Europe After Brexit

 

EU dominoesThe British vote to leave the European Union has triggered a debate — or as Spiegel puts it, a raging power struggle — in the rest of Europe about the proper way to respond. The leaders of Europe are divided, first, about how uncompromising the EU should be in negotiating the terms of the British exit:

For those in favor of a strong and powerful EU, for those who always saw the UK as a bothersome obstacle in their path, the British withdrawal process can’t proceed fast enough. Plus, French President Hollande and others want to use Britain as an example to show the rest of Europe how bleak and uncomfortable life can be when one leaves the house of Europe. Hollande, of course, has good reason for his approach: The right-wing populist party Front National has threatened to follow Cameron’s example should party leader Marine Le Pen emerge victorious in next year’s presidential elections. European Commission President Juncker wants deeper EU integration. German Chancellor Merkel does not.

The even more important question is what the European Union is to become. Is the lesson of Brexit that the remaining states must pursue a closer union, or is it that they must return powers from Brussels to national governments? Both answers make sense. It’s clear that the EU as presently constituted isn’t strong enough to deal with crises of the kind Europe has faced in the past decade. It’s also clear that it’s strong enough to alienate a significant portion of Europe’s population.

For Germany, handling this deftly is a matter of national survival. Germany exports nearly half of its GDP to the rest of Europe. It must at all costs preserve the free trade area. If Britain leaves without consequences, other countries might follow suit. This will not be a disaster for Germany if the free trade area is preserved. But if tariff barriers go up — as Marine Le Pen advocates, for example — and a trade war ensues, it would be a grave threat to Germany’s prosperous and stable postwar existence.

And from this follows the big question: Without the EU as a mechanism for peacefully channeling German energy and ambition, would the postwar peace of Europe at risk? Anyone who says, “Don’t be silly, of course it wouldn’t be” should not be so confident. To say that is to confuse the state of Europe as we’ve mostly known it in our lifetimes with Europe’s natural state. As far back as we have records, Europe has been, mostly, at war. To argue that this could never again happen on the Continent is to ascribe to the theory that humanity learns from experience. Perhaps it does. Or perhaps it only learns for a few generations, and then forgets.

The psychological impact of this vote shouldn’t be underestimated. Many Ricochet members, I’ve noticed, see Brexit as a cause for celebration. For many in Europe, however, it marks the end to what they have long understood to be a project for European peace. Accounts such as this are common:

It was only as I stepped onto Bonn’s underground that I realized I hadn’t gone by bike – my thumb going into overdrive as I frantically scrolled through the latest news. Sardined into the early morning tube, I suddenly heard a little “Scheiße” over my shoulder. Turning round, a burly German in his 50s nodded at my phone. “Sorry,” he said, with an awkward smile. My eyes began to well up – not for the first time that morning, and most certainly not the last.

Working in an international newsroom comes, naturally, with its fair share of devastating news: bombings, terrorist attacks, plane crashes, natural disasters. But never have I experienced such a somber mood as on Friday. “It’s not as if someone’s died,” I later saw someone tweet. The heavy weight in the newsroom said different.

There is a good deal of sadness and fear in Europe right now. This continent doesn’t trust itself, and for good reason.

Good intentions, at least, preside on both sides of the power struggle. The goal is somehow to put a stable, peaceful, tolerant, and prosperous Europe back together again; the debate is about how to achieve this. Both camps see Brexit as a deeply disturbing warning that the EU must change; both see it as an opportunity to change it. But on one side are the protagonists of “more Europe.” They include European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Parliament President Martin Schulz. On the other are the majority of Europe’s heads of state and government, led by Angela Merkel. Drearily but predictably, Europe’s bureaucrats believe — probably earnestly — that the solution lies in giving them more power. Europe’s individual heads of state and governments think the solution lies in giving them more power.

