The European Union is not suffering from a lack of consensus—it is suffocating from it.

What masquerades as unity is, in truth, enforced obedience. And the architects of this system are not elected leaders with a mandate from the people. They are unelected bureaucrats—appointed, not chosen—shielded from accountability, and drunk on the power to micromanage the lives, laws, and liberties of half a billion citizens.

These power brokers in Brussels now issue sweeping edicts on everything from energy and farming to borders, speech, migration, and digital surveillance. They override national parliaments. They threaten democratically elected governments. They fine, blacklist, and humiliate countries that dare to act in their own interest. This is not democratic cooperation—it is colonization by procedural dictatorship.

Let’s not pretend otherwise: no citizen voted for this empire. No German, Hungarian, Italian, Dutch, or Greek voter chose to be ruled by remote technocrats with no skin in the game, no cultural roots, and no loyalty to the people. Yet these bureaucrats impose laws that insult their traditions, damage their economies, and erase their borders—while preaching “solidarity” from behind reinforced gates.

The EU’s so-called “culture of consensus” is a hollow farce. Real consensus means debate, disagreement, and consent. The EU offers none of those. What it enforces is conformity—obedience by design, with punishment for deviation. Smaller nations are expected to obey. Larger nations are expected to pay. No one is allowed to resist. This isn’t unity. It’s a cartel of unelected overlords.

Brexit was not an anomaly. It was a warning. A flare shot across Europe to say: when democracy is smothered, the people will walk out. And the EU learned nothing. It responded with more centralization, more threats, more disdain for national identity—doubling down on the very arrogance that caused the rupture.

This model cannot last. No union survives when its rulers are unelected, unreachable, and unaccountable. The more Brussels tightens its grip, the more nations will slip through its fingers. The more it tries to control, the more it will provoke revolt—not from extremists, but from ordinary citizens who have had enough.

The European dream will not be killed by nationalism—but by the EU’s own imperial hubris. Europe must now choose: consent or collapse. Union or uprising. Sovereignty or submission.

Because for centuries, Europe tried to rule others against their will—and collapsed, time after time. Maybe it’s time Europe practiced democracy at home, and started honoring the sacred principles it so loudly demands from others—while shamelessly violating them itself. Maybe it’s time to try something new: actually respecting the democracy it preaches but never practices—before, not after, the usual civil reckoning, when the people rise to reclaim their freedom.