Many people have been drawn to the EU because its founders claimed it was intended to avoid another war in Europe. It was all about ‘working together’ instead of fighting. But in truth, building a new regional state at the expense of existing nation states has achieved even less than other post-war nostrums, such as learning Esperanto.(…)
However, the EU soon lost sight of its focus on peace and became an empire-building project with a life of its own.(…)
The EU has no track record of success in international peace making. Its ambition, according to the previous President, Jose Manuel Barroso, has been for some time to make the EU a new military power. In his 2012 ‘state of the union’ address, he made it clear that the aim was to build a power bloc to rival the US and China. And he clearly envisaged an EU capable of exerting military force. The world, he said, needs a Europe that is capable of ‘deploying military missions’. Former EU Commissioner, Peter Mandelson, made the point even more starkly last year when he said that the EU was no longer about peace but about power.(…)
The proposal for a European Public Prosecutor, he thought, most strongly illustrated ‘the extent to which some in the present Commission now seem dangerously out of touch with the people of Europe they are supposed to serve’. Grieve accused the Commission of failing to observe the rule of law. Indeed it appeared to consider itself above the law.