“The next weeks will be decisive,” said French President François Hollande. “Europe must show its solidity, its solidarity, its capacity to propose initiatives for and with Europeans.”

Continental Europe’s center-left, unlike Britain, had a plan for the Brexit contingency: It drew up blueprints for a more federalist Europe with a common budget and much deeper political integration. Before the polls, Germany’s SPD wrote a position paper, called “Re-Founding Europe,” which it published immediately upon receiving news of the British vote. It’s a direct challenge to Merkel’s policies. Europe, says the paper, needs the courage to “risk something grander.” Schulz, though, like Juncker, wants to transform the Commission into a “true European government.”

Now, before you say, “Who asked Schulz?” — he and Juncker were elected, following months of campaigning on this very platform.

The Democratic Deficit: A Quick Detour

Let’s take a quick detour here. I’ve noticed that many members of Ricochet believe that the European Union is essentially undemocratic and unaccountable, and indeed, many in Europe feel the same way. It’s worth asking why so many feel this.

This charge is often made in bad faith. The EU is at least as democratic than its member states, and in the case of Britain more democratic; after all, Britain still maintains an unelected and hereditary peerage. Any basic constitutional change in the EU requires unanimous consent from all 27 member states, followed by domestic ratification in accordance with that state’s constitution. This is a more exigent threshold for constitutional change than in any other modern democracy.

Before it can be placed on the agenda, legislation in Brussels has to secure — seriatum — consensual support from national leaders in the European Council; a formal proposal from a majority of the Commission; a two-thirds majority of weighted member state votes in the Council of Ministers (in practice, a consensus); absolute majorities in the European Parliament (which is directly elected); and transposition into national law by national bureaucrats or parliament, all of whom are elected or appointed in keeping with national customs and laws. It’s in fact impossible for Brussels to legislate secretly, quickly, or in the interests of a single narrow group, which can be said of no other extant Western democracy. It makes much more sense to criticize the EU for being ineffectual than for being undemocratic. It is ineffectual because it is too democratic. The threshold of consent required for achieving anything of significance is too exigent.

Nearly every critical EU decision-maker – national leaders, national ministers, European parliamentarians, national parliamentarians – is directly elected. Any European citizen can vote his or her representative out of the European parliament. European law is then translated into domestic law by parliamentarians who, in turn, can be voted out. The only actors in the legislative process who aren’t directly elected, or directly responsible to someone who is, are the European Commissioners and their officials — and the Commission’s power has steadily declined in recent decades; except in a few regulatory areas, such as competition policy, its authority is weak, and its ex ante agenda control has been overtaken by the European Council, which is directly elected. Control over amendments and compromises has been assumed by (directly-elected) European Parliamentarians.

1956-tanks-budapest_56_06 Hungary, 1956. The difference between the Soviet Union and the European Union should be obvious.

It is true that some decision-making bodies are insulated from direct democratic control: the European Central Bank, the European Court of Justice, competition authorities, trade negotiators, and fraud investigators. But this is true of every Western democracy. National governments customarily insulate these functions from popular pressure, too. That’s what’s meant by an “independent” judiciary and an “independent” central bank. The independence of both is vital to their legitimacy.

To liken the EU to the USSR or other totalitarian regimes is grotesque. Every member of the EU willingly signed on to the project, with many states voluntarily undertaking huge democratizing reforms to meet the accession criteria, reduce their state sectors, and strengthen their democratic institutions. Those who liken the EU to the Soviet Union either know nothing about the EU or are engaged in a denial of the Soviet Union’s crimes. The photo to the right, above, shows what happened to Hungary when students there declared they no longer wanted to be in the Soviet Union. By contrast, Hungary held a referendum on joining the EU on April 12, 2003; 83.8 percent voted in favor. Hungary’s admission was celebrated with fireworks, street parties, and the Ode to Joy. See the photo below. Even as Britain voted to leave, the Western Balkan nations were impatiently pounding on the door, eager to be let in.

