AUGUST, 2021
The process that started European integration after World War II has been one of the most interesting experiments in the realm of international relations. It has generated an abundance of theories at the academic level and growing passions in the general public. It is an organic process adapting and evolving in an ever-changing world. This piece is an assessment of the state of this experiment and what could be expected of its future development.
The examination of the early years of European integration is often overlooked even though it is an essential element in the understanding of how these events shaped its evolution and the peculiar features of the European Union of today. At times there is also a tendency to embrace a particular ideological or theoretical standpoint and retroactively justify it with selective facts, instead of elaborating a theory from all the available information. Different approaches can be more useful than others in explaining different aspects. Neo-functionalism could probably better explain how a common currency could provoke endogenous effects that push for a common fiscal policy but less the hybrid institutional compromise that saw the nation states privilege a more intergovernmentalist framework. Proponents of a federalist Europe see any setback on that front as a massive disappointment and a sign that the European project is failing, Eurosceptics distrust any step to strengthen supranational institutions which are described as technocratic bureaucracies with little democratic accountability.
However, one of the most remarkable features of the wider discourse must be how easily criticism of the policies is conflated with a scathing rebuke of the existence of the institution itself. In a conventional political debate even the most vitriolic attacks are generally directed to rival political parties or unwanted policies without calls for a dismantling of the whole system of government. On the one hand nationalist and far-right parties have long been claiming that the solution to the economic woes and other defining issues that their countries are facing, like globalisation and immigration, can be easily solved simply breaking away from the European Union and going back to fully independent and sovereign nation states. This is the narrative that the UKIP pushed in Britain and that led to Brexit. On the other, for the committed federalists the current arrangements are unsatisfactory and can only be seen as an intermediate step toward a federal state based upon solidarity among Europeans. If that goal is not achieved, the Union would be just a dry exercise of balancing budgets and an undesirable way for big economic interests to dictate policies that make people suffer with austerity and a denial of basic human rights.
So, how did we get here? What are the forces that drove European integration and why do we have the current institutional structure? Since the very beginning of the integration process many different and contrasting forces were at play, each one pushing for a different outcome. It is difficult to underestimate how the final result was only made possible by a unique confluence of historical circumstances. An association of European nation states was only made possible by the destruction of the two world wars. Germany came out as the big loser, but the emergence of the Cold War gave it a lifeline. The United States saw West Germany as the new frontline in the confrontation escalating with the Soviet Union and pushed for its integration with the Western Alliance. France was mainly preoccupied with retribution and wanted to make sure that another German invasion on French soil would never happen again. The United Kingdom at this point considered France to be only a regional power, while it still regarded itself as one of the main world powers and pushed for France to lead a grouping of European states in opposition to the communist threat. France on the other hand, with its overseas territories, still believed to be a global force and saw this opportunity as a way to control any possible German renaissance and exploit Germany’s economic potential to strengthen its own clout on the world stage. At the same time, without Konrad Adenauer and his determination to anchor the Federal Republic to the West it is not unlikely that things would have gone in other ways, as many in Germany favoured reunification and a neutral Germany. Some other critical moments pushed the European partners to work closer, most notably the Korean War and the Suez Crisis. With the heightened need of more integrated defence capabilities the project for a European Defence Community gained ground. And with it the idea that to make it work, a political union among the member states would be necessary to provide accountability and a reliable institutional framework. There were some doubts but five out of the six founding members of the ECSC ratified the treaty. In France, the ratification process faced many obstacles though and after long delays the National Assembly finally rejected the EDC and the federal political union. This was a defining moment for the future of European integration. The founding members came tantalisingly close to a federation but evidently the momentum and the external pressures were not strong enough and the idea of a federal Europe slipped into the background.
