Avanti ragazzi!

Welcome to 2024. This is the year that Europeans vote for new representatives to the European Parliament. And while some people may have good reasons to think this doesn’t matter, the fact is: it does. This is a dangerous, precarious time for the future of Europe.

One of those dangers is that many individuals running for European Parliament—those vying to be your MEPs—are vulgar opportunists who view the average citizens with disdain. They look down on all of us from positions of privilege. Unfortunately, many of these power-hungry grifters will end up in the hallways of power—in Brussels, Strasbourg, and elsewhere. They will rise from the ruling class in their respective countries and they will, once elected, amass even more power—if you let them. It is your duty in June to stop them.

We’re here to help you do that by reporting in ways the mainstream media won’t. The European Conservative will continue to publish news, essays, and opinions on the falsehoods, manipulations, and shenanigans of those who populate the “empire of little kings” (as former Dutch MEP Derk Jan Eppink once wrote of the Eurocrats), as well as those who would seek to join them.

Our core view is that there are individuals in the world who want to control your lives. They use fancy rhetoric and speak of high-minded ideals to obfuscate the simple fact that they seek not only to control you but to destroy you as well, if you do not succumb to their values and worldview. This is the fascism of today—the progressive tyranny of the metropolitan elites—that we are here to resist.

Mind, there is no area of your life that the rich and powerful do not wish to supervise, manage, and control. The European Commission has said as much, listing six priority areas for its 2019-2024 mandate: the Green Deal, a digital transformation, an economy “for people,” a “stronger Europe,” promoting the “European way of life,” and pushing “European democracy.”

Understanding what EU officials mean by these terms requires a bit of translation from bureaucratese. Unraveling the myriad legislative and regulatory efforts that are being conceived within each of these six areas is more challenging still. But that is our job: to translate, investigate, decipher, and then report back to our readers—so that the opaque may be made transparent. We seek to shine a light on all the many dark corners of le projet européen—one of the greatest boondoggles known to man.

We well know that the EU’s understanding of these areas is vastly different from our own. That is why we consistently raise concerns about the EU’s approach to … everything. The EU’s conception and understanding of today’s challenges—and the responses they require—do not in the least reflect the worries and concerns of those who do most of the living and working and dying in Europe. This is a scandal.

With all this in mind, we have a very clear task ahead for the next five months, which is to focus on some of the most urgent areas prioritized by the Commission—while asking the following questions:

• The Green Deal: What does this really mean for ordinary citizens—and for business and industry? Who really benefits? What are the financial implications of the ‘green transition’? How will it affect transport services, the food supply, and consumer rights?
  
• A stronger Europe: What does this mean in terms of the EU’s ‘external action’? What does it mean internally—within Europe—given rising crime rates, urban insecurity, and uncontrolled immigration? And what impact will the ongoing demographic challenge among native populations have on the future of Europe?
  
• Our European way of life: Who determines what this means and how does one define it? What role do European arts and letters have in this way of life? How can we move from the ideology of ‘wokeness’ to real human dignity in our way of life—particularly as enshrined in the great works of the West?
  
• European democracy: What does this mean—and how is it used (and abused) by officials? What role does the principle of subsidiarity have in this democracy? How is the concept of the rule of law used as a weapon to sanction member states unwilling to submit to ‘EU values’? How are national sovereignty and democracy undermined by multilateral governance structures?

The basic underlying question is: who decides? Our vision—which we believe is shared by the vast majority of Europeans—recognizes that corrupt, entrenched, self-serving elites in Brussels (and in our European capitals) think they know better than we do about how to manage our lives. Now they are hungry for even more power—and want to control ever more sectors of our societies. In the process, they will take decisions and implement policies that will adversely affect the lives of working Europeans everywhere.

But shouldn’t those most affected have a voice? Should they not decide for themselves—without pressure or mandates or penalties from bureaucrats?

These are just some of the basic questions that we will continue to ask—in our daily news coverage, in our weekly newsletter, on our monthly TEC TV program, in our quarterly print journal, and in all our other products. Our kind of conservative research and reporting is needed more than ever—especially in the five months ahead. And the four priority areas we have identified above will, from the start of this new year, guide our efforts.

Let the European media landscape function as a public square in which we may continue to agitate for transparency. Let it also be an arena where we can push back forcefully against the imposed orthodoxy—and let it serve as a battlefield where our spirited dissenting voices can be heard. And may these voices serve as harbingers of a new Europe that—come June—has finally found its way.