515e0601a8d7da386ebfef32cf1915c2 Hungary joined the EU after an overwhelming majority of Hungarians voted to do so.

But if this is so, why do so many people feel it’s undemocratic? Uncharitably, one could say that people think this because they’re too lazy to look up how it works. It is also because national politicians tend to blame the EU for their policy failures, so better to avoid suffering the electoral consequences. The Leave campaign, for example, blamed Britain’s housing crisis and the NHS shortfall on the EU. But these problems devolved from national policy, not from the EU, and neither problem will be rectified by withdrawing from it. Indeed, the NHS will have a critical staffing shortage without EU employees.

Likewise, many of the charges of “absurd EU over-regulation” are fantasy. Some poor bureaucrat in Brussels compiled a table of Euromyths; the list is extensive. No, it isn’t true that the EU funds African acrobats and trapeze artists. No, it’s not true that the EU has banned bendy bananas. But clearly something has given rise to the widespread sense that EU law is alien and suffocating.

The answer to the question, “Is there a democracy deficit?” is a matter of definition and fact. But no matter the definition or fact, it matters that people believe it to be so, even if it isn’t factually accurate. Politicians must attend to what people believe.

The deeper problem, I suspect, is not a democratic deficit but an insufficiency of power. The European Parliament doesn’t represent an EU State, because that state doesn’t exist. It doesn’t represent individual EU members; they have their own parliaments. So who does the EU Parliament represent? Europeans generally. Everyone and no one. Like almost everything else in the EU, the Parliament is neither national nor truly supernational, the first because its national affiliations are so diluted, the second because there is no European state to which it owes allegiance and for which it acts.

Nor does the EU Parliament have the proper powers of a democratic parliament. The Council of the European Union, which sits in the EU Parliament, is not elected by the Parliament but by member states. It’s the transitivity of voting (Citizen X votes for Hollande who votes for Schultz therefore X has effectively voted for Schultz) that results in the widespread sense that there is insufficient accountability. Parliament and the Council in turn appoint the enormous cadre of unelected civil servants and elect the members of the EU Council, which can’t on its own initiate legislation. That must be undertaken by the EU Commission, whose president is in turn selected by the EU Council and whose members are approved (not selected) by Parliament. Parliament has no true right to dismiss or even to review members of the EU executive branch.

Still more significant: Real power in the EU is held by its permanent cadre of civil servants, who make the laws and the regulations, and by shifting alliances among EU heads of state. It’s France, Germany, and Italy for the moment; but during the pile-up on Greece it was France and Germany with an assist from Spain. This is not a problem that will be solved by any nation’s withdrawal from the European Union, however. Europe has always been characterized by balance-of-power coalitions, from the Grand Alliance in the wars against Louis XIV and Louis XV and the stately quadrille to the Concert of Europe to the Triple Alliance.

How Can They Fix It?

This detour, I hope, makes the nature of the problem clearer and suggests avenues for rectifying it. Some form of pooled or shared sovereignty seems to me a necessity for Europe. No single European state can cope with such severe and transnational threats to European security on its own. Agreements for collective defense are bound to be signed anyway, whether under the EU aegis or by means of separate treaties. It makes perfect sense for Europe to have a common foreign, defense, and trade policy. The United States is overstretched and greatly resentful of the European defense burden. Leading politicians of both major American parties charge Europe with freeloading. Any responsible European defense planner must see that this has long-term implications.

What remains of the EU needs to secure its borders, maintain internal and external security, undertake a rational shared strategy to cope with inward migration, and either complete the EMU or abandon the Euro. Absent a common policy, Europe can’t possibly hope to cope with these challenges and security threats. All of this is long overdue; and it’s true that without Britain to hold it back, it’s easier to imagine solutions.

