INTERNATIONAL
Shaping Europe's global role I: Why the EU badly needs a new political narrative
Autumn 2010
Brussels' eurocrats bemoan the ingratitude of public opinion and even of Europe's voters. Yet Giles Merritt, Editor of Europe's World, says they themselves have dismally failed to explain what the EU stands for, and why it's so central to the futures of 500m Europeans
The European Union lacks a clear political narrative, and that's partly why public support for it is on the wane. It's not just a narrative for Europeans that matters; what's also needed is a clear and universally understandable message for world opinion.
The last few years have see Europe's reputation fall precipitously. From being the world's most widely admired political experiment enjoying widespread respect and a degree of leadership on policy issues with global impact like climate change and fighting Third World poverty, it has in the minds of many been brutally downgraded. Its new image is of a low-growth zone whose member governments have turned away from co-operation and are instead becoming a byword for sort-sighted beggar-thy-neighbour tactics imperilling the euro.
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It's not that simple, of course. It would be wrong to suggest that Europe has suddenly slipped from the ranks of leading nations and become a backwater. But it is certainly true that Europeans need to step back and take a long, hard look at themselves and at where on present trends they'll be 40 years from now.
Defining a new political narrative for Europe doesn't mean dreaming up a snappy slogan. What is needed is a clear definition of Europe's interests and also its responsibilities. There has to be a sense of purpose for a 21st century in which many of the odds will be stacked against Europe, but also a statement of the moral compass that will guide Europe's actions and, one hopes, its leadership.
The first step towards a narrative capable of replacing earlier rallying cries like "no more war" and "a single market and a single currency" is to set out Europe's interests. And because we're living in a world of accelerating change it's no use thinking that our goal must be to fight a rearguard defence of what we've got and what we stand for. To protect its interests in a world whose 2050 population now seems headed not for 9bn but more like 11bn, Europe needs to take a radically different tack to its present policies.
European policymakers still inhabit the 20th century, even though it's already as outdated and irrelevant as the 19th century. Close associates of the EU's top official, Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso, say their boss' main preoccupation is Europe's place in the world, but it's not true of the bureaucracy he heads. Brussels insiders know that the highest-flying eurocrats aim for jobs handling internal EU problems. The Union's external relations are a poor relation, witness the fact that even though Europe accounts for 53% of development aid worldwide (the U.S. less than 20%) there are only six people in the policy planning unit of the Commission's development arm. It's a discouraging basis for the EU's embryonic diplomatic service.
It would be unfair to put all the blame on Brussels. European "federalists" and others who believe that some sort of unification is vital have so far lost the debate over the EU's role. Public opinion understandably favours leaving democratic decisionmaking and therefore power at a familiar national level. The sorry result is that Europe is now in poor shape to advance its interests at a global level.
So what are these interests? They are mostly things that cannot be secured within the EU's borders, and certainly not those of its member states. Security is an obvious priority, and that means being able by economic rather than military means to defuse the tensions being created by exploding populations in poor countries around the world. The Arab world and Africa will be Europe's particular problems, where militant Islam will be matched by the runaway urbanisation of Africans whose number will by mid-century have gone from 800m today to two billion.
Just as important will be Europe's interests in terms of a global rulebook. Climate change and improved banking and financial regulation head the agenda at present, but before long there will need to be global agreement on access to resources ranging from hydrocarbons to minerals to agriculture. And now that it is markets not territories that are competed for, intellectual property rights as well as trade and investment must be governed by worldwide agreements.
We shouldn't despair over the European Union's paltry half-billion population in this difficult global environment, but we must adapt our thinking without delay. Europe's dominant position in many world markets means that for a while we will still have the clout to try and order the global agenda in ways that suit us. But so far the track record of EU governments has been merely to react to developments outside Europe, first by seeking consensus among themselves and then acting collectively once they've achieved agreement.
From now on, that won't be good enough. European policymakers are going to have to decide in advance what they want, and then push for it at a global level. The confusion that still surrounds Europe's fragmented and therefore weak representation at international fora like the UN Security Council, the IMF and World Bank and G20 and G8 is a major hurdle that national leaders need to be shamed into removing.
Until about 20 years ago the European Commission could lay claim to being the world's biggest think tank. Its officials produced a steady flow of new ideas that stimulated many of the giant strides made by the EU. Nowadays the inventive brains are outnumbered by the bean-counters, but that doesn't mean that Brussels and others should not re-create the heady atmosphere of the 1980s. Europe has to re-think its policy objectives, and that means that its member governments must also re-evaluate the EU itself. Too many seem content to say that with the death of the European Constitution and the weak compromise that is the Lisbon treaty they have slain the dragon of the "European superstate" and can for the next few years forget about re-designing their collective policymaking.
The EU narrative they must help write is that none of the steps to protect Europe's way of life can be taken nationally – neither militarily nor industrially. Policy areas like energy where concerted EU action has been hanging fire for many years will have to be tackled soon. And in financial and economic areas even the largest of the EU's trading nations will find that their dealings with Asia's tigers demand genuine European unity.
Some optimists say Europe's future isn't too gloomy. They argue that its share of global GDP will drop only a little, from 22% now to 17% in mid-century, and that by then it'll be a smaller slice of a much bigger cake. That's possibly true, but right now Europe has to tackle some very serious immediate problems as well as plan for some alarming future ones.
The short-term challenge is, of course, Europe's very disparate national economies. The eurozone crisis is not a passing phase but the symptom of a serious ailment. The €500bn safety net agreed as a response to the Greek debt crisis and the threat of similar ones in Spain, Portugal and Ireland is only going to buy time - perhaps three to five years. But it doesn't resolve the fundamental economic imbalances between the countries whose common currency is the euro. Only a fiscal union can do that, and tax is the sacred cow that the EU's sovereign governments resolutely refuse to discuss. The eurozone countries are therefore stuck in a place where they can't go back by scrapping the single currency, yet can't go forward unless they do what a big but unevenly distributed economy like the U.S. does and pool tax revenues to even things out.
The longer-term challenge for Europe is its demographics. It may be that the coming years will somehow see solutions to EU countries' daunting problems of lost competitiveness, poor innovation, shrinking manufacturing, inadequate education and growing shortages of manpower. But what there is no solution for its ageing. The average age of EU citizens will inexorably rise from about 38 now to over 50 by mid-century. That means a far smaller proportion of wage-earners in the European economy will have to support more and more "inactive" people. Coupled with the competition Europe is going to face from low-wage but increasingly well-educated countries, and the outlook seems bleak.
The advantages the EU can deploy are nevertheless considerable, providing its member governments pull in the same direction. Europe's position as the world's largest trade bloc with approaching 40% of all international commerce and the growing importance – eurozone crisis notwithstanding – of the euro as a reserve currency for central banks around the world, mean the EU can set the agenda for negotiating the new global rulebook just as much as the U.S.
The difference, of course, is that Washington acts decisively and Brussels does not. On the other hand, Europe occupies the moral high ground that America has to a large degree vacated, and the emphasis is going to be on establishing global economic and financial rules that will be seen as fairer. America's post-WW2 position as "world's most admired nation" has been badly dented by its adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, whereas Europe's leadership on climate change and on development aid could, if well handled, be the basis for a new moral authority.
So far, though, there has been little sign of this. And it's where the need for a new narrative kicks in. Europe isn't setting the pace in either the G20 or the G8 processes that are crucial to identifying the key chapters of a future global rulebook, and there is no sign so far that the EU and its heads of government have even begun to address these questions. The moment is ripe for Europe's political leaders to define what the EU's role must be, and why.
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