That’s the view trumpeted these days in some of Europe’s more conservative circles. But forget it. Left, right, up, down–it’s all been said before. Sure, the heyday of the left may be waning, as the righties say. The tide of social democracy may be ebbing, even if only a bit. And yes, as elections draw near in half a dozen key countries, the European right is everywhere resurgent. In Germany, conservative parties have rallied around a dynamic new leader, Edmund Stoiber, who, by attacking economic policies of the ruling Social Democrats, has taken a surprising lead in political-opinion polls. In France, conservative President Jacques Chirac maintains his edge over Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, his left-leaning challenger. Portugal next month will choose a successor to socialist Prime Minister Antonio Guterres, who resigned in December after his party lost heavily in local elections, apparently due to economic troubles. Rightish governments have already come to power in Spain, Italy, Austria, Belgium, Denmark and Norway, and they seem poised to gain in Switzerland and, possibly, even the Netherlands.
It’s undeniably an important shift, possibly heralding changes in everything from welfare to immigration. But when it comes to the really big issue of Europe’s future, will it turn the clock back? Will the skeptics at last gain the upper hand, thwarting further political and economic integration? Not a chance. Left or right, the path is set. It remains what Europhiles have long called “ever-closer union.”
And yet, thanks to those elections, 2002 is also destined to mark a watershed for Europe. It’s impossible to escape the fact: decisions will be made in coming months that determine its course and identity. And they will be made by a cast of characters very different from those who’ve come before, amid a shifting balance of European power. As John Palmer of the European Policy Center in Brussels puts it, the question isn’t so much whether Europe continues to advance. “It’s how much it advances,” and in what manner and direction.
Some years ago a scenario haunted Europe. What might happen, worrywarts wondered, if Europeans created a common currency but could no longer get along? What if Italy’s rightists (or, worse, neo-fascists) gained power on an anti-Europe agenda and sabotaged the workings of the Common Market? What if the partnership between its biggest powers, France and Germany, unraveled, or if they blocked reforms demanded by Britain and the Scandinavians? What if some members of the Union, concerned about a flood of cheap labor and farm imports from the east, obstructed its expansion into Eastern Europe? Inevitably markets would sour on the euro. With its fate tied to a single currency, financial havoc could hit the entire continent. At the very least, the EU would come to resemble a dysfunctional marriage, its partners at odds and resentful.
In today’s new political climate, variations on this theme seem less far-fetched than before. And no wonder. In Austria, Jorg Haider’s Freedom Party threatens to veto the Czech Republic’s entry into the EU unless it shuts down its Temelin nuclear reactor. In Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi bluntly questions Europe’s policies and direction, to the point of indulging open Europhobia from his leading ministers. Abandoning his country’s once knee-jerk backing for France and Germany’s vision of a federal Europe, he now sides with Britain’s Tony Blair, favoring a Europe that is integrated economically but less so politically. France, meanwhile, appears increasingly ambivalent about Europe’s ambitions, especially as they relate to enlargement, and it’s likely to be joined by Spain and Portugal. (What, give up our farm subsidies to benefit poorer countries of the east? Jamais!) Who knows what the new elections might bring, especially in an era of economic hardship? “We are entering a very difficult time,” concedes a senior aide to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder–adding that, when it comes to the vision of Europe, the coming year could bring any number of surprises.
Among them could be Edmund Stoiber, named last month as the German conservatives’ candidate to run against Schroder in the September elections. In fiery beer-hall speeches, the Bavarian premier declares support for both Haider and Berlusconi. The euro, he has said, is an “Esperanto money” that never should have displaced the Deutsche mark. Lately he’s dialed back that rhetoric, perhaps thinking it intemperate for a would-be statesman. Now he talks of a “Europe of regions,” a place where power devolves to strong local entities like, well, Bavaria. (Last year, incidentally, he allied with Scotland to fight for more local power.) Unlike Schroder or Jospin, he opposes tax harmonization and Europe-wide labor standards, in the spirit of Blair’s camp of laissez-faire Europeanists.
Similar questions are building in France, Germany’s partner in the grand tradition of ever-closer union. For decades, their common vision has been that of a European superstate, bound politically and economically. But it was, by and large, a French invention, growing from Jean Monnet and the original European coal-and-steel community of 1951. It even had a name: la pensee unique, the single line of thought shared by generations of leaders, most recently German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, a Christian Democrat, and French President Francois Mitterrand, a socialist. No one dared challenge that ideal, least of all in France.
Today, what a change. The old Franco-German alliance is fraying. “The relationship has been downgraded,” says Dominique Moisi of the French Institute of International Relations. The famously good chemistry between Mitterrand and Kohl is not shared between Schroder and Chirac, who’s not on very good terms with his rival Jospin either. Indeed, when it comes to Europe, France seems to be undergoing an almost existential crise du coeur. While Germany remains wedded to one of Europe’s most fundamental principles, enlargement to the east, France is having second thoughts. The country’s parties of the left, especially, worry that further European integration will break down state authority, expose protected industries and agriculture to new foreign competition and (gasp) undermine the country’s once undisputed role as Europe’s intellectual leader. In an extraordinarily blunt report released last week, EU trade commissioner Pascal Lamy and Jean Pisani-Ferry, an economic adviser to the prime minister, described what they called “the French malaise”: having built Europe in its own image, the French “no longer recognize themselves in it.” It’s an open question whether this spring’s elections will assuage the crisis of second thoughts–or accentuate it.
All this poses immense challenges for the idea of Europe. The editors of the Financial Times captured the new unpredictability perfectly, writing last week that “France is in danger of replacing Britain as Europe’s most awkward member.” That says a lot, considering Silvio Berlusconi’s disruptive presence on the scene. For weeks he’s been the “joker in the pack,” as one British analyst puts it, the man all Europe is warily watching and trying to figure out. The fact that he is emerging as but one of a constellation of problems must be a sobering prospect indeed for any committed European.
And the uncertainty could hardly come at a more sensitive time. Governments are even now picking delegates to the grandly named Convention on the Future of Europe, which kicks off in March and aims to culminate in the crafting of a common European constitution. The EU must also grapple with other nettlesome issues, many of which have already caused deep divisions: how to share power once the Union grows to as many as 25 members in 2004, how to allocate regional aid among members and deal with controversial farm subsidies, how to create a common defense force and foreign policy.
These choices will be shaped by this year’s elections. Yet significantly, political affiliation–right, left, center–has seldom predicted how leaders act on such crucial matters as Europe. Stoiber, for instance, may tip his hat to Berlusconi–yet he also favors more power for the EU, including a strong foreign policy, a European security force and a permanent European seat on the U.N. Security Council. Note, too, that while Belgium elected a center-right government in 1999, its prime minister, Guy Verhofstadt, counts among Europe’s staunchest federalists. For Europe, clearly, this is a defining moment. Less clear is how that moment might play out. Whatever happens, the old and hallowed idea of a single united Europe doesn’t work anymore.
