(*This opinion / analytical article was written by Ivan Dikov for The European Views website.)

Referring to the EU as a “bloc” doesn’t make enough sense any way you look at it.

The “28-member bloc”, soon to be the “27-member bloc”, or just “the bloc”.

Who else is irritated, fed up, and even maddened by the incessant use of this empty, meaningless, and sometimes even outrightly malicious journalese cliché in international media to mean the European Union?

“The bloc” this, “the bloc” that, “the bloc”, “the bloc”, “the bloc”…

The constant application of this lackluster term to the EU generates a feeling as though the respected or not so respect international (English-language, that is) media in question are actually referring to the Tripartite Pact of Axis Powers. Or the Soviet Bloc. Or to either the Entente, or the Central Powers, in the best-case scenario.

And certainly not to the EU: the best thing that has happened to Europe (and possibly the world) since the Reformation. (A favorite thought of mine of which I claim authorship.)

This journalese wording setup of international English-language media, in which the European Union is referred to as “a bloc” or “the bloc”, conveys either a deep misunderstanding of the EU, or an unwillingness to reflect its true nature.

Or, alternatively, a desire to denigrate it.

(Which certain English-language media on both sides of “the pond” certainly aren’t in short supply of – much to the detriment of their own societies and the entire West.)

Anybody referring to the EU as a “bloc” is wrong to do so because the EU isn’t one.

And not for the reason that would first cross one’s mind:

Not because the EU is being ripped apart by diverging interests of its vastly diverse and different member states; not because it is being torn down by spikes of nationalism, chauvinism, and nation-state selfishness; not because it is just barely being held together by evil, neo-liberal, complacent trans-national elites; and not because it doesn’t have a joint military and a real speaking-with-a-single-voice foreign policy…

Read the rest of this article on The European Views website here

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