The Greater Germanic Union (Hypothetical)
An exploration of the potential benefits, scale and strategic implications of a political union of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Flanders, Austria and Switzerland.
What would a hypothetical political union of eight closely related Northern/Central European polities (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Flanders (region of Belgium), Austria and Switzerland) look like? If engineered carefully, such a union could deliver significant economic, political and security advantages - a larger single market, coordinated industrial and green-transition policy, strengthened international bargaining power and enhanced regional resilience.
Key baseline facts (estimates):
Population (combined): ~149.4 million
Nominal GDP (total): ≈ US$9.3 trillion
GDP per capita (nominal): ≈ US$62–63k/year
Active military (aggregate, indicative): ~340,000 personnel
Human Development & living standards: Members are in the “very high” HDI bracket; life expectancy generally in the low 80s; strong education systems and high R&D intensity.
Religious composition (broad): an approximate breakdown across the union of ~45–60% Christian, ~25–40% unaffiliated/secular, remainder other religions (mainly Muslim communities and other minorities).
Major urban centers: Berlin, Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf; Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht; Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö; Oslo, Bergen; Copenhagen, Aarhus; Vienna, Graz, Linz; Zürich, Basel, Bern; Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, Leuven. These nodes produce dense economic corridors (e.g., Rhine–Ruhr/Rhine–Meuse).
Structural economic strengths
Combining these high-income, highly open economies would create a substantial internal market - large both in consumer demand and in industrial procurement - which in turn would reduce trade frictions and unlock scale economies across manufacturing, logistics and services. By pooling demand and harmonising standards, firms could operate more efficiently, supply chains would become more resilient and cross-border investment projects would achieve stronger returns.
The union’s sectoral profile would be strongly complementary. It would bring together world-leading advanced manufacturing and automotive clusters in Germany, Austria and Switzerland; premier logistics and trade hubs centred on the Netherlands (notably the ports of Rotterdam and Antwerp); high-value financial and professional services concentrated in Switzerland and the Netherlands; Norway’s important energy resources (hydrocarbons and growing renewables); and cutting-edge high-tech and green innovation clusters across Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Austria. That mix of capabilities would support integrated industrial value chains from research and design to production and global distribution.
As a result, the union would be a major exporter of complex manufactured goods, services and technology - placing it among the world’s most competitive trading blocs by value. High GDP per capita across members, together with diversified fiscal positions (including Norway’s sovereign wealth assets), would provide important buffers against economic shocks and create real capacity for coordinated, large-scale investment in the green transition, cross-border infrastructure and shared strategic priorities.
Social & human capital advantages
The union would benefit from an exceptionally strong pool of human capital: a highly educated workforce supported by well-developed vocational training systems and world-class universities — from Stockholm and Amsterdam to Zürich, Munich, Vienna and Louvain - that together produce skilled graduates across science, engineering, healthcare and the professions.
Public-service standards would be uniformly high across the member states, with universal or near-universal health coverage, robust social safety nets, and advanced public-transport and digital infrastructures that sustain high living standards and facilitate labour mobility and economic dynamism.
Complementing skills and services, the region’s innovation ecosystem is a major asset: consistently high R&D intensity and deep public-private research collaboration would enable accelerated, coordinated investments in strategic areas such as climate technology, artificial intelligence, advanced manufacturing and the life sciences, strengthening the union’s capacity to compete on next-generation technologies.
Political and strategic benefits
A consolidated political entity would command considerably greater international influence, able to project a stronger diplomatic, commercial and normative voice in multilateral forums such as the UN and WTO and in high-stakes bilateral negotiations. By speaking and negotiating as a single bloc, the union could shape global rules, secure more favourable trade terms and amplify its policy preferences on issues ranging from standards to digital governance.
Cooperation on defense and security would allow members to specialize where they hold comparative advantages - maritime surveillance for coastal states, cyber defense hubs in tech-dense regions, and high-end engineering capacities in established industrial centers - while capturing efficiencies through shared procurement, joint training and interoperable capabilities. Such pooled approaches would lower unit costs, reduce duplication and create a more coherent regional deterrent and crisis-response posture than isolated national programmes could achieve.
Finally, close policy coordination on transnational challenges would yield practical gains: harmonized climate and energy policies could accelerate the green transition at lower cost; aligned migration and labour rules could smooth intra-union mobility; and coordinated infrastructure planning (transport corridors, cross-border grids and digital backbones) would reduce fragmentation and exploit complementary strengths across territories. In short, a unified policy approach would cut duplication, amplify impact and make it easier to deliver integrated solutions to shared problems.
Shared linguistic and cultural background
Perhaps the greatest benefit of this political union would be the shared Germanic linguistic and cultural background of its member territories.
A shared linguistic family lowers transaction costs. Several member languages (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Dutch/Flemish and German) sit in the same Germanic branch; that creates pockets of mutual intelligibility (especially among the Scandinavian languages and between Dutch and Flemish), and it makes second-language acquisition easier for speakers across the union. Practically this reduces translation and interpretation costs for administration, cross-border business, courts and public services, and it speeds up the spread of technical knowledge and best practice between universities, firms and public agencies.
Cultural affinity supports quicker institutional cooperation. Common folklore, legal and administrative traditions, educational norms and civic practices produce similar expectations about governance, contract enforcement and public administration. That cultural proximity makes it easier to build trust between institutions, harmonize professional qualifications, standardize regulatory frameworks and design joint programmes - trust and predictability are often what lets cross-border projects move from planning to execution.
Labour mobility and skills matching become simpler. When language barriers are lower and professional education systems share comparable structures (vocational tracks, apprenticeships, university degrees), mobilising talent across borders is easier. Employers can fill shortages faster, universities can run joint degrees with fewer linguistic obstacles, and mutual recognition of credentials becomes both politically and technically simpler to implement.
A shared media and cultural market accelerates integration. Common or closely related languages and cultural references allow books, film, news and academic work to travel more easily across the union, enlarging markets for creative industries and enabling a common public sphere that reinforces policy coordination and civic identity without erasing local particularities.
Branding and soft power are more coherent. A union that can legitimately market a cultural-linguistic continuity - while still celebrating regional diversity - gains a clearer identity in external diplomacy and trade promotion. Unified cultural initiatives, tourism campaigns, and joint educational scholarships become more credible and cost-effective when they draw on widely understood historical and linguistic ties.
Innovation networks and research collaboration benefit from lower friction. Scientific collaboration, patenting, tech transfer and start-up ecosystems rely heavily on shared vocabularies and professional norms. Linguistic proximity and comparable education traditions make cross-institutional labs, industry consortia and joint funding programmes more straightforward to run and scale.
Emphasizing Germanic commonality should be practical, not exclusionary. These territories are internally diverse, and political legitimacy requires explicit inclusivity. Any integration strategy should protect minority languages and ensure non-Germanic residents have full access to public life. There’s also substantial internal variation (dialects, legal systems, welfare models) that requires careful, pragmatic harmonisation rather than simplistic cultural appeals.
Conclusion
A Greater Germanic Union as hypothesized would represent a powerful economic and social bloc, boasting world-class cities, education systems and industrial strengths. The Germanic linguistic and cultural affinity is a real, practical advantage for cooperation - it lowers costs, speeds institutional trust-building and smooths labour and knowledge flows. The potential benefits in prosperity, resilience and geopolitical influence are real and substantial.