Considering the recent development of the European Union, it seems appropriate to look at a meme that has been going around for some time, namely, “EUSSR.” The implication is, of course, that the EU is starting to resemble the Soviet Union. Though this might sound like a bad joke on the face of it, there are in fact many common points between the European Union and the Soviet Union, and the EU planned direction—such as the Letta plan and the Draghi plan—will further increase the similarities.
The Soviet Roots of European Integration
In early 2025, US Vice President J.D. Vance warned Europeans of “old, entrenched interests” hiding behind ugly, Soviet-era words like “misinformation” and “disinformation.” Though this is clearly a case of the pot calling the kettle black, there is undoubtedly some truth to this, as the EU has been turning the screws ever tighter on freedom of speech (e.g., via the Digital Services Act and most recently with the probable ban of social networks for children).
Then, a few months later, while visiting Moldova, President Macron stressed that “the EU is in no way the Soviet Union.” This comment didn’t come out of nowhere: such a remarkable and unnecessary denial by the French president is full of meaning, at a time when the “EUSSR” meme is becoming more and more popular. In fact, a comparison between the EU and the USSR is not unwarranted. True, the European Union is far wealthier and more capitalistic than the Soviet Union ever was. But politically, the parallels exist, which is why the acronym EUSSR is now so often being thrown around to describe the inefficient, corrupt, and centralized EU administration.
It is important to note, though, that these similarities are not just a coincidence. In EUSSR: The Soviet Roots of European Integration (2004), authors V. Bukovsky and P. Stroilov exposed, with declassified archives in Moscow, “the secretive discussions between Western and Soviet Union leaders planning to create a collectivist European Union State.” A top priority for the USSR in order to counter the United States’ influence in Europe was to try to bring Western Europe—through an enhanced EU—closer to a reformed Soviet model. The Soviet leadership under M. Gorbachev introduced the socialist concept of a “Common European Home” which was to include Western Europe, the Warsaw pact countries, and of course, a reformed USSR.
The booklet shows that this idea was fully embraced by many Western European socialist leaders at the time, like President F. Mitterrand of France and Prime Minister F. González of Spain, who discussed the matter directly with M. Gorbachev in Moscow. Not surprisingly, both Mitterrand and González strongly favored further European integration at the expense of nation-states; they not only were proponents of the Maastricht Treaty (signed 1992), but also two of its most influential architects and advocates within the European Council. In a meeting with Spanish Foreign Minister Ordóñez on March 3, 1989, Gorbachev said: “Through our perestroika, through the new ideas brought forward by the socialists of Western Europe, we are not moving away from each other, we are doing the opposite.”
The idea was that the political and economic “restructuring” of the Soviet Union, meant to stop its decline, would align economically and ideologically with the future EU. Considering this context, it is not surprising that the European Union of today recalls the late Soviet Union in many respects. As the authors wrote: “For anyone even remotely familiar with the Soviet system, its similarity with the developing structures of the European Union (EU), with its governing philosophy and ‘democratic deficit,’ its endemic corruption and bureaucratic ineptitude is striking.”
Towards the Collectivist EU State
The “European Union” is the technocratic administration centered in Bruxelles (European Commission and Council) and Strasbourg (European Parliament), and semi-independent national states, tied together in a symbiotic power relationship, including currency stability from the ECB and redistribution between states, regions, and sectors. In the same vein, the USSR was composed of the administrative apparatus centered in Moscow (Council of Ministers, Gosplan, Central Committee of CPSU) together with nominally-sovereign Socialist Republics, involving credit allocation from Gosbank and redistribution between republics, autonomous regions, and industrial sectors.
The political and administrative similarities between the EU and the USSR are indeed striking, and even more so today. Economically, Europe also does far too much planning from the center than healthy societies need. Though it has a much bigger private sector than the Soviet Union had, the growing size of EU’s public sectors, unsustainable state debts and intolerable fiscal pressure are clearly weighing on European economies in ways that strongly remind of the stagnation of the late USSR.
The EU is following in the Soviet Union’s footsteps also by prioritizing political ideology and regulatory control, rather than free markets and laissez-faire. The EU’s energy policy is a good example : there is an almost sectarian fervor to it (“the science is settled!”), demanding “net zero” while disregarding science, competition, and cost, and with a deeply-rooted dislike of Russia. As Bruxelles is coming under ever more pressure, it is also becoming more disconnected with economic laws and social realities, just like the Soviet leadership.