Nonetheless the need for a strong partnership among west European states did not go away and other forms of collaboration had to be found. With some scepticism it was decided to go down the path of further economic integration, which had already started with pooling together their coal and steel industries, and expand it to atomic energy and a common market of industrial products, with the latter being especially successful and destined to become the core of European integration. Once the European Economic Community was established, the dominant figure on the scene was Charles de Gaulle. For de Gaulle, even more than for his predecessors, Europe was an instrument for France to perpetuate what it considered its legitimate grandeur and keep its strategic autonomy. The workings of the EEC’s institutional architecture were still being defined and the first Commission of the EEC, led by Walter Hallstein, saw the opportunity to enhance its supranational nature. Once more, the showdown that followed made clear that all member states were not ready to give up substantial parts of their sovereignty and that they were still strongly attached to the concept of the nation state. At the same time, they did cede parts of their sovereignty to constitute a hybrid institution, that would comprise important supranational elements. In its subsequent incarnations, Europe kept this composite system, represented at best by the institutionalisation of the European Council on one side and the expansion of the European Parliament’s prerogatives as well as establishing the single currency on the other.
It is clear then that European integration has been non-linear and strongly dependent on exogenous factors. Even so, it cannot be ignored that the idealistic motivations were at least as strong. The idea of European unity was never totally forgotten, and since the fall of the Roman Empire this mythology occasionally surfaced back in the conversation of the different cycles of history, from Charlemagne, through the Holy Roman Empire, to Napoleon. Philosophers and intellectuals occasionally kept toying with the idea, until its last manifestation, when a group of exiles in the Italian island of Ventotene in 1941 wrote the famous Manifesto, calling for a federal Europe as a way to end all wars in Europe. This time idealism was embraced by history and the political leaders of post-War Europe not only were pursuing their national interest and making their own political calculations but were also convinced that Europe needed a break from the past and could not afford to repeat once more the mistakes that brought so much destruction and suffering. Without an understanding of this multitude of external factors, national interests, and federalist impulses, it would be impossible to understand the European Union, its intricate balance of power, its complex institutions, its successes and its failures, as well as its future prospects. With this in mind I will try next to explore the reasoning behind some of the more unfavourable views of the EU, consider the problems arising from the currency union, and survey some prominent voices in the scholarly debate on the democratic deficit.
An appraisal of the state of the European Union needs to address the mounting criticism that it faces, especially in light of the most recent crises. In his critical assessment of the European Union, Marian L. Tupy, senior policy analyst at the right-libertarian American think-thank Cato Institute, suggests that the costs of EU membership far outweigh its benefits and that a negotiated parting of ways and a return to fully independent nation states would be beneficial to all parties involved. It is safe to say that in the general debate this is quite a radical position, but it can be a useful starting point to evaluate how such a conclusion is reached and to discuss some of the points that are made in his piece.
As it has become a recurrent talking point of anti-European discourse, it is worth mentioning the complaint that is made right at the beginning about the byzantine bureaucracy of the European Union. Granted, bureaucracy has generally a longstanding negative reputation as something shady and convoluted and it is therefore an easy target of criticism. At the same time, it is essential for a functioning public administration, and no entity could do without it. In the European Union there are around 60.000 civil servants who serve around 500 million Europeans. By comparison, the French Finance Ministry has around 140.000 staff and employment in the Home Civil Service is at 463.000 in the United Kingdom.
It also maintains that by claiming its contribution to peace and stability in Europe, the European Union would be denying the role of the United States, of NATO and of the Marshall Plan in achieving these goals. In fact, it would be hard to find anybody in the debate on European integration that would ignore or underestimate how the United States were decisive in kickstarting and protecting the process. It is rather the contrary, as the discussion has often been centred on the necessity for Europe to find its own footing and independence from the American overwhelming influence. Since 1945 there had been a number of overlapping institutions that all contributed to the stability of Western Europe, among them the OEEC, WU, WEU, NATO, ECSC, EEC and eventually the EU. At the same time, in complex and fluid circumstances the six founding members of the ECSC, and then EEC, deserve credit for their willingness to work closely together, in an effort not to repeat the mistakes made after the first World War. The United States encouraged these developments but could not impose them. The most obvious measure of EU’s success in bringing stability is its force of attraction for other countries and that saw the EEC-EU grow gradually from 6 to 28 members, 27 after Brexit. Needless to say that joining the EEC or the EU has always been on a voluntary basis.
