I love (E)U

By Floris Cooijmans

Love is in the air! While some see Valentine's Day as a commercial farce, a fake holiday, promoted by the roses-and-greeting card industry to increase sales, the less cynical at heart can appreciate the fact that there is a special day that puts love front and centre.

Valentine’s Day also gives us an opportunity to look at an institution not often associated with love, the European Union, from an unusual angle. This article will discuss some of the ways the EU promotes love among its citizens. Although love as a concept is not mentioned in any of the treaties which lay at the foundation of the EU, one can argue that this supranational institution does meddle with affairs of the heart. This article will discuss four areas: Freedom of Movement, the Erasmus Programme, LGBTQ+ Rights and Family Reunification.

Freedom of Movement

People living in countries who are part of the European Single Market enjoy what is known as the ‘four freedoms’. First introduced in the Treaty of Rome, this refers to the freedom of movement of goods and services, capital, and the most important for love, people. This means that people are free to travel, work and move to any other country in the Single Market. Many do so.

Even though the freedom of movement was ostensibly to promote economic activity and expand the flexibility of the labour market, in which it has been successful looking at intra-EU labour migration, perhaps its most common use overall has become tourism. In 2022, 94% of all tourism from the EU stayed within the EU.

The ease of travelling and moving abroad has resulted in repeated and increased interactions between groups of people, who, without this frictionless movement would have not encountered each other. This in turn has resulted in most international marriages of EU citizens being with other EU citizens. While the number of marriages is not a perfect indicator of love, it is the only one we have.

The Erasmus Programme

The Italian writer Umberto Eco already recognised the tremendous potential the Erasmus programme could have for the future of the EU. Provocatively, he called it ‘’a sexual revolution’’.

To Eco, catapulting young EU citizens at their biological (and fertility) prime into different countries, ostensibly for education, but with the explicit instruction to have a good time and meet plenty of new people is a brilliant strategy to create a whole generation of ‘’Europeans’’. Children of such couples would most likely be binational and bilingual: personifications of the European project.

While the percentage of young people who go on Erasmus is still too low to see its effects on a societal scale, a 2014 report did estimate that since the inception of the Erasmus programme more than 1 millions ‘Erasmus babies’ have been born. The same study showed that more than a quarter of people who went on Erasmus have met their ‘’life partner’’ during their time abroad.

The current iteration of the programme (Erasmus+) expands both the budget available as well as the exchange opportunities. As it now also includes adult learners and apprenticeships, the number of people making use of the EU’s most popular programme is expected to rise, and with it, the number of people who will find love through it. Who would have thought that a Dutch philosopher from the late 15th century would ever play Cupid?

LGBTQ+

Still, not everywhere in the EU can everyone love who they want or express their gender identity freely. In all EU countries, individuals belonging to the LGBTQ+ community are still facing discrimination for who they love or for being themselves on a number of different levels.

The EU tries to fight discrimination with programmes such as the ”LGBTIQ Equality Strategy 2020-2025’’. This strategy includes actions such as ‘’improving the recognition of trans and non-binary identities, and intersex people’’ and ‘’reinforcing legal protection for LGBTIQ people against hate crime, hate speech and violence‘’, just to name a few.

The EU does not have the necessary competences to mandate that member states introduce marriage equality, for instance. Only national governments can decide that.

What the EU does have a say over, however, is enforcement of its treaties. The European Court of Justice (ECJ) is the court of last instance in cases based on discrimination, which is forbidden by the EU treaties. An example of how this can move LGBTQ+ rights forward is that a ruling of the ECJ forced countries which did not have marriage equality to recognise a same-sex marriage officiated in another member state. This shows that even without the competences, the EU can move forward LGBTQ+ in the entire Union.

Family reunification

Despite popular misconception, the most common reason third-country nationals are granted residence permits in the EU is family reunification. The EU’s family reunification policy is a result of the rights featured in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, which includes amongst others, ”the right to marry and right to found a family’’ (article 9) and ‘’the right to respect for his or her private and family life’’ (article 7).

Although there is evidence that family reunification helps with the integration of immigrants, on a more fundamental level, family reunification is a policy because we think it is inhumane to deprive someone of the proximity of their loved ones, which is reflected in EU law.

Conclusion

Despite the EU not having a Directorate of Affairs of the Heart, (DG AMOR if you will) it does play a large role in the love life of the people living in it, whether they are exchange students, queer identifying or immigrant who can be reunited with their family due to an EU directive. I wish everyone a valentines day filled with love <3

Disclaimer: this article is adapted from an essay the author wrote during his Bachelors’ degree. This version has been completely rewritten and considerably shortened.

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