While Europe can legitimately celebrate the past, it cannot escape the serious challenges that lie in the future
May 9 is the 60th anniversary of a proposal submitted by French statesman Robert Schuman for the creation of a united Europe. This was a project that he claimed was indispensable for the maintenance of peace in a continent that was just emerging from a half century of carnage. Some 90 million people were killed in Europe directly as a result of warfare during that period. From this perspective there is little doubt that what came to be known as the “Schuman Declaration” has proved to be an astonishing success. Europe has prospered and enjoyed the kind of protracted peace that 60 years ago would have been unimaginable.
But the call for 60th birthday for reflection on the past and on the legacies that will be left for future generations.
Europe’s rise as a global power began in 1492 when Christopher Columbus set out with a small fleet from Palos de la Frontera, near Huelva, in Andalusia, Spain. The ensuing “discovery” of America inaugurated the Age of Empire, as successive European powers — Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, Britain and France — embarked on their colonising odysseys across the world. What had hitherto been a remote and backward region of the Eurasian continent thus began its inexorable rise. Following the Enlightenment, the Industrial and French revolutions, and the colonisation of vast parts of the world, by 1900, Europe was at the apogee of its global power. Then disaster stuck. In more recent decades with the establishment of the European Union (EU), Europe has sought to reassert a global role.
How fitting it is therefore, that it is Spain that once again serves to underline a new departure for Europe. But while 600 years ago it was Europe’s global ascent that was signalled, the latest turn of events may mark its global descent. The symmetry is furthered by the fact that while Europe’s ascent began with the discovery of America, the descent is illustrated by an American slight to Europe.
US President Barack Obama’s refusal to attend the planned EU-US Summit in Spain on May 24-25 has European leaders smarting at the snub. But in the eyes of many non-Europeans — and those of discerning Europeans — it is merely a recognition of the realities of these turbulently transformative times.
Ironically, it is just as the EU has expanded to incorporate 27 member states, including the ones hitherto under Soviet rule, that it is being relegated to an increasingly small part on the world stage.
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There have been some notable achievements, especially the single market, the expansion of membership and the introduction of the Euro.
But it is other forces that may ultimately prove more decisive. Europe’s impotence in the face of the disintegration and carnage of the former Yugoslavia, especially the war in Bosnia, was an early and vivid illustration of its incapacity to get its act together. If in the 1990s, in the Balkans the Americans had to be called in, a decade later, as the Bush administration envisaged its foolhardy invasion of Iraq, Americans should have been restrained. Yet the deep divisions between Britain and Italy on the one hand and France and Germany on the other over the Iraq war were a strident signal of Euro-confusion.
European leaders have come around to accepting the fact that the EU will never be able to rival the hard power of the US. With the failure of the (2000) Lisbon Agenda whereby the EU aspired to “become by 2010 the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion”, many European leaders have also become resigned to the fact that the EU may be losing out as a global economic power.
The rapid rise of the emerging economies of Asia is challenging and probably, if many forecasts are to be believed, will eventually eclipse the European economic power.
The global economic crisis has only served to highlight this shift in the balance of power from West to East. While Europe continues to struggle to wrench its economy out of recession, while also facing the Greek and possibly other sovereign debt risks, the major Asian economies are growing briskly, demonstrating an adaptability to change and challenges that the EU sorely lacks.
The crisis engendered a clear need for a major adjustment in global economic governance. But, intra-European parochial squabbling has prevented the EU, despite it representing the world’s largest economy, from emerging as one big force with one big voice. Thus, at the G20 summits not only did all the original EU G7 members (France, Germany, Italy and the UK) insist on being present, but eventually had their numbers increased to include the Commission, Spain and the Netherlands.
The behaviour of the European powers belies European intentions. While the world was undergoing the profoundest transformation it has seen in centuries, perhaps as far back as the “discovery” of America in 1492, the EU was in the process — initially via a proposed constitution, then, after it having been rejected, through a Treaty, signed in Lisbon — of engaging in a lot of unproductive navel-gazing.
The much-beleaguered Lisbon Treaty came into force on December 1, 2009. The scale of the political capital that was expended on pushing it through was justified by the argument that through Lisbon, Europe would finally have that elusive single voice with which to speak on the world stage.
But within the first few weeks of the Treaty having come into effect, much cold water was poured on these hopes with the unfolding of the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. The mission of leading and delivering the planet from the perils of global warming had become integral to both how Europe perceived itself and wanted to be perceived by the rest of the world.
Copenhagen was a mortal blow to European prestige. Not only did the EU have no influence on the outcome, it was ignored. As a deal between the United States and the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) countries was struck, Europe was left out in the cold. This was a raspberry that has left Brussels with burning cheeks.
So, while the EU at 60 can legitimately celebrate the past, it cannot escape the serious challenges that lie in the future. At present, Europe seems headed for a steady decline. This is true of its hard power, its economic power, and its demographics: In 1900, Europeans corresponded to 24 per cent of world population, by 2000, that figure had more than halved and it is expected to halve again by 2050.
But Europe’s decline need not be total; it could occur with a degree of dignity and it could retain influence and leadership in global affairs. But it needs rejuvenation. It needs a vision that will engage the Europeans who will be 60 in 2070. It needs the spirit of discovery and innovation of Christopher Columbus.
In the meantime, Obama is correct in not attending the Spanish summit. Only if and when the EU is able to speak with one dynamic voice to its global partners will it be a credible interlocutor. Hopefully, Obama’s ‘slap’ in the European face might serve as a wake-up call.
Co-author Jean-Pierre Lehmann is a professor of international political economy at IMD, Lausanne