A more interesting remark is that the European Union does not really deserve credit for the prosperity of Western Europe after World War II, as the customs union promoted by the EEC came fully into force only in 1968, and a generally favourable economic cycle was responsible for its large economic expansion. The most obvious mistake is that this observation simply confuses the whole process of European integration with the implementation of the European Economic Community and the customs union. More broadly, the issue of Europe’s golden age and its staggering economic growth between 1950 and 1973 is still debated by economic historians and many reasons account for it. Yet, the underlying potential for catch-up growth in Western Europe vis-à-vis the United States could only be achieved by creating a new consensual basis for its elites and policy making. In the process through which stability was regained in Europe the common policies of the European Community were part of the process. Rebuilding consensus on the European nation state required the solution of the connected problems of production and security. European leaders were aware that in order to rescue the economies of their nation states national policies had to be internationalised to make them viable, Germany being a case in point. The reinvigorated nation state had to choose the surrender of a degree of national sovereignty to sustain its reassertion. Only then other contributing factors like for example a favourable ratio of human to physical capital or the matching of the then transferable technology to the emerging demand pattern could unleash their full potential. And that is why individual measures, like Erhard’s liberalisation of the West German economy in 1948, global reduction of tariffs under the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs or the importance of the Marshall Plan cannot be considered in a vacuum. There were also trade-offs. The customs union for industrial products was only possible by allowing France to take advantage of the Common Agricultural Policy. Speaking of which, it should be acknowledged that subsidising the agricultural sector is nothing unusual in most countries around the world, US included. Tupy seems to go to great lengths to stress the widespread positive economic environment of that time to justify the European economic expansion but then ignores that the stagflation of the 1970s came in the context of the oil crisis and that the United States abandoned the gold standard and therefore undermined the Bretton Woods monetary system. Or that new actors came into play, globalisation took hold, outsourcing became the norm for many Western companies and manufacturing jobs were lost to emerging economies. In 1973 the group of G7 countries accounted for 51 percent of world GDP, in 2018 that amount was reduced to 39 percent. The US was at 30 percent in 1973, only to become 20 percent in 2018. China went from 1,4 in 1980 to 14,08 in 2018. India started its economic reforms later than China and its figures are more modest, 1,37 percent of world GDP in 1980 and 2,75 in 2018, but Western companies are relying more and more on its workforce in sectors such as customer service and software development. In regard to the supposed overregulation of the European Union, it seems fair to say that Europeans are quite happy to have reliable and safe electronic appliances, avoid an excessive use of antibiotics in farming, have more oversight of genetically modified foods or more stringent privacy laws, just to name a few, compared to the lax standards of the US. Even praising obvious EU’s successes comes with perplexing reluctance. Breaking down barriers to trade, liberalising the movement of capital, the Schengen agreement and free movement of people is not any good according to this reasoning, as long as services still need to be fully liberalised. Finally, the efficacy of the EEC’s customs union can be compared to that of the EFTA’s free trade agreement, sponsored by the United Kingdom. EEC countries were growing faster than those in the EFTA grouping. The United Kingdom itself switched from EFTA to EEC in an effort to regain an economic advantage that had been slipping away.
An issue that indeed is widely recognised as problematic is the currency union. It can be agreed with the point made by most of its critics that the Eurozone was poorly designed, and that the Euro has been a source of divisions and has exacerbated economic differences. Faced with reality the rules and enforcement mechanisms to keep debt and deficits at manageable levels did not work out effectively and low interest rates made borrowing more appealing for weaker economies. Yet, it must be said that introducing the common currency was both an economic and political undertaking. On a pure economic logic, the full realisation of the single market would need the removal not only of all tariff barriers but also of non-tariff ones. Having different currencies and being able to devaluate them to gain a competitive advantage was one of the elements that distorted the single market, and previous attempts were made long before to limit currency fluctuations among member states. On the political front, even after four decades of fruitful and friendly collaboration, the prospect of a unified Germany after the fall of communism was scary for many in Europe, especially in France. Germany had regained its national pride and worldwide recognition on the strength of its economy, and the Deutschmark was its prime symbol. One way to make sure that a united Germany would not renounce its anchoring to the West and recommit to European integration was to replace the German currency with a European one. At the same time, the long-standing reluctance of the nation states to give up too much of their national sovereignty did not make it possible to create a common fiscal policy. As it was often the case with economic integration and the neo-functional approach, the hope was that with time, sharing a common currency would create the necessary conditions for further alignment. The most eye-catching consequence of a currency union without a fiscal union has been the inability by the individual countries to respond to changing economic conditions with the necessary flexibility. With the inability to devaluate the currency and to independently print money, facing an economic downturn under stringent debt and deficit rules and without financial support from the other members of the union made it all but impossible for weaker countries to refinance their debt and to avoid a default, Greece being the most evident example.
