Before moving to Belgium, I went to school in a small country in Northeastern Europe. I might have said “North,” but I also said “East.” Yes, a post-Soviet country. For us, solidarity was not a slogan of kindness but a tool of control. It meant silence, conformity, and the suppression of dissent.
When I moved west, I thought I had left that behind. The European Union, in my mind, represented the opposite: a project built on freedom, reason, and moral responsibility, the promise that the mistakes of the twentieth century would never be repeated.
It was an idea I believed in wholeheartedly. I was proud to call myself European, proud to live in Brussels, the symbolic heart of that experiment.
But over the years, that pride has turned into quiet unease. The Europe that once free
d itself from dogma now seems to be constructing a new one: a dogma of solidarity that cannot be questioned, even when it undermines the very values it claims to defend.
When I worked in a role that required me to go through old speeches from EU summits, I started noticing a pattern. Certain words appeared again and again, like a litany: solidarity, equality, democracy, diversity.
No one would dispute the nobility of these ideals. They are the foundation of peace and prosperity on this continent. And to be fair, Europe’s insistence on these words comes from both pride and pain. The scars of the twentieth century run deep, and it is understandable that leaders would rather risk naïveté than repeat brutality.
But even virtue can harden into ritual. When principles are repeated too often without self-reflection, they stop being guides and start being shields. The EU’s vocabulary of moral certainty, so essential after the war, now risks becoming a substitute for real debate.
Europe seems to have traded religion for ideology. The pews are empty, but the faith remains. The altar is Brussels, and the sermons speak of inclusion, openness, and unity. To question this faith is not dialogue; it is heresy.
The problem is not the values themselves, but the blindness with which they are applied.
The dogma of solidarity manifests in many ways. It is present in the rhetoric that insists that Europe must always be open, even when our systems strain under pressure. It appears in the reflex to label all criticism of integration or migration policy as malicious. And it thrives in the notion that moral worth depends on never drawing boundaries, that saying no somehow makes you less European.
Brussels, often described as the capital of Europe, should be the model of coexistence, proof that diversity can flourish. And in many ways, it does: this city remains creative, multilingual, and resilient. Yet beneath that surface, a quiet unease has settled.
Fear has seeped into daily life. Explosions, shootings, riots, they flicker across the news with unsettling regularity. Sirens have become the new background music. People speak of tension in their neighborhoods, of changes they feel but hesitate to name.
None of this negates Europe’s successes or the extraordinary human stories of those who come here seeking safety and opportunity. But success cannot become an excuse for silence. We need the courage to talk about the challenges that come with our choices, not in anger, but in honesty.
Europe’s commitment to tolerance is its greatest moral achievement and also its deepest vulnerability.
Under that banner, we have opened our doors and hearts to those in need, and that compassion defines us. But somewhere along the way, tolerance became an obligation rather than a choice, and solidarity became a test of faith rather than a shared duty.
Most who arrive in Europe enrich our societies. They build businesses, study, work, and contribute to the communities they join. The problem is not people, but policy: the absence of clear expectations and the unwillingness to defend our principles consistently.
Philosopher Karl Popper warned of this long ago, the paradox of tolerance, the idea that a society which is endlessly tolerant risks being destroyed by those who are not.
Europe now stands in that paradox. In its rush to prove its virtue, it has left itself open to ideologies that reject its core freedoms. And when someone raises this concern, they are told they have betrayed Europe, as though self-preservation were a sin.
The result is paralysis, a continent that preaches courage but practices denial.
For those of us from post-Soviet countries, history feels closer to the surface. To see certain fears return in Western Europe, Jewish communities hiding their faith, public debates that polarize rather than enlighten, and young people romanticizing the very ideologies that once crushed their ancestors, is deeply unsettling.
Of course, Europe today is not the Europe of the 1930s. Its institutions are stronger, its citizens freer. Yet history rarely repeats; it echoes. And these echoes should concern us, not because they prove that disaster is imminent, but because they reveal how fragile our assumptions about progress really are.
Europe promised “never again.” That promise requires constant vigilance and the humility to admit when good intentions start to drift into denial.
If Brussels is the political heart of Europe, it is also a mirror reflecting its contradictions. The institutions that speak of solidarity often seem detached from the realities faced by ordinary Europeans. Bureaucracy has replaced empathy; moral posture has replaced policy.
The city’s chronic budget struggles and governance issues are not merely technical problems; they symbolize a deeper fatigue, a Europe stretched between ideals and realities.
Solidarity, in its truest sense, means caring for your own home so that it can remain a refuge for others. But somewhere along the way, we have confused generosity with neglect and openness with abdication.
I write this not as an enemy of Europe, but as someone who loves it enough to worry. I believed, and still believe, in a Europe that protects the vulnerable without becoming vulnerable itself, a Europe that welcomes diversity without losing its identity, a Europe that leads not by moral theatre but by example.
To protect this Europe, we must reclaim the right to question it. Solidarity without discernment is not virtue; it is self-destruction. Tolerance without boundaries is not strength; it is surrender.
Europe’s future will depend on whether it can pair generosity with realism, openness with order, compassion with courage. To question our methods is not to betray the European project, but to strengthen it. After all, self-criticism, not blind faith, is one of Europe’s greatest inventions.
If we can rediscover that, then perhaps this Union can still be saved from the weight of its own good intentions.
