Alexander
Stubb: Europe’s endangered liberal future
Focus
on practical solutions, says the former Finnish PM who some believe
is the Iron Man who could save Europe.
By DAVID M.
HERSZENHORN 12/26/16, 5:32 AM CET
To some, Alexander
Stubb is the Iron Man who could save Europe: a polyglot triathlete,
former Finnish prime minister, and, at age 48, part of the next
generation of leaders desperately needed on a Continent battered by
anti-establishment populism.
To others, Stubb is
a well-chiseled has-been, whose lackluster leadership of his
center-right National Coalition Party allowed the euroskeptic,
anti-immigrant Finns Party to gain ground and finish second to the
Center Party in the 2015 parliamentary elections, putting an end to
Stubb’s one-year stint as prime minister.
Last summer, the
National Coalition Party voted to replace Stubb as its leader, and he
is now just one of 200 members of parliament. It has been a humbling
fall for a man who served as finance minister, foreign minister,
minister of European affairs and, for four years, as one of the
better-known members of the European Parliament.
POLITICO caught up
with Stubb at the Finnish Permanent Representation in Brussels this
month when he was back for meetings, mainly on the topic of Brexit,
with senior officials, including senior leaders of the European
People’s Party, of which he is a member.
Stubb not only
speaks fluent English but, thanks to four years at Furman University
in South Carolina on a golf scholarship, he can also execute a
perfect Dixie drawl. “Finnish by birth, Southern by the Grace of
God,” he says by way of introduction.
Over nearly an hour,
he claimed to be content serving in Parliament and focusing on his
two young children. But it’s hard to believe that restlessness
isn’t twitching beneath the surface. He says he now refuses to do
interviews in the Finnish press in an effort to stay out of the
domestic fray, but he still writes a column for the Financial Times.
After
‘a decade of hope,’ Europe got ‘very tangled up with
naval-gazing.’ It wasn’t ready for the populist backlash to
financial collapse and migration.
And he spends quite
a bit of time pondering the political implications of a world that
seems to be changing at warp-speed — which isn’t what a guy who
plans to exit public life usually does.
Following are
excerpts from the interview:
On change and chaos
“We’re in a mess
but we should put things into perspective: The EU is constant crisis
management. You move from one crisis to the other and, at the end of
the day, it’s just a question of the size of the crisis and who
gets hit the hardest. I have always believed the EU advances in
three-phases: Phase no. 1 is crisis, phase no. 2 is chaos and phase
no. 3 is sub-optimal solution, and that’s very much the nature of
the beast.
“There is, of
course, a huge difference in the sentiment that we had in the late
1980’s early 1990’s versus the sentiment we have in 2015, 2016.
So in the early 90’s, we have the collapse of the Berlin Wall, we
have the end of the Cold War, we have the Velvet Revolution, the
collapse of the Soviet Union, and there’s sort of a feeling of hope
if you will. Central and Eastern Europe start integrating in the
European Union. Democracy, free markets, globalization is on the
march. Nelson Mandela is freed. You name it. It was just a decade of
hope.
“And once we had
gotten things settled in the 1990’s, we move on to the new
millennium, which for all intents and purposes becomes an
institutional decade. The first 10 years, we were very much happy
that the euro has been established, that enlargement takes place,
that we have a common foreign security policy, we have justice and
home affairs, but we get very tangled up with naval-gazing, looking
at institutions. And, you know, I’m partly to blame for that. I am
an institutional nerd myself. I love to tinker with weights and votes
and numbers of commissioners and the balance of power between
institutions here in Brussels. But to be quite honest, Joe Six Pack
on the street doesn’t really care about that.
“And then we hit
the financial crisis of 2008-2009 and it’s basically been downhill
since. We’re all trying to come to terms with the aftermath of the
financial crisis. I think we did quite well in solving and salvaging
whatever was to be salvaged. And in hindsight, we came out of the
crisis, I am not saying unscathed but, quite well and stronger than
expected. People were speaking about the collapse of the euro. At the
end of the day, we got more members into the euro. People were
speaking of severe economic recessions à la 1873 or 1929. And at the
end of the day, our economies bounced back and arguably we are
stronger than before the crisis. So we managed that quite well,
albeit it was chaotic.
Protectionism
is a failed model, and won’t work in a world of technological
advancement, information technology, robotics, digitalization, 3-D
printing and the rest of it.
