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EU fans in front of the Opéra Garnier in Paris 2020:
A giant who shapes life on earth
Photo: Bruno Levesque / IP3 Press / imago images
I.
In the cosmos of cartoons, Europe is a snail or hydra, a pit of a snake, a pigsty.
The EU can be a sick man, an old woman in a wheelchair, a neglected child, a sad woman, with or without a bull.
There is Europe as a balloon that is running out of air, as a racing car without a motor, as a derailed train, as a sinking ship, as a jumbo jet, too big for any runway.
The continent was portrayed as a desolate mountain range made up of sheer EU peaks, as a garbage dump from files, as a poisoned land of milk and honey in which milk and wine lakes slosh.
Europe as a caricature - is a house of cards, shack, burning hut, ailing temple, always ruin.
The idea that the European Union is in truth a world power, despite everything, never occurs to the illustrators.
The news also speaks a different language.
In the mirror of topicality, in the Twitter thunderstorms of our time, the EU often looks as broken as its worst enemies describe it.
Then Cyprus single-handedly blocks European sanctions against the Belarusian dictatorship.
Then Hungary and Poland's governments ruthlessly undermine the rule of law.
Then agonizing negotiations about a continental, common refugee policy end again and again in a shabby nothing.
Or the agricultural policy, which has been wrong for decades, is cemented again.
Or the procurement of vaccines, after an encouraging start, gives rise to petty dispute again, fueled by 27 national interests.
Truly, one imagines a world power differently.
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