Europe is starting to suffer from the same centralization sickness as the Soviet Union; with the center too incompetent and too disinterested to really represent and defend the interests of European peoples. Indeed, the EU’s political architecture seems to be moving towards the USSR’s organizational concept of “democratic centralism.” As Alberto Mingardi, Director of Istituto Bruno Leoni, writes:
The drive to transfer ever more sovereignty from diverse member states to Brussels is turning the European Union into an inefficient, centralized nation-state construct.
Hence, the EU is supposed to grow through crises and thanks to crises: whatever the problem or issue, it could foster a slice of national sovereignty to be cut and brought up to a higher level.
Mingardi hints at the fact that external causes are falsely painted as culprits for the EU’s current predicament, just like the Soviet Union tried to blame decay on the “Global Capitalist System” and the “Arms Race.” In the EU, these “crises” also serve as excuses to enhance social control; globalization, Covid-19, Russia, USA, China, global warming, immigration, and so on.
Further, just like the USSR’s Council of Ministers, the EU Commission is composed of large, unelected bureaucracies (32,000 “civil servants”…); both are unaccountable bodies that hold the true power over the legislative process. Even the EU titles have strong similarities with the USSR, as “Commissioners” could be called “ministers of the EU” and the Directorates-General of the Commission, “ministries.” There is a sham parliament in both cases; the EU Parliament resembles the Supreme Soviet in that it exists primarily to “rubber-stamp” decisions made by the executive bureaucracy rather than represent the people. The “EU Commission’s drift towards authoritarianism” is unmistakable today.
Few would deny that the EU now also has a Soviet-style “nomenklatura”; a new class of “Eurocrats” which also enjoys legal immunity, high salaries, and privileges that separate them from the general population.
The ever-closer cooperation between the EU and NATO also resembles the USSR, where the military and the civilian economies were not easily distinguishable. The EU—and in particular Germany—is moving in this direction as “defense” expenditures are exploding, using the Ukraine conflict as a pretext. “Using 2024 constant prices, EU defence spending was €234.2bn in 2020. It rose to €343.2bn in 2024 and is expected to reach €381bn in 2025. The real increase over the past decade, from 2015 to 2025, is 99%. In 2014, spending was at its lowest level in real terms at €188.5bn.”
Expansion and Collapse of the EU Project?
The examples above show that in many ways the EU is moving towards the Soviet model, closer to what was planned had the USSR not collapsed. This is part of a general trend across the Western world that has been on-going for several years, to increase statist technocratic control of society in all areas; public opinion (restrictions on freedom of speech), private property (CBDC for public financing of government debt and control dissent), and even physical movement (digital health pass, carbon restrictions). Ironically, this is part of the globalist plan of the Western financial oligarchy.
Most citizens would probably reject this obvious restriction of freedom. In the future, there will of course be public opposition to these plans; the question is when and how widespread this popular opposition will be. In order for the ruled majority to express firmly its opposition to such an evolution, it must first become largely aware of it. Therefore, information and education about what the European Union (including its mostly compliant national governments) is morphing into is key. If anything, this nefarious statist development of the EU is accelerating rather than slowing down. It is therefore urgent to move now to stop the further “sovietization” of the European Union, and return to simply upholding the principles of Four Freedoms, if the supranational EU structure cannot be dismantled entirely.
Hopefully, it will be possible to count on EU hubris, corruption, administrative disorganization, and bureaucratic incompetence, all of which are inevitable with every attempt at centralizing political power. Therefore, just like the Communist experiment that collapsed in Russia, there is also a possibility that the future “sovietized” EU could experience the same fate. With the current incompetent EU leadership, this possibility has probably increased of late. As the authors of “EUSSR” wrote, but with perhaps too much assurance: “The EU will continue to expand uncontrollably, unable to stop, until it collapses in exhaustion pretty much like the late Soviet Union.”
Many politically-alert Western Europeans could probably recognize their own societies in the following description of the late Soviet Union by Professor of Anthropology Alexei Yurchak: “Everyone in the Soviet Union knew the system was failing, but no one could imagine any alternative to the status quo, and politicians and citizens alike were resigned to maintaining the pretense of a functioning society.”
The problem in Europe is that this political awareness does not exist yet with the majority of Europeans. Until (and if) such an awareness crystalizes, there is thus no vigorous public pressure that could oppose the EU’s plans for further integration. This lack of understanding can partly be explained by the European bourgeoisie’s mostly business-oriented attitude, lacking much political consciousness. But it is also a result of successful propaganda efforts undertaken over decades by corporate media and state institutions to align the public with the EU agenda. This has been going on for so long now that—contrary to the Soviet peoples—relatively few Europeans have realized yet that their freedoms are being eroded and that their beloved democratic systems are failing. The tragedy is that, by the time they wake up, it could be too late.