The financial crisis, the subsequent debt crisis, and the measures following the most recent coronavirus pandemic showed some steps by European institutions and the member states to counterbalance this situation. While some discuss the legitimacy of an overly independent European Central Bank, the famous “whatever it takes” uttered by Mario Draghi put to rest the speculation that bet against the survival of the common currency. If the complaint is that when the southern economies crashed, their creditors, chiefly European banks, were bailed out at a massive cost to the European taxpayer, then the same complaint should be extended to any major world economy that in the same conditions did exactly the same, presumably to save their whole financial and credit system. It is a legitimate opinion to refuse a fiscal union and reject a common currency, which is coherent with an appeal to a negotiated parting of ways between the EU and countries that feel they can do better on their own. But it is odd to do so in response to the divisions that the Eurozone is causing among member states and its contribution to the rise of populist parties in Europe. An unravelling of the European Union would make more likely a return to European countries vying for wealth and power in a zero sum game. A further rise of nationalism and of populist parties would be the most obvious consequence and the emphasis would be more on confrontation than collaboration. It is possible that a Europe based on free trade agreements could get along just fine but the incentives for conflict would gain momentum and there is no guarantee that given such conditions history would not repeat itself. It would not be wise to take peace in Europe for granted if the circumstances that contributed to it since 1945 were to change.
After the establishment of the European Union with the Maastricht Treaty and a further delegation of powers from the member states to Brussels in the 1990s a discussion emerged on the question of the democratic legitimacy of the supranational institutions. This debate on the democratic deficit evolved and went through different versions in a feedback loop that saw the EU trying to address some of the issues that arose throughout the years and subsequent institutional amendments. In the first few decades of their existence European institutions could enjoy a benign neglect or permissive consensus from citizens that trusted their leaders and the competence of their policies in the post-war period, aided by strong economic expansion and the perception that Europe dealt mainly with technocratic and distant matters. This perception gradually changed and for some fears of an unaccountable European superstate grew. A feeling that was sometimes fuelled by the assumption that most of the policymaking at the national level comes from Brussels, but also by overconfident predictions about the future prospects of the Union, like those made by Jacques Delors at the end of the 1980s. Following the failure of the Constitutional Treaty and the updated institutional framework of the Treaty of Lisbon the debate on the democratic deficit gained new momentum. What follows is a selected sample of some prominent academic opinions.
Andreas Follesdal and Simon Hix argue that even when European elections happen their legitimacy is limited as electoral campaigns are still focused on domestic political issues. European Parliament elections are second-order national contests, they are fought by national parties on the performance of national governments, with lower turnout than national elections, and hence won by opposition and protest parties. But they also see some early seeds of democratic contestation and a potential for battles over the EU policy agenda in terms of party organisation and competition in the European Parliament and the convergence of parties that are ideologically closer together beyond national divides. They suggest that one solution to reinforce democracy would be to enhance the politicisation of the EU agenda, for example with the direct election of the Commission President either by the citizens or by national parliaments and a more transparent role for the Council of Ministers, with more public access to its deliberation process.
