Europe needs to refocus, despite Brexit vote
During the prolonged referendum campaign that on Thursday will at last decide whether Britons will “Leave” the European Union (EU) or “Remain” a member of that institution, the struggle between these two sides has steadily got ever louder and ever nastier.
The character of these confrontations was captured brilliantly by the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph. The entire debate, it declared, had become “Project Fear,” that is of voters being pulled one way because they feared too many immigrants would come into their country, or of being tugged the other way because they feared that leaving the EU would damage their nation’s economy and threaten their jobs.
As one example of such excess, leave advocates have warned, if Britain stays in the EU, it will have take in a million or more Turks because it would have to continue obeying the EU’s rules for freedom of movement among all its member states.
The opposite excess was as extravagant. According to Chancellor George Osborne, a defeat of those who wanted to remain would force the government to slash spending and raise taxes, hitting pensioners the hardest.
Nevertheless, at least two sensible observations have been expressed. The first came, of all places, from Berlin. In a special bilingual edition, Der Spiegel, Germany’s biggest magazine, proclaimed, “Please don’t go,” (“Bitte geht nicht”, that is), going on to argue that the loss of Britain would cost Europe the special qualities Britain possesses, “in human rights, freedom movements, culture and its talent for being cool.”
The source for the other insight was as surprising. It was Pope Francis, who used a speech to ask the agonizing question, “What has happened to you, Europe?”
The confrontation, this is to say, isn’t really about Britain vs. the EU. That this version exists at all was caused by an unwise calculation two years ago by Prime Minister David Cameron to hold the referendum, which he assumed he would win and so silence Euro-skeptics in his own government.
In fact, Britain’s present state could scarcely be better — its economic condition is Europe’s best, but for Germany. It’s volume of immigrants — last year, a near record of 330,000 — can be a strain. But the real demographic change that worries many of its people is more that of the ever-increasing difference between London and the rest of the country.
Europe’s problem is instead that of Europe itself. It has bungled its own immigration policy. And its monetary policy. And its military policies in the Middle East and in Ukraine.
Above all, the EU has lost control of its own political policies in the sense that its inward-turned bureaucracy in Brussels has lost touch with the interests and attitudes of more and more of its member-states in the south, from Greece to Italy to Spain, and in the east from Poland to Austria to Hungary to Slovakia. Even France, the EU’s original creator, is now almost as critical of the EU as are the “leavers” in Britain.
On Thursday, the most probable referendum result will be a narrow, fluky, win for Cameron. (Often, as in the case of Scotland’s attempt to break away from Britain, the undecided only make up their minds at the last minute).
But the effect of such an outcome, either way, will be of secondary consequence, even in Britain itself.
The fundamental decision will be whether Europe, for so long the world’s centre, can re-fashion itself into a true, multinational union.
That’s the question Pope Francis asked. When he said it, he didn’t sound confident it would happen.