When people say “Europe”, the conversation often jumps straight to Brussels. I understand why. Institutions make laws, manage common policies, negotiate, regulate, spend, coordinate and occasionally provide excellent material for collective eye-rolling.
But Europe is not a synonym for its institutions.
Europe existed before today's institutional architecture, and the European idea reaches far beyond it. It lives in countries and regions, languages and minorities, universities and ports, borderlands and capital cities, family histories and shared crises. It is cultural without being only cultural, political without being only institutional.
That distinction matters because it lets us do two things at once.
We can defend European institutions when they are blamed for decisions they did not make or powers they do not have. Accuracy matters. So does competence.
And we can criticise those same institutions when they are timid, opaque, incoherent, wasteful or detached from the people they are meant to serve. Loyalty to Europe is not a requirement to applaud every European office-holder.
The healthier principle is simple: institutions are instruments of a European political project, not sacred objects.
I want a Europe capable of acting together where acting together makes us freer, safer and more effective. I also want decisions taken close to people when common action adds little. Countries and regions are not administrative clutter to be tidied away. They are part of the democratic and cultural reality Europe has to work with.
That makes European unity harder. Good.
A Europe worth having cannot depend on pretending our differences do not exist. It has to turn difference into cooperation without turning cooperation into uniformity.
Brussels matters.
Europe is bigger.