Reforming (and Replacing) the European Union for Nationalist Purposes (Part 1)

In the last week Elon Musk has kicked off an astonishing row over the European Union issuing a fine to X and himself. The fine is clearly politically motivated. The European elite want to silence critics of their project and especially do away with criticism of multiculturalism, secularism, and the great plethora of other post-war progressive dogmas that define their crumbling worldview. Don’t believe me? The European Union has pushed for years to pass “chat control“ legislation that would allow EU and subsidiary national authorities to scan your private texts, including encrypted texts, as well as scan all of the photos on your phone.

Significantly and perhaps purposefully, Musk’s call to abolish the European Union comes on the heels of the Trump administration’s newly released national security strategy. The new strategy essentially called the European Union a failed project which had led to economic sclerosis and demographic disaster. The administration’s interpretation of this is correct, perhaps even more than they realize. West of what used to be the Iron Curtain Europe is failing Europeans quite substantially and in almost every way. Economies are de-industrializing, energy is remarkably expensive, housing is scare, and migration levels are sky high despite the European public constantly begging their national and EU officials to stop the inflow of strangers.

The ideological pro-EU opposition will and does point out that much of what Musk is saying is in pursuit of his business interests and that he does not care about Europeans, perhaps this is true, and perhaps it isn’t, but that does not spare the European Union from deserved criticism any more than the rampant accusations of “Russian disinformation” spare the Democrats in America from massive unpopularity.

Then, on December 11^th 2025, a leaked classified, leaked, version of the US national security strategy went wide on the internet. Reported by The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian, and other outlets, the leaked version of the American plan purportedly shows that the United States plans to pull Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland away from the European Union and into a new “patriotic” orbit that remains aligned with pro-American interests. It’s abundantly clear that the United States views the European Union as a serious threat to Western civilization and to its long-term strategic interests on the European side of the Atlantic. The American document floated the idea of creating a forum type organization (like the G7 etc.) where these countries would cooperate with the United States, but I can tell you now this will be woefully insufficient.

Western political discourse is entering a time of reevaluation of the core concepts and institutions that have ruled us since the 1950s. The European Union is not above this kind of reevaluation and the ideological battles over its nature and future are not going to abate any time soon. These ideological battles over the success or failure of the European project specifically have led to the emergence of three distinct camps of commentators:

1. Europhiles/EU Shills

2. Euroskeptics/Reformists

3. EU abolitionists

The first camp is entirely self-explanatory. EU shills are blindly dedicated to the European project as created by Jean Monnet and his various vassals such as Paul-Henri Spaak. Today’s Europhiles believe that the European project is wildly successful and ignore all evidence to the contrary and never almost never address the concerns of their skeptics. I have noticed that most EU shills are not particularly upset about the Trump administration calling out the economic and defense failures of their project and this is because Europhiles have long chased and are still chasing grand ideas about a single European economy and a European Union army to enforce the will of an increasingly imperious Brussels via the barrel of a gun.

In short, they agree with Trump about a need for European economic and military might (even if they disagree about its exact form) though they can never explain how they will get a huge continent of atomized individuals to fight for the anti-nationalist European army when the Germans cannot even get their own population to fight for their decidedly anti-German state. Rather, the Europhiles are furious about the Americans commenting on the demographic decline and democratic deficit of Europe.

The response of European leadership was not to explain how they are not replacing their own people, but instead to insist that everything is just peachy. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said that Europeans must “look at ourselves and be proud” while European Council President Antonio Costa demanded respect from Trump and warned him not to “interfere” in European “democracy.” Once again, it is notable that neither official tried to rebut the contents of the US strategic assessment of Europe.

The national security strategy directly links EU and national government failures to the ongoing demographic transformation of the European continent via mass immigration. When the American national security strategy proclaimed that it is America’s interest for “Europe to remain European” the Europhiles began to hyperventilate that the Washington consensus about their previous multicultural anti-nationalist project had been shattered, and rather unceremoniously at that.

As a result of this sudden American abandonment of the precious “Western value” of multiculturalism the loudest EU shills are calling for complete disentanglement from the United States in order to preserve their project and using America’s ideological about face to push Europe into a new integration phase. Europhiles have wanted a new phase of integration for a long time, but have been entirely incapable of getting public buy in for it due to divergent policy interests among European public. The Netherlands, Germany, and Nordic states cannot abide common European debt while Italy and Greece are desperate for access to Germany and Sweden’s national credit cards. There is also massive divergence on matters of foreign policy. Only 18% of Italians, 29% of Romanians, and 35% of the French think Ukraine should be given support until it retakes its territory while in Denmark and Belgium near majorities are in favor of providing Ukraine with such support.

