Leviathan is here, in Brussels

Brussels is the lair of a bureaucratic monster, writes the German essayist Hans Magnus Enzensberger. It’s up to the Europeans themselves now to take up their pitchforks.

He poses the question of whether the traditional understanding of democracy is something Brussels remains committed to, or whether democracy is not seen rather as an obstacle that Brussels will work assiduously towards shifting aside. The European Union is on the way to disenfranchising its citizens. Only Europeans citizens can stop them.

However, Hans Magnus Enzensberger does not call for the dissolution of the European Union. Quite the contrary: Enzensberger admits that in Brussels there is indeed a critical and enlightened discourse vis-à-vis the EU. And it is precisely this self-criticism that feeds the hopes for a better future for the Union: 'Those who love the EU criticise it, as does Hans Magnus Enzensberger, he concludes.