The European Union Is Damaged by Its Loudest Supporters
Recent pro-European demonstrations in Italy saw top liberals call for the EU to rearm. For some, it’s a passionate rallying cry — but the diversion of more funds to the military is weakening any prospect of serious European social policy.
Participants wave European flags during a demonstration in support of Europe in Rome, Italy, on March 15, 2025. (Riccardo De Luca / Anadolu via Getty Images)
The recent clash between Volodymyr Zelensky and Donald Trump sent shockwaves across Europe, exposing the continent’s deep political fractures. The European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen’s response — a €800 billion military spending plan dubbed “ReArm Europe” only exacerbated divisions across the continent, including within the pro-EU camp.
Take Italy, where Michele Serra, a columnist for center-left daily La Repubblica, called for a demonstration in defense of European integration against Trump’s bullying tactics. The event, intended to showcase a unified European front, instead highlighted growing tensions between centrist liberal forces and the pro-EU left. While the former demanded the demonstration be used to display unconditional support for rearmament, the latter — more skeptical of Von der Leyen’s militarization agenda — argued for a focus on peace and Europe’s fundamental values.
In the end, about 30,000 people showed up at the March 15 demonstration — mostly aging members of what historian Paul Ginsborg once called Italy’s “reflexive middle class” as noted by Giuliano Santoro. This was the same liberal crowd that used to power the movement against Silvio Berlusconi’s outrages but now finds itself clinging to a vague, hollow notion of “Europe.” The messages delivered during the event were contradictory — and swung between a banner saying “ReArm yes, even like that” and another stating “Italy rejects war, No ReArm Europe.”
From the stage, mainstream liberal intellectuals took turns delivering self-congratulatory speeches. Disregarding the direct and indirect involvement of European countries in countless conflicts over the last thirty years, the bestseller writer Antonio Scurati declared:
We are not people who invade neighboring countries; we are not people who bomb and raze cities to the ground; we do not massacre and torture civilians with sadistic pleasure; we do not kidnap children and deport them to use them as ransom. We did this up until eighty years ago when Italians — though not all — were Fascists and allied with the Nazis. But precisely for this reason, we stopped doing it, once and for all, forever.
These words certainly did not enhance his purported status as a leading intellectual of the opposition.
With a rather chauvinist attitude, the songwriter Roberto Vecchioni reminded the crowd that Socrates, Baruch Spinoza, René Descartes, G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, William Shakespeare, Miguel de Cervantes, Luigi Pirandello, Alejandro Manzoni, and Giacomo Leopardi are Europeans, while the “others” don’t have such things. The word “culture” itself — in his view — should be a notion belonging exclusively to Europeans.
These episodes underscore a dangerous reality: a pro-EU liberal elite — entrenched in increasingly arrogant and self-righteous stances — is actively steering the union into perilous waters. Ironically, their blind Europeism may further diminish the popularity of the EU project, posing an even greater threat than the most ardent Euroskeptics.
The Betrayal of the European Identity
In the aftermath of World War II, the European Union was envisioned by its main advocates as a new model of international cooperation. The promise was that this would transcend the nationalism, power politics, and imperialism that had torn apart the continent in the previous decades.
These ideas are embodied in the 1941 Ventotene Manifesto, drawn up by the anti-fascist political prisoners Altiero Spinelli, Ernesto Rossi, and Eugenio Colorni during their detention under Benito Mussolini’s regime. The pamphlet quickly became a key document for many European movements that advocated for European integration. As noted by Italy’s far-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni in a parliamentary speech on March 19 criticizing the document, the Ventotene Manifesto laid out the vision of a free and united Europe based on socialist principles and the emancipation of the working class. It specified that private property should be limited and directed to liberate the economy from the nightmares of militarism and national bureaucratism.
The current European Treaties are hardly a replica of the Ventotene Manifesto but — at least on paper — proclaim the idea of an EU committed to social rights, peace, and civil liberties. Article 2 of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU) explicitly states that the union is built on respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, and the rule of law. Article 3 establishes that its primary objective is to promote peace, human rights, and the well-being of its citizens.
Yet the EU institutions have repeatedly failed to live up to the lofty ambitions set out in the treaties. In contrast to its fundamental principles, the union embraces the very realpolitik it was designed to overcome and keeps neglecting its social pillar. The blame for that lies squarely with the core of the EU liberal establishment — led by the centrist factions of the Social Democrats (S&D) and the European People’s Party (EPP), along with the liberals of Renew Europe.
From Peace to Militarization
Rather than forging a new security framework rooted in arms control, cooperation, and confidence-building measures — reviving the spirit of the 1975 Helsinki Accords — the EU Commission has chosen the path of militarization to counter the specter of a US withdrawal from the continent. “ReArm Europe” will see the commission borrow €150 billion from capital markets to finance arms purchases, with the remaining funds raised through loosened deficit rules at the national level.
This move was welcomed by the EPP and Renew Europe, while the S&D took a more cautious stance — supporting the plan but demanding democratic oversight and assurances that social protections won’t be sacrificed. In the discussion regarding the EU Parliament resolution supporting the rearmament plan, Italy’s Partito Democratico (S&D) proved more reluctant than its European counterparts. It pushed to replace the NATO-imposed target of spending 3 percent of GDP on defense with a “priority for joint European initiatives.” Its partial abstention in the parliamentary vote has sparked fierce criticism of Partito Democratico leader Elly Schlein, especially from liberal factions — both inside and outside her party — who are becoming increasingly uncompromising on the issue.