Giandomenico Majone is convinced that there is indeed a serious democratic deficit at the European level. One example being an executive organ like the Commission that is not elected directly and has the monopoly of the legislative initiative with little space for discussion and opposition, little transparency in its decision-making processes and lack of mechanisms to evaluate the responsibility of different actors. He believes that even though decades of integration produced a certain Europeanisation of elites, this process never reached the great majority of the population in member states. The founding fathers thought that the best way to create an increasingly closer union among European peoples would be the institutionalisation of the integration process and the material benefits of European integration would be such that with time the authority and the legitimacy of the new supranational system would develop on new foundations and the loyalties and political expectations of wider social groups would be gradually transferred from the national to the European level. The problem according to Majone is that European institutions have not delivered and that this lack of efficacy is at the core of its lack of legitimacy. In his view the EU does not contribute relevantly to prosperity and security and hopes of being a global player on security matters failed when Europe tried to play a role in the Balkans. On the limits of technocratic integration, Majone concentrates his attention on the European Central Bank. He considers the ECB a typical example of sacrificing democracy on the altar of integration, especially with the constitutionalisation of its independence in the Lisbon Treaty and the lack of political counterbalance since a real European government or an organism with the necessary authority to coordinate fiscal policies of Eurozone countries does not exist. This separation of monetary technocrats from any contact of political or simply institutional nature has serious consequences not only from the point of view of democratic legitimacy but also from that of its efficiency. Finally, Majone identifies another potential source of legitimacy deficit in an enlargement that has produced an excess of heterogeneity and where the benefits of harmonisation and a single set of rules and standards for the single market that is based on the median necessities of its members could become less and less representative of the real needs of the different nation states.
Andrew Moravcsik argues that the issue of a democratic deficit is made up of a number of myths. So the European Union does not have the attributes of a powerful superstate since the nation states are still in charge of most salient issues and the principal democratic oversight takes place at the national level. He notes that while the EU has developed a prominent role in trade, regulations and monetary policy, salient issues like taxation, labour policies, healthcare, pensions, education, security and infrastructure remain mainly in the realm of domestic politics. On the criticism that the EU lacks transparency and sufficient checks and balances he observes how political authority is divided between Commission, Council, Parliament, Court of Justice, with tight national oversight and that far from being an arbitrary technocracy, the EU functions under greater restrictions on fiscal, coercive and administrative capacity, transparency requirements, narrower checks and balances, and a wider range of national controls compared to the national governments of its member states. He also contests that EU decisions are made by unelected officials not subject to meaningful democratic accountability as nearly every critical decision-maker, that is national leaders, national ministers, European parliamentarians, national parliamentarians, is directly elected. And the most important formal body in the legislative process is the Council of Ministers, a forum where elected national ministers and their subordinate officials reach decisions, subject to any democratic constraint national governments see fit. The dominance of directly elected politicians therefore explains why the EU constantly responds to public pressure. In matters such as agricultural support, genetically modified foods, trade negotiations, services deregulation, labour market reform, energy policy and environmental protection, European policy responds to broad national electorates and powerful interest groups rather than national policy elites or Brussels technocrats. Institutions like the European Central Bank, the European Court of Justice and competition authorities enjoy some insulation from direct democratic control, but this is not a European abnormality as these are the same governmental functions that national governments customarily insulate from popular pressure. The negative results of referendums in France, the Netherlands and Ireland also contributed to the sense of rejection or dislike on the part of the citizens for the EU and its policies. The problem with referendums is that research on voting trends shows the tendency of voters to use European level elections to cast protest votes on national issues, like opinions about the ruling parties, globalisation, non-EU immigration and other matters not involving the EU. Similarly, elections to the European Parliament generate low turnout and are hardly influenced by European issues. Thus, Moravcsik believes that rather than toying with radical democratic reform, Europe should embrace its system of indirect representative democracy, where democratically elected national governments and parties manage EU policy through the European Council, the Council of Ministers and the directly elected European Parliament. If indirect democratic accountability is acceptable for the nation states, then the European Union should not be judged on a democratic double standard.
