Unpalatable choices for an EU with shrinking options

Giles Merritt urges a rigorous re-think of Europe’s strengths and weaknesses to fuel debate on a streamlined EU suited to the new ‘Age of Disruption’.

Europe at last knows where it stands, both with the United States and globally. What it doesn’t yet know is where else to go, still less how to get there. It’s an urgent debate if Europeans are to reach a common stance in this Age of Disruption. Coalitions of the willing are so inherently fragile they are no substitute for a steelier new European Union.

Donald Trump’s tariffs and his rogue projection of US power – Ukraine, Gaza, Venezuela, possibly Greenland, perhaps Cuba and even Mexico and Colombia – shatter any remaining illusions Europe may have had about ‘the West’. Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia two decades ago was a subtler message, but disregarded by a Europe still denying its economic and geopolitical shrinkage.

The EU’s future is indisputably key to Europe’s wellbeing. Whether or not it can be re-fashioned and made fit for purpose will determine living standards and security for years ahead. Potential reforms range from tinkering at the edges to revolutionary change – either a Titanic-style rearrangement of the deckchairs or returning the EU to the dockyard.

The outlook is grim. Europe’s political leaders have never been so divided over the EU’s shape, size and powers. There’s so little consensus over key common policies that European solidarity may already be fatally weakened.

Four reform options are worth consideration: Each commands a degree of political support in some quarters but also deep-seated opposition. Together they offer a framework for discussion, so if a Europe-wide debate can somehow be orchestrated these choices could help bring the EU’s complexities into focus for the general public.

1. Change, but nothing drastic  
It’s the default position of those who argue for preserving political stability at all costs. Their mantra is ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’. They believe the EU institutions’ credibility would be undermined by all but minor reforms. Inertia is strengthened by fears that ambivalent public opinion in many EU member states risks tipping into outright hostility if the reform discussions of 30 years ago are resumed.

2. Reforms tailored to EU enlargement 
Decision-making has become increasingly awkward, slow and divisive since the ‘Big Bang’ enlargement to central and eastern Europe. The prospect of Balkan newcomers therefore raises thorny questions over majority decision-making and perhaps multi-speed ‘concentric circles’. Whether the Union should become more fragmented raises profound questions, yet these have a fairly marginal bearing on Europe’s geo-economic difficulties.

3. Re-calibrate the EU’s priorities
Which EU activities address crucial challenges, and which are legacy tasks ripe for spinning-off? ‘Mission creep’ affects the EU like any other organisation, so there’s a case for a review of which responsibilities should remain centralised and independent of national politics. If routine tasks could be coordinated between member states by advanced ITC communications, might a more streamlined EU be better placed to tackle the daunting new problems that confront Europe?

4.   Scrap and start again
It may be unrealistic to expect any institution or enterprise to objectively identify its own strengths and weaknesses, so perhaps only outsiders can do a radical job. The European Commission routinely reforms and renames its Directorates-General, but seldom satisfies external or internal critics. The EU’s institutional structure is a ramshackle, quasi-democratic arrangement born out of stop-go progress towards “ever-closer union”. Unthinkable maybe, but would a ‘scrap and build’ re-invention of the EU be less divisive than chronic tinkering?

Europe’s global decline leads policy experts to lean increasingly towards extreme solutions. Awareness that already in this century Europe has gone from level-pegging with the US to only two-thirds of its GDP has sparked calls for radical policies. Progressive europhiles thus join populist europhobes in their exasperation with the EU.

Europeans nevertheless enjoy social advantages and lifestyles that many Americans can only envy. At the same time, the digital, AI and quantum revolutions now underway risk leaving Europe so far behind that it may never recover.

As well as being able to deal with Washington, Moscow and Beijing on a firmer footing, a more streamlined EU needs to be better placed to introduce collective industrial policies and research drives that fully exploit the world’s richest single market.

The political character and, if it’s not too fanciful, the soul of the re-vitalised Union that might emerge from a Europe-wide discussion is anyone’s guess. Opposing views are so entrenched that such a debate could even sound the death knell of the European ‘project’. Economic stagnation, security weaknesses and growing geopolitical irrelevance make it plain, however, that the EU cannot remain where it is.

The views expressed in this Frankly Speaking op-ed reflect those of the author and not of Friends of Europe.