Eugenie Bastie. Le figaro.
CHRONICLE – A fascinating essay compares the Europe of the Twenty-seven with the Habsburg Dual Monarchy, a mosaic of peoples that collapsed in 1918 as a result of the war.
It’s obvious: Ursula von der Leyen doesn’t have the graces of Sissi, Brussels has the charm of Vienna and the Eurocrats aren’t aristocrats. However, isn’t it relevant to compare the European Union with the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which collapsed in 1918 after six centuries of existence?
The journalist Caroline de Gruyter weaves this parallel in her book The World of Yesterday, The World of Tomorrow (Actes Sud). An exciting journey that takes us from the cafés of Vienna to the offices of the European Commission, where we encounter descendants of the continent’s oldest dynasty and EU commissioners, excerpts from writers from Central Europe and essays on geopolitics.
Also read Eugénie Bastié: “The Fertility of Populism”
The similarities between the Habsburg Empire, which included Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary, parts of Italy, Poland, Ukraine and Romania, and the European Union and its 27 member states are numerous. Like the EU, the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was a mosaic of peoples…
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