Month: July 2013

The agreement on the ‘normalisation of relations’ signed by the Republic of Kosovo and the Republic of Serbia has been praised by almost everyone as a ‘historical agreement’. And indeed it is historic – but apparently for completely different reasons than those the EU and other bureaucrats praise it for. From the EU’s gaze and perception of the Balkans, everything that is not an outburst of our primitive ethnical passions is indeed a historic achievement. Peace is almost considered a state of exception.

-A note from Romania on Croatia’s integration into the EU-

One should not be afraid to ask this famous Monty Python question in relation to the EU Empire. Seen from the Romanian perspective, 6 years after its integration into the EU structures, the answer should be clear. EU brought increased subordination to the rule of global and corporate capital; the flexibilization of domestic labor and its incorporation into waves of continental migration; the weakening of the state in relation to the bureaucratic structures of the EU and the subordination of the local political class to the interests of EU business and bureaucracy; the intensification of imports and the loss of competiveness of the local production due to the inherently unequal nature of EU regulations; influx of credit from German and Austrian banks; the transformation of universities into diploma factories and their subordination to public policy demands via the Bologna system; an entrepreneurial subjectivity forced by the constant need to write projects in order to access European funds; the culturalization and de-politicization of everyday life through various EU sponsored programs, such as the European Capital of Culture.