The biggest missing feature of European politics is not institutional reform, but strong leadership, said The Times of London in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts:
Has there ever been a time when Europe’s leadership was more fractious, less capable of such partnerships? Or a time when they are more sorely needed? The European Union is being tested, and it is being found wanting. The three great European projects of the past 30 years are all in danger at the same time. One of the great achievements of the Union has been the enlargement of its membership after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The potential collapse of one or more of the economies of Eastern and Central Europe will test how real that welcome was, how genuine the solidarity. The economic crisis also threatens the single currency area. The single market itself, the baseline of the European Union, is also being jeopardized.
Earlier this week Joschka Fischer, the former German minister, described Europe’s future as “bleak”. He questioned whether the continent’s richer nations understood the obligations they now had to its poorer ones. And he wondered whether they would be prepared to meet them. Fischer’s solution, as characteristically German as his political pessimism, is institutional reform and greater political integration. “Europe is not integrated enough to act decisively,” he said. “We don’t have streamlined institutions. We don’t have a strong common foreign policy or security policy.” Fischer’s diagnosis is right, his prescription wrong. For the biggest missing feature of European politics is not institutional reform. It is strong leadership. The democratic deficit — the gulf between the governors and the governed — requires, at the very least, politicians who can talk to the people of Europe with a consistent and convincing message. Unless politicians can find a way of communicating a sense of a common European identity, we cannot hope for institutional reform to bridge the gaps.