All of this is ultimately for Europe to decide, not us. But the United States has a massive interest in European stability and security, and we should be involved, diplomatically, in representing this interest. That’s why it vexes me that for some reason, American conservatives seem eager to see the EU dissolved. This is not at all obviously in our interest, although it’s in our interest to see the EU reformed so that it doesn’t dissolve, or to see it replaced by another mechanism for European economic and security cooperation. Doug Sanders makes this point in the Globe and Mail:

You might think [from the rise of isolationism in US and Brexit] that barrier building and isolationism are naturally, and perhaps rationally, conservative responses – a rejection of a liberal elite’s international cosmopolitanism and an embrace of national self-security. Yet there is nothing ideologically inevitable or politically rational: It is an artifice of electoral politics, created by opportunistic politicians who could just as reasonably make the opposite case.

That was apparent in the runup to Britain’s vote on its European membership, which was triggered by a devastated economy, an angry population and a deeply divided governing party. After an ugly campaign in which the tabloid press denounced the Leave campaign as “doctrinaire Marxist socialism” and all major parties supported Remain, almost 70 per cent of British voters voted to stay in Europe. Yes, we’re talking about the 1975 referendum on whether Britain should stay in the political and trade bloc that would become the European Union. It was virtually the same referendum as last week’s, with the same arguments – except left and right were precisely reversed.

Europe’s insurgent parties, from hard left to far right, are now poised to challenge the basic tenets of the European consensus. They are broadly sceptical about the EU, resent the United States, and prefer Putin’s Russia. They want borders closed, migration low, and trade protected. Sinn Fein has called for a vote on reunifying Ireland and Northern Ireland. The Scottish National Party is poised to demand a second independence referendum. The National Front in France, the PVV in the Netherlands, the AFD in Germany, Lega Nord in Italy, and the FPO in Austria have all called for referendums in their countries. But no one would be well-served by the fracturing of Europe into mini-states run by nationalists or communists who would quickly wreck Europe’s economies.

The coming months will be critical. The relationship between the European Union and its member states can — and must — be reconsidered. Whatever the causes of the perception of a democratic deficit, it must be fixed. And the US should help. This is one of the rare times and places where skillful American diplomacy could make all the difference. Sadly, I’m not sure whether we’re apt to see this clearly.

Anyway, please contribute, and I’ll keep writing about it.

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  1. Claire Berlinski, Ed. Member
    Claire Berlinski, Ed.
    @Claire

    Percival:Has it occurred to anyone that when any member country balks, the reaction of the powers that be is to beat the offender over the head with the only part of the entire enterprise that ever functioned as intended?

    Yes, it has, and I think the criticism of this is entirely warranted. The currency union was a disaster, and it would be a disastrous mistake for the EU to punish Britain pour encourager les autres. That said, politicians in the EU are under great popular pressure to do so — pressure that I think they’ll probably ignore, first, because it would be wrong, and second, because it would be in no one’s interest. So this is a case where “more democracy” would lead to terrible results.

    • #91
  2. Claire Berlinski, Ed. Member
    Claire Berlinski, Ed.
    @Claire

    J Climacus: It was the monarchical/fascist nation state that failed, and since that scourge was eliminated after WW2,

    See my longer comment, above, about the EU accession criteria. I think you’re correct to say this, but I think you’re underestimating the degree to which the EU has been a democratizing force. An imperfect one, but not a negligible one.

    • #92
  3. Claire Berlinski, Ed. Member
    Claire Berlinski, Ed.
    @Claire

    iWe:I called you out on a misstatement: that bendy bananas were not banned. You should admit the error.

    They weren’t. Or at least, the regulation banned “misshaped” bananas, but the standards are pretty much exactly what every individual state had and has. (Has anyone ever seen a banana that doesn’t bend, by the way?)

    • #93
  4. Eric Hines Inactive
    Eric Hines
    @EricHines

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.:

    Eric Hines:

    This is part and parcel of their hektoring of Luxembourg for competing successfully unfairly with the rest of the EU in tax policy.

