Europe’s Order of the Golden Farce

he orders of merit instituted by modern-day states have a rich history behind them. They are, of course, supremely European in conception and tradition. As the heirs to mediaeval Christendom’s dynastic orders of chivalry, they were specifically designed following the tremors of liberalism and the French Revolution as a new aristocracy of service. The new, liberal orders of merit were detached from religious or monarchical allegiance, in keeping with the spirit of the times, and meant instead to recognise collectively beneficial individual achievement—remarkable deeds performed in the name of the republic. Napoleon’s Legion of Honour is perhaps the better-known of these secularised orders; nevertheless, the clever imitations of the century-old knightly societies of the Holy Spirit (France), the Garter (England), Saint Andrew (Russia), Tower and Sword (Portugal), or the Golden Fleece (Burgundy, Austria, and Spain).

Deracinated, meaningless political structures have always craved the charisma provided by performative tradition. A recent example of this is the European Parliament’s absurd new ‘European Order of Merit,’ to be unveiled today in Strasbourg. Why the European Union should have an ‘Order of Merit’ of its own is hard to comprehend. Like their mediaeval ancestors, the whole point of such organisations is that they are fraternities created by a sovereign prince—or, in the republican era, by a head of state. Their European Union is neither a realm nor a nation. As the great French historian Ernest Renan once put it in Qu’est-ce qu’une Nation?, “un Zollverein n’est pas une patrie” (“a customs union is not a homeland”).

That Europe’s grey, dull bureaucratic leadership craves that role for itself and its post-national machinery is no surprise; they have made it amply clear over the decades. But the new attempt will not fail to inspire the derision and merriment of onlookers, European and otherwise. The great Charles V, who was not altogether that far from being something akin to an Emperor of Europe, had the Order of the Golden Fleece. Europe’s Three Disgraces—von der Leyen, Metsola, and Kallas—will have to content themselves with this Order of the Golden Farce.