This article addresses how the Wikipedia community has grappled with controversial elements of the European Union’s (EU) history from 2001 to 2019. It also examines what perspective on the EU the Wikipedia editors develop in debates about the institution’s history and if/how the community has (de)legitimised the EU’s existence today in the context of discussions about the EU’s predecessors. The data examined consist of Wikipedia contributors’ debates that took place on a Wikipedia discussion site (‘talk page’). Taking a corpus-assisted approach combined with argumentation analysis and aspects of systemic functional linguistics, I found that Wikipedia editors repeatedly propose that Nazi Germany might have been a precursor of the EU today. However, the Wikipedia community ultimately rejects this notion and emphasises the voluntary nature guiding the EU’s creation process. Thus, while the EU’s legitimacy is indeed contested in the course of the debates, the Wikipedia community eventually rejects this challenge.

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“这正是纳粹的运作方式”：（De）在维基百科上使欧盟合法化

本文介绍了维基百科社区如何应对 2001 年至 2019 年欧盟 (EU) 历史中存在争议的元素。它还研究了维基百科编辑在关于该机构历史的辩论中对欧盟的看法以及社区是否/如何在讨论欧盟前任的背景下（去）使欧盟今天的存在合法化。检查的数据包括维基百科贡献者在维基百科讨论网站（“讨论页”）上进行的辩论。采用语料库辅助方法结合论证分析和系统功能语言学的各个方面，我发现维基百科的编辑反复提出纳粹德国可能是当今欧盟的先驱。然而，维基百科社区最终拒绝了这一概念，并强调指导欧盟创建过程的自愿性质。因此，虽然欧盟的合法性确实在辩论过程中受到质疑，但维基百科社区最终拒绝了这一挑战。