Merkel,
Hollande offer rhetoric, not reality
A
joint appearance before the European Parliament only underscores the
EU’s challenges.
By MATTHEW
KARNITSCHNIG 10/7/15, 10:55 PM CET
The first joint
appearance by the leaders of France and Germany at the European
Parliament since the fall of the Berlin Wall was meant to offer the
beleaguered union a new vision.
Instead, Angela
Merkel and François Hollande unwittingly presented a stark reminder
of why the EU, in the words of European Commission President
Jean-Claude Juncker, “is not in a good state.”
Far from the
blueprint for Europe’s future, the two leaders offered little more
than old hat.
With a pair of
speeches almost identical in tone and scope, they relied on familiar
rhetoric about the necessity for “more Europe,” peppering their
remarks with dire warnings that the EU could disintegrate if members
don’t accept deeper integration.
The underlying
message was that Europe needs saving not because the future is
bright, but because the alternative is worse.
“The
debate is not between the less or more Europe,” Hollande said.
“It’s between the strengthening of Europe or the end of Europe.
Yes, the end of Europe, the return to national borders, the
abandonment of the euro.”
Merkel echoed that
same theme, insisting that Europe “has not brought us lower, it has
lifted us up.”
“The debate is not
between the less or more Europe,” Hollande said. “It’s between
the strengthening of Europe or the end of Europe.
Trouble is, fewer
and fewer Europeans are buying it.
As Europe confronts
an array of crises, from the economic to the humanitarian, the EU has
proved incapable of meeting the challenge.
Brussels blames the
member states for a failure to find consensus on the balance between
national sovereignty and deeper integration.
France and Germany,
for example, both profess a commitment to overhauling the eurozone to
tie members closer together and, in Merkel’s words, “repair”
its architecture. But even after Greece and the broader debt crisis,
they remain miles apart on the details.
Even with more than
one million refugees expected to try to reach Europe this year,
members are unable to even agree on a unified asylum policy, not to
mention a quota system.
The disconnect
between rhetoric and reality was on full display during Hollande’s
speech. He stressed the importance of more solidarity in dealing with
the refugee crisis even though his own government has only agreed to
take in a token number of asylum seekers.
Europe has long been
divided by such disputes. Yet in the past, a spirit of common purpose
and commitment to a set of values prevailed.
Wednesday’s
session in Strasbourg — a commemoration of the joint appearance by
Francois Mitterand and Helmut Kohl in 1989 — was an attempt to
revive that feeling.
Back then, the Iron
Curtain was falling, German reunification was in the air and the Cold
War was ending. The French, in particular, viewed the expansion and
deepening of Europe as essential for stability.
“Europe’s
political development needs to be planned, strengthened and
accelerated,” Mitterand said. “That is the only answer to the
challenge we face.”
For past
generations, in particular those scarred by the war and its
aftermath, the attractions of European integration were obvious. But
that romantic ideal of Europe as a bastion of peace has faded.
Today, Europeans
want action, not flowery rhetoric.
The EU is beset by
divisions over everything from the euro to the Ukraine. It has been
caught flat-footed by the refugee crisis and appears to have no
strategy for keeping the restive U.K. in the union.
What’s missing,
critics say, is convincing leadership.
When Mitterand and
Kohl met in Strasbourg, the Franco-German partnership was the motor
that drove integration forward.
No more.
France lacks the
economic clout to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Germany. Hollande,
France’s least popular leader since the war, doesn’t have the
political capital to define a vision for the rest of Europe.
As Merkel has
recently discovered in the refugee crisis, Germany, despite its
economic power, still lacks the moral sway to rally the rest of
Europe behind it.
Some warn that the
centrifugal forces battering Europe could tear the EU apart.
But such concerns
aren’t new.
“There’s no
single answer to the questions we face,” Mitterand said in his 1989
speech. “In short, things will be more complex.”
Maïa De La Baume
and Hans von der Burchard contributed to this story.
Authors:
Matthew Karnitschnig
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