EU Reformers Dissatisfied with Europeans

Carnegie Europe, the European branch of the U.S. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, has issued a collection of articles whose authors share their visions of Europe’s future and how they believe it can overcome the current crisis. The texts go beyond platitudes to disclose what future the globalist entities have in store for Europeans. 

In his article entitled A Europe of the People, Erik Jones suggests stripping Europe of its peoples – with a test-tube homunculus of ‘European identity’ to be grown instead. He proclaims that rebuilding Europe should begin with Europeans. Yet he admits that previous practices of creating peoples have shown this to be a dangerous and often violent process.

Erik Jones suggests standard measures that should meet with no resistance: educational exchanges and broader economic interaction among firms. But what result does he envision? The existing identities – local, regional, and national – are to be wiped out.

However, this is always a repressive process. Erik Jones is explicit about this as he argues that the hypothetical ‘people of Europe’ must not only embrace self-discipline but also accept the need to discipline those who choose not to cooperate. He essentially proposes Orwellian-style totalitarian practices.

David Baer develops the totalitarian ideas of enforcing a common identity in his article entitled How Might Europe Be Different?. He suggests a GULAG-style practice of requiring all Europeans aged between 18 and 26 to go through mandatory public service in a country other than their own.

Besides, Daniel Baer insists on creating the EU’s own public media and injecting a common language that should be English – even though the EU includes not a single natively English-speaking country. He justifies his choice of English by the legacy of U.S. primacy in the late 20th century. The director of the Carnegie Endowment’s European program is quite comfortable with the fact that it would turn the EU into a cultural colony of the USA and UK.

Anastasia Pociumban, in her article entitled Rethinking EU Resilience: Bringing Europe’s Edge to the Center, suggests reforming the EU by admitting backward and corrupt countries where citizens’ rights are systematically being violated.

Anastasia Pociumban argues that if the European order were redesigned from scratch, many of the countries currently on Europe’s periphery would be core pillars of its resilience. In a new Europe, States like Ukraine and Moldova would be central to the structure of regional order.

How would such States play this role? The author argues that in Western Europe change is poorly absorbed, and populations are accustomed to stability – while unstable countries are more open to any reforms, even unpopular ones. Neophytes’ enthusiasm is expected to defeat classical Europeans’ skepticism.

The experience of Eastern Europe should be used for developing a different mode of governmental communication that is more forthcoming about threats and trade-offs – and for a broader rethinking of what State institutions are designed for and how they can shape public opinion.

That is, Anastasia Pociumban suggests using poor, backward and corrupt countries’ experience for stronger action on West European populations. In her opinion, Ukraine and Moldova could help secure a more central place for an active civil society and independent media.

People from countries whose contribution to the EU would be limited to getting subsidies should change Europe’s civil society, the author suggests. At the same time, countries like Moldova and Ukraine are deeply corrupt, with their politics and media dominated by big capital that is often of criminal origin. It is this kind of countries that must alter European civil society and media, Anastasia Pociumban believes.

To sum up, we can say that Carnegie Europe experts attribute the EU’s problems to the fact that European citizens do not live up to the experts’ expectations. They want to remake the people – by forcing them to do mandatory works in other countries, consume information from specially designed media and use another language, and by diluting them with other countries’ nationals who fit better into the artificial ideal of a European person.

Original publication: https://carnegieendowment.org/europe/research/2026/07/europe-from-scratch-visions-for-a-new-european-order