European Union Quotes

“Too rich to be relevant to the world's poor, [Europe] attracts immigration but cannot encourage imitation. Too passive regarding international security. Too self-satisfied, it acts as if its central political goal is to become the worlds most comfortable retirement home. Too set in its ways, it fears multicultural diversity”
― Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives

“Europe, it is true, is a geographical and, within certain limits, an historical cultural conception. But the idea of Europe as an economic unit contradicts capitalist development in two ways. First of all there exist within Europe among the capitalist States – and will so long as these exist – the most violent struggles of competition and antagonisms, and secondly the European States can no longer get along economically without the non-European countries. ... At the present stage of development of the world market and of world economy, the conception of Europe as an isolated economic unit is a sterile concoction of the brain. ...
And if the idea of a European union in the economic sense has long been outstripped, this is no less the case in the political sense.
....
Only were one suddenly to lose sight of all these happenings and manoeuvres, and to transfer oneself back to the blissful times of the European concert of powers, could one say, for instance, that for forty years we have had uninterrupted peace. This conception, which considers only events on the European continent, does not notice that the very reason why we have had no war in Europe for decades is the fact that international antagonisms have grown infinitely beyond the narrow confines of the European continent, and that European problems and interests are now fought out on the world seas and in the by-corners of Europe.”
― Rosa Luxemburg, Rosa Luxemburg Speaks

“When the day comes that Tehran can announce its nuclear capability, every shred of international law will have been discarded. The mullahs have publicly sworn—to the United Nations and the European Union and the International Atomic Energy Agency—that they are not cheating. As they unmask their batteries, they will be jeering at the very idea of an 'international community.' How strange it is that those who usually fetishize the United Nations and its inspectors do not feel this shame more keenly.”
― Christopher Hitchens

“Europe has achieved peaceful political union for the first time ever: They're using this unprecedented state of affairs to harmonize the curvature of bananas.”
― Charles Stross, Accelerando

“The European Union has a lot in common with the Congo Free State. Both share the same flag, both are headquartered in the Leopold district of Brussels and both were sold to the public as great humanitarian projects.”
― Isaiah Senones

“The noble old synagogue had been profaned and turned into a stable by the Nazis, and left open to the elements by the Communists, at least after they had briefly employed it as a 'furniture facility.' It had then been vandalized and perhaps accidentally set aflame by incurious and callous local 'youths.' Only the well-crafted walls really stood, though a recent grant from the European Union had allowed a makeshift roof and some wooden scaffolding to hold up and enclose the shell until further notice. Adjacent were the remains of a mikvah bath for the ritual purification of women, and a kosher abattoir for the ritual slaughter of beasts: I had to feel that it was grotesque that these obscurantist relics were the only ones to have survived. In a corner of the yard lay a pile of smashed stones on which appeared inscriptions in Hebrew and sometimes Yiddish. These were all that remained of the gravestones. There wasn't a Jew left in the town, and there hadn't been one, said Mr. Kichler, since 1945.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“Je tak jasne, ze v dlhodobom horizonte je nutna restrukturalizacia celkoveho verejneho dlhu a jeho ciastocne odpisanie zhruba na urovni 65% z tejto sumy. Ako druhy krok je nutny predaj majetku statu, co by mohlo znizit dlh o dodatocnych 20% HDP. Z vynosov z privatizacie je nutne oddlzit a rekapitalizovat grecke banky, respektive vytvorit tak domace zdroje kapitalu na financovanie statneho dlhu, kedze po znizeni ratingu a poslednej emisii je uz jasne, ze na trhu si Grecko vie pozicat len kratkodobo, teda do jedneho roka. Pokial sa tieto kroky co najskor neurobia, hrozi kolaps celeho greckeho financneho systemu a nie len vyhlasenie defaultu krajiny. Vsetky tieto kroky by navyse mali prebehnut este predtym, nez budu v juni publikovane vysledky stresovych testov europskych bank.”
― Radovan Kavický

“When [Ivan] Ilyin wrote that the art of politics was “identifying and neutralizing the enemy,” he did not mean that statesmen should ascertain which foreign power actually posed a threat. He meant that politics began with a leader’s decision about which foreign enmity will consolidate a dictatorship. Russia’s real geopolitical problem was China. But precisely because Chinese power was real and proximate, considering Russia’s actual geopolitics might lead to depressing conclusions.

The West was chosen as an enemy precisely because it represented no threat to Russia. Unlike China, the EU had no army and no long border with Russia. The United States did have an army, but had withdrawn the vast majority of its troops from the European continent: from about 300,000 in 1991 to about 60,000 in 2012. NATO still existed and had admitted former communist countries of eastern Europe. But President Barack Obama had cancelled an American plan to build a missile defense system in eastern Europe in 2009, and in 2010 Russia was allowing American planes to fly through Russian airspace to supply American forces in Afghanistan. No Russian leader feared a NATO invasion in 2011 or 2012, or even pretended to.”
― Timothy Snyder, The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America

“I interpret your question as applying more to financial stability in the euro area than to the euro itself. I do not think there has been a crisis. The euro is the single currency of 330 million people and enjoys a high degree of confidence among investors and savers because it has delivered price stability remarkably well over the last 11½ years. What we had was a situation in which a number of countries had not respected the Stability and Growth Pact. These countries have now engaged in policies of fiscal retrenchment that were overdue. They have to implement vigorously these policies which are decisive for the preservation and consolidation of financial stability in Europe.”
― Jean Claude Trichet

