The war in Ukraine has highlighted fundamental differences across the EU about the importance of the nation state as a political and social construct, argues Daniel Hannan in today’s Telegraph.
For those on Europe’s Eastern border faced with an existential crisis, nation status is a very real and treasured idea for which men will fight and die.
This is anathema to the Brussels mind-set however, exemplified in its sour diplomatic treatment towards the new accession states and to Poland in particular:
“Eurocrats see the current government as altogether too Catholic and, worst of all, nationalist. Its real sin was to declare that Polish national law was supreme over EU law – or, at least, that its own judges, rather than the EU’s, should get to decide when Brussels is going beyond the powers bestowed on it by the EU treaties.
Nationalism is the worst of all offences in Brussels, the sin against the Holy Ghost that shall not be forgiven unto men. But ask yourself this. What exactly is the Ukrainian war about? What caused the refugee crisis?
This is, au fond, a war about national independence. Ukraine was invaded because it insisted on being a fully sovereign nation rather than accepting a semi-dependent status. Ukrainians, in other words, are fighting for the national principle, for their right to form their own state and live under their own laws.”
The war has and will change many things, including it is hoped, the EU’s aversion to nation-state democracy. For that in the end is what people go to fight and die for:
“Look at what Ukrainians are suffering in its defence, look at what Poles are prepared to do to assist them, and then try and tell me that it doesn’t matter.”
The full article can be read here with a link to the original beneath it:
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