The European Union Now Resembles the Soviet Union

The European Union now resembles the Soviet Union by Finn Andrean.

Considering the recent development of the European Union,

it seems appropriate to look at a meme that has been going around for some time,

namely, EU-SSR. The implication is, of course, that the EU is starting to resemble

the Soviet Union. Though this might sound like a bad joke on the face of it,

there are, in fact, many common points between the European Union and the Soviet Union

and the EU-plan direction, such as the Letta Plan and the Draghi Plan,

will further increase the similarities.

The Soviet roots of European integration.

In early 2025, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance warned Europeans of old, entrenched interests,

hiding behind ugly, Soviet-era words like misinformation and disinformation.

Though this is clearly a case of the pot calling the kettle black,

there is undoubtedly some truth to this. As the EU has been turning the screws ever tighter

on freedom of speech, for example, via the Digital Services Act, and most recently with the

probable ban of social networks for children. Then, a few months later, while visiting Moldova,

President Macron stressed that the EU is in no way the Soviet Union.

This comment didn't come out of nowhere. Such a remarkable and unnecessary denial by the French

President is full of meaning. At a time when the EU-SR meme is becoming more and more popular.

In fact, a comparison between the EU and the USSR is not unwarranted.

True, the European Union is far wealthier and more capitalistic than the Soviet Union ever was.

But politically, the parallels exist, which is why the acronym EU-SR

is now so often being thrown around to describe the inefficient, corrupt, and centralized EU

administration. It is important to note, though, that these similarities are not just the

coincidence. In EU-SSR, the Soviet roots of European integration,

2004, authors Vybukovsky and peace-stroyloff exposed, with declassified archives in Moscow,

the secretive discussions between Western and Soviet Union leaders,

planning to create a collectivist European Union state.

A top priority for the USSR in order to counter the United States' influence in Europe

was to try to bring Western Europe through an enhanced EU closer to a reformed Soviet model.

The Soviet leadership, under M. Cyr Gorbachev, introduced the socialist concept of a common European

home, which was to include Western Europe, the Warsaw Pact countries, and of course, a reformed

USSR. The booklet shows that this idea was fully embraced by many Western European

socialist leaders at the time, like President F. Mitterrand of France and Prime Minister

F. Gonzalez of Spain, who discussed the matter directly with M. Gorbachev in Moscow.

Not surprisingly, both Mitterrand and Gonzalez strongly favored further European integration

at the expense of nation-states, they not only were proponents of the Maastricht Treaty,

signed 1992, but also two of its most influential architects and advocates within the European

Council. In a meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister O'Donnis on March 3, 1989,

Gorbachev said, through our perestroika, through the new ideas brought forward by the socialist

of Western Europe, we are not moving away from each other. We are doing the opposite.

The idea was that the political and economic restructuring of the Soviet Union meant to stop

its decline would align economically and ideologically with the future EU. Considering this context,

it is not surprising that the European Union of today recalls the late Soviet Union in many

respects. As the authors wrote, for anyone even remotely familiar with the Soviet system,

its similarity with the developing structures of the European Union with its governing philosophy

and democratic deficit, its endemic corruption and bureaucratic ineptitude is striking.

Towards the collectivist EU state, the European Union is the Technocratic Administration

centered in Bruxelles, European Commission and Council, and Strasbourg, European Parliament,

and semi-independent national states tied together in a semiotic power relationship,

including currency stability from the ECB and redistribution between states, regions,

and sectors. In the same vein, the USSR was composed of the administrative apparatus

centered in Moscow, Council of Ministers, Gosplan, Central Committee of CPSU,

together with nominally sovereign socialist republics involving credit allocation from Gospank

and redistribution between republics, autonomous regions, and industrial sectors.

The political and administrative similarities between the EU and the USSR are indeed striking

and even more so today. Economically, Europe also does far too much planning from the center

than healthy societies need. Though it has a much bigger private sector than the Soviet Union had,

the growing size of EU's public sectors, unsustainable state debts,

and intolerable fiscal pressure are clearly weighing on European economies in ways that strongly

remind of the stagnation of the late USSR. The EU is following in the Soviet Union's footsteps,

also by prioritizing political ideology and regulatory control rather than free markets

and laissez-faire. The EU's energy policy is a good example. There is an almost sectarian

fervor to it. The science is settled demanding net zero while disregarding science, competition

and cost, and with a deeply rooted dislike of Russia. As Bruxelles is coming under ever more pressure,

it is also becoming more disconnected with economic laws and social realities, just like the Soviet

leadership. Europe is starting to suffer from the same centralization sickness as the Soviet Union,

with the center too incompetent and too disinterested to really represent and defend

the interests of European peoples. Indeed, the EU's political architecture seems to be moving

towards the USSR's organizational concept of democratic centralism. As Alberto Mingardi, director

of Istituto Bruno Leoni writes, the drive to transfer ever more sovereignty from diverse member

states to Brussels is turning the European Union into an inefficient centralized nation-state

construct. Hence, the EU is supposed to grow through crises and thanks to crises.

