Europe The Times 25 October 2100
There is now a real possibility that the European Union will break apart.
There are many in Parliament who would cheer this and I suspect even more in the country beyond who would join in with enthusiasm. Nor would they be alone. It is not only in Britain that the public mood against the EU runs so strongly. The Dutch seem to agree and even the people of Germany, given the chance, might vote the same way.
The odds against the Euro surviving in its present form are mounting with every new dither from its leaders. Some fundamental re-arrangement of the economic pieces of what started as an economic union, now looks more and more inevitable. Even if this leads to some — led by Germany — moving to form a stronger center, we cannot get there without others — led by Britain perhaps — having the opportunity to chose something looser, or perhaps even leaving altogether.
The single greatest political idea of our time, European integration, now looks in serious trouble. The dynamic of Europe is set to change from centripetal, to centrifugal.
And God help us all if it does.
The reasons for European integration are not weaker today than they were when this all started; they are stronger. The EU’s founding fathers saw European integration as a means to avoid repeating our past and as the right response to the post-war turmoil of the past. We should we see it as the best means to assure our future and the right response to the global turmoil of the future.
I know this view has little or no popular support and is espoused by few if any of Europe’s leaders (two facts which are almost certainly connected). But that does not make it wrong.
Behind the titanic struggles to rescue the euro and the almost equally titanic obsessions of Tory Eurosceptics intent on re-opening ancient wounds in their party, there lurks, as the Americans say, a 650lb gorilla which everyone is conveniently ignoring.
The position of Europe in the world has changed fundamentally in the last decade or so – and not to our advantage.
This is no longer a unipolar world dominated by our friendly neighbourhood superpower on the other side of the Atlantic. It is increasingly a multipolar world in which we have to survive among many competitors – only a few of them friends – who look hungrily at our markets, our influence and our position.
Our American allies seem to understand this better than we do. They now look west across the Pacific just as much — maybe more — than they do east across the Atlantic. As the US Secretary for Defence Robert Gates recently made clear, the US no longer sees itself as Europe’s defender of last resort and friend for all circumstances.
Europe, in short, is much more alone today, than it used to be.
Meanwhile to our east, we have a highly assertive — not to say aggressive — Russian leader, whose fondness for tanks over dialogue has already been shown and who looks certain to be elected for another six years in office. Beyond that we have a rising China; a growing India; an ascendant Brazil; and to our south, a whole new set of relationships to build with the post-Arab Spring Maghreb — and a new kid on the block, Turkey, who is currently making more progress there than we are.
If we Europeans don’t understand that the right reaction to our new circumstances is not to loosen, but to deepen the integration of our defence, our foreign policy and our economics, then we are bloody fools. If we really believe that this is a moment to consign ourselves to a collection of perfectly sovereign corks bobbing along in the wake of other people’s ocean liners, the next decades will be much more difficult, turbulent and dangerous for us.
This is not to say that the European Union can stay as it is.
The tragedy of the past half century of European integration is that the Brussels institutions have turned a transcendental idea into a conspiracy of obsession with the petty. In an age when all our democracies are under pressure, they have consistently failed to tackle the yawning democratic and accountability deficits which still infect the heart of the EU machine – while at the same time failing to show the unity or vision to make a real difference where we could and should, for instance in the Balkans.
The result is not something we “pro-Europeans” find it comfortable to admit; Europe’s institutions in their present form have comprehensively lost the confidence of the people they serve.
There is a price to pay for this.
Maybe it was right in different circumstances to seek a single perfectly level social playing field and perfectly homogenised sets of rules, means and standards to support the single economic market. But this, coupled with what the public regards as unwarranted interference in our domestic affairs, is just no longer sellable.
So do I agree with the Tory Party in their quest to “repatriate powers” from Brussels?
Only up to a point, Lord Copper.
I can agree that it would be better if the EU adopted the principle that in such matters as agriculture and fishing, it would set the targets and leave it more to member nations to decide how to achieve them. I agree too that it should accept more variation in social norms and intervene much less in those matters which touch on the services of citizens within their own countries. I do not take the view that the single market requires us to be as rigid on these matters as we currently are.
But this is only part of the story.
If on the one hand the EU should get out of things it doesn’t have to be in, then on the other it should get deeper into those areas where, in an increasingly turbulent, even hostile world, it is to all our benefits to speak with a more powerful voice together, than we ever would alone.
The Tory Party want to “repatriate” powers as a prelude to weakening the EU and our voice in it. In this climate, that seems to me folly of a grand order.
Far better to rebalance the powers of the EU so that in those areas where it is in our interest to speak with a louder voice in an inhospitable world, we have the ability to do so.
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