What is to be expected, from the European point of view, from this new year? It might be wise not to expect anything very positive. After all, the problems and dangers of 2016 are still there. The rotten egg that is Brexit still has to be cracked. The eurozone continues to sit precariously, pulled in one direction by those who see themselves as the intransigent guardians of budgetary orthodoxy and, in the other, by those, like the Commission, who believe it is time to cut some slack. All this time, the Greeks (though not all of them) continue to suffer – “solidarity” with their country not extending as far as them. In Italy, banks are still in danger, just like the overcrowded boats that continue to be lost in the Mediterranean, as many European leaders barely masking their indifference. Let’s stop there. There’s no point in casting further dark shadows over the picture facing European citizens at the dawn of the new year. Nor, indeed, must they be given any further grounds for doubting, as they did in 2016, the whole point of Europe.
Yet the good news is that European citizens are making a virtue of resilience. According to an eupinions poll unveiled by Bertelsmann Stiftung at the end of last year, support for the European Union is on the rise. The Eurosceptics saw Brexit as the first domino to fall, soon to be followed by others until the entire Union imploded. They will be disappointed because the survey, conducted amongst ten thousand citizens in each of the “large” member states provides striking proof of exactly the opposite. And this, too, in the United Kingdom, where, in August of last year, 56% of those interviewed said they would vote for their country to stay inside the Union, the same country where in the March referendum only 48.1% voted to remain. In a sign of the times and the malaise caused in the southern countries by some European policies, only 51% of Italians delivered the same response, and 41% supported their country’s exit from the EU.
Results such as these are, overall, positive but they need to encourage European leaders to listen to the grievances and recriminations being expressed. Otherwise the ranks of the Eurosceptics and nationalists will certain swell further. Will this be so? That is, unfortunately, to be expected. The learned institutional and media commentators are quick to point out that the elections due to take place in the next few months in the Netherlands, France and Germany will prevent the launch of any new initiatives that might brighten the European project and make it, if not more attractive, at least more reassuring to citizens. This completely bears out what sociologist Andrea Rea of the Brussels Free University says when he argues that “the problem with the body politic is that it is so fixated with elections that political discourse is no more than politicking and electioneering” (Le Soir, 2 January). This is true on the national level where, everywhere, democracy is to some extent under threat. It is even more true at the European level where national elections induce stasis in the Union, condemning it to impotence. Hence, according to Rea, Europe has become the place where “politicians of today, because of their obsession with elections, no longer carry the moral and political authority expected of the elite”. Even more than in their own countries, they are “unable to provide people with a vision for the future”, conceive projects that people can buy into, even though they may not necessarily be enthused by them – manna for those who have returned to nationalism and political extremism.
So, should we already be resigning ourselves? Perhaps not. Firstly, because the world is changing. Stating that “2017 is shaping up to be a year of challenges and uncertainty”, Javier Solana argues that the biggest uncertainty of all is whether this is “simply the end of another year, or the end of a geopolitical epoch” (Project Syndicate, 21 December). Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election will mean a new, disturbing order, perhaps even a shock to the system, for European countries – commercially and economically, and doubtless militarily, too. All this at a time when Putin’s Russia is increasingly behaving in ways that may be interpreted as serious threats in Europe. This has led Judy Dempsey to deliver a stark warning in Carnegie Europe’s Strategic Europe blog (21 December): “The threat is plain to see: Europe’s democracy and stability are being threatened as they were during the Cold War. Then, Europe had the United States to protect it. Today, efforts by Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and France’s National Front Leader Marine Le Pen to defend their nation-states against the EU are grist to Putin’s mill”.
Logically, this shifting geopolitical context and growing domestic threat more or less everywhere in the Union should make European political “leaders” cut right to the chase, have the European Council urgently assess the threats that are growing at the Union’s external borders and, indeed, within the EU and provide themselves with the means to address these various threats effectively. Will the European Council show that it is up to the task facing it? Will it be able to put the electoral concerns of the coming weeks on hold and deliver an effective response to the major challenge facing the European Union? If not, it will deliver the definitive proof that the “absolute monarch” slated by Sylvie Goulard is, indeed, “ineffective” and that “in using Europe for their own purposes, national leaders consolidate their power but serve neither Europe nor the national interest”. It might be useful, therefore, for civil society to remind this collective monarch that, one hundred years ago, the February revolution led a Tsar to abdicate, so that, as far as possible, an October revolution may be avoided. A revolution, let there be no doubt, that would be no less hazardous than the one in 1917.
(Original version in French by Michel Theys)