Fears about the EU falling apart are no more. The club will not break apart by accident. If anything, the EU is antifragile: it emerges sturdier from every crisis
An acceptance among Europe’s leaders and voters that the continent’s fate is bound together has been the main shift of the two years your departing columnist has spent writing this column. Residual objections to the idea melted during the pandemic. A long-standing refusal to issue common debt was reversed. Even the most sovereignty-obsessed governments, such as Poland’s, were happy to make theThat the problems facing individual countries required a continental response became obvious.
Part of the reason for the shift is simple: money. Supervision is the price for solidarity. In the summer of 2020, leaders signed off a recovery fund of €750bn paid for with common debt, with half of it given as grants rather than loans to needy countries. Dutch taxpayers’ money is spent in Italy; German cash is in Polish coffers. It is only natural that they pay attention to how it is spent.has been summoned before.
Being stuck together brings problems, of course. Troublesome members, such as Poland, have no intention of leaving. Britain pursued a clean Brexit, ripping up the rules that bound it to the continent; Poland is opting for a dirty remain, hanging around and ignoring strictures it does not like. Grinding out consensus is the only option. The flipside is that bad behaviour can no longer be ignored.
finds itself resolving whether banning a headscarf in a business is a defence of secular values, or an assault on religious freedom. At a summit this summer leaders gave Viktor Orban a tongue-lashing for proposing a homophobic law. It is precisely because they are stuck together that feelings run so high. A family fight is always more painful than one with colleagues.
Those outside the community have an even rougher time. Talk of “Western” values has been replaced by “European” ones. Leaders such as Emmanuel Macron play up transatlantic splits. The differences between Europe and America are so large, he suggests, that they are best thought of as separate civilisations with distinct worldviews, whether on capitalism or. A club that was once evangelical is now defensive.