Thread by @jonworth

I've been pointed towards this by @hanskundnani by @MaryFitzger - entitled "What does it mean to be “pro-European” today?" While there is something to it, I think it mixes up different terms, and hence it's not quite right... This 🧵 will explain

newstatesman.com/world/2021/02/…

1/13

I am also of course aware the title might not be Hans's choice...

The first issue is a basic one: to be a European, or to be a pro-European, are not - in my view - the same things

2/13

I will happily call myself a European, but not a pro-European (although plenty would describe *me* as the latter), because pro-European leads us to looking at the European Union in terms of more or less of it, rather than the individual policy outcomes it can produce

3/13

It's from 2013, but I have written why it's pointless to describe oneself as pro-European here: jonworth.eu/why-its-pointl…

It's pretty obvious: there are some things the EU does that are good, some that are bad, "pro-European" implies you support the lot

4/13

Or put it another way, I am not "pro-Bundesrepublik" or "pro-Westminster" or such

And once we have free ourselves from that way of thinking we can look at the EU afresh. It exists. It is a political reality. And we can argue for different politics within it as a result

5/13

Which then brings me to the gist of Hans's piece where he does have a point - because it is based upon how the European Union is perceived within itself, as opposed to outside of it

6/13

It strikes me that the European Union can simultaneously be a cosmopolitan project *internally*, but as a bloc projecting its power outwards it can behave as a problematic actor in the way Hans describes

7/13

Of course the internal/external thing cannot be completely separated out, and that's when we end up with contortions like a Commissioner for "Promoting our European Way of Life" which... well, I questioned at the time...

https://twitter.com/jonworth/status/1171374755599069191

8/13

All of this touches upon the sorts of questions that rankle so much for me with regard to integration, belonging - I am a proud republican in the UK, but the UK citizenship test obliges those newly becoming Brits to swear an allegiance to the queen - that I would never do

9/13

Does it make me less British that I dislike the royal family? Can I compensate that I like cricket?

Or in the European equivalent - while a Commissioner for a European way of life worries me, I guess I live a more cross-border European life than most

10/13

So - to conclude - Hans's key assertion that "whiteness may become even more central to European identity" (or, in other words, some traditional christian view of what Europe is) is indeed a danger

11/13

But each of us can counter that - by arguing that the European Union exists, will continue to exist, but that it is a contested political space - it's normal for it to produce the wrong outcomes, without us having to attack its existence

12/13

So I am a European. I am a Green European. I am a socially liberal European. I am a republican European. But I am not a pro-European.

Wdyt @anthonyzach @markhleonard @JeremyCliffe?

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