Leadership Quote by Jacques Santer

Europe has always been tempted by the easiest kind of unity: the kind forged in opposition. Santer’s line is a corrective to that reflex, delivered with the calm authority of a man who watched the EU try to become more than a postwar insurance policy. “Against anyone” reads like a warning label slapped on the project itself: if Europe defines its purpose as blocking Washington, boxing out Moscow, containing China, or punishing smaller neighbors, it will end up reproducing the same rivalrous nationalism it was designed to dilute.

The intent is practical as much as moral. A coalition built on a shared enemy is brittle; when the threat shifts, so does the glue. Santer is arguing for Europe as an affirmative political identity: a community of rules, rights, and mutual obligations that can survive changes in the international weather. The subtext is also a rebuke to domestic politics inside member states, where leaders periodically sell “Europe” as either a shield against outsiders or a cudgel against insiders. Both strategies turn integration into a mood rather than a commitment.

Context matters: Santer led the European Commission in the late 1990s, when the EU was expanding eastward, preparing the euro, and testing how far “ever closer union” could stretch before it snapped. His Commission’s eventual resignation amid scandal also gives the line an extra edge: legitimacy can’t be manufactured through antagonism. Europe, he implies, has to justify itself by competence and solidarity, not by picking a villain.