Opinion | The European Union must wake up to the threat it faces or be prepared to go the way of the USSR
- George Soros says with anti-European forces poised to enjoy a competitive advantage in the upcoming European Parliament elections, the EU must take urgent steps to rally its supporters and defend its founding values
Europe is sleepwalking into oblivion, and its people need to wake up before it is too late.
If they don’t, the European Union will go the way of the Soviet Union in 1991. Neither our leaders nor ordinary citizens seem to understand that we are experiencing a revolutionary moment, that the range of possibilities is very broad and that the eventual outcome is thus highly uncertain.
The next inflection point will be the elections for the European Parliament in May. Unfortunately, anti-European forces will enjoy a competitive advantage in the balloting.
The reasons for this include the outdated party system that prevails in most European countries, the practical impossibility of treaty change and the lack of legal tools for disciplining member states that violate the principles on which the EU was founded.
The party system of individual states reflects the divisions that mattered in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as the conflict between capital and labour. But the cleavage that matters most today is between pro- and anti-European forces.
In Germany, the political alliance between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Bavaria-based Christian Social Union (CSU) has become unsustainable.
