The European Community has always been a project led by the elites of its member states. For most of its history, outside Britain at least, it enjoyed popular support because it delivered growth and prosperity, especially in its early years. But the last two decades have seen a big change. The treaty that set up the single currency obliged all member states of the now European Union, with the exception of Denmark and Britain who had opted out, to adopt it once they met the economic criteria. For the sake of the political dynamic, the criteria for joining were sometimes fudged. The more fragile economies struggled, especially when, faced with economic downturn and unemployment, they were bound by exchange rates and interest rates better attuned to the stronger economies than to their own needs.
Over the same period, the EU welcomed in the newly liberated countries of eastern and central Europe. Their acceptance by the existing membership has been the supreme achievement of the European Union to date: a brilliant act of generosity in the interests of peace and stability. But it has been accompanied by migration from the new member states on a scale that few anticipated. That in turn has contributed to massive social change. The resulting tensions have combined to turn public opinion away from support of the European Union and its institutions.
None of us can know whether the European Union could survive the break-up of the single currency. It looks for now as if the departure of some members is more likely than the demise of the whole project. And it may yet be that the crisis will finally bring about the central political governance necessary to make the currency a success. But the pressures of national public opinion make such a dramatic breakthrough very problematic.
Oh please. The article says that the EU ‘affirms the nation state and constrains it.’ Constrains it yes, but affirms it? Our image of the EU in Britain is of a bloated, self-interested bureaucracy that completely without shame manipulates the nation states to get its own way. If you doubt that consider the Lisbon Treaty – when it became clear that this proto-constitution for Europe was being rejected by voters (France, the Netherlands, Ireland) the few times they got a chance to vote on it, the referenda were ignored, and after a cosmetic make-over it was announced that this was not, after all, a constitution (when up to that point it had been marketed as one). As for the suggestion that we will all go to war unless we bend to every decision of the Eurocrats … words associated with a basic human function occur to me.