“But immediately
in the aftermath of that crisis, we were obviously hit by the asylum
crisis and immigration. So when you have two almost seismic events —
a financial crisis combined with an inflow of immigration, which we
haven’t seen since World War 2— there will be a reaction.
“And the reaction
in Europe has been of a populist nature, of a rolling back of powers
from Brussels, of a certain nativist inclination, anti-globalist
inclination, even anti-Democratic inclination. And then on top of
those crisis we get hit with two events which pose question marks:
one is permanent and the other is not. So the first one is Brexit –
obviously of a permanent nature. And then the election of Donald
Trump as president of the United States. So the only thing that’s
certain is uncertainty at this moment, but my argument is always that
Europe will survive.”
On populism and
protectionism
“One of the
problems is what we do with European integration and the problem is
that national leaders, as they are national, they take the credit for
all the successes and they put all the blame of failure on Brussels.
So everything that’s good is because of me; everything that’s bad
is because of Brussels. And if you push that agenda long enough,
people start to believe it. That’s what happened in the U.K.: You
basically had a 40-year relentless propaganda machinery which was, by
and large, eurosceptic and counter-factual.
As far as
protectionism is concerned, there are not too many examples in the
history of nation-states where protectionism has worked out and
especially not in today’s world of technological advancement,
information technology, robotics, digitalization, 3-D printing and
the rest of it. And funnily enough, if we look at the free movement
of goods around the world, tariffs are not really the issue anymore.
The goods move pretty freely and the tariffs are quite small. At the
end of the day, it’s really about the cost of services and how they
cross borders. My children who are 15 and 12 ½, their children are
probably not going to go to schools with vehicles that have a driver.
They will be printing sneakers off their 3-D printers.
Liberal democracy
needs to show it can deliver results.
They can already
purchase goods and services over the net across borders if they get
their parents’ credit card. They and their children will be
diagnosed with illnesses better, faster and more accurately than by a
doctor. They will not experience market analysts or x-ray experts. So
the world they will live in is, by definition, a borderless world and
yet we, the geriatric politicians, keep on erecting these walls.
So there’s
something sort of highly paradoxical in all of this. And, of course,
my fear is that now that we have this wave of whatever you want to
call it — nativist extreme-left, extreme-right, whatever-populism —
this will only increase as technology develops … and the venting of
frustrations will be even stronger towards us. So the situation,
although I am an optimist, will probably get worse rather than
better. And the funny thing is that common rules are probably the
only way forward.”
On Merkel, the last
liberal standing
“Finland is a very
Western country. We know our place in history and we try to focus on
the issues that we know best and believe in – market economy,
internal market, free trade, strong European institutions, we try to
push that agenda. But we’re 5.4 million people. In that sense, it’s
very difficult. I think Europe has one leader right now, to be
honest, and that leader is Germany – and especially through the
persona of Angela Merkel. She is sort of the last, liberal Democrat
standing.
“I am married to a
Brit and obviously a strong Anglophile so naturally I’m saddened by
Brexit. We are now in a situation where the U.K. has marginalized
itself voluntarily from the European Union and we have to live with
that.”
“It’s tough days
for us, liberal internationalists — I think this is the best term,
people who really believe in democracy, market economy and
globalization. We just have to fight back. We have to be patient. We
have to persevere.
On a fast-changing
world
“You don’t need
to read much literature on the Fourth Industrial Revolution to
understand that much bigger things are happening, whether they are
linked to your future job or your future economy or whether they are
linked to ethical questions on how far to perfect a human being and
do gene manipulation to eradicate disease or improve the quality of a
human being.
“We have basically
been able to rid the three big issues that have pestered us for all
of our lives. One is war. I am not saying it’s completely gone but
in comparison to what it used to be, it is. The second one is famine.
And obviously that doesn’t pertain to everyone in the world but we
know how to do it. And the third one is disease. We have basically
beat all of those three things.
“And now the next
step is what happens to homo sapiens in the future? And how does that
then pertain to politics? And the difference to previous times is
that you know one generation had time to grapple with an industrial
revolution or agricultural revolution but this just happens so fast
that it’s the key is to be curious and try to understand and
influence.”
On delivering
results
“Liberal democracy
is also about delivering results. If people feel secure, if they feel
that their economy is stable, then they will also support democracy
and political leaders. So I don’t think it’s necessarily time for
high-flying visions. It’s more time for doing business and
delivering results.”
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