Whatever the problem or issue, it could foster a slice of national sovereignty

to be cut and brought up to a higher level. Mingardi hints at the fact that external causes

are falsely painted as culprits for the EU's current predicament. Just like the Soviet Union,

tried to blame decay on the global capitalist system and the arms race. In the EU, these crises

also serve as excuses to enhance social control, a globalization, COVID-19, Russia, USA, China,

global warming, immigration, and so on. Further, just like the USSR's Council of Ministers,

the EU Commission is composed of large, unelected bureaucracies, 32,000 civil servants.

Both are unaccountable bodies that hold the true power over the legislative process.

Even the EU titles have strong similarities with the USSR as commissioners could be called

ministers of the EU and the directorates general of the commission ministries. There is a sham

parliament in both cases. The EU parliament resembles the supreme Soviet in that it exists

primarily to rubber stamp decisions made by the executive bureaucracy rather than represent the

people. The EU Commission's drift towards authoritarianism is unmistakable today.

Few would deny that the EU now also has a Soviet style, Nomenclatura, a new class of

eurocrats which also enjoys legal immunity, high salaries, and privileges that separate them

from the general population. The ever closer cooperation between the EU and NATO also resembles

the USSR, where the military and the civilian economies were not easily distinguishable.

The EU, and in particular Germany, is moving in this direction as defense expenditures

are exploding, using the Ukraine conflict as a pretext. Using 2024 constant prices,

EU defense spending was 234.2 billion euros in 2020. It rose to 343.2 billion euros

in 2024 and is expected to reach 381 billion in 2025. The real increase over the past decade

from 2015 to 2025 is 99 percent. In 2014, spending was at its lowest level in real terms

at 188.5 billion euros. All right, expansion and collapse of the EU project.

The examples above show that in many ways the EU is moving towards the Soviet model.

Closer to what was planned had the USSR not collapsed. This is part of a general trend across

the Western world that has been ongoing for several years to increase status technocratic

control of society in all areas. Public opinion, restrictions on freedom of speech,

private property, CBDC for public financing of government debt, and control dissent,

and even physical movement, digital health pass, carbon restrictions.

Ironically, this is part of the globalist plan of the Western financial oligarchy.

Most citizens would probably reject this obvious restriction of freedom.

In the future, there will of course be public opposition to these plans. The question is when and

how widespread this popular opposition will be. In order for the rule majority to express firmly

its opposition to such an evolution, it must first become largely aware of it. Therefore,

information and education about what the European Union, including its mostly compliant national

governments, is morphing into its key. If anything, this nefarious status development of the EU

is accelerating rather than slowing down. It is therefore urgent to move now to stop the further

Sovietization of the European Union and return to simply upholding the principles of four freedoms

if the supernatural EU structure cannot be dismantled entirely. Hopefully, it will be possible

count on EU hubris, corruption, administrative disorganization, and bureaucratic incompetence,

all of which are inevitable with every attempt at centralizing political power.

Therefore, just like the communist experiment that collapsed in Russia, there is also a possibility

that the future Sovietized EU could experience the same fate. With the current

incompetent EU leadership, this possibility has probably increased of late. As the authors of EU

SSR wrote, but with perhaps too much assurance, the EU will continue to expand uncontrollably,

unable to stop until it collapses in exhaustion, pretty much like the late Soviet Union.

Many politically alert Western Europeans could probably recognize their own societies

in the following description of the late Soviet Union by Professor of Anthropology, Alexey

Yurchak. Everyone in the Soviet Union knew the system was failing, but no one could imagine any

alternative to the status quo, and politicians and citizens alike were resigned to maintaining the

pretence of a functioning society. The problem in Europe is that this political awareness does not

exist yet with the majority of Europeans, until and if such an awareness crystallizes,

there is thus no vigorous public pressure that could oppose the EU's plans for further integration.

This lack of understanding can partly be explained by the European bourgeoisie's

mostly business-oriented attitude, lacking much political consciousness. But it is also a result of

successful propaganda efforts undertaken over decades by corporate media and state institutions

to align the public with the EU agenda. This has been going on for so long now that, contrary to

the Soviet peoples, relatively few Europeans have realized yet that their freedoms are being eroded

and that their beloved democratic systems are failing. The tragedy is that by the time they wake

up, it could be too late. For more content like this, visit meses.org.