Covid-19 has put the EU into intensive care
We can’t deal with Eurocrats who insist on treating us as a renegade province
Imagine it the other way around. Suppose our negotiators were to insist that a trade deal with the EU was contingent on British access to EU fishing grounds, a British veto over European regulations and the continuing jurisdiction of British judges on the Continent. Would anyone think our stance reasonable? Would anyone accuse the EU of deliberately collapsing the negotiations? Would anyone make (in reverse) the accusation made by Phil Hogan, the EU’s Commissioner for Trade, on Thursday, namely that there is “no sign that the UK wants the talks to succeed”?
Of course not. Yet, incredibly, some British commentators are now so angry and tribal that they automatically side with Brussels, however preposterous its demands. Like those British Communists who tamely accepted the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939, they unhesitatingly follow the party line, blind to any considerations of consistency, decency or (obviously) patriotism.
The country as a whole, though, has moved on. By 48 per cent to 40, we now say that Britain was right to leave the European Union. Plenty of Remainers have reconciled themselves to the result, and you can see why. The strongest argument for staying in was always change-aversion – or, to put it more grandly, Burkeianism. “We might not like the Brussels racket,” many reasoned, “but is leaving really worth the hassle?”
Now that argument is obsolete, people can take a more straightforward view of whether the European project is succeeding.
Let’s recall what the EU is supposed to be all about. Its ruling principle, the end that it cites to justify almost any means, is “solidarity”. Member states give up their democratic autonomy in return for the benefits that come from being part of a big bloc. That, at any rate, is the theory.
Yet look at what happened when coronavirus struck. While surpluses of medical equipment piled up in Germany, Italy was forced to turn to China for help. A bloc notionally devoted to trade liberalisation imposed export bans. Even the EU’s closest partners were frozen out.
A visibly shaken Aleksandar Vucic, the president of Serbia, took to the airwaves to tell his countrymen that they had been thrown under the bus. The EU, he said, having for years set conditions that effectively forced Serbia to bid for European rather than non-European contracts, had now excluded Serbia from its markets. Only the Chinese would send medical equipment.
Some EU states did, of course, continue to trade in masks, ventilators and the like. But, at the same time, there were border closures, export restrictions and a general turning inwards. The European Commission pleaded with national governments to act together, but no one was listening.
For as long as I can remember, Euro-enthusiasts have spoken of the need for Europe to unite so as to square up to someone-or-other. It used to be the USSR, then it was Japan, then the United States. For the past decade or so, it has been China. Only by pooling their resources and their institutions, Europeans were told, could they hope to look that mighty state, with its vast population, in the face.
Yet, faced with an unarguable breach of international norms by China – at the very least, Beijing’s secrecy hampered the early response to the epidemic – Eurocrats kowtowed to Beijing’s autocrats. Twice, EU officials bowed to pressure from the dictators to doctor public statements, removing references to coronavirus having originated in China.
Meanwhile, more seriously, the euro once again looks like becoming an obstacle to recovery. Had Covid-19 been designed to wreck the single currency, it would have struck at Italy – and, in particular, at the industrial heartland of northern Italy. A virus that hit Germany and the Netherlands harder than Italy and Spain might, paradoxically, have helped the euro. Instead, we face the prospect of Italy emerging from the crisis so indebted that growth is impossible, while the northern states continue to refuse to establish a fiscal union.
In the absence of formal transfer mechanisms, Eurocrats will try to use their existing budgetary resources, bending the rules if needed. No wonder they want Britain to defer its final withdrawal and keep coughing up. No wonder they want to hold us in the current worst-of-all-worlds status, subject to the costs and regulations with no say over their formulation.
As this column has previously argued, there is nothing that the UK and EU could agree next year that they could not agree now. Britain is not asking for special treatment. All it wants is the sort of basic, low-fat trade deal that Brussels has with Canada or South Korea.
There are no complicated details, no difficult technicalities. If the EU refuses such a deal – if, in clear contradiction of its promises, it now insists on concessions from Britain that it never dreamed of asking for from others – then it will be clear that Brussels never wanted an amicable trading relationship.
To claw our way out of the coronavirus slump, we need maximum economic flexibility. So far, there is no sign that the EU is prepared to relax its grip. To take just one current example, the economic shutdown has affected the proposed shift to the EU’s new standard of engine. Many engines were built in good faith to the previous specification but, because of the stoppages, they are piling up unsold in warehouses. European manufacturers have asked for a six-month moratorium to clear the backlog – a very modest request in the circumstances. Yet the Commission refuses to budge, even though its stubbornness is, as all sides agree, costing jobs.
Is this the model Britain should be following as we seek to fire up our economy? Are we going to offer a form of continuing suzerainty to officials who view us as a renegade province? Are we going to let those officials kill any chance we have of signing trade deals with the United States, Japan and our other allies?
Coronavirus has sent the European project into intensive care. It may eventually struggle back, but it will be an altogether more feeble entity. The League of Nations, after all, limped on for a further 13 years after its effective destruction in 1933, when Germany and Japan withdrew. So, likewise, the EU may continue to survive rather as the late Holy Roman Empire survived – a shell, a title, a memory. But, whatever happens, the nation state is back.