The European Union turns 50 this weekend. There will be lavish celebrations in Berlin — the current capital of Europe in its rotating system of presidency — that will no doubt try to accommodate the full variety of European identity. Though the focus will be on a momentous achievement, the underlying mood will be considerably less confident. The EU is still reeling from the double-no votes of 2004 when French and Dutch voters resoundingly rejected the proposed constitution. But the unease goes a little deeper.
Turning fifty is hard, or so I’ve noticed. It usually comes with a big wallop of navel gazing: What have I achieved, where have I failed? As well as a growing sense of one’s own mortality. Will I have the energy and strength to do all I set out to do? And there lies the essence of the accompanying disillusionment, for too often in life we don’t take account of our change in perspective. We compare not what was and what is but what is and what could have been. It’s hardly surprising that what has been achieved always falls short of what could have been.
In 1957, when the Treaty of Rome was signed, the aims of the “European Project” were both more significant and less ambitious than they are today. More significant because it was primarily a declaration of long-lasting peace. Countries which had gone to war against each other not once but twice in the preceding fifty years were pledging never again. They put down concrete markers for peace. From now on they would be partners, not enemies. The aims were less ambitious not only because there were only six member states compared to 27 today, but because they fell short of the economic, monetary and political union dreamt up by today’s modern Eurocrats.
It is easy to forget that EU was once the EEC (European Economic Community), an economic community, not a union. The aim was to create an economic market big enough to enable Europe to compete with the US and that aim has been achieved. The single European market is now a reality and one that has brought economic growth and prosperity to the citizens of Europe. But by dreaming bigger than an economic community, the EU has delivered much more to its citizens. They can now travel freely and more cheaply, make international calls at local rates, work almost anywhere in Europe, seek medical treatment in neighboring countries, shop around across borders and generally enjoy freedom in a way that the signatories of the Treaty of Rome could scarcely have hoped for. They also enjoy rights and social protection well beyond those provided by the simple creation of an economic community.
Just as is the case today much of the EEC’s raison d’être came from the wish to create something with enough weight to counter American power. Countries such as France and Germany were forced to accept a future of dwindling influence on the world stage. The only way to remain in the game so to speak was to join forces with their neighbors and gain critical mass. Of course the assumption was that they could create something in their own image. It’s easy to see this as anti-Americanism; indeed it is a criticism often leveled at the EU, but it is misguided. Anti-Americanism exists — and boy is it popular in today’s world! — but it is wrong to view a quest to build something on a par with the superpowers of the day as anti-American in itself. It is not unlike those who see feminism as an attack on masculinity. It is not. It is an assertion of identity and a fight to compete on equal terms.
Those who signed up wholeheartedly to the bangs and whistles version of a new Europe were idealists with an ambitious dream. They have not succeeded in achieving their dream — a United States of Europe with a social conscience — but their ambition has enabled Europe to take bold steps in that direction, be it creating the euro, now the world’s most traded currency, or the social chapter of the EU charter.
The EU is to a large extent a victim of its own success. Ask the average person on the street in euro-land what they think of the euro and they will point to higher prices. Ask them about enlargement and just listen to their reactions: They can vary from a nonchalant shrug to full-blown xenophobia. Much of the right-wing nationalism we see rearing its ugly head in Europe today is associated with feelings of threatened identity and fears about unemployment and security. Though much of the discourse is aimed at a supposed threat from Muslim extremism, a discourse that singles out Muslim immigrants as different and unable or unwilling to integrate into a secular society, the roots of this movement can be traced back to a perceived loss of national identity and sovereignty.
Enlargement saw the EU jump from 15 to 25 member states overnight in 2004. To some this was an own goal. The EU became too large and unwieldy, too diverse and unequal in its membership to make the dream of economic and political union a reality. To others it is the EU’s single greatest achievement, opening the door to economic liberalization and growth to the countries of the former Eastern bloc and thus ensuring continued peace and prosperity in the region.
The size and diversity of the EU is a two-headed sword. It is both a sign of its success and an impediment to its efficient functioning.
There will for instance be 27 cakes on the menu this weekend, a sure recipe for indigestion. In Britain, the EU is often depicted as a meddling bureaucracy that creates endless red tape and comes up with absurd regulations. The EU’s biggest failure is probably the common agricultural policy or CAP which artificially props up its agricultural sector with subsidies that eat up almost half of the EU budget. But for those who dreamt of a utopian Europe its biggest failure is that it has ended up more free market than social model, a group with a common border rather than a union of like-minded states, a union with economic power but limited political clout. The EU at fifty has achieved more than it set out to do, just less than it could have done.
