Europe faces an existential crisis and its leaders must race against time to respond
AEUROPE EDITOR mid all the tumult and speculation about what Brexit could mean for both the British economy and political union, there is, of course, an equally urgent discussion going on in Europe about what the decision to leave portends for the EU.
Angela Merkel made no attempt to evade the seriousness of the situation, admitting candidly that the departure of the world’s fifth largest economy and key Nato contributor was a “blow” to the European unification process that could not be ignored.
Putting aside the narrow question of negotiating the British divorce, the much more profound challenge for Europe is how respond meaningfully to the democratic démarche that was delivered by Britain last week.
Because, as several recent opinion surveys have shown, the British public are far from alone in their frustration at Europe’s failure to deliver the prosperity and democratic accountability that they crave. Europe is fed up; it is simmering with rage.
Europe’s leaders know they must do more to heal the divisions thrown up by a global economy that leaves too many once-prosperous low and medium-skilled workers behind.
It is understood that “more Europe” is not the answer; even if there are still some head-in-the-sand federalists, the great majority of Europe’s leaders do accept that that ship has now sailed. Instead, the new mantra is “better Europe, not more”.
“The main thing is that we must make Europe more concrete and effective for people,” Jean-Marc Ayrault, the French foreign minister, said this weekend. He added that “for a long time, we’ve been aware of the fact that we must make Europe more attractive”. But these are mere words. Europe may have open skies and cheap mobile phone calls, but outside the prosperous enclaves of the educated classes and the cities, there is an economic and political morass.
But having been complacent for too long, many of Europe’s leaders may now discover that making “concrete and effective” changes will require more time and space that the forces of populism are prepared to grant them.
As Geert Wilders, the leader of the Holland’s populist Party for Freedom told me last month, the “genie is out of the bottle” and a Brexit vote could “liberate Europe” by triggering a wider unravelling and return to national politics.
At the time, with both the polls and the betting markets pointing towards Remain, those words will have sounded like mere wishful thinking to many in the political establishments in Brussels, Berlin and London: the same old rabble-rousing bravado. Well, not any more. Britain’s decision to quit the EU is a seismic moment because it points to the inescapable reality that a new national politics is trumping Europe’s supranational ambitions.
In the next 12 months, Europe will hold a series of votes, all of which have the potential to further amplify the centrifugal political forces that have now been unleashed.
In October, Hungary has a referendum to reject refugee quotas that will advertise the chasm in values on religious tolerance and multiculturalism that now divides Europe east from west, while in the same month Italy has a referendum that could trigger the resignation of Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister. His departure would be another significant blow to centrist forces.
In March, the Netherlands will hold its own parliamentary elections where the anti-Islam, anti-Europe Mr Wilders is leading in the polls, while in April, the French National Front leader, Marine Le Pen, is likely to reach the second round of the French presidential campaign.
A month after Europe avoided electing a far-Right president in Austria by a margin of less than 1 per cent, these events take on a more threatening hue when viewed through the filter of Brexit.
In the short term, talk of a continent-wide political disintegration is overblown – Britain was already semi-detached from core Europe, being outside the eurozone and the Schengen free movement zone – but, as the Brexit vote demonstrates, the paradigm is shifting.
More likely, as the nationalist and anti-globalisation movements continue to rise, Europe’s ability to govern itself as a cohesive entity will diminish. Populism is now the constant knocking in the pipes of European governance. That will impact lives and livelihoods.
Expect a steady rise in governmentto-government dealings as EU governments look to work around the now visibly dysfunctional European political system that – echoing the fundamental economic disagreements over the eurozone – is in a nearconstant state of muddling through.
In the longer term, Europe’s future looks bleak – demographically, economically, geopolitically – since so many of the challenges thrown up by globalisation require a scaled-up, collective response that national politics is making so very hard.
Optimists will see Brexit as a trigger for a new beginning for Europe. But no one should underestimate the difficulty of that, given the incoherence of populist narratives that want less global trade and more borders; less multi-culturalism and more EU disintegration.
The unavoidable reality is that as globalisation continues, in terms of trade share, innovation capacity and population, Europe is shrinking relative to the rest of the world.
The truly existential crisis for Europe is how to combat that intoxicating populist narrative, while driving through the kind of reforms that will prevent Europe (as distinct from the EU) from sliding into global irrelevance and geo-political old age.