What's in an EU anthem?

Things get a bit more complicated.

I don't know about other European anthems, but at least the original version of the Portuguese anthem read,

To arms, to arms!
Over the land, over the sea,
To arms, to arms!
To fight for our Fatherland!
Against the Britons, march, march!

May I kindly correct one mistake: M. Van Rompuy is NOT running for "EU President" - such post doesn't exist. He's the leading candidate for President of the European Council - where heads of state and government in the EU meet.

If you read the piece in The Telegraph carefully, you will find it does not say that Von Rompuy wants a European national anthem. Although he is reported to be "committed to a European national anthem" in the summary above the article, the claim is not substantiated in the text.

As The Telegraph reports, the EU already has an anthem - the triumphant theme from the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth "Choral" Symphony - which was endorsed by EU leaders in 1985.

A further formalization of the anthem was included in the European constitution, which was rejected by Dutch and French voters (not Irish, as The Telegraph wrongly states), in 2005. The reference to the anthem was removed from the Lisbon Treaty that has now been adopted, but that doesn't mean there is no anthem.

The Telegraph also makes the common mistake of describing the anthem as "Beethoven's Ode to Joy." The Ode to Joy was written by Friedrich Schiller in 1785. Beethoven used it in his symphony and wrote the accompanying tune, but he did not write the Ode. The European anthem is the tune that Beethoven wrote, not the Ode that Schiller wrote, and has no words.

I suppose the author of this post is trying to make a (very feeble) joke by suggesting that the President/Chairman of the European Council would have the authority, ot the desire, to interfere with the national anthoms of member states. This is, however, a totally fatuous idea that only serves to perpetuate U.S. ignorance about how the EU workds.

As for the national anthems cited, it is true that Germans are not supposed to sing the words "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles/Über alles in der Welt," but many of them still do because they don't know the sanitized version.

In any case, with the EU's military weakness endangering the allied effort in Afghanistan, it might be better to put some martial spine into the words of an EU anthem, rather than just warble on about peace, as you seem to suggest.

And while we're on the subject, it might be a good idea to remove insulting language about America's best ally - Britain - from the Star Spangled Banner, which refers to the British as "haughty" and "hirelings and slaves" who have left "foul footsteps" in America.

The reference to slaves is particularly ironic in lyrics written in 1814. In the War of Independence, less than 40 years earlier, it was the British who freed the slaves, while the American forces did their best to recapture them and return them to their owners.

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