The “geopolitical” fantasy
Von der Leyen has promised to lead “a geopolitical” European Commission. European leaders love to coin new phrases, raising the stakes from “an ever-closer Union,” to “a political union”, to Emmanuel Macron’s favourite “European sovereignty”. Now its Europe as a “geopolitical” force. The swagger of ‘the European Project’ is comforting because the substance is maddeningly elusive.
In her geopolitical crusade, von der Leyen has her eye on China. “We must define and enforce our interests in terms of China together as Europeans,” she pleaded in an interview with Die Zeit. “China gently ensnares us,” she said. “And that’s why we often overlook how consistently it pursues its goals and how cleverly.” She warned especially against entanglement in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a transcontinental infrastructure program reputed for trapping host countries in unsustainable debts owed to the Chinese.
But no one paid attention. The list of who have joined the BRI includes Austria, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Greece, Portugal, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Unity on this front finally collapsed when the Italians signed on to the BRI, in the hope that it will help their struggling economy upgrade infrastructure and expand exports to China.
The differences among European member states on strategic and policy issues is endless. Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform warns that France and Germany are increasingly operating unilaterally, each pursuing its national interest. “Germany,” he points out, “did not consult its EU partners over its support for the Nord Stream 2 Russian gas pipeline, although it will increase the EU’s dependency on Russian energy and cause tensions with the US.” On the contentious involvement of Huawei in European networks, Grant notes that “in March 2019, Merkel kept the French in the dark before saying that she would allow Huawei to compete for contracts in parts of Germany’s 5G network; she ignored the French view that Huawei was a potential security threat and that there should be a common EU response to the Chinese company.”
Macron believes what is good for France must also be good for Europe. He vetoed the start of the talks on North Macedonia’s accession to the EU, although that aspiring country had made a huge preparatory effort—including accepting a controversial change in name—to reach the threshold set for the talks. Macron’s veto came as a shock, especially to Germany because of its strategic interest in the Balkans. Macron also alarmed other member states with his surprise overture to Russia, hinting at a new relationship with the EU.
Together Macron’s nixing of the North Macedonia accession process and extending his hand to Russia added to the tensions between France and the Visegrad countries—the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. Macron has made it a habit to antagonise these countries. Right after he became president in May 2017, he pushed the European Commission to restrict the posting of Eastern European workers in France. These workers—such as the fabled Polish plumber—were a form of “social dumping,” Macron charged. Looking for political brownie points at home, Macron’s was a mean-spirited move since the numbers of posted workers is small in relation to the French labour force.
A fragmented continent in decline
Underlying this recurring drama on matters of high politics and policy is an unyielding reality: the EU is a confederation of states, just as the United States was after the War of Independence in 1776. By 1786, member states threatened to paralyse the newly-minted United States. Madison, a proud Virginian, wrote a history of confederations in which he mercilessly catalogued the bitter divisions that caused them to repeatedly blow up. Madison then teamed up with George Washington—and with zero-probability chances all falling their way—in March 1789, they helped install a federal government with coercive fiscal authority and absolute national defence responsibility under the U.S. constitution.
Von der Leyen airily talks of a United States of Europe. “All member states will have to be ready to contribute to deeper integration,” she says, without explaining why member states—deadlocked on fiscal, foreign, defence, and migration policies—would abandon their conflicting national interests to move forward on the path to greater integration.
Europeans emphatically steered away from a United States of Europe even in the shadow of the Second World War when the impetus to come together as a way of erasing the bloody memories was the greatest. The circumstances today are particularly inimical to such a goal—and likely to become steadily worse.
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Ashoka Mody | Radio Free (2020-02-21T19:06:51+00:00) The EU is in trouble and Ursula Von der Leyen is the wrong person to rescue it. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2020/02/21/the-eu-is-in-trouble-and-ursula-von-der-leyen-is-the-wrong-person-to-rescue-it-2/
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