So when I’m thinking about ending western imperialism one of the first institutions that is a major block is the EU. Not only does it facilitate global exploitation in favor of the global north, but it also forces austerity in Europe and my understanding is that you literally cannot be a socialist government in the EU- this is not something we can change/take power of, but something that must be ended entirely.
In terms of the current crisis, the EU is leading the charge to essentially rid Europe of all Russian energy. As someone who does not and has never lived in Europe, I’m wondering if I’m witnessing the beginning of the end for the EU and how easy or realistic it would be for countries to escape its grasp. I would also like to extend the time frame we’re looking at a bit- if this crisis doesn’t directly cause people to leave the EU this winter it could still cause it down the line. It just comes down to how decoupled Russia and China become from the west at the end of all this. Especially 10 years down the line, it is inevitable many countries side with China over the US if they’re forced to choose just 1. That’s not even including the amount of countries that are totally fucked without Russian gas. I just don’t get how the EU could maintain itself through such a crisis, a self caused one at that.
No i don’t think it can happen. Not in the short term. There is just absolutely no impetus for it, all the elites are pro EU. Hungary may be the only exception but even there i highly doubt it because they just don’t have a choice really. They depend economically on the EU too much. But maybe an anti-EU movement will be created by this crisis and that could grow over the next few years. If it does happen it will be a long process, things will be bad for a long time.
I doubt that it’ll be a genuine working class movement though, seeing how the primary anti-EU force in countries like Poland or Hungary is right-wing reactionary. And that’s what I’m afraid of as well, that it’ll be used to strip away the “leftie” (in the right-wing populist lens) elements of the EU, like eg. consumer protection or these meager fucking scraps of rights for minorities.
Yeah, as one poster above mentions, anti-EU topic is portrayed as far-right… but not without reason, overwhelming amount of anti-EU voices heard are far right. In Poland there is basically no left heard at all anywhere. And liberals and conservatists, even the protofash like PiS are pro-EU (no matter how much they whine, it’s completely empty). Which means that actually realistic prospect of leaving EU require either complete collapse of said intitution or hard turn right for the dominant political power… hard turn right from what already is protofash.
Also EU is tied to NATO.