It’s very common throughout English. The Russian government is refered to as Moscow, US as Washington. It’s the same and doesn’t refer to residents. It’s known as synecdoche.
In other words, sorry but it’s here to stay.
In other words, sorry but it’s here to stay.
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.
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.
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.
Perhaps the earliest example is Pharaoh. It originally referred to the royal residence.
Which kind of proves your point.
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.
Yes, I heard of the concept. My point was just that many have a misconception about the nature of the EU.
So while linguistically it's the same system as using 'Washington' or 'Moscow', Brussels is specifically in the bad spot where it gets blamed for impopular stuff but never praised for popular things.
So ‘Brussels suffered a deadly fire’ will always refer to the city. ‘Brussels decides on new aircraft regulations’ will almost always refer to either the city government, the Belgian government, or the EU Parliament headquartered there. Brussels is just an exceptional case because there is so much based there, as opposed to the Hague or the Vatican.
And Brussels is not the capitol of the EU because the EU is not a country.