    We have antitrust legislation in the US, too. You can argue that this is not a valid application of antitrust law — I don’t know; I know nothing about the case — but I don’t see antitrust law as inherently dictatorial.

    The EU didn’t have, and didn’t press, an anti-trust beef.  Their beef was that the nations’ tax laws–along with Ireland’s (recall the hoo-raw over their low corporate taxes drawing too many businesses to Irish jurisdiction)–were too low and must be raised.

    Full stop.

    To the extent this was an unfair competition beef (the heart of an antitrust beef), there were more than one solution to the competitive problem in the EU’s cases, whereas with an antitrust beef, there really is only one solution.  In the EU’s cases, the two solutions were to, one the one hand, require Spain, Luxembourg, and Ireland to raise their taxes/adjust their tax structure to match the competition losing nations’ rates/structures or have (allow, in the EU’s case of mandatory rates/structures set from the deep center) the competition losing nations lower their rates/adjust their tax structures to more effectively compete with Spain, Luxembourg, and Ireland.

    The anti-competitive EU, though, dictated which solution must be chosen.

    Eric Hines

    • #94
  5. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Eric Hines:

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.:

    Eric Hines:

    This is part and parcel of their hektoring of Luxembourg for competing successfully unfairly with the rest of the EU in tax policy.

    We have antitrust legislation in the US, too. You can argue that this is not a valid application of antitrust law — I don’t know; I know nothing about the case — but I don’t see antitrust law as inherently dictatorial.

    The EU didn’t have, and didn’t press, an anti-trust beef. Their beef was that the nations’ tax laws–along with Ireland’s (recall the hoo-raw over their low corporate taxes drawing too many businesses to Irish jurisdiction)–were too low and must be raised.

    Full stop.

    To the extent this was an unfair competition beef (the heart of an antitrust beef), there were more than one solution to the competitive problem in the EU’s cases, whereas with an antitrust beef, there really is only one solution. In the EU’s cases, the two solutions were to, one the one hand, require Spain, Luxembourg, and Ireland to raise their taxes/adjust their tax structure to match the competition losing nations’ rates/structures or have (allow, in the EU’s case of mandatory rates/structures set from the deep center) the competition losing nations lower their rates/adjust their tax structures to more effectively compete with Spain, Luxembourg, and Ireland.

    The anti-competitive EU, though, dictated which solution must be chosen.

    Eric Hines

    The United States of America is not perfect, ergo the EU is a good thing. Can’t you see that? Why do you keep bringing up these facts?

    • #95
  6. Bryan G. Stephens Thatcher
    Bryan G. Stephens
    @BryanGStephens

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.:

    iWe:I called you out on a misstatement: that bendy bananas were not banned. You should admit the error.

    They weren’t. Or at least, the regulation banned “misshaped” bananas, but the standards are pretty much exactly what every individual state had and has. (Has anyone ever seen a banana that doesn’t bend, by the way?)

    You miss the point. There is no reason for a regulation on the shape of bananas coming form the EU. It does not matter the actual form of the regulations, their very existence is an anti-liberty.

    • #96
  7. iWe Coolidge
    iWe
    @iWe

    Bryan G. Stephens:

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.:

    iWe:I called you out on a misstatement: that bendy bananas were not banned. You should admit the error.

    They weren’t. Or at least, the regulation banned “misshaped” bananas, but the standards are pretty much exactly what every individual state had and has. (Has anyone ever seen a banana that doesn’t bend, by the way?)

    You miss the point. There is no reason for a regulation on the shape of bananas coming form the EU. It does not matter the actual form of the regulations, their very existence is an anti-liberty.

    For my part, the point is rather simpler. Claire’s OP said that bananas were not banned. I quoted chapter and verse. Her reply is that the US does it, too.

    We will disagree about how beautiful Bureaucratic Brussels is. But Claire is not entitled to her own facts, or logical fallacies.

