Visions
of doom unite a continent
Political
establishment veers from ‘More Europe’ to ‘Apocalypse Europe.’
By MATTHEW
KARNITSCHNIG 1/28/16, 5:36 AM CET
BERLIN — By
nature, Europe’s idealists and doubters rarely see eye to eye,
clashing over everything from bent cucumbers to bailouts.
When it comes to
predicting Europe’s future, however, the antagonists have found
common ground.
Their conclusion:
The end could be nigh.
“Europe could fall
apart,” Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament,
declared in a recent speech, adding that the EU’s “failure is a
realistic scenario.”
The grim prognosis
could have come from the mouth of Marine Le Pen.
Reflecting on the
potential repercussions of Brexit last month, the nationalist French
politician predicted it would “be the beginning of the end of the
European Union.”
“I compare
Brussels to the Berlin Wall. If Great Britain knocks down part of the
wall, it’s finished, it’s over,” Le Pen told The Telegraph.
Schulz and Le Pen
may have different political agendas — he wants to save Europe,
while she wants to bring it down — but the symmetry of their views
on the state of the Continent reflects the deep pessimism across the
bloc over the EU’s prospects.
Not too long ago,
prophecies of Europe’s doom would have been dismissed as absurd.
Further integration seemed a given. When it came to strengthening
ties between member nations, debate focused on the when and how, not
the if.
In the throes of the
debt crisis, “More Europe” became the Continent’s rallying cry.
These days, it sounds more like a threat.
For a time, the EU
seemed as inevitable as the United States. Today, the 28-member bloc
is more likely to prompt comparisons to the Soviet Union or the
Habsburg Empire.
Such shifts in the
public mood are often triggered by a single event. In this case, it
was a confluence of crises, ranging from the euro’s woes to
refugees, from the threat of Brexit to the rise of “Orbanism.”
Among the first to
warn of Europe’s demise was none other than Angela Merkel.
“If the euro
fails, Europe fails,” the German chancellor said during the early
days of the euro crisis in 2010.
The phrase quickly
became her signature. Germans are strong supporters of Europe and
Merkel used the mantra to sell bailouts for Greece and other flagging
euro members by underscoring what was at stake. Few really believed
Europe was in danger of failing.
Nonetheless, for the
leader many regard as the EU’s dominant power broker to raise the
specter of Europe’s collapse broke a taboo.
In the years since,
predicting Europe’s doom has become increasingly fashionable. In
fact, barely a week passes without a prominent European politician
invoking the EU’s Armageddon.
Nowadays, crises
large and small, from the victory of the conservative Law and Justice
(PiS) party in Poland to the re-introduction of national border
controls, are described as mortal threats to Europe’s future.
“The European
Union could fall apart and it could happen very quickly if isolation,
not solidarity becomes the rule,” Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister
Jean Asselborn said amid a worsening of the refugee crisis.
The president of the
European Parliament warns that “Europe could fall apart.”
His countryman,
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, said earlier this
month that a suspension of open-border rules under the Schengen
accord could precipitate the collapse of the euro.
“The euro doesn’t
make any sense without Schengen, without freedom of movement for
workers, without the freedom of travel, which all Europeans benefit
from,” he said.
European Council
President Donald Tusk said last week that the EU had “no more than
two months” to save Schengen or “face grave consequences.”
Wolfgang Schäuble,
Germany’s irascible finance minister, went a step further, saying
that re-erecting borders amounted to “a massive, an enormous danger
for Europe.”
What worries some
Europhiles is that the cacophony of gloom could become a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
“The more we talk
about a complete breakdown, the more likely it is that it will
happen,” said Ulrike Guérot, founder of the European Democracy Lab
at the European School of Governance in Berlin.
So far, the European
public doesn’t appear overly concerned by the prospect. EU leaders
such as Juncker, Schulz and Tusk simply don’t carry much sway in
most countries. Many Europeans don’t even know who they are.
Some economists and
political analysts dismiss prophecies of the EU’s collapse as
political hyperbole. After all, Europe existed before Schengen. And
while the euro may be less compelling without open borders,
disentangling the common currency would be extremely complicated, if
not catastrophic.
What’s more,
individual member countries, not to mention global investors, have
too much riding on the euro to let it collapse.
Still, a classic
European muddle, a series of half-measures that keep the union intact
at all cost without addressing the root causes for its problems,
could be worse than a total collapse in the long term.
“The worst case
scenario is a system that can’t die,” Guérot said. “It’s
like the frog that doesn’t jump out of boiling water.”
Authors:
Matthew Karnitschnig
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