Due to European media being almost hysterically anti-Trump the Europhiles are hoping to parlay the current transatlantic crisis into an integration push that would finally see the nations of Europe relegated to provincial status along the lines that Altiero Spinelli imagined. There are also Europhiles who are deeply distressed by the criticism from Washington because they understand that much of the money and ideological backbone of their project emanates from the universities, international organizations, and NGOs that are based in the US. It was and is American money that funds color revolutions and media projects aimed at combating “misinformation” as defined by the progressive elite who occupy the Berlaymont. The Europhiles know that without the United States backing they will be unable to effect regime change in Belarus, Kazakhstan, or even Russia. It is this deeply distressed class of transatlantic Europhile that dominate the institutions of the European Union and it is this class of Europhile that has not the slightest idea how to proceed aside from tepid public statements about the continued strength of relations between America and the EU.

Moving away from the Europhiles, the second and third camps of the EU debate are very similar aside from a single key difference around abolition. These camps are dominated by European and American nationalists (and a scant few leftists) who view the European Union for the failed neoliberal project that it is and wish to free the nations of Europe (and the American treasury) from obligations to keep the lights on within the cracked edifice of the Berlaymont and in some cases even at NATO headquarters. Both camps believe that by utilizing the democratic institutions of the fast fading and wounded nation-states of Europe they can force a bottom up change on the European political landscape, and both are correct.

EU abolitionists (who are often also NATO abolitionists) want to see the project swept away to the dustbin of history and the nations of Europe freed to act unilaterally and with full sovereignty. This abolitionist camp is vocal though not especially large, though the recent addition of Elon Musk to their cause may garner it new members and increased political weight going forward. In fact, this is already happening. Dutch nationalist and influencer Eva Vlaardingerbroek called for the abolition of the European Union at her 2024 CPAC Hungary speech, and has since repeated this call, saying in part “I don’t believe in reforms … The Tower of Babel needs to be destroyed.”

On the same side of the table though of a different headspace are the Euroskeptics and Reformists who are trying to have the best of both worlds. They want to seize control of the European Union through member state democratic institutions and then begin a process of reforming the project to suit nationalist ends. They believe the European Union can be changed and that a great deal of the currently pooled sovereignty in Brussels can flow back to national capitals while an overarching form of coordination between the nations of Europe is maintained.

This reformist camp is strikingly large and contains most of the officially tolerated nationalist movements in the European Union such as Marine Le Pen’s National Rally and Giorgia Meloni’s government. There are plenty of non-politician voices as well. Irish nationalist and political commentator Keith Woods recently came out in favor of reforming the European Union, saying in a recent article “A movement strong enough to abolish the Union would be strong enough to reform it, and reform could offer us the tools we need to undo our erasure without gambling our people’s survival on a highly fraught, unpredictable course. Given the high stakes with which we are playing, it’s wiser to focus on building what will last than to roll the dice on rupture.”

My personal sympathies are with the Reformist crowd. I believe that not only Europe but the whole of the Western world needs institutions where our governments meet regularly and work together to pursue the preservation and strengthening of Western Civilization. We need to jettison the progressive dogma and have European and Western Institutions that champion our common heritage, history, Christian faith, and economic interests. We will need permanent cooperation to keep the incredibly large and growing third world population at bay and we will need our collective weight to force the reluctant countries of the world to take their people back when we inevitably implement policies of remigration. I want Western and European countries to defend one another in the case of invasion by a state from outside of our civilization and I want a system where we trade first with each other before going outside of the West to garner resources, food, or technology. However, the European Union is not the vehicle for this.

If a conference of Western nations led by nationalist leaders were to gather in the Hague and attempt to reform the European Union and perhaps NATO it would quickly become clear that what was happening was less a reform and more a wholesale replacement of the EU and sister institutions. The European treaties are some of the most inherently neoliberal and progressive documents in the world and to rewrite them is to fundamentally alter what the European project is. I agree this should be done, but nationalists who pursue this project need to understand it is more a form of creative destruction than any kind of reform.

To give one example, a core foundation of the current European project is the single market and its competition rules. These competition rules (rooted in Articles 101 and 102 of the TFEU) prohibit member state governments from supporting their domestic industries through state subsidies or purchases. If Sweden wants to buy new police vehicles it must hold a continent wide competition between automakers and decide through as non-political process as possible rather than buying Volvo or Polestar vehicles that are designed and produced in Sweden. In short, European countries cannot use their citizens tax money to support the jobs of their own citizens. To delete these articles – and they should be deleted – would be to transform the single market beyond recognition and therefore the European project itself. The same could be said for solidarity clauses, austerity and fiscal rules, the Lisbon Strategy, and social/cohesion funds. All of these things should be abolished or radically changed, but in doing so we will not reform the EU so much as create something new.

We should be honest about that.

The West is in desperate need of a set of international institutions that reflect the core values of our civilization and not progressive dogma. I will lay out a vision for such a set of institutions in the second piece.