The final part of a three-part essay on the European Question and what Europe means, historically and today. Only by looking at the history of Europe as an idea can we properly contextualise the Europe we have today, and perhaps discern some insights from history on how to proceed with our project of unification.

A crisis occurs when the centre fails to hold – when the object is pulled apart. In this, we can understand the centre to mean the consensus. Europe, then, is as Monnet said, built on crises. Forever, Europeans have challenged the supposed consensuses and destroyed them; crises have forever shaped Europe. Although crises have shaped modern Europe, they have mostly taken place within a broader consensus, the most crucial one of all remaining unchallenged – that is, until now. The permissive consensus on the inherent right of a united Europe and the idea that there’s only one destination on this journey is one which has not been challenged throughout the last half of the 20th Century. Now, Europe faces the question of Quo Warranto; with that, the Union’s existence is being challenged