The EU looks like the Soviet Union in 1991 –
on the verge of collapse
In May’s European elections, anti-EU forces
will be on the rise. Those who want to preserve the union’s values must wake up
Tue 12 Feb 2019 15.12 GMTLast
modified on Thu 14 Feb 2019 14.15 GMT
Europe is sleepwalking into oblivion and its
people need to wake up before it is too late. If they don’t, the European Union will
go the way of the Soviet Union in 1991. Neither our leaders nor ordinary
citizens seem to understand that we are experiencing a revolutionary moment, that
the range of possibilities is very broad, and that the eventual outcome is thus
highly uncertain.
Most of us assume the future will more or less
resemble the present, but this is not necessarily so. In a long and eventful
life, I have witnessed many periods of what I call radical disequilibrium. We
are living in such a period today.
The next inflection point will be the
elections for the European parliament, in May 2019. Unfortunately, anti-EU forces will enjoy a competitive advantage. There are
several reasons for this, including the outdated party system in most European
countries, the practical impossibility of treaty change and the lack of legal
tools for disciplining member states that violate the principles on which the
EU was founded. The EU can impose its laws on applicant countries but it lacks
sufficient capacity to enforce member states’ compliance.
The antiquated party system hampers those who
want to preserve the values on which the EU was founded, but it helps those who
want to replace those values with something radically different. This is true
in individual countries and even more so in trans-European alliances. The party
system of individual states reflects the divisions that mattered in the 19th
and 20th centuries, such as the conflict between capital and labour. But the
cleavage that matters most today is between pro- and anti-European forces.
The EU’s dominant country is Germany, whose
dominant political alliance – between the Christian Democratic Union and the
Bavaria-based Christian Social Union – has become unsustainable. The alliance
worked as long as there was no significant party in Bavaria to the right of the
CSU. That changed with the rise of the extremist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). In last
September’s länder elections, the CSU’s result was its worst in more than six decades, and the AfD entered the
Bavarian parliament for the first time.
The AfD’s rise removed the raison d’etre of
the CDU-CSU alliance. But that alliance cannot be broken up without triggering
new elections that neither Germany nor Europe
can afford. And the ruling coalition cannot be robustly pro-European while
facing the AfD threat.
The situation is far from hopeless. The German
Greens have emerged as the only consistently pro-European party in the country,
and they continue to rise in opinion polls, whereas the AfD seems to have
reached its high point (except in the former East Germany). But now CDU/CSU
voters are represented by a party whose commitment to European values is
ambivalent.
In the United Kingdom too an antiquated party
structure prevents the popular will from finding proper expression. Both Labour
and the Conservatives are internally divided, but their leaders, Jeremy Corbyn
and Theresa May, respectively, are determined to deliver Brexit. The situation is so complicated that most Britons just
want to get it over with, although it will be the defining event for the
country for decades to come.
Collusion between Corbyn and May has aroused
opposition in both parties, which in the case of Labour is bordering on
rebellion. May has announced a programme to aid impoverished pro-Brexit Labour
constituencies in the north of England. And Corbyn is accused of betraying the pledge he made at Labour’s last
party conference to back a second Brexit referendum if he can’t trigger a
general election.
The chances that May’s deal will again be
rejected by MPs are growing by the day. That could set in motion a groundswell
of support for a referendum – or, even better, for revoking Britain’s article
50 notification.
Italy finds itself in a similar predicament.
The EU made a fatal mistake in 2017 by strictly enforcing the Dublin agreement,
which unfairly burdens countries, such as Italy, where migrants first enter the
EU. This drove its predominantly pro-European and pro-immigration electorate
into the arms of the anti-European League party and Five Star Movement in last year’s election. The previously dominant Democratic party
is in disarray. As a result, the many voters who remain pro-European have no
party to vote for. There is, however, an attempt to organise a united
pro-European list. A similar reordering of party systems is happening in
France, Poland and Sweden.
When it comes to trans-European alliances, the
situation is even worse. National parties at least have some roots in the past,
but these alliances are entirely dictated by party leaders’ self-interest. The
European People’s party (EPP) alliance is the worst offender – almost entirely
devoid of principles, as demonstrated by its willingness to embrace Hungarian prime minister Viktor
Orbán’s Fidesz party in order to preserve its majority and control the
allocation of top EU jobs. Anti-European forces may look good in comparison: at
least they have some principles, even if they are odious.
It is difficult to see how the pro-EU parties
can emerge victorious from the May elections unless they put Europe’s interests
ahead of their own. One can still make a case for preserving the EU in order
radically to reinvent it. But that would require a change of heart within the
EU. The current leadership is reminiscent of the politburo when the Soviet
Union collapsed – continuing to issue edicts as if they were still relevant.
The first step to defending Europe from its
enemies, both internal and external, is to recognise the magnitude of the
threat they present. The second is to awaken the sleeping pro-European majority
and mobilise it to defend the values on which the EU was founded. Otherwise,
the dream of a united Europe could become a
21st-century nightmare.
• George Soros is the chairman of Soros
Fund Management and of the Open Society Foundations
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