Fork the EU

LinkedIn blog post, 12/08/2025, by Sven Franck (en français , in Deutsch)

TL;DR - Wherever you spent your holidays (me circling the Baltic sea), one could hardly escape the trade-undoing of the European Union courtesy of national governments. The EU now seems in full-FOMO mode as the next episode of "Orange Mirror" is set to air when Donald Trump meets Vladimir Putin to find out, how between them, they can win the Noble Peace prize for invading and destroying a neighbouring country 🕊️💥.

The EU even issued a joint statement by 26 governments for the occasion. A joint EU position was of course a non-starter because of Viktor Orban.

This got me thinking: I often compare democracies to open-source software: You can use it by voting and you can contribute to improve it (interested? 👉 Join Volt Europa). When an open-source project runs into trouble, is taken over, maintainers disappear or no longer make updates, stakeholders sometimes create a fork.

Reaching a fork in the road

For example: the database software MySQL was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2008 who then was acquired by Oracle in 2010. Fearing Oracle would stop development of its principal open-source competitor, the founders created a fork of MySQL called MariaDB - an exact copy to continue to develop. The community switched to MariaDB which today is state of the art in databases and has significantly evolved from the original fork of MySQL.

Realistically or not, why not fork the EU? Because whatever your dream of a future European Union, any changes to treaties will require unanimity and there will always be someone saying "nope". We are currently seeing how the EU has zero geopolitical leverage. No joint defence. No rare earths. A weak Commission President. It also has zero internal leverage to force any blocking member state to play along.

Creating internal leverage

Imagine there is drawer with a plan for a fork of the EU. Drafted by willing member states, who are ready to make an EUxit to launch an exact copy of the European Union - minus the bad things, plus what the EU needs to compete geopolitically: say a Constitution, joint military and a step by step process to join or get kicked out.

In software, it is often sufficient to have such an alternative in the drawer, because threatening to use it already provides leverage, especially if the group of stakeholders or member states becomes significant (like in a qualified majority).

The risk of not being included in the forked and revamped EU will likely work wonders at the ballot box 🗳️ and force leaders like Viktor Orban to play nice in the current version of the European Union. After all, it's better to leave the room for a coffee during decisions than the whole room moving to a different building while he is outside at the coffee machine. To think further: #jumpstartEU.