Europe’s states are trundling towards the edge of an abyss like sleepwalkers – that, at least, is one of the cliches you read in comment articles about the eurozone crisis these days, an image inspired by the title of Christopher Clark’s recent book about the outbreak of the first world war. And, indeed, the way in which Europe’s powers are sliding into a conflict against their will does indeed seem to bear a certain resemblance to Clark’s narrative.
Surely the European Union’s bookkeepers must have been asleep at the wheel while Greece’s public debt increased tenfold between 2001 and 2010. When Europe’s leaders imposed one useless bailout programme after another, weren’t they too acting like sleepwalkers, oblivious to the consequences of their actions? And now Europe has suddenly woken up to the sorry mess of six years of failed somnambulant economic and social policy.
But that’s where the parallels with 1914 end. It’s unthinkable that European states would go to war over the euro in the way they went to war over Serbia 100 years ago. The EU was rightly awarded a Nobel prize for its contribution to peace, with which it has kept its promise to the citizens of Europe. This is also why all the metaphors of war and death – of Angela Merkel as a Trümmerfrau (rubble woman), of the Greeks as a terrorised, tortured people – are wide of the mark.
If a flatmate moves out after raiding the kitty, that doesn’t mean the whole apartment will have to be demolished – as long as the remaining tenants still see the advantages of cohabitation and stick to the rules that have worked until now.
Europe needs to stop allowing itself to be scared into an existential crisis by a small state with a barely functioning administration. In Germany, in particular, the public mood has reached a tipping point: many people are simply fed up with this Greek drama. If the 3 million Greeks who voted no in last Sunday’s strange referendum really were to force through their anarcho-socialist demands against the will of half a billion EU citizens, then our political elite would deserve to go down in history as a bunch of sleepwalkers.
But to conclude from the current fiasco that we need “more Europe, not less” would be just as misguided. What is correct is that none of the big global challenges such as the threat of an expansionist Russia, climate change, refugees in the Mediterranean or world trade deals can be tackled by one nation alone. Most Europeans realise this, but the impasse of the current situation is beginning to reconvert them to the virtues of the empirically tested nation state. Britain – including Scotland – is the best example of this trend.
It’s OK to consider this reflex a fatal misjudgment: but to ignore this retreat into national certainties would be dangerous. In every election in recent months – in Finland, Denmark, Poland and Italy, even the Greek referendum – voters have emphatically put national interest before European solidarity. Convinced Europeans will need to put their more ambitious plans on hold. Balkan expansion, further handing of national sovereignty to Brussels, new members of the eurozone – all these things need to wait. The lack of solidarity that EU member states displayed during the row over refugee quotas shows that “business as usual” no longer does it.
Europe’s plan for a union of states was always ambitious. Making it work would have required not just a common currency but a joint policy on the economy, infrastructure and social spending. But the people couldn’t be convinced to walk down this fascinating but precarious path: just as they say oxi to financial solidarity now, they said no to a European constitution in 2005. What we are realising now is that forcing unequal states into the same mould does not automatically lead you into the paradise of solidarity. In that respect the EU is like a rubber band: overstretch it, and it breaks.
The EU is a union of democracies, so there is simply no way it can function against the will of its voters: an institution still perceived as largely benign in most parts of the continent would increasingly be seen as a dictatorship. So the reason Europe is now facing a frustrating and long period of stagnation has nothing to do with narrow-minded citizens and everything with ill-advised politics.
The process of retreating behind national barriers has already started: borders are being pulled up; national welfare is being bitterly defended; asylum seekers are being rejected. Rebuilding trust in the European project will be an arduous process. The only consolation is that the best idea since the Holy Roman Empire – because that is what the EU is – will not collapse, in spite of the current political and economic mismanagement.
