politics

Is the EU a failed experiment?

Hoover Institution
New York University
Genesis
Response
Penultimate
Finale

Bruce Thornton

Hoover Institution

April 3rd, 2021
Professor Cabral highlights the economic boons that have have followed greater European integration. After all, it originated in trade agreements like the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community. That integration indeed benefited Europe's economies, giving them greater freedom of movement for capital, services, and goods.
If the Eurocrats had stopped with economic integration, such success might have continued. The creation of a common currency, however, was imprudent, tying the northern, richer members to the poorer south, each of which retains its own culture concerning work and thrift, as well as national economic policies.
These tensions exploded in 2008-9. Germany's outsized wealth and power, and the dependence of countries like Greece on largess from Germany, whose citizens were loath to finance people they saw as spendthrifts, sparked bitterness and talk of a Grexit. "Europeans" once again became Germans and Greeks. That problem of north vs. south still festers, and has been exacerbated by the pandemic and the failure to distribute vaccines.
But more consequential was the E.U.'s encroachment on matters of culture and national identity, and the attempt to create greater social and political integration. The place of Christianity in Europe, for example, has remained a flashpoint between ordinary citizens and the Eurocratic elite. Their "Christophobic" inclinations became obvious in 2009, when the demand to acknowledge Europe's Christian roots in the E.U. constitution was dismissed by some Eurocrats as "absurd" and a "joke"; or when Catholic philosopher Rocco Buttiglione was not allowed to be the commissioner of justice in the European Commission because of his traditionalist views on sexual identity and marriage.
As for the E.U.'s economies, they are chronically troubled by disparities among member states in terms of GDP, debt, deficits, overly intrusive regulation, and high unemployment. High taxes, particularly the regressive Value Added Tax, and expensive social welfare benefits likewise are drags on productivity and economic growth for the less affluent member states. Of course, E.U. millennials belonging to the cognitive elite, "who travel and work and live and form relationships across the continent," benefit from the E.U. But millions of ordinary and working class Europeans lack those opportunities—and cheap airfares are still unaffordable.
For now economic ills from the past like high inflation have been tamed. But at what cost? Can Germany and the northern states continue to bail out the south indefinitely? We know that without the economic power of Germany, the E.U. cannot last, especially since England, which had one of the E.U.'s richest economies, has left. The pandemic has worsened these threats, as lockdowns damaged economies like Italy's that were at risk before that catastrophe. The problem with the E.U. has always been the viability of its future, not the transient successes of the present.
Finally, I will return to the fundamental problem that has beset the E.U. from the start: What beliefs, values, and principles do these 27 distinct countries—with a large diversity of languages, customs, folkways, religious beliefs, and historical memories—share to bind them into a coherent, political community?
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