Politics & Power Quote by John Bruton

Calling the E.U. the "world's fastest growing democratic body" is less a victory lap than a piece of political stagecraft: it turns a notoriously technocratic institution into a story of momentum. John Bruton, a mainstream Irish politician and committed European, is selling legitimacy through speed. "Fastest growing" borrows the language of markets and startups, implying dynamism and inevitability. "Democratic body" is doing even heavier lifting: it recasts the E.U. not as a treaty machine or a regulatory superstructure, but as a polity - something you belong to, not just something that governs trade.

The intent is clear: normalize deeper integration by framing it as democratic expansion rather than elite coordination. The subtext answers a familiar charge - the E.U.'s "democratic deficit" - without naming it. Bruton doesn't argue that the Union is perfectly democratic; he asserts it as a category, then invites you to judge by comparative scale: whatever its flaws, it's still the biggest experiment in shared governance on the planet.

Context matters. Bruton's career spans Ireland's transformation from a peripheral economy into a major beneficiary of the single market, structural funds, and free movement. For smaller states, the E.U. can look less like lost sovereignty and more like pooled leverage. The line also comes from an era when enlargement and treaty reform were the headline narrative, and "growing" could mean both adding member states and thickening institutions. It's a rhetorical bid to make that growth feel like progress, not creep.