    • #97
  8. DialMforMurder Inactive
    DialMforMurder
    @DialMforMurder

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.:

    Eric Hines: why is it a good idea for there to be a Pan-Europe, or a Pan-West State?

    Since this seems to be the essence of the question people are asking, here’s my answer. First, European history is characterized by fratricide, with more devastating blood loss in each war up until the final act of suicide in the Second World War. The Westphalian state system failed in Europe. Going back to things the way they were is definitionally insane — doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

    An earlier commenter brought up the point that it’s not necessary for states to be united to keep them from going to war with each other. All that’s required is that the states be democracies. The degree to which that’s true isn’t entirely clear, but the point of the EU, among other things, was precisely to give states incentives to democratize, in the form of the Copenhagen criteria

    all those bloodbaths were the result of one provocator thinking they knew what was best for the whole continent. (Nazi Germany, The USSR, Napoleon, the ottomans, the Mongols), or if not the continent, at least their weaker next-door neighbour.

    theres no point comparing Europe with India, that’s an apples and oranges argument. You are trying to propose a “cure” for European ills that has historically proven time and again to cause the very bloodbaths you say you wish to avoid.

    • #98
  9. Eric Hines Inactive
    Eric Hines
    @EricHines

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: The Westphalian state system failed in Europe.

    I don’t agree.  It put an end to the prior system which had been constant warfare among nobility, not nations or even the feudal reaches, and between religion-held areas, and between the two groups, with the peasantry paying the price.

    It created the more stable nation-state system, and it laid the foundation for the final separation of church and state while withdrawing the church from the governance of the situation in this world.  That the nation-state system ultimately failed in Europe 250+ years after Westphalia, while it continued to succeed elsewhere says more, I think, about Europe than about the system.

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: The degree to which that’s true isn’t entirely clear, but the point of the EU, among other things, was precisely to give states incentives to democratize, in the form of the Copenhagen criteria.

    More directly, it gave States incentives to improve their own economic situations.  True, the EU requires certain trappings of democracy and even hopes those trappings will be taken seriously, but the economic improvements, in addition to making the lives of the people involved better, also improve the ability of the State to democratize.  The EU’s verbal push may have been for democratization (and I agree that in the beginning, the EU believed it, too), but the driver was that liberalizing of property rights and freeing up of competition as entry criteria.

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: There’s a lot of empirical evidence that using democratic criteria as a carrot to gain access to a regional trade bloc is democratizing. (ASEAN and MERCOSUR, for example). And there’s a lot of evidence that regional trade agreements reach their full potential when the political and ideological differences among participating countries are minimal and when member states coordinate monetary and fiscal policies.

    Absolutely.  But notice the centrality of free trade to all of that.  The trade and the economic situations that flow from it drag the political improvements along behind them.  That political lag is real, but so is the outcome nearly inevitable.  There’s no need to impose the politics from the top down, or to make the political criteria mandatory: economic entanglement drives that, does it at a pace the liberalizing culture can handle, and so does it much more permanently than saying, “Become a democracy on our model, and you can come play with us.”

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: when the political and ideological differences among participating countries are minimal and when member states coordinate monetary and fiscal policies.

    Indeed.  Others and I have been on about the breadth and depth of political and ideological differences among the EU’s constituent nations being so great the EU as constituted cannot succeed; there’s no need to repeat those comments here, except to repeat the conclusion: the ideological and political differences are too great.

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: it’s hugely advantageous to the individual members to be able to behave as a bloc in foreign policy.  …together, the EU is extremely powerful and prosperous.

    But the EU bloc has gotten too big and is much, much too inhomogeneous.  It has a measure of economic strength, perhaps stronger than Great Britain, or France, or Germany (or perhaps it’s those three are who give the EU its global economic strength); it is stronger than the rest of the constituents as individuals.

