[lukan]

No, it is not quite the same as Moscow and Washington are capitals of centralised states who give orders to the whole nation.

The EU on the other hand does not have a common constitution, army etc. so is not a real state (yet). It is made up of soveraign nations who come together debate and decide there, but then it is still up to the members to implement that.

So the transition to the EU as one state is happening, but might never complete.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

The European Commission is in fact empowered to boss member states around, it's one of the things that give EU law teeth rather than it being like "international law" (unenforceable anarchy). It also acts much like a government (in the sense of executive, not in the sense of state) when it comes to EU lawmaking, and has various government-like powers in fields like competition law for example. And the European Commission is based in Brussels. Saying "Brussels" to refer to Commission activity is as natural as saying "London", "Downing Street", "the Cabinet Office", "Whitehall" etc to refer to British government functions. And that's without getting into all the other EU institutions that are based there!

It is true that the EU institutions are ultimately subordinate to the member states in a way that, say, the US federal institutions are not, but the EU is still very much is its own thing. It even has legal personality these days: you can sue the EU and the EU can sue you.

[philipallstar]

It doesn't imply that the EU is one state. It's just the place where the decisions are made. If Brussels didn't like anyone knowing that, I'm sure other cities in the EU would happily take the gobs of free money showered on wherever the EU is headquartered.

[lukan]

You mean like Strasbourg?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seat_of_the_European_Parliamen...

Spoiler, the parliamanet moves once a month between Brussel and there. That's how centralized the EU is, we cannot even decide on one fixed place to meet and decide.

[philipallstar]

Yes indeed - the gobs of money know no bounds.

[finghin]

I’m not sure you realise that this is a far more generic rhetorical phenomenon that encompasses all kinds of situations. Like referring to the FBI as Quantico.

[simonh]

Or Scotland Yard for the metropolitan police in london. They were commonly known by that name almost immediately after their founding in 1829.

Perhaps the earliest example is Pharaoh. It originally referred to the royal residence.

[TeMPOraL]

TIL Scotland Yard is the Metropolitan Police. I thought it was its own thing named "Scotland Yard" for some reasons I never bothered to investigate.

Which kind of proves your point.

[krisoft]

> TIL Scotland Yard is the Metropolitan Police.

It is not? But also it is.

You are right that when people say "Scotland Yard" they do frequently mean the whole Metropolitan Police. And you are also right that there is no other police entity (that I know of) which would be associated with that name.

But also, "Scotland Yard" was just the address of the original headquarters of the Metropolitan Police. Even then it wasn't the whole organisation, just the address of one of the buildings. Then they got a new headquarters and called it "New Scotland Yard". And to confuse matters further they repeated this multiple times. Which means there are 3 buildings which were called "New Scotland Yard" at various points in time.

And today of course the MET occupies far more real estate than just the famous "Scotland Yard". For example if you look at this FOI request[1] you can see that there were 226 other buildings the Metropolitan Police used in 2023. (Not counting covert/sensitive estate).

1: https://www.met.police.uk/foi-ai/metropolitan-police/disclos...

Scotland Yard was originally the name of the street in which headquaters of the Metropolitan Police.

[TeMPOraL]

Right. What I meant is, until today I believed that "Scotland Yard" was an entirely different law enforcement agency from MET.

[lukan]

Oh, or using building names like White House and Kremlin?

Yes, I heard of the concept. My point was just that many have a misconception about the nature of the EU.