City of Glass

City of Glass

EU-ROPEAN UNION STUDY TOUR €: Bruxelles, Stras-bourg, Luxem-bourg, and Frank-furt

May-June 2006

Btw (The hyphens in the middle of the names of places are a computer glitch; please go ahead and assume I am not a retard:)

            A stone throw away from Water-loo you will find a thriving city in the middle of Bel-gium, the heart of the Eu-ropean Empire. In twenty or thirty years, it might well be referred to as the city of glass that was born at the dawn of a century, a new era in cooperation and harmonization. Bruxelles was a symbolic choice to place the seat of EU power within. Its ability to bridge two languages and two cultures of one country says much about its history in the business of compromise. Dutch and French languages come together in Bel-gium to form a hybrid Flemish language that stretches from the North of Bruxelles past Ant-werp where it eventually thins out into purely Dutch. Obviously the Germans couldn’t let the French host the government and likewise the French weren’t about to let the Germans hold the capital so they chose a third way, in much the same way that gave Leopold the II the Congo back in the 18^th century. The powers that be couldn’t bear to see each other win the prize so they gave it to the country that qualified least for it.

But here the capital lay, and since its inauguration as the seat of Eu-ropean power, something strangely inspiring has been under construction in this city. Whole arcades of green and brown and grey glass are being erected to house the bureaucracy that travels to and from this city from the four corners of Eu-rope. The ongoing experiment in government has no definitive end point or goal which makes every new development in EU policy all the more intriguing. Though there is no clear finale politic, as it is called, it is an experiment that, so far, has had monumental success in doing what it was originally created to do. It has managed to reconcile two arch enemies that had warred nearly to the brink of annihilation for half a century, Ger-many and Fran-ce. Now you would scarcely imagine the two countries ever going to war unless it was over establishing beer or wine as the official alcoholic beverage of choice of the Eu-ropean Un-ion.

As my EU professor so eloquently put it after returning home from a trip to Bruxelles late last year, “Eu-rope is something quite different from other experiments in government. In Washing-ton we have an entire army of reporters that follows, monitors, and reports every word, action, and movement that the leader of that country makes. An empire is led by a leader whose influence is felt throughout the globe. In Bruxelles we see something far different. Without a doubt the city is a monument to the fact that an empire is slowly but surely being constructed. But this is an experiment in empire never before attempted. Here we don’t have a press gallery following around one man to catch a glimpse of his every thought at any given moment. Here there is no leader at all in fact; it rotates from country to country on a six month basis. In Bruxelles the construction of an Empire is clearly underway, but it is an empire that lacks any clear leader to rule it; really it is an Empire without an emperor.”

I thought my Professors remarks were put together quite pertinently. It is a major separating factor between Ameri-ca and Eu-rope. At the risk of completely oversimplifying and stereotyping a far more complex issue, one might conclude that the American approach is one of unilateral action and leadership while the Eu-ropean approach is one of multilateral consensus building without any clear leader in charge. Each approach has significant advantages and each has equally significant disadvantages. I think that it is a result of each continent’s unique history and role each has played in the others’ conflicts. Eu-rope is not a union that could ever have a leader and continue to function. Ameri-ca’s federation needed exactly this for it to have achieved what it stands as today: a global leader.

I won’t spend much time explaining the beauty of Stras-bourg and Luxem-bourg as such a task is better accomplished through a first hand visit to these places. As for their function in the EU, and that of Frankfurt’s, they all have a defined and crucial role they fulfill in the Union and are emblematic of the cooperation that the Union is to represent. Four different cities spanning four different countries, all with quite separate cultures and foods, house the great halls of government that turn this union into a functional project that hopefully will continue to flourish.

Comments

[Daniel Colling]

I had no idea there was no set leader of the EU. I thought it was like the UN with a President with little power and a conglomerate of nations which push their own agendas. I love your website. The pictures are great, and the updated commentary lets me imagine I am there ;o)

[Tam]

Hi Matt! Thanks for creating such an informative website about your experiences. I really enjoy reading the new posts and learn a lot from them. I really enjoy all the pictures...especially the sunset ones...you know I'll want copies of them. 8-) I've got some awesome ones from my trip to Utah that I am buying frames for tomorrow. I'll send you an email all about my trip in the next couple of days. Keep up the informative blog. I'll talk to you soon.