    Militarily?  Could be, but look at the difficulty it’s having raising an EU Army.  Look, too, at the difficulty of coalition military activity in general–from holding the thing together during WWII with those vastly disparate coalition members to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  Holding such a coalition together by requirement from the center–even an agreed and subscribed-to center–is even harder.  See, for an example of how well that works, our Articles of Confederation and how that almost cost us our War of Independence and then our subsequent independence.  It’s why we have a Constitution, a constitution concept which many of the EU’s constituent nations explicitly rejected in popular referenda.

    Politically powerful?  It was helpless in the war following the dissolution of Yugoslavia (although, it’s true enough that that began as the EU was forming, but even in extremis, the EU hid behind a NATO that was useless until the US came in; the EU refused to act on its own recognizance.  And this powerful political union that is the EU has meekly, timidly stood by while Russia invaded and partitioned Georgia and Ukraine, and it continues to cower when member States are attacked with cyber war and actively threatened with nuclear war by that same Russia.

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: [anonymous’s argument]: The cultural differences between southern and northern Europe are too great; there’s no way these different states can ever function as a single state. But that’s a different question from, “Why would it be advantageous?” The answer to that is, “For exactly the reasons a union was advantageous for the thirteen original colonies.”

    The cultural differences are too great, and that answers the question of Why would it be advantageous?  It would not be, precisely because of those differences. The 13 States reasons don’t exist in Europe, but their contrary do.

    Political union tighter than the Articles worked for us because the 13 States constituent to the Articles all thought fundamentally alike–the primary reason such a union was advantageous for those 13 States.  Political union–a PanEurope nation-state–cannot work precisely because there is no pan-European political, economic, philosophical confluence of fundamental beliefs.

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: As for it being impossible, I think there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that’s correct, but I don’t think it’s necessarily so.

    Take smaller steps.  Three or four currency unions, with a free trade zone among those three or four, would be a good start.  From there, let each currency union pursue (or not) political integration at its own pace, and let the free trade economic entanglements set the framework for larger currency unions (or not) and further political integration (or not).

    The EU took too large a step and tried it by fiat from the center (yes, joining was voluntary, but…).  From that there was no opportunity for any of those or nots to halt the process, or even to interrupt it to let reality catch up to the dream.  (And in fairness to the EU, the Greeks lied about their economic progress, and the EU didn’t find out about it until after accession.)

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: I don’t think that it’s inherently more nuts for Italy and, say, Sweden to be part of the same union than it was for the northern and southern states to be part of the same union, or for Anglophone Canada and Québec to be part of the same union.

    I can’t speak for Canada and its situation with Quebec, but in our case, even the North and South thought fundamentally alike, differing only in who was a man.  Given a man, though, there was very close alignment in political philosophy.  And it took a war to begin to settle the question of who was a man.

    In the end, it may be that Europe’s nations, however constituted or aggregated, simply have to accept that they’re too small to act wholly independently and must rely on alliances with others, especially with others stronger than they.  Even the US and the PRC have constraints that prevent wholly unfettered action.  But the Pacific Rim, for instance, absent aggression by a hegemon, are doing just fine without political union among them.

    Eric Hines

    • #99
  10. Eric Hines Inactive
    Eric Hines
    @EricHines

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.:

    Percival:Has it occurred to anyone that when any member country balks, the reaction of the powers that be is to beat the offender over the head with the only part of the entire enterprise that ever functioned as intended?

    Yes, it has, and I think the criticism of this is entirely warranted. The currency union was a disaster, and it would be a disastrous mistake for the EU to punish Britain pour encourager les autres. That said, politicians in the EU are under great popular pressure to do so — pressure that I think they’ll probably ignore, first, because it would be wrong, and second, because it would be in no one’s interest. So this is a case where “more democracy” would lead to terrible results.

    That popular pressure comes in two flavors: one is to push the politicians to punish the Brits, and the other is to resume their own push to go out from the EU and a resulting pressure on the politicians to punish to keep these quiet.

