During the heady months of 2004, Brussels was the place to be. The EU was the organization to join. Europe was brimming with optimism and confidence.
On May 1 of that year, eight countries from Eastern and Central Europe became EU members. Poland’s Mission to the EU threw a marvelous party. There was a cacophony of languages. There was dancing, singing, and a real sense of relief. Poland and other countries in the region had returned to Europe.
There was also a sense that this bigger, united EU was ready to exert its influence beyond its borders. Almost twelve years later, that Europe is hardly recognizable.
Europe has retreated into its shell. With the exception of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, and her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, both of whom understand what is happening to Europe, EU leaders are acting as if they have no obligation to defend Europe’s values and the principles of freedom and openness. More worryingly, they don’t seem to care about the EU’s influence in the world.
This is confirmed by a new report by the World Economic Forum called Europe: What to watch out for in 2016-2017. To say it makes grim reading is an understatement. “European leaders must deliver solutions, and fast, if they want to prevent support for the EU [from] imploding in coming years,” the report states.
The EU has always had its share of doomsayers. But what is particularly worrying about this report is the Eurobarometer survey it cites. Respondents were asked what were the most important issues facing the EU at the moment. The first in the list was migration, mentioned by some 58 percent of those surveyed. The last was the EU’s influence in the world, cited by about 6 percent. What a depressing indictment of Europe’s priorities: influence doesn’t matter.
The report also reflects how the EU’s influence inside Europe is waning, and this is more troubling. If the EU’s role is weakening or if the bloc is less attractive even to its own members, how can the EU have influence beyond its borders?
The EU’s values are under threat in many member states. The Polish, Hungarian, and Slovene publics are intent on upholding the role of the traditional family only months after the Irish, once a bastion of Catholicism, voted in a referendum to legalize gay marriage. Warsaw and Budapest are meddling in the courts and the media—not that Italy’s former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi had any qualms over how he used his media empire to further his own interests.
The members of the Visegrad Group, which consists of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, want nothing to do with the refugees (read Muslims) fleeing the wars in Syria and Iraq. They are not alone. Other countries across Europe are closing their borders too, mostly in response to the growing appeal of populists who are Euroskeptic, oppose immigration, and fear globalization. The November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris gave the populists a boost.
Those issues aside, the refugee crisis has exposed the inability of the EU to deal with the challenge of migration. Above all, it has shown that most European leaders do not see the connection between helping the refugees and the EU’s influence.
Refugees, migrants, and students who are offered the opportunity to live, work, and study in a democratic country give something back to that country if they remain and integrate. As the Economist argued in its January 29 issue, if migrants and students return to their homeland with new skills, they are more likely to do business with the country that welcomed them.
Other reports make similar arguments about Europe’s dwindling influence. The Eurasia Group’s Top Risks 2016 includes a chapter called “Closed Europe.” In it, authors Ian Bremmer and Cliff Kupchan argue that the rise of populism and nationalism, the erosion of the rule of law, and the risks to the Schengen system of open borders are chiseling away at the principles on which the EU was founded. “Closed Europe is first and foremost a Europe that closes itself up to the outside world, and whose countries close themselves up to one another,” the authors write.
Merkel is key to the EU’s future and influence. She has kept the eurozone countries afloat, although the single currency’s woes are far from over. She has kept the EU together in standing up to Russia despite wavering from her Social Democrat coalition partners and other EU leaders. She has tried to preserve Europe’s values of humanity and decency through her open-door policy toward the refugees.
Yet for all that, Merkel has been pilloried by several European leaders. She has been denied the solidarity that Germany had unflinchingly extended to its EU allies when asked. As a report by Citi GPS argues, the basic tenets of the European model of liberal democracy that Merkel is trying to defend are being challenged. And with it, Europe’s influence.
Comments(10)
It would be indeed ironic that the EU member state that most pushed for enlargement to the east (while now attempting to discriminate against citizens from those States) leaves de EU at the same time that those States engaging in illiberal practices of democracy (Poutine like) are expelled because not longer respecting the Copenhague criteria.
"She has been denied the solidarity that Germany had unflinchingly extended to its EU allies when asked." I would argue that Merkel hasn't displayed a great deal of solidarity, especially when it came to the Euro Crisis and instead intended to impose orod-liberalism to all the rest of the EU, even countries for which is is not only a foreign but immoral conception of economy and social relations (the Southern Europe and most of France). Furthermore, the fact that austerity-baked policies often served to further the benefits of great companies and banks (especially German's, but also French, British and from elsewhere), it is not hard to understand why she found no solidarity now : the countries which could have had extended it have been crucified economically, and their populations aren't even willing to share any burden anymore.
Europe's declining appetite to play a global role derives from EU's big members states weak politics. The EU is only as strong as the sum of its economic and political heft. Neither is strong at the moment.
