Before the Revolution

THE Irish are making big waves. They have voted in a referendum to reject something called the Lisbon Treaty. This may sound like a technicality of interest only to those hooked on politics, but actually it bears vitally on the future of Europe, and the hopes and fears of those who live there.

These uncertain times all over Europe have a whiff of failure about them, a loss of confidence in democracy and identity reminiscent of the 1930s. The European Union is a project now 50 years old that is intended to recover lost power and prestige. The EU has the core belief that the nation-state is the cause of all contemporary ills, and it has been absorbing as many of them as it can, and hollowing out their identity in order to lay the foundations of nothing less than a new continentwide empire. Politics, law, business, the economy, and even culture have already been harmonized and centralized. The Lisbon Treaty is supposed to be a final step, turning the European Union irrevocably into the United States of Europe, a legal entity with sovereign powers, and whose 27 constituent nation-states from now on would be mere regions.

About the Author

David Pryce-Jones

David Pryce-Jones (1936–2025) was a British author and commentator and served as a senior editor of National Review.

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Ireland

THE Irish are making big waves. They have voted in a referendum to reject something called the Lisbon Treaty. This may sound like a technicality of interest only to those hooked on politics, but actually it bears vitally on the future of Europe, and the hopes and fears of those who live there.

These uncertain times all over Europe have a whiff of failure about them, a loss of confidence in democracy and identity reminiscent of the 1930s. The European Union is a project now 50 years old that is intended to recover lost power and prestige. The EU has the core belief that the nation-state is the cause of all contemporary ills, and it has been absorbing as many of them as it can, and hollowing out their identity in order to lay the foundations of nothing less than a new continentwide empire. Politics, law, business, the economy, and even culture have already been harmonized and centralized. The Lisbon Treaty is supposed to be a final step, turning the European Union irrevocably into the United States of Europe, a legal entity with sovereign powers, and whose 27 constituent nation-states from now on would be mere regions.