Contact us: info@strategic-culture.su

These are hard times for centrist governments in Western Europe. They are suffering a collapse of support and loss of control in Germany, France, and elsewhere, as the peoples of Europe say “Enough” to the liberal establishment.

Yet one centre-left regime somehow appears to be bucking the trend and consolidating its power:  the central ‘government’ of the European Union, led by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

As President von der Leyen finished nominating the commissioners for her second term in office this week, one awestruck headline even hailed her ascension “From Queen to Empress.” Sounds like we should all be taking the knee to Her Imperial Majesty.

But like all empresses—and unlike her troubled allies in Berlin or Paris—President Ursula is not elected by the people, the ones who put the demos in democracy. Safe in their smoke-free committee rooms, the Brussels elite smugly assumes this lack of democratic accountability insulates her regime against pressure from the vulgar peasants outside the castle walls.

They will find out soon enough, however, that they are not immune from the populist revolt by Europe’s farmers, workers, youth, and many others against their terrible migration policies and mad pursuit of Net Zero targets.

Many voters may not even have realised that the commission is now the central government of the EU, directing European politics. Perhaps they thought it was simply a technical, administrative body, a building full of civil servants appointed to carry out the wishes of the EU’s member states and parliament.

If so, they cannot have been paying close attention to the expanding political role of the commission at the heart of the EU, especially under President Ursula over the past five years, with the craven support of much of the ‘independent’ media.

It is not often you hear the liberal media celebrating the power of monarchies these days, but there was something creepily reverential about the reports of how von der Leyen had secured her authority this week.

Politico, the house journal of the Brussels establishment, set the unctuous tone with that headline, “From Queen to Empress.” In selecting her 27 commissioners, they said admiringly, she had promoted her allies and loyalist “guard dogs,” sidelined the few irritating critics from her first term in office, and even put her friend the French president in his place.

As a result, Empress Ursula had “silenced the doubters about who was really in charge in Brussels” and made clear that “she would have unfettered control over European Union politics.”

“Unfettered control” over EU politics? Is the union of 27 parliamentary democracies now an absolute monarchy, then? The EU establishment might claim to be defending democratic values against the ‘far right,’ but its system is a top-down mockery of democracy.

Where does Empress Ursula claim legitimacy for her rule? Not from God but, according to another Brussels fanzine, Euractiv, from “the sweeping political victory of her centre-right EPP party in the June EU elections.” Despite being labelled ‘centre-right,’ the European People’s Party (EPP) is largely a fake-conservative collection of centrists allied with the Left and the Greens in the European Parliament.

They must imagine that we have very short memories. The EPP did emerge from the June elections as the still-largest group in the EU parliament, with 188 out of 720 MEPs—a grand increase of one seat since the 2019 elections.

It achieved this by winning 23.5% of the votes cast. With an overall voter turn-out of 51%, that means the EPP won the support of 11.99% of the total EU electorate.

Yet this week, when von der Leyen finally announced her proposed line-up from the new European Commission, Manfred Weber—leader of the EEP group in parliament—could bluntly boast that “We shape Europe.”

To prove the point, the EPP proudly tweeted photos of all its prospective Commission members: the second-term President Ursula, alongside the 14 fellow EPP members she chose as her commissioners, representing just over half the total of 27.

On what planet can getting less than a quarter of the vote amount to a “sweeping victory”? And only in the fantasy world of the Brussels bubble could winning the votes of just 12 out of every 100 Europeans amount to a mandate to “shape Europe” and interfere in the affairs of sovereign democracies.

As we pointed out in June, though Empress Ursula-through-the-looking-glass had the nerve to thank the voters on election night, this President of the EU did not actually receive a single vote from the peoples of Europe whose lives she now seeks to shape. She was reappointed to her position for a second term through backroom deals and pork-barrel power-broking.

Her EPP group intends to govern again in coalition with the left and the Greens—the biggest losers in June. Meanwhile, let nobody forget, the sovereigntist and populist parties that made the biggest gains in those elections are ignored.

The new Patriots for Europe grouping, now the third-largest group of MEPs, has been denied any of the positions in parliament to which it is entitled, cut off behind the anti-democratic cordon sanitaire imposed by the EPP and its leftist co-conspirators. The Patriots have been banished from the court of Empress Ursula—along with, even more importantly, the millions of ordinary patriots who voted for them.

These elitist shenanigans matter more than ever before. Because the European Commission now has more influence than ever over not just EU policy, but the everyday lives of Europeans.

The Commission has always been much more than a technical, administrative body, of course. Although unelected, it is the only EU institution with the power to initiate legislation. Unlike sovereign national assemblies, the European Parliament has no power to write and pass laws without the prior assent of the Commission.

The centralisation of EU power in the Commission has accelerated over the past two decades, as an important report published this month by the MCC Brussels think tank makes clear. “The Silent Coup: the European Commission’s Power-grab” spells out how “the EC has used its responses to a series of crises—the euro crisis, Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ukraine war—to assume more authority and make ‘emergency’ decisions, for example on vaccines or sanctions, that lead to permanent changes in the exercise of EU power.”

“This use of the politics of ‘permacrisis’ to expand the reach and power of the Commission has reached new heights under the regime of the current EC president, Ursula von der Leyen.”

We can expect much more of the same from Empress Ursula and her camp followers through the inevitable crises of the next five years. But while they can get away with this silent coup inside the Brussels bubble, what happens outside is another matter.

The peoples of Europe are stirring in revolt against the society-wrecking consequences of centralised EU policies, from the Migration Pact to the Green Deal. Already, the new Netherlands government has made clear that it wants to break from EU migration rules, and Viktor Orbán’s Hungary is set to follow suit. Even the German government, a ‘traffic light’ coalition of reds and greens at the heart of van der Leyen’s “open borders” EU, has been forced to reimpose border controls in a desperate effort to assuage public anger about uncontrolled migration and crime.

In response, the Brussels elites have begun making polite noises about political concessions on farming and migration. But why should anybody believe them? The court of Empress Ursula carries on as if nothing has changed in its let-them-eat-bugs world, where the problem is always the masses and the solution to everything is More Europe.

It is now clearer than ever that there are two Europes. What we need is not more of the official Europe ruled over by the EU Commission, but more national sovereignty and more democracy in the real Europe where millions live and work. Some of us might think that Empress Ursula’s EU is beyond reform. But in any case, we all need to fight for more accountability, more democratic control, and no more cover-ups, shady power deals, or secret coups.

Von der Leyen’s fan club can enjoy their moment, crowing about their “unfettered control of EU politics” and power to “shape Europe.” But she should not get too comfortable on that Berlaymont throne. The populist peasants’ revolt is just beginning. And like the emperor in the Hans Christian Andersen story, the Empress’s grand new clothes might not bear closer critical examination from the disenfranchised peoples of Europe.

Original article: The European Conservative