Shattered Europe

Europeans, open your eyes. You will make up no more than 6 per cent of the population of the world by 2050, when back at the start of the 18th Century you represented 20 per cent of it. Taken all together, you are very small; taken as individual nations, you are tiny. Even Germany, the new economic and demographic giant of the union, has only 1 per cent of the world’s population today, and tomorrow it will have even less. At the same time, the African continent has grown in population from 180 million in 1950 to more than 1 billion today, and probably to more than 2 billion within 35 years. Of course, demography is not everything: the influence of Singapore is not measured by the size of its population. But population is an important factor.

If Europeans need the union now more than ever before, it is not only because they are comparatively less numerous than they once were; it is also because the world around them is becoming more uncertain. America is moving away, tired of its costly and uncertain military adventures in the Middle East, and no doubt reassured as well by the energy independence it should have by 2020 thanks to shale gas and oil. Russia is drawing closer, but not in the good sense of the word – not at the level of values, but rather bringing the shadows of its imperial ambitions. It has never renounced the Ukraine and now it is leaning on Kiev with all its weight. This is not the return of the Cold War; Russia is not the Soviet Union. But in the east, it is back once more, and that is worrying.

[[To the south, the Middle East has been fragmenting ever since the start of the Arab Spring]]. The Arab revolutions can provoke a double analogy, with the French Revolution and the wars of religion that saw so much blood spilled in Europe from the middle of the 16th Century to the middle of the 17th Century: today, the roles of Protestants and Catholics are being played by Shiites and Sunnis. In reality, though, it’s the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreements [on dividing the Middle East after the First World War] that are crumbling before our eyes and, as they crumble, undermining the unity of countries like Iraq, Syria and Libya, on whose stability the whole Middle East depends.

Confrontations ahead

And finally, there is the huge expanse of Asia. From Tokyo to Beijing to Seoul, Asian elites are wondering anxiously if 2013 is not for their continent what 1913 was for Europe: the year that preceded the war. Nobody wants an armed conflict, but no one of them has tried hard enough to avoid a war that could break out by accident in the China Seas.

Facing an international environment that has become more dangerous, what is Europe doing? It’s turning inwards, leaving the field open to the rise of populism.

In 1994, a film that enjoyed huge success came out in Britain: Four Weddings and a Funeral, starring Hugh Grant. Today one could probably describe the reality of Europe as “Four Divorces and No Funeral”.

There is indeed a quadruple divorce underway, which tends to be getting more entrenched among the EU member countries. The first and the most important is that between European societies and their elites, whether those are national or “Brussels” elites. This divorce came before the financial and economic crisis broke out in 2007; negative referendums on the 2005 Constitutional Treaty, in France and the Netherlands, are proof of that. The crisis has only deepened the trench that has been dug between a European project that no longer inspires anyone – except non-Europeans or non-members of the union, like in the Ukraine – and citizens disillusioned by both politicians and policies.

Geographical split

The second divorce, a geographic one, is between a northern Europe that falls in behind Germany and a southern Europe that is failing, like Greece – although Athens, fortunately, is still the only one in that category. To this North-South divide we now ought to add an East-West dimension. [[Apart from Poland, the eastern and central European countries that joined the European Union between 2004 and 2005 are not faring well, neither economically nor politically]].

The third divorce is a divorce brought on by the different positions that France and Germany, two countries that were once the pillars of the Union, now find themselves in. To put it brutally, Paris no longer plays in the same league as Berlin. Certainly, Germany’s total lack of any hankering after international power tends to restore a balance between the two countries. But the balance is an artificial one. Since 1995 and the death of François Mitterrand, no president of the French Republic has been a match for a Chancellor of Germany. One should not be surprised that France is moving dangerously close to the neighbourhood of southern Europe and its problems and drawing away from northern Europe and its successes.

The fourth divorce, that between Britain and Europe, makes that third divorce even messier. Paris can no longer rely on London to counterbalance Berlin, because London is moving further away from the continent, with an inevitable referendum on Europe coming up in 2017.

Europe has lived well above its means materially and far below its means politically and intellectually, if not spiritually. There will be no funerals if it rediscovers lucidity and courage when confronted by a crisis that is, above all, ethical. Europeans have no choice but to continue to believe in Europe and its exceptional mixture of unity and diversity. They have to: they need it more than ever.