“of course they don't see the alienation. they don't see the decadence and degeneracy. they do not see how the meaninglessness of European life leads to not only depression, but drug addiction. Drug addiction of both illegal and also legal drugs... antidepressants and such medications. they don't see the alienation of the people within generations and from each other. they don't see how it is almost impossible now for young men and young women to come together and form strong, stable romantic and emotional bonds that will lead to flourishing families. They don't see that. They don't see it at all.”
― Gonzalo Lira

“New populist leaders don’t fantasize about changing their societies. They don’t imagine people in terms of what they might become; they like them just the way they are. Empowering people without any common project is the ambition of the new populism. In this sense, the new populism is perfectly suited to societies where citizens are consumers above all else and view their leaders as waiters who are expected to move quickly in fulfilling their wishes.”
― Ivan Krastev

“De Europese Unie is een monster met 27 koppen die op één na allen de kop werden ingeslagen. Boorling "euro" is een gedrocht dat de hele financiële wereld aan het ontwrichten is.”
― Jean Pierre Van Rossem

“Fear that Fascism might return to the continent where it was born is what spurred the drive for European integration, but the origins of that sentiment are now more than seventy years old, and anxieties, like human beings, eventually show their age.

Virtually every state in Europe is the product of a nationalist movement that flowered in the nineteenth century or earlier. Wilson’s doctrine of self-determination gave a boost to the idea that wherever there dwelled a people, there should be a state—however impractical that concept would be to implement in a region where the movement of people and the wondrous spontaneity of romance have conspired to link some very different family trees. The whole notion of pure blood is laughable, but that does not stop tribal instincts and their accompanying national mythologies from exercising a powerful sway over behavior, as World War II so tragically demonstrated. It took the shock of that war to create a reaction strong enough for countries to embrace regional integration, but that choice has always been more compelling logically than emotionally.”
― Madeleine K. Albright, Fascism: A Warning

“Today, nearly two-thirds of the citizens in EU countries believe immigration has a harmful impact on their societies. Cosmopolitanism, once considered a virtue, is less in vogue than nativism.”
― Madeleine K. Albright, Fascism: A Warning

“Macedonia has been receiving positive recommendations for entry into the European Union for 12 years now . It is three circles ahead of Dante's hell.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, Yet Another New Land

“Macedonia has been receiving positive recommendations for entry into the European Union for 12 years now. It is three circles ahead of Dante's Inferno.”
― Ljupka Cvetanova, Yet Another New Land

“Most Americans have no idea how much better things are in the European workplace.”
― Steven Magee

“Swedish society is mentally Sick.
They need to burn their hypocrisy, selfishness, ego, and their radical intolerance mindset rather than quran”
― Mohammed Zaki Ansari, "Zaki's Gift Of Love"

“The European Union is the biggest fraud in world history; it was created to capture all European land and resources by four power-hungry countries: the UK, Germany, France, and Italy.
Small European Countries People are just happy that they can roam freely in Paris, Venice, and Berlin, but they have no idea how their governments are paying for this by mortgaging their sovereignty. They are not free nations but a modern-era colony of four power-hungry nations.”
― Mohammed Zaki Ansari, "Zaki's Gift Of Love"

“Ukraine is an independent former Russian country that is not part of the European Union or NATO.”
― Steven Magee

“If you think there is a war in the European Union, you are using incorrect borders.”
― Steven Magee

“Ukraine is not part of the European Union, it is an independent eastern European country.”
― Steven Magee

“Free healthcare for all is the foundation of the European Union, it does not exist in the USA.”
― Steven Magee

“The Ukraine war is really Russia fighting the expansion of NATO onto its borders.”
― Steven Magee

“When you get down to basics, the Ukraine war is really about Russia fighting with NATO.”
― Steven Magee

“Most Americans are unaware that the Ukraine war is about Russia objecting to NATO expanding onto its borders.”
― Steven Magee

“When compared to the European Union, I find America to be like a third world country.”
― Steven Magee

“Years of officially promoted European idealism and denigration of national sentiment added to a growing sense of unease. What was it, in a world of multinational business and pan-European bureaucracy, to be Dutch, or French, or German?”
― Ian Buruma, Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance

“It is strange that Switzerland, an independent state in the middle of continental Europe, freely provides Swiss passports to descendants of people from far-off places without background checks or any sort of probationary period. They only need to submit their photos and fingerprints, and a Swiss passport will arrive in the mail a few weeks later, in Barcelona or anywhere, seemingly without much consideration.
Considering the Nazi vibes and the Nazi Gestapo methods used by Israeli, Spanish, British, Hungarian, South American and Italian criminals above it is pretty surreal. Disrespectful towards the victims of Nazi criminals.
I wondered what Martina was hiding and why Argentina and her family had sent her away at the age of twenty. Did Switzerland wonder who Martina or her brother really were? Organizing lethal crimes, partaking in Adam Maraudin’s Israeli Nazi cocaine mafia the exact same time whilst becoming "Swiss" and "Europeans".
Switzerland is granting Swiss passports upon request on demand to the grandchildren of Nazi war criminals. Would it be so surprising, a few decades after grandpa's escape from Justice, they had resorted to Nazi tactics as they returned to Europe and landed in Spain, (by Argentine perspective, their former conquistador's land) to deliver revenge in the EU?”
― Tomas Adam Nyapi, BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA

“My team is very disappointed, as am I myself, but there is nothing we can do except hope for an agreement between the British in London and the British in Belfast."

-- Monday, 4th December 2017

[Theresa May was in Brussels to sign the Joint Report on the financial settlement between EU and UK but had to hurry back to London after Arlene Foster and the DUP objected to its Article 48 (and threatened to bring down her government)]”
― Michel Barnier, My Secret Brexit Diary: A Glorious Illusion