EuropeDec 4th 2021 edition
Why bullshit rules in Brussels
The €300bn Global Gateway initiative is a prime example
BULLSHIT IS A surprisingly rich seam of philosophical inquiry. "On Bullshit", a short essay by Harry Frankfurt, an American philosopher, became a bestselling book. Since its publication in 1986, the essence of the stuff has been chewed over, with thinkers ranging from Wittgenstein to St Augustine invoked to help understand it. The field of inquiry was even given its own name: taurascatics. Examining the theory of bullshit—"indifference to how things really are" in Mr Frankfurt's formulation—is now a well-trodden path. To see bullshit in practice, head to Brussels.
Consider the EU's Global Gateway initiative, launched on December 1st. It is a sprawling scheme that will supposedly result in €300bn ($340bn) of investment in infrastructure across the developing world by 2027. Diplomats compare it to the "Belt and Road Initiative", which China uses to expand its influence. Beneath the spin lurks bullshit. It is not just the language (the scheme is based on "a Team Europe approach") but the content. The €300bn is mainly a mixture of existing commitments, loan guarantees and heroic assumptions about the ability of the club to "crowd in" private investment, rather than actual new spending. Even the threat it is designed to counter is overdone: Japan quietly invests far more than China on infrastructure in Asia, for example. It is a perfectly good idea; but it is simply caked in bullshit.
Anywhere politicians, journalists, wonks and lobbyists gather tends to produce a surplus of bullshit. But the EU's de facto capital is especially prone to it. It is a city of great power but little scrutiny. Media attention is still focused on national capitals. Mr Frankfurt wrote that bullshit is "unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about". In Brussels this happens every day. Those inside the bubble are expected to keep on top of judicial reform in Poland and coalition formation in Sweden, as well as the grand sweep of geopolitics. A deep knowledge of the domestic politics of 27 countries and an encyclopedic understanding of how the EU's institutions work (in theory and in practice) is both necessary and impossible. Some bullshitting is inevitable.
Inhabitants of the bubble are reluctant to call it out. Brussels is a cosy place. The same people attend the same events, making the same points about topics that would be unintelligible to a passer-by who sneaked in for the free sandwiches. Disagreements on panels are rare. A soporific consensus is the norm. Admitting that the EU's policy in the Indo-Pacific barely matters would send its authors, and the assembled wonks who pored over it, into an existential tailspin. Ignoring how things really are, as Mr Frankfurt explains, is the essence of bullshit.
Much as all models are wrong but some are useful, there is good bullshit and bad bullshit. All bullshitters are winging it, but some get it right. At one end of the spectrum are total chancers. One EU talking head conned TV channels into putting him on air, even though the "think-tank" he ran had a spelling error in its title, stock images for staff and existed mainly in his head. At the other end are the usual array of well-funded wonks (and columnists) opining on whatever dominates the day, with a degree of intelligence if not always insight. But sometimes all that separates the two is the cash for a glossy website and proofreaders.
Bullshit lurks at the heart of the EU's legitimacy. In other political systems, a government wields an electoral mandate. In Brussels, laws stem from the European Commission, which is not directly elected and yet must still act in the European interest. Determining this interest is often done by surveys, which can yield misleading results. (An EU-funded survey in March 2017, taken nine months after the Brexit vote, revealed that only a quarter of Britons believed that membership of the EU was a bad thing.) Strange as it may seem, when politics is absent, bullshit has free rein.
Boredom can breed bullshit. For all the late-night suspense of conclaves of the European Council, in essence they are just long meetings to argue about revisions to a document. Diplomats who offer the juiciest bits of gossip know that their views will be reflected best. The upshot is that even the blandest summit is jazzed up for the sake of hungry hacks. Likewise, crunch points rarely crunch in the EU. Deadlines are an invention of diplomats attempting to create pressure and journalists trying to create peril. In either case, they are nearly always bullshit.
Called to ordure
It is possible to build a career on bullshit in Brussels. A young Boris Johnson made his name in the city as a Euro-bashing journalist from the Daily Telegraph. What is striking is that the outrageous stories—whether on condom regulation or the bendiness of bananas—were never outright fabrications. Instead, they were, often, bullshit. That made them harder to counter. A takedown of the bendy-banana myth focused on the fact that it was not "Brussels bureaucrats" who decided to regulate them, but national governments which pushed for changes to existing EU regulations. A pedantic clarification missed the wider truth: the curvature of bananas in Europe is a supranational matter. A bullshit attack was countered with a defence that was also bullshit.
If bullshit can be an opportunity in Brussels, it is also a prison. "Bullshit jobs", as the anthropologist David Graeber called them in another addition to taurascatics, are rife within the EU. Most officials dealing with big topics in Brussels are intelligent and diligent. Stay in Brussels long enough, however, and sad souls who are overpaid and underworked reveal themselves. The perks, which range from fat pensions to an expat allowance that cancels out any tax due, are simply too good to give up. Outside the institutions, youngsters with dreams of building Europe instead find themselves lobbying for the aluminium industry or Kazakhstan. Each day is a scramble to justify a sorry existence. The result? More bullshit shovelled into a system already overflowing with it. ■
Read more from Charlemagne, our columnist on European politics:
A new treaty between France and Italy upends EU politics (Nov 27th 2021)
Last of the commies (Nov 20th 2021)
Minimum wage, maximum rage (Nov 13th 2021)
This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "On bullshit: Brussels edition"
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