    If anything that looks like punishment occurs, look for the second flavor to get stronger.

    Eric Hines

    • #100
  11. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Kate Braestrup: Arizona Patriot said: It seems to me that if people are going to abandon their national identity, they need to have a capital-C “Cause” to which they transfer their allegiance

    Restraining Germany isn’t much of a Capital C Cause if Germany is one of the member states. How dispiriting for the Germans it must be to know that the point of the EU is to make sure they don’t freak out, express their innate Germanness, and start murdering Jews again…

    If, as Thatcher said, the European countries were formed by history and the U.S. was formed by philosophy, either Europe allows history to form it into whatever it is going to be or Europeans come up with a philosophy inspiring enough to trump history. “Don’t let the Germans wreck everything” doesn’t sound like quite enough.

    Now, if the Germans should actually start wrecking stuff…then you might see all the other countries Unite “most ricky-tick” as my Vietnam-era veteran Dad used to say. War does seem to push history along…actual war, that is, not just potential war.

    • #101
  12. James Gawron Inactive
    James Gawron
    @JamesGawron

    Claire,

    I will make one last parting comment on this. To imagine that the Executive Branch of Government can have no direct democratic link to the people, either through direct election as in a Presidency or through a parliamentary majority as in a Prime Minister, is simply not representative democracy. To imagine that the Legislative Branch of Government has not the sole power to write legislation, is simply not representative democracy.

    We have had these two aspects to our successful representative democracy for over 200 years. However, since WWII we have suffered from a defect. The third branch the Judicial Branch, although appointed by the Executive and Confirmed by the Legislative, has an insulated lifetime term. This has produced a Supreme Court too far from the consent of the governed. My remedy for the undemocratic Supreme Court is to allow a Legislative Branch override of their decisions.

    This would be very simple. In any SCOTUS decision an eligible minority opinion is registered. (Eligible minority opinion would require two Justices in concurrence.) At any time, a super-majority of both houses of Congress could vote to install the eligible minority opinion and remove the majority court opinion. This would bring the Supreme Court into line with the United Will of the People (Kant) or government with the consent of the governed (the Declaration).

    The EU at a minimum, desperately needs democratic reform to maintain its legitimacy. The EU should immediately institute an elective process for their Executive Branch, either parliamentary or Presidential. The EU should immediately give its parliament sole power to write and pass legislation.

    If the EU does not make these reforms there is little hope for its future. Global Governance is a fancy name for political regression to a Feudal system of government. This is unacceptable.

    Regards,

    Jim

    • #102
  13. Skyler Coolidge
    Skyler
    @Skyler

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: First, European history is characterized by fratricide

    An interesting characterization of the Germans’ relationship with their enemies in the 1930’s and 1940’s.

    • #103
  14. Eric Hines Inactive
    Eric Hines
    @EricHines

    Skyler:

    Claire Berlinski, Ed.: First, European history is characterized by fratricide

    An interesting characterization of the Germans’ relationship with their enemies in the 1930’s and 1940’s.

    It’s an accurate characterization, notwithstanding a carefully selected, narrow slice of history.

    Germany itself is the result of fraticidal…combination…of a myriad principalities, city-lettes, fiefdoms, and the like.

    Eric Hines

    • #104
  15. The Reticulator Member
    The Reticulator
    @TheReticulator

    Concluding paragraph from David Stockman’s post, The EU Isn’t About Free Trade — It’s About Control:

    A friend noted with regard to these post-Brexit days that “divorce is so emotional”. And indeed, politicians like Mr Juncker and Mrs Merkel speak of the European Union as if it were a marriage or a family, to which one is bound by some transcendental duty. Perhaps it would be better to again return to the notion of federations as voluntary (and reversible) associations between friends, pursuing a (specified) common goal, and not as codependent marriages that get abusive as soon as one party wants to get a divorce.

    • #105
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