Things are getting bad in Europe, real bad, and the costs of European dithering are increasing. There has been plenty of excellent commentary about the crisis in Europe and the need for European political leaders to step up. (See Matt, Adam, and NSN's piece today). But to put this in a bit larger context, the current dithering is in no small measure due to the EU's failings over the last decade to consolidate and strengthen its political union, as well as to take adequate action to alleviate the "democratic deficit."
The first problem is that Europe enlarged without modernizing its decision-making structure. The failure to pass an EU constitution as it into Eastern Europe has hampered the EU's ability to make even simple decisions. Expansion has also meant that the Union is no longer dominated by a pro-European German-French alliance due to enlargement. Consequently, each has lost a feeling of ownership over the project -- as seen by the French rejection of the EU constitution in 2005 and current German dithering.
Yet at the same time Europe has failed to adequately enhance its political union, its economic union has intensified. Over the last few decades European countries have become enormously integrated with one another. The true scope of this integration is often under appreciated, but the economic, legal, and administrative fabrics of European countries are now incredibly intermeshed. In short, Europe has become a single market and has developed an elaborate bureaucracy and legal system to monitor and develop this system. But it has done so without a proper over-arching political structure to govern the system. This is all fine when the going is good and top-down political intervention in the economy is largely unnecessary. But when the going gets bad, this is real bad. As Stefan Kornelius, of the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, told the New York Times, "We always said you can't really have a currency union without a political union, and we don't have one. There is no joint fiscal policy, no joint tax policy, no joint policy on which industries to subsidize or not. And none of the leaders is strong enough to pull the others out of the mud."
The second problem -- and this is pretty massive -- is that Europeans in general don't understand the EU, don't understand its importance, and don't care that much about it. (If you ever get in a conversation with a European who rants about how ignorant Americans are about their politics, respond by asking them who is the EU commissioner for external relations? or enlargement? Don't be surprised to see a blank stare) And so at the moment when leaders need support from European publics to take bold action in support of the European project and the single market, public support in many countries has soured. Instead, nativist slogans like "British jobs, for British workers," and "buy Spanish" are making the rounds. As a result, few political leaders in Europe -- at a time when their popularity is sinking and many on the right and left are using the EU as a convenient scapegoat -- are willing to go to bat for the EU.
British EU-skeptic Gideon Rachman had an amazing column in the FT where he, after deriding the EU as the FT columnist from Brussels over the last decade, is now really worried that the liberal single market that is advanced by the EU is starting to unravel. He writes:
The great irony here is that the thing Rachman has opposed -- EU bureaucracy and expanded EU federalism -- are now the things desperately needed to protect the thing he supports -- a liberal open economy.
So where the EU goes from here is anybody's guess. The worries of collapse are legitimate, but it is likely that the EU will pull together to do just enough to muddle through this crisis. If it is able to get through, the opportunity could be there for the EU to strengthen its political union. The Lisbon Treaty, which is not far from ratification, is no cure all, but it would be an awful important step to improve Europe's ability to act more decisively.
The late Civil War historian Shelby Foote had a great quote about the impact of the Civil War on the US: "it made us an is," he said. What he meant was that before the war people thought of the United States as a collection of states and would say "the United States are" a beautiful country. After the War it became "the United States is." While this crisis could never have the unifying and transformative impact that the Civil War had on the U.S., crises do expose shortcomings and create opportunities to address them. A silver lining perhaps.
Robert Kuttner: The Blair Project
Why is Blair likely to be the first President of Europe? Because he is just what Europe's ruling financial elite wants -- nominally a man of the center-left who can be trusted to continue business as usual.
Barry D. Wood: Remembering 1989, Diversity in Post-Communist Europe
Today, nearly 20 years after the Berlin Wall came down, freedom and diversity are the realities in post-communist Europe.
Harry Fuller: Nature Has a Way with Black Swans
How the money's spent matters not just because the "stimulus" might work or fail... It matters because we're despoiling the planet at an ever greater rate and we don't have a replacement.
Amitai Etzioni: Bad News Vaclav Klaus
Vaclav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic, is about to take the helm of the EU. This is not necessarily good news for Europeans, Americans, or any one else.
actually, that is just about the least likeliest outcome of this recession. the idea that any european union member country at a time of recession is going to choose to pull out of the EU and so in doing so pull out of the largest single market in the world, at a time of this great globabl recession!?! i really don't think so. i've noticed a bit of this kind of thing in the U.S media of late, 'the EU is on the brink of despair', 'it really looks like it's going to go under', 'it's all over for the EU' etc. this is just your standard fair, pro america, propagandising, clap trap that the US media likes to put about. american audiences love it, lap it up, so higher viewing/reading figures. but it's exacly this kind of sillyness reporting about the outside world that is the reason why so many americans have extraordinarily silly views about it. all just amusing/annoying when they're ignorance and arrogance is directed towards europe, we're not in any danger of going to war with the U.S any time soon. but it's the insidious, creeping persuasion to also be just as disdainful of or outright hate the islamic world that it all starts to get quite sinister. american readers beware, this may well be a left leaning website but it's still never the less aimed at an american audience.
I'm talking about an overarching relationship between Germany and Russia. Advanced technology and specialization in export allied with the enormous resources and highly educated and underemployed people of Eurasia. These two nations can effectively steer Europe. They can just ignore the stammering of the Brussels bureaucracy. De facto beats de jure every time in international relations.
The relationship has to extend deeper than economic and military cooperation, the two nations need a sustained cultural exchange to overcome the wounds of the past and forge a common identity. Oh, and US troops and military bases will need to leave Germany -- its been an occupied nation for far too long.
This would be real European independence. France would need to align itself with the new continental power. England can continue, as always, as that island off the coast, more aligned with America than Europe.
The economic, political, military and social dynamo created would be better for the world, even for the US, which would have to abandon its delusions of hegemony.
In my view, it is not too late to revise past mistakes.
Rather than being pushed by political elites - Giscard d'Estaing and his ilk - to be a political union rivalling the power and influence of the United States, the European Union should instead be a true association of independent nations, working and trading freely together, and pooling their sovereignty when appropriate.
This pragmatic view of Europe - as envisaged by the unromantic and practical British - is in my view, the only way to achieve real and effective harmony on that continent.
Time for the two most powerful "tribes" -- the Russians and the Germans -- to restore order. Rome redux, but without the physical conquest. Business, economics and control of the oil and gas.
No European country would give up its indivuduality because of Europe, it is not needed anyway. We here in Germany always favor the EU as we are the biggest export nation in the world. However even if the union was more loose, we still could sell our stuff. I agree, Europeans like the economic benefits of the union and we could not care less about the political stuff.