Perry Anderson's case against the European Union
Perry Anderson’s essay ‘Ever Closer Union?’ explores the significance of the different institutions within the European Union. Their common principle, he finds, is that they minimise democracy, with the leaders of the most powerful states directing the affairs of the union from within an impregnable fortress of rules.
Anderson starts with the European Court of Justice, established in 1952 as part of the European Coal and Steel Community, which evolved into the European Economic Community and eventually the EU.
Anderson notes that the first president of the court was an Italian fascist, the first German judge a “devoted” Nazi, one of the first advocate-generals another German who was heavily involved in running occupied France during the war, and the other advocate-general a Vichy functionary, “in charge of co-ordinating the first wave of persecution of French Jews”. Not all appointments to the court were fascists, but they “were nearly all political” – few had any legal qualifications.
