Both the E.U. and U.S. have
their respective flag days during the month of June—on the 29th and
14th, respectively. This isn’t the only thing that the flags have in
common, and what sets both off from the flags of the states. I contend that these
similarities and difference regarding political symbols can function as markers
for what both unions are as complex polities of polities even as ideologies seek
to obfuscate and dissimilate, even dismissing or ignoring the history of both
unions. In other words, flags don’t lie; people do.
The first flags of the E.U.
and U.S. were both used by their predecessors, rather than being created in
1993 and 1789, respectively. These dates mark when the states gave some of
their governmental sovereignty to the union-level judicial, legislative, and
executive branches. The first E.U. flag had been used by the European
Communities since 1986, and the first U.S. flag had been used beginning in 1777
by the alliance’s Second Continental Congress, and, moreover, under the
Articles of Confederation, under which each of the 13 member countries was sovereign
after having been colonies in the British Empire until 1776. Crucially, the
Declaration of Independence declared the independence each of the 13 colonies,
which even while colonies had been in a military alliance like modern-day NATO.
The original E.U. and U.S. flags. The sheer paralellism is astonding, especially given how differently the two unions are perceived today by the general public on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
The E.U. flag contains stars
representing its 12 original states and the U.S. flag contains stars
representing its 13 original states because all of those states had been
sovereign countries and still retained some governmental sovereignty. In fact, in
1993 and 1789, respectively, the states still held most of the
governmental sovereignty, with the federal governmental institutions, or
branches, being much restricted in their respective exclusive competencies and
enumerated powers.
The parallelism itself is
astounding, especially given the tendency in Europe to perceive the E.U.
incorrectly as a “bloc” or international organization like NATO and NAFTA, and
in America to perceive the U.S. like France with a large back-yard rather than
an empire-scale union of semi-sovereign polities. This is precisely why the
history of the two flags is so important to know, for treating the U.S. as if
it would be a state in the E.U. rather than on the same level and scale as the
E.U., and treating the E.U. as if it were a temporary “bloc” of sovereign countries
for a single purpose like trade or defense as if a trade agreement of military
alliance incur rather basic yet invisible category mistakes.
The basic, or qualitative difference between the unions and their respective states can be grasped by the fact that the E.U. flag’s twelve golden stars, “explicitly, and in contrast to” the flags of the states, represent the states and “the ideals of unity, solidarity and harmony,”[1] which are especially important at the union, empire-level because empires are inherently heterogenous (i.e., interstate differences in culture, norms, and values as well as dominant ideologies) whereas the states themselves are relatively homogenous. Rather than a difference in degree, the difference is that of a leap, given that there is a leap in geographical scale between that of a state and a union of many such states.
That the stars in the E.U. flag are in a circle better stands for unity than does the arrangement of the 13 stars in the original Star-Spangled U.S. flag, but the circle configuration was in the Betsy Ross version, which although not the official flag, was consistent with the specifications in the Flag Act of 1777. The parallelism between the stars in the Ross flag and in the E.U. flag is very strong.
The Betsy Ross Flag, a close up of part of that flag, and the E.U. flag. The close up and the E.U. flag are directly parallel, with only the color of the stars differing. The stars on both flags stand for states.
The value being placed on unity and solidarity at the federal level is more crucial than at the state level, and this is reflected in the fact that the state flags not only do not have stars representing sovereign and then semi-sovereign polities therein, but also do not symbolically highlight unity or solidarity.
In short, unity and solidarity, which by the way are put at risk by relying too much on the principle of unanimity in having state vetos at the union level, are more valuable at the federal level in an empire-scale union of states than at the state level. Therefore, empire-scale governance contains, or should contain, dynamics that do not exist at the state, or (early-modern, rather than medieval) “kingdom” level, such as in managing diversity of state preferences at the union level. Interstate differences are more salient in union-level governance than regional differences are in state-level governance, and early-modern federalism, as distinct from confederalism, treats the two levels as qualitiatively different as a result. To conflate them is thus one hell of a category mistake, and yet people on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean do it much too often, given the reasoning potential of the human brain. Yes, ouch! Just for added fun, let's put corrective braces on the crooked teeth of "Brexit" and add some disinfectant mouth-wash to extirpate the bad odor from former British Prime Minister David Cameron's erroneous statement that the E.U. was just one of the international networks that Britain had been in.
Before the United Kingdom seceded from the E.U., it could be said that the ideological and cultural differences throughout the empire-scale union bearing on political decisions needed to be managed in the European Council, the Council of the E.U., the European Parliament, and the European Commission dwarfed the differences between the four regions or provinces of the United Kingdom that had to be managed at the state level there. Put another way, whereas the original E.U. flag has stars representing the states, the state flag of the United Kingdom does not have stars representing its regions. Nor, for that matter, does the flag of Germany have stars representing its 15 regions.
The governmental dynamics at the scale of
former and existing E.U. states are in crucial respects qualitatively different
than the unique dynamics that empire-scale unions of such states must have in
order not to fall apart due to pressure from state differences seeking their
own expressions yet while there is unity at the union level. This is the
balance that renders federalism itself an unstable form of government, yet the
best suited form to empire-scale unions of states. Contrasting union from state
flags warns us not to conflate state with union-level governance, and thus
states with unions of such states.
1. Andreas Rogal, “European
Flag Celebrates 40 Years as Symbol for EU and Predecessor,” Euronews.com, June
29, 2025.
