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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
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However, even if all of the above measures were implemented it would
not be enough. The EU, in addition to implementing the policies identified
above, needs to create a new set of instruments and to develop a political
will that it currently lacks in order to confront the defining phenomenon of
the 21st century: globalisation. Addressing this challenge cannot be
achieved simply by applying solutions derived from Rodrik’s trilemma.
Instead, what is required is a long-term approach that draws on a renewal
of the European project designed to oppose the disheartening lack of a
shared vision between member states, and a worrying dichotomy between
north and south that is the product both of the crisis itself and of the restric-
tive policies applied in the EU’s southern countries. This is compounded by
another division: that between east and west, most clearly visible in the
issue of solidarity in the response to the arrival of refugees.
Without political unity, it will be impossible to maintain the pace of
quantitative and qualitative growth which, over the last 60 years, has been
a characteristic of the great democratic project that brought peace and
prosperity to a Europe devastated by two world wars and was a political
inspiration to millions of people across the globe.
Proposals such as those identified here must allow a core of countries
that wish to progress more rapidly to do so, while leaving the door open
to others who may wish to join later, and without jeopardising the cohe-
sion of the 27 member states. At the same time, EU-wide approaches
must predominate over intergovernmental ones, strengthening the
European Parliament and the Commission, while the European Council
sets out broad guidelines that affect the sovereignty of member states.
When the EU was created, it had a powerful plan: to achieve peace and
reconciliation in Europe, and to deliver the social and economic regenera-
tion of a continent that had been crushed by war. Policies were developed
and implemented at the national level, as was the welfare state, and the
project counted on the support both of social democratic and Christian
democratic parties. The involvement of the USA in European security, pri-
marily through NATO, was very clear from the outset. Thirty years later, the
EU renewed itself through Economic and Monetary Union and the creation
of the euro, achieved political reunification with the fall of the Berlin Wall,
and made the idea of European citizenship a reality through freedom of
movement and residence. This was supported by the European Court of
Justice, whose authority the UK government is now eager to reject.
Today, although the EU is geographically larger and politically more
powerful, it lacks any real plan for the future and is threatened by a com-
bination of neoliberal policies, the impact of the crisis, the danger of frag-
mentation, and hostility from abroad (Trump and Putin). The old ideas