The remarks that Andrew Moravcsik makes about the salient issues being the domain of the nation state and the non-salient ones pertaining to the supranational institutions were convincing until the end of the 2000s. As well as it was convincing that the EU operated as a representative democracy with elected MEPs and elected governments deciding what policies should be adopted with a method based on consensus. Things started to change as it became evident that successive crises were pushing the European Union more and more into salient issues territory. Once Europe was charged with dealing with the financial and debt crisis, the influx of migrants and refugees, and most recently the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, it is only natural that the benign neglect would become a thing of the past and citizens would be more responsive to its policies and more demanding in its results. As Hix and Follesdal note, if citizens cannot identify alternative leaders or policy agendas, it is difficult for them to determine whether leaders could have done better or to identify who is responsible for policies, and without a visible alternative it is problematic to distinguish between opposition to a current EU policy regime and opposition to the EU system as a whole. Parties that had been at the extremes of the political spectrum and were less likely to be involved in government realised that they could take advantage of this flaw in the system and started to gain traction and votes attacking the institution itself and claiming that the only way to change unwanted policies was by dismantling European integration rather than reform it, and let each nation state go it alone. As a response some voices are starting to call for a pro-European opposition movement that is ready to fight against the narrative of nationalist movements at the grassroots level and abandon the elitism that took the benefits and the limits of European policies for granted. These are all signs of a politicisation of the European space and possibly the formation of a full-fledged European polity. The feeling is that the European project is in the middle of the road and things could go either way. Nobody could seriously believe a few years ago that the United Kingdom would exit the EU and that Euroscepticism could become so relevant. At the same time, the scenarios at both ends of the spectrum must be considered honestly and the question must be asked if it would be better for European nation states to deal with their neighbours and the rest of the world alone or further integrate and delegate more powers to a federal entity. As noted above, without an institutional framework that guarantees all actors involved and with a return to pre-1945 conditions, it cannot be excluded that individual nations would drift away and the good will to work together could be gradually substituted by competition and eventually even hostility. And that is the first reason why the path to more integration is the safest one. Peace and stability should not be taken for granted. Another reason is that the status quo is not sustainable. If it is agreed that going back is not an option, then moving forward is the only one. With the politicisation of the EU its institutions need to be quicker and more effective in the decision-making process. As positive as a consensus method is in trying to bring everybody on board, it makes the EU less efficient and less transparent. The evolution of the system should contemplate more majority voting and accept that policies do have winners and losers. The final destination should be one where elections have consequences and European citizens vote more and more on European issues.
As much as a conversation is to be had on the best way forward and contributions steadily come in numbers from scholars, politicians, journalists and the whole of civic society, any observer should be reminded that how political systems evolve is inherently messy. The European Union is often compared to the United States, especially to highlight how dysfunctional and inefficient the EU is when we look at a well-functioning federal state. The problem is that the EU is not a federal state, and often those who make this kind of comparison interestingly do not want it to become one. And if we look at the United States as a model, it could hardly be suggested that the best way to start a peaceful federation of independent states would be through a revolution, an enlargement that would carefully make sure that slavery-supporting states are evenly added together with non-slave states to keep the balance of power on that issue intact, a secession of slave-states and a civil war fought after 8 decades of existence, the extermination and displacement of native peoples, and the enduring discrimination and segregation of minorities. And yet, the good that was in its founding idea made it possible for slow and difficult progress in the struggle for a more perfect union, a process that is still ongoing and full of setbacks. Comparisons are made with the evolution of other nation states. Philippe C. Schmitter reminds us that famous D’Azeglio’s quote, that after Italy was united Italians were still to be formed. And for a long time it was thought that German peoples would be federated by Austria, not Prussia, only for Germany and Austria to end up as two distinct nations. I believe that the founding principles of the European Union are as good as any other. If the messiness of history allows it, in a few decades from now it could make further steps toward a more perfect union. One more recent example of this messiness is the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. To stay faithful to its principles and encourage democratisation, the EU opened its doors to an enlargement that made it grow from 15 member states in 1995 to 28 in 2013. In a 15 member EU