i do not consider myself to be european. i am first and foremost, irish.
what do i have in common with a german? with an italian? with a french citizen? we share a millennium of wars, invasions, betrayals - history written in blood and redrawn borders.
and what do any of us in the west have in common with estonia, romania, latvia? places that spent half a century behind an iron curtain while we built our common market. places that feel more like history books than neighbors. our histories don't just diverge - they barely intersect. our futures point in different directions.
we can only speak to each other in english - the language of an island that left us.
the EU exists only in paperwork and policy. in trade agreements and treaties. in the endless meetings in brussels where bureaucrats debate bottle caps and privacy. but "european" as an identity remains hollow - a political construct searching for cultural meaning.
we've built cathedrals of compliance, where priests of process perform their regulatory rites.
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national identity already strains against its boundaries. irish people argue over what makes someone truly irish. germans still grapple with expressing pride in their nationality. italy drifts between north and south. france dreams of past glory while its influence wanes.
but beneath these surface tensions lies a deeper fracture - the slow dissolution of our christian foundations. empty churches echo where communities once gathered. ancient cathedrals become tourist attractions, their spires reaching toward a heaven fewer believe in.
america forges americans. immigrants arrive speaking a hundred languages and within a generation their children pledge allegiance to the same flag, dream the same dreams, share the same cultural touchstones.
but europe seems incapable of forging true europeans. we've lost the spiritual glue that once bound us. christianity gave europe its first common language - not just in latin mass, but in shared values, shared stories, shared meaning.
our differences run deeper than food and festivals. they're etched into centuries of war, carved into ancient borders, burned into what we think a nation should be. we can't even agree on what shape to make our plugs - how are we meant to align our futures?
we replaced the cross with committee meetings, substituted faith with regulations. but bureaucracy makes for poor communion. our new religion demands different devotions - not prayer but paperwork, not communion but compliance, not faith but forms in triplicate.
brussels demands we paper over these chasms with bureaucracy, as if shared regulations could heal historical wounds.
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war returns to europe and suddenly we remember why the EU exists. tanks roll across borders we once thought permanent. missiles strike cities we once thought safe. our peace dividend evaporates in a flash of artillery.
we discover our militaries have grown soft, our energy policy naive, our alliances untested. france stands alone with working nuclear plants while germany shutters theirs. we celebrate unified train tracks while our power grids splinter at every border. we find ourselves dependent on american weapons, middle eastern gas, chinese goods.
unity emerges in crisis, but crisis unity is fragile. we coordinate sanctions, send weapons, welcome refugees. yet beneath the surface, old fissures widen. france demands autonomy. in germany, merkel's grand gesture becomes europe's permanent crisis. italy swings between governments. spain still bears the scars of franco's dictatorship - their democracy younger than their grandparents. the eastern states remember soviet tanks in their streets. we play at collective action while pursuing national survival.
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we are not america, with its brash certainty and cultural dominance. we are not russia, with its imperial dreams and autocratic impulses. we are not china, with its surveillance state and economic might.
but negative identity is inherently unstable. you cannot build a lasting union on what you are not. you must know what you are.
our cities transform. minarets rise where church bells once rang. in paris, marseille, brussels, berlin, london - the call to prayer echoes across neighborhoods where ave maria once sounded. this isn't about immigration - it's about conviction. islam arrives with certainty while we cultivate doubt. they build while we deconstruct.
we've created a spiritual vacuum, then act surprised when others fill it.
our cathedrals stand empty while mosques overflow. our values waver while others hold firm. we champion tolerance until we have nothing left to tolerate - no core, no center, no faith of our own.
europe's attempt at identity feels like a corporate merger - streamlined processes, standardized regulations, efficiency gains on paper. but culture resists spreadsheet logic. you cannot mandate belonging.
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brussels has become a factory for regulations. we export rules about bottle caps and cookie notices while america exports the future. our bureaucrats craft thousand-page guidelines about AI ethics while silicon valley builds it.
we've made a religion of rules. our holy texts are written in legalese, our prophets speak in policy briefs, our salvation lies in standardization.
we mistake process for progress. standardize the width of bananas while our startups suffocate. write rulebooks for technologies we can't produce. our answer to american dynamism is to regulate it, our response to chinese efficiency is to document why it's wrong.
GDPR wasn't just a privacy law - it was our attempt to shape the digital age. instead it became our perfect metaphor: well-intentioned regulations that created more compliance jobs than tech jobs, more pop-ups than privacy.
we worship at the altar of administration. our prayers are procedures, our rituals are risk assessments, our communion is conducted via committee.
we comfort ourselves that we're the world's conscience, the adults writing the rulebook. but you can't regulate your way to relevance. our best minds flee to california while our committees debate the ethics of technology that's already reshaping the world.
this regulatory reflex reveals our fatal flaw. we've become so good at saying no that we've forgotten how to say yes. so practiced at managing decline that we've lost the ability to grow. our answer to every challenge is another directive, another framework, another set of guidelines that strangle innovation in its crib.
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i want the european project to work. we all do, in our own ways. we see the logic of it, the necessity of it, the potential beauty of it. but wanting something isn't enough to make it real.
every morning i wake up to news of another crack in the foundation. another policy fight, another cultural clash, another reminder that we're trying to build a house on shifting sand. we paper over the cracks with treaties and regulations, but they keep spreading.
the painful truth hits harder each year: the european project might be too ambitious, too soon, too fast. like a forced marriage between reluctant partners, we focus on the practical benefits while the emotional distance grows.
yet complete failure would shatter more than markets. we're too intertwined, too dependent, too aware of our shared fate. perhaps that's the real european identity - not a celebration of unity, but a grim recognition of necessity.
there's a peculiar loneliness in watching something fail that you desperately need to succeed. we build institutions while bonds crumble, draft treaties while trust erodes, speak of unity while drifting apart.
maybe that's all we can do for now - maintain the machinery of cooperation while accepting our fundamental separateness. coordinate where we must, diverge where we will, and stop pretending we're something we're not.
so i remain what i've always been: irish. and that's enough.