When I saw the EU approve the 28th regime I thought: wait a minute, we've seen this movie before
For those unaware, this is the EU's latest trick: a European legal system floating above national laws. It is supposedly "optional," but deep down, it seeks to ensure that the regulations of Spain, France, or Poland stop mattering. It is a bureaucrat’s dream and this is where our protagonist enters the frame: Charles V
Five hundred years ago, Charles didn't have a glass office in Brussels but he had half the world under his command. His "single market" wasn't the economy but the Christian Faith. To him, Europe only made sense if everyone prayed to the same God, in the same way and under the same rules. It was the glue meant to bind his chaotic empire together
But he forgot what the Commission ignores today: we Europeans love to be contrarian. As soon as you try to squeeze a German, an Italian, and a Spaniard into the same ideological corset, someone ends up losing an eye
The climax arrives when Charles gets too full of himself. After winning the Battle of Mühlberg, he felt like the master of Europe. He had Titian paint him riding victoriously and decided to tighten the corset until the ribs cracked: he imposed the Augsburg Interim, laws saying "it’s my way or the highway." It is the historical equivalent of the EU approving the 28th regime feeling like it has won the game, domesticated nations, and turned a club of competing countries into a monolithic block where no corner escapes regulation. Charles thought he had conquered the soul of Europe, just as Brussels thinks it has conquered its market
But reality has a nasty habit of spitting in your face when you think you’re invincible. Overnight, that cardboard power crumbled. His allies betrayed him and the most powerful emperor in history had to flee through the Alps because his "unity of faith" had turned into a prison that no one wanted to inhabit. The warning for the EU and its shiny new regime is that when you try to erase differences by decree and stifle the sovereignty of those at the bottom, the system doesn't become stronger, it becomes more fragile. Rigid structures don’t bend, they explode
In the end, Charles did the smartest thing you can do when you realize you’ve screwed up: he sent everything to hell and quit. He retired to a monastery in Spain where he grasped the great lesson that Brussels ignores today: that it is impossible to control the hearts, customs, and norms of all Europeans from a distance. You cannot standardize the lives of millions of people without the whole thing blowing up in your face
The lesson is that Europe is a beast that is hard to tame. The Romans tried, Charles V tried, Napoleon tried... and they all failed for the same reason. Europe is by definition diversity and conflict. Trying to make this continent a legislative oasis is to go against its DNA
Whoever fails to understand that excess control is the beginning of collapse is condemned to repeat history
