🇪🇺Europe Day is a reminder of how far we've come, and how much harder we have to fight
Today we celebrate peace in Europe, but to protect it, we must finish the Union and stand up for democracy, unity, and shared strength.
👋Hey guys, Julien here. The French Dispatch is a reader-supported publication, and both our coverage of current affairs as well as our ability to bring you more news and information on the world around us is entirely funded by paid subscriptions and donations.
If you enjoy reading articles written by high-level experts, then make sure to support the publication by liking, subscribing, and sharing it with your friends and colleagues, and consider taking a paid subscription.
75 years ago, this continent was in ruins.
Cities were barely rising out of the rubble of the most destructive war in human history. Families were broken. Generations traumatised. War in Europe wasn’t a chapter in a history book; it was a far-too-regular part of life.
And then, something remarkable happened.
Leaders who had every reason to hate each other, to mistrust each other, and to guard against one another chose a different path.
75 years ago, everything changed thanks to the Schuman Declaration, which put forward a bold idea: that cooperation could replace conflict. That shared interests can bind old enemies together.
That friendship could replace hatred.
Through working together, starting with steel and coal, and growing into what we now call the European Union, we could make war “not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible”
It’s easy to be cynical about politics, about institutions, politicians, and Brussels itself, but we should never lose sight of the miracle that peace in Europe and our Union represents.
For most of our history, peace was the exception, not the rule, and this is what makes what we’ve built over the past few decades so extraordinary.
Even if it’s far from perfect and far from finished, the sheer extraordinary nature of what we’ve created should leave us breathless.
But, with a dangerous world around us, we must remember that peace is not just the absence of war, but the strong presence of justice, democracy, solidarity, and prosperity for people inside and outside of our Union.
And these values are being tested.
Which is why we need to make sure that we not only celebrate what we’ve created today but also ensure that Europe Day is a renewed call to complete the European project.
We need a Union that is more resilient, more democratic, and more capable of standing up for what we believe in.
We need to be able to defend liberal democracy, not just with words, but with real strength and presence.
We need to avoid repeating the failings of the past: division, complacency, and short-term thinking.
Europe Day isn’t just about treaties or flags or speeches.
It’s about this simple but radical idea: that peace is possible, that democracy is worth fighting for, and that unity makes us stronger.
But it's also a reminder of how far we've come and how much harder we have to fight to ensure that we never fall back into the depths of depravity that our continent once knew.
Thank you for reading The French Dispatch! If you liked what you read, you should like this post and subscribe to the newsletter by clicking/tapping the button below:
And if you’d like to contribute a coffee or two to help fuel my coverage of the wild world of politics, feel free to click on the picture below:
