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THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
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implemented in reaction to the crisis will never
be reversed and that the sole answer to their
problems lies at the national level.
The EU has been mired for several years in
the worst crisis it has faced since its beginnings
as the European Economic Community 60 years
ago – a multifaceted crisis that presents chal-
lenges on a number of fronts. The severity and
longevity of the economic crisis has revealed the
limits of solidarity between member states and
the ineffectiveness of community mechanisms
in place to deal with it and triggered new levels
of inequality, employment insecurity and social
exclusion. An internal and external security crisis
that has made Europe more vulnerable has been
aggravated by the disinterest of the newly elect-
ed US president in European security. The refu-
gee crisis has laid bare the weakness of our
much-proclaimed values and underscored, once
again, our societies’ meagre capacity for solidar-
ity. Underlying these circumstances is the great-
est problem of all: a growing lack of internal
cohesion on the economic plane, most vividly
illustrated by the expanding economic breach
between the EU’s northern and southern mem-
bers, and the political plane, which has been
typified by an anti-democratic drift in Poland
and Hungary that threatens to spread to more
relevant member states – an ominous trend the
EU has yet to formulate an effective response to.
The internal and external pressure against
the EU is mounting, perhaps in part due to the
fact that viewed from the most radical neolib-
eral perspective in a highly-globalised world,
Europe is the only significant, albeit weakened,
bastion of the welfare state. The European
Union
stands as the last remaining obstacle to
the worldwide imposition of the law of the jun-
gle, which is nothing less than total financial de-
regulation and the global suppression of labour
and social rights. The EU is also a supranational
framework with the potential to make Europe a
global power in the true sense of the word, a
possibility that is viewed with apprehension in
certain Anglo-Saxon political and economic cir-
cles. No member state has ever previously de-
cided to withdraw from the Union. Neither has
any previous US president attacked the EU as
directly or brutally as Donald Trump. Never be-
fore have so many called for a “re-nationalisa-
tion” of European politics or advocated “less
Europe”.
Less Europe is the worst thing that could
happen to Europeans. It would mean more na-
tionalism, more protectionism and more distrust
between neighbours – all of which could lead to
hostilities. The assertion made by François
Mitterrand during his final
speech in 1995 that
“Nationalism is war” holds true today. The dis-
mantling of the EU would mean a return to the
Europe of 1930s, and we all know well how
that story ended
.
The most tepid new Eurosceptics have come
up with the tautology that we need a better
Europe rather than more Europe. The two, in
reality, are the same because improving the way
the EU functions inevitably supposes empower-
ing community institutions, the European
Parliament and the European Commission and
weaning ourselves away from the intergovern-
mental method, which has been the greatest
contributing factor to the situation in which we
now find ourselves. The intergovernmental
method produces confrontations between win-
ners and losers in that it allows individual gov-
ernments (voted into power by domestic elec-
torates) to defend national rather than collective
interests. It is furthermore perceived as being
manifestly undemocratic by European citizens
tired of leaders they haven’t voted for making
decisions against their interests, not to mention
slow and inefficient – reaching a consensus