Perry Anderson's case against the European Union
The entry-point for Anderson’s first essay, ‘The European Coup’, is a book by the Dutch writer Luuk van Middelaar, ‘The Passage to Europe: How a Continent Became a Union’, reviews of which, says Anderson, “ransack the lexicon of admiration”.
Born in 1973, van Middelaar read history and philosophy at university, studying under Frank Ankersmit, who was best known for admiring the “aesthetics” of finding the political compromises to solve conflicts. He joined the Dutch liberal party, VVD, went to Paris to write his master’s thesis, and then embarked on a study of EU pension systems. In 2001 he wrote an article for a Dutch newspaper supporting the invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11. Only a strong leader, he argued, can deliver human rights, taking up “the modern man’s burden”.
By then he had secured an internship with a Dutch EU commissioner, Frits Bolkestein, a leading VVD politician who tried to drive through a liberalisation of terms of employment. Van Middelaar took careful note of the constraints affecting activist politics and returned to the VVD to serve as political secretary for its leader, helping write the party’s 2005 manifesto. It was not a success, and van Middelaar left to write ‘The Passage to Europe’, which Anderson describes as “a work of impressive scholarship and historical imagination... unlike anything written about the EU before or since”.