differences were relevant, but it could be imagined that the more homogenous Western European countries could find a confluence of policies, financial regulations and institutional compromises more rapidly than an expanded EU comprising 13 new members, 12 of which coming from the former communist bloc. In an enlarged European Union, the merging of its national communities becomes a longer process. As it is, signs are that alliances among member states in the Union are evolving and are becoming part of the politicisation. Besides the notorious Franco-German engine, talks often include the contrasting views of other groupings, like the frugal countries, the Visegrád group, the Mediterranean club and more generally a divide along the lines of north vs south and west vs east. If within these differences more overarching similarities and a more marked economic convergence will emerge, then the sense of a common purpose and belonging could strengthen. It might be still a minority, but more and more Europeans are moving from state to state to study and work, they are starting families in third countries, and are multilingual. Many of these people do not belong to any elites, they are the children of working-class or middle-class families that simply take advantage of the opportunities that a united Europe can offer them. If these trends keep on spreading and touch an ever-increasing number of people, we might be looking at the making of a European citizenship. But the process must not be rushed and must be rooted in reality. Calls for a dismantling of European integration can be as extreme as calls for an immediate transformation of the European Union into a federal state. This would be a recipe for disaster, as the nationalist backlash could be more disruptive than any attempt at a great leap forward. Incremental steps are less exciting and are not a guarantee of success, but European countries have shown a relentless resilience in time of crises and a determination to protect the gains made so far and move forward when necessary.
And finally, an issue that is probably more important for the ruling classes of several European countries than for most of its citizens at the present time is the geopolitical positioning of the EU. It is nevertheless an issue with serious consequences for any society. For countries like France, and the UK as long as it was a member, the EU has always been a way to enhance their political clout once the glory days of their empires were over. The reality is that the post-war world order is unravelling and sooner or later a reckoning will come. It is easy to imagine that finally a reform of the United Nations will have to take place and that the diplomatic balance of power will need to reflect real economic and military weight as well as size of population. The UK in particular has been remarkably able and successful to maintain a strong political clout and punch above its weight, but time is not on its side. And the same can be said about France. As the relative economic weight of the biggest European countries diminishes and their place in the global ranks go down, they will see slip away their influence and their ability to secure advantageous trade deals, to promote their interests abroad and keep a strong defence posture. As memories of WWII fade ever more in the background, Germany without the EU would see no reason why it should count less than France or the United Kingdom. Without a united Europe there is no reason why Russia should not try to replicate in Eastern Europe what it already did in Georgia and Ukraine and try to reclaim its old sphere of influence. And the Trump presidency and the drift of the Republican party toward a repudiation of its old values show that Europe cannot rely on the United States as it once did, not only for defence purposes but also defending democracy and the rule of law at home and abroad. If the transactional attitudes of the Trump administration were to come back in a future election cycle, then Europe would be left to its own means and could once again face hostility from the old ally. China is eager to invest in all continents and to gain a foothold through the indebtment that many countries incur while dealing with it. If many complaints were understandable in light of the conditions that were attached for the rescue of Greece’s economy, it is conceivable that loans coming from China would be more lucrative in the short term but less forgiving in the long term and be aimed at gaining an outsized influence in any country going through the same troubles. In other words, it is reasonable to think that a Chinese taxpayer (if they had a say) would care less about the faith of the Greek people than the notoriously grumbling German taxpayer. In a time when an authoritarian and nationalist wave seem to be sweeping around the globe, a consolidation of the European Union seems to make even more sense. It is something that is in the self interest of Europeans in general but that could have a positive effect more globally as a bastion of democracy, human rights and an example of peaceful collaboration. Mistakes will be made as much as many mistakes have been made before. Political systems are not perfect, as the individuals who constitute them are not either. The European Union has been partly a marriage of convenience and partly a project full of idealism. The latter is often mocked as naive and detached from reality, but idealism is what often keeps people together. As long as a measure of idealism survives then the European project could be trusted more in its motives. Recent events in the United States show us that institutional frameworks alone do not guarantee peace and prosperity if it is not a common goal of the whole of society. Democracy is fragile and nothing lasts forever, but an effort should be made to make it last as long as possible.