Von der Leyen, in the speech to the European Parliament, invoked the legacy of Italian postwar leader Alcide De Gasperi and his vision for a European Defense Community. What she conveniently omitted is that the Christian Democrat De Gasperi did not advocate for an arms race but for a democratically governed Europe-wide military force. ReArm Europe, on the other hand, is nothing more than a cash grab for the defense industry, doing little to advance member states’ political and military integration and even less to promote peace. Another overlooked fact is that the commission is pushing for increased military spending to counter an adversary — Russia — that even in wartime spends significantly less on defense than the European bloc as a whole and has displayed limited military capacities during three years of war in Ukraine.
Selective Outrage
The EU’s claim to be a global champion of human rights has long been undermined by its selective outrage. While rightly sanctioning Russia for its brutal aggression against Ukraine, it has turned a blind eye to Israel’s war crimes in Palestine. Not only has the EU not imposed any sanction for the war in Gaza, but many EU countries keep supplying Israeli forces with military equipment. The official statements do not get any better. Even when Israel recently blocked humanitarian aid to pressure for an extension of the cease-fire deal, the EU released a declaration condemning Hamas, while only making a passing reference to Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon of war — a clear violation of international humanitarian law.
European leaders’ sharp declarations against Putin’s authoritarianism have not impeded the EU from cozying up to other autocrats in neighboring countries. The most emblematic example of this is the special relationship between the current EU leadership and Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev. Von der Leyen has repeatedly praised the country for being a reliable and crucial energy partner, remaining silent about its abysmal human rights records and the recent escalation of political repression. Meanwhile, then EU Council president Charles Michel complimented Aliyev for winning the 2024 elections only a few months after Azerbaijan’s military operations had provoked the displacement of over 100,000 Armenians who fled Nagorno-Karabakh after Baku forcefully took control of the enclave.
Austerian Pattern
Although the EU has long obeyed neoliberal orthodoxy, the principles of solidarity and social cohesion were also foundational elements in its series of treaties. Over the decades, the EU has slowly expanded its role in social security, though primarily as a means to support the functioning of the common market. The commitment to social security was considerably stepped up with the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty, whereas the Lisbon Treaty introduced in 2009 enacted a so-called social clause requiring the EU to fulfill its social objectives — including full employment and solidarity between generations — when defining and implementing its other policies and activities. Another milestone was the 2017 European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR), which established twenty principles that should guide the construction of a strong social Europe.
The EPSR was followed by some interventions — on minimum wages and homelessness prevention, for example. But these social measures are mostly regulatory, and the EU action in the field remains underfunded overall, as the bloc refuses to overhaul its fiscal rules to allow greater social investment at the European and national levels. The so-called reform of the Stability and Growth Pact introduced only cosmetic changes, maintaining the austerity framework that has defined EU economic policy for decades.
Meanwhile, the shift toward a security-oriented economy threatens to squeeze social spending even further. A clear sign of this trend is the ongoing debate among EU chiefs over diverting already limited cohesion funds — meant to support Europe’s poorest regions — toward defense spending. Even more revealing, the commission is now proposing to loosen fiscal rules for military investment, though they have always refused to do the same for social programs. The investments in the military sector will inevitably create new debts and current expenditures for the member states, likely offset by cuts to welfare.
Liberal Authoritarians
Rising living costs are eroding European living standards, while deindustrialization and declining competitiveness are hollowing out the EU economy. According to the EU Post-Electoral Survey 2024, Europeans rank economic hardship and global instability as their top concerns. Yet rather than fostering international stability and addressing the economic issues, EU leaders are doubling down on militarization and stoking tensions with Russia.
The looming Russian threat has become a convenient excuse for an increasingly aggressive and authoritarian turn among the most fervent pro-EU forces. Liberals across Europe not only celebrated the annulment of Romania’s latest elections over alleged Russian interference but also backed the disqualification of Călin Georgescu, the ostensible first-round winner, from competing in the second vote. For all his obnoxious positions, this is a chilling precedent for democracy within the union.
Beyond Romania, “foreign influence” is fast becoming a catch-all pretext to brand political opponents as Kremlin stooges and crush dissent. Both at the European and national levels, new regulations to combat “foreign interference” are being drafted, with pro-EU liberals leading the crusade for defending European values against all manner of scapegoats. In the hands of a radicalized elite increasingly intolerant of opposition, the allegations of treacherous foreign influence risk morphing into outright political repression. The crackdown on dissent in the name of defending the domestic front against external influence might start to resemble the narrative of the same autocracies — including Russia — the EU claims to oppose.
Welfare or Military Spending
By casting Moscow as an existential threat against which all resources must be mobilized, EU elites are conveniently deflecting blame for their own failures — economic stagnation, industrial decline, and the erosion of social protections. These crises, more than anything else, are fueling the rise of far-right parties across the continent. Framing every political shift as a Russian conspiracy without addressing the material struggles of European citizens will only accelerate this trend.
Instead of embracing an increasingly securitarian and intolerant rhetoric — an ill-fated attempt to rally support around the European flag against supposed internal and external enemies — forces who want to regenerate the EU should return to the spirit of Ventotene and the principles that guided the continent’s postwar recovery: building a more equal society with robust social protections. This foundation, not militarization, drove Europe’s now-fading prosperity. It represents the true European identity that must be reclaimed to combat the forces that seek to dismantle it. If the EU and Europeanism are to survive, they need a Europe of Welfare more than a Europe of Military Spending.