 |
 |
Until about 15 years ago Euro-summits were held without special security measures. With the exception of farmers, there were no demonstrators. They were simply boring events, most people never noticed them. The idea that a European summit would attract violence was generally unthinkable in the early years of the EEC, as it was then known. Researchers have generally failed to realise the depth of the anti-European reaction in the last 20 years. A huge group, possibly the majority of the EU population, sees the EU as intrinsically wrong. At best it is something which must be contained: they see it as the task of their national government to defend them from the EU. The EU has also become a focus for a broad category of anti-systemic protest, in a pattern typical for declining colonial governments. The colonised population saw the colonial administration as the 'source of all evil' - and saw its removal as the precondition for all social change. Issues such as land reform or housing all became part of the indepemdence campaign. In a similar way, the anti-EU movement is slowly becoming a catalyst and focus for opposition to very diverse issues. The EU will no doubt introduce more repressive measures for future summits: a special summit to discuss this is already planned. Now, security measures are not in themselves unusual, nor is hatred and aggression. The Israeli governmnet would not expect to hold a cabinet meeting in Gaza without police protection, not the Palestine Authority in a West-Bank Jewish settlement. The Real IRA would not expect to openly hold a meeting in a London hotel. But everyone knows why this is, everyone knows of the wars, hatreds and deaths. None of that is present in the evolution of the EU. In historical perspective it is extraordinary that the EU - neither a state nor a people, and largely a bureacracy - attracts the responses normally associated with hostile peoples or states, or with colonisation. Again I think it is a failure of academic research to consider this: instead there is an evasion of the issue. Sooner or later, someone will be killed protesting against the EU. That was absolutely not predictable at the foundation of the EEC in Rome in 1957. What is happening and why? -- Paul Treanor http://web.inter.nl.net/users/Paul.Treanor/which.europe.html