You are totally right. The Considerable number of members and the numerous standards unachieved let Europe, I mean the European Union: especially the Single Monetary area a Weak entity. Remaining with a more reasonable membership ought to Have Boosted its Power. And the Over-Evaluation - Valuation equation weakens the EURO as a Currency. Favouring the Dollar and othe national or politically federal monetary units of Value and Transactions.
EUROPE is Still LIBERAL: There is no Illiberalism as Such, But Tremendously Growing POPULISM ans EXTREMISM on Identity basis: Yes! But: It'll Hopeful not Prevail.
"The last was the EU’s influence in the world, cited by about 6 percent. What a depressing indictment of Europe’s priorities: influence doesn’t matter." When "influence" is seen by the voters as merely a "decorative set of fluffy feathers" with which politcians far removed from their everyday lives then it should not be a surprise. Political importance isn't something people strive for and they rarely even pay attention to it. So why the depression, why the surprise? Being "important" for the sake of "being important" isn't something many people see as worthwhile.
With the tens of millions jobless people, with the influx of mostly muslim refugees, of which history has demonstrated that they integrate with great difficulty whèn they do-because the european governments had been neglecting the socialisation of these new people, with a european leadership loosened up from their peoples, do you still think europeans care about their influence in the world? Only the elite does, bat as said: they've lost contact with the ordinary people, that only groes angry as the leadership talks about enlarging europe's influence in the world. The elite doesn't even care, can't even take care of, the daily needs of their own people. Everything is relative for the elite overhere , cultural marxism rules, it's not the result that counts, but the intention. And the media work together with the elite. See the firstly concealed problems in Cologne, the massive childabuse in Rotherham. People are not sure anymore of their own lives
Leftists are always looking for revolutions that will, in one step, create social and economic utopias. Leftists always portray "conservative" parties (British Conservative Party, most other European nation's Christian Democrats) as regressive, proto-Fascist and elitist. The reality is that conservative parties are incrementalist, who neither deny progress nor seek a feudal or fascist state. Rather, conservative parties believe that a nation's culture, social balance and economy are very complex and people have a low tolerance for major change, thus social, cultural and economic development must move in small, digestible increments. "Eurosceptics" is the derisive term leveled at people who suggested that the EU/European Project was a multi-generational, century-long process that needed to proceed as solely a common market/customs union for 30-50 years, then a loose Western and Central European (i.e. non-Russian, non-Turkish) bloc/confederation with internally open (but externally controlled) borders for 20-30 years and finally a 20-30 year-long integration period that included a pan-European currency and political institutions. Leftists have been revealed as the parties and political bent of the demagogues, who preach ever-more centralized powers and decision-making as a remedy for the chaos that their own policies created. Look at the predictions of the "Eurosceptics" starting from the 1990s and onward, versus the predictions of the Europhiles over that same period. "Eurosceptics" were almost entirely correct, while Europhiles were almost entirely incorrect. Perhaps we should rename the Eurosceptics as Realists, Pragmatists or even just simply politicians, while the Europhiles might be renamed as Utopians, Theorists or simply demagogues. Once that is clarified, European governing classes might adopt realist or pragmatic policies, and terminate Utopian policy programs and demagoguery as the response to their critics.
The collapse of the Euro and the failure of the Eurozone would cause a loss averaging 15% of GDP across the nations of Europe, with Central and Eastern states suffering more, while Western countries may see "only" a 9-10% plunge. The skyrocketing unemployment and disappearance of pensions, savings, businesses and home values would impoverish vast sections of society, simultaneously making these people desperate, angry and radicalized. Europe's entire political paradigm would shift, the "middle" would disappear as people radicalized to the extremes. Every imaginable balkanization would find support, language, tradition, province, region, religious and cultural idiosyncrasies would become new fault-lines. Thus, there really is no Plan B for the Euro and/or the Eurozone. The ECB will have to have unlimited support from the EU member states, and most especially the U.K. (despite the fact that the U.K. quite correctly opted out of the Euro and Schengen zones) and Germany. However, political authority (apart from the ECB and Euro monetary policy) should speedily and firmly returned from Brussels to the Member States. Schengen should be suspended for 12 months in order to allow the creation of a common EU external border policy and a 100,000-strong border police. The common market in goods and services remains, but immigration and every other political issue will be decided by national parliaments. What little must be decided at the so-called "European level" will be decided by the Council of Ministers. All other European institutions, bodies and the acquis communautaire abolished. Once national governments have taken control of all the overlapping crises and dealt with them, the EU can be reconstructed as an incrementally and organically growing polity. One in which various coalitions opt-in, and over time (probably a century or more) distinct nationalities eventually feel "European" (rather than Dutch, French, British, Polish, German and so on) at their core.
Europe current growing illiberalism is not typically European. It comes from the lack of social rules and the ending of Welfare-state driven by the EU. Growing illiberalism is perceived by Europeans as the single alternative to the EU extream liberal economic policies. The Word Trade Organization and Russia help much the EU to commit suicide.
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