Europe seems immune to internal and external shocks. Since this blog was launched five years ago, the EU has lurched from crisis to crisis. The eurozone is still under immense pressure. It is not certain that Greece will be able to remain part of the union’s single currency area. In several European cities, scores of civilians have been killed in terrorist attacks. The refugee and migrant flows that began in 2015 have slowed. But these issues have not been tackled in any strategic way by individual member states or by the EU institutions.
There’s also a great amount of unfinished business—in Ukraine, with Russia, in the Western Balkans, and in the EU itself.
All the above have not only tested the EU’s ability to act strategically. They have also shown how the EU as a bloc was and continues to be incapable and unwilling to grasp what has changed over the past five years. For want of a better term, this self-denial could lead the EU to terminal decline unless there is a fundamentally different way of using the EU.
Several factors are at play across Europe. The first is the bloc’s fragmentation. The decision by the British in June 2016 to leave the EU is having a deep and complex psychological effect on all member states. If there is one issue that has shattered Europe’s self-confidence, it is Brexit. When the British voted to quit Europe’s post–World War II architecture, they were rejecting a continent that put an end to centuries of war and conflict, epitomized by the Franco-German rivalry. The EU’s institutions and member states are now squabbling about the terms of Britain’s departure, instead of limiting the fallout by making the EU accessible and coherent.
Another phenomenon is the shocking weakness of the Franco-German relationship. Chancellor Angela Merkel should be proud of Germany’s economic and political strength. But it’s a double-edged sword. Germany’s qualities are shackled by France’s weaknesses. France’s political and economic systems are locked in the past; the country’s self-confidence has been replaced by pessimism. France has been unable to play any major role in Europe over the past several years.
This disparity has prevented Berlin and Paris from working together to push the EU forward. And this vacuum has been exploited by populist, anti-immigration, and Euroskeptic movements. Even if Merkel is Europe’s undisputed leader, she knows Berlin cannot go it alone. But her allies, mostly in the Nordic and Baltic countries but also in Madrid and Lisbon, have never used that support to create a strong pro-EU caucus.
This has led to the increasing renationalization of European foreign policy. There’s little need to mention defense or security, because they have yet to gain any serious traction in the EU institutions and most member states. As for the conduct of foreign policy, the big member states in particular have their own envoys for Russia, the Caucasus, the Middle East, and the United States, to name just a few parts of the world. The member states seem not to take the ridiculously called European External Action Service (EEAS), headed by Federica Mogherini, seriously.
If big and small EU member states really wanted to give the EEAS teeth, then the service should have been involved from the start in the Minsk II agreement, which the French, German, Russian, and Ukrainian leaders negotiated in February 2015 to reach a ceasefire and some kind of political solution in eastern Ukraine. The EEAS has been all but absent from that negotiating table. Instead, the burden has fallen to Merkel to keep what is left of the Minsk accord on track.
Ukraine’s future matters to the stability of Europe and, particularly, to the country’s immediate EU neighbors. Yet over the past five years, the Visegrád countries—the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia—have been singularly disappointing in forging regional foreign, security, and defense policies but highly critical of Brussels. This is a great shame. The growing Euroskepticism of the leaders of a quartet that longed to return to Europe after 1989 has deprived the EU of ideas, energy, and optimism, in contrast to the hundreds of thousands of their compatriots who work in other EU countries.
Finally, there is the United States. A couple of myths need to be debunked about the administration of former U.S. president Barack Obama. He was interested in neither the EU nor NATO. His main interlocutor in Europe was Merkel. His defense secretaries were just as critical of Europeans’ free-riding—taking the U.S. security guarantee for granted—as is the current administration of President Donald Trump. But at least Obama, unlike Trump, didn’t wish the EU’s demise.
For all that, there is a warning for EU leaders. The transatlantic relationship is no longer a given. Trump has served Europe notice. In practice, this means that Europe cannot go it alone, even though this is precisely what Russian President Vladimir Putin would relish. The transatlantic relationship has to be rebuilt. EU leaders—and there is a dearth of them—have to grasp the need for Europe to define its interests, and not in a half-baked way. Without defining those interests, there can be no strategic outlook or ambition.
Comments(3)
I can't help but wonder why you, Mrs Dempsey, have not yet realized the central underlying reason for all the "ills" you have diagnozed. Could it actually be that many Europeans have little to no interest in forming some kind of Euro Superstate and are quite happy in their national states? I know this may be an ideological blow for the federalist woolgatherers but especially the CEE states, who did really long to "rejoin Europe" after the fall of the Iron Curtain, wanted to rejoin Europe as sovereign nation states and not as provinces of some Brussels-governed superstate. That is the great dishonesty of the EU these days, the widening gap between the disinclination of most EU member states (and their citizens) to give up their sovereignty and the laments of the Federalists who want to push the development towards this goal, if necessary against public resistance. Such elitism is what alienated citizens and politicians alike, it is in parts behind Brexit and at least partially behind the success of nationalist movements across the continent.
Judy, you are a wise woman who really cares about the EU, thank you but it is mortally sick and no cure is effective anymore, it's just a matter of time when everything is over. 27 natoins as different and diverse as they are just cannot exist under one umbrella anymore, especially under German umbrella, watching any longer with their eyes wide open the circus politics performed by the Eurobureaucrats. The brilliant unity idea of Jean Monnet is dead and cannot be revived. He never dreamed of proposing such a monstrous creature as today's EU, with Croatia & Belgium or Bulgaria & Austria dancing together and feeling equally fine at that. And you just add dozens of other deadly deceases. Plus ignoring and offending Russia, the largest European country, no matter how demonized it's been by all European wizzards, including Frau Merkel who is almost exclusively to blame for the destruction of a fragile European security architecture. No foreign policy. no domestic policy. no security policy, just puppeting-on-a-string before Washington's mockering eyes. Add Greece, add Brexit and now recently adding anew an ancient ridiculous plan of a "European army" - same thing again for the last 60 years or so. Poor Europe, with a current French President as a symbol!
This is an outstanding piece of Judy Dempsey that should be food for thought and action of those in charge of EU affairs before the forthcoming meetings this month. Thanks a lot Judy. Thanks
Comment Policy
Comments that include profanity, personal attacks, or other inappropriate material will be removed. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, steps will be taken to block users who violate any of the posting standards, terms of use, privacy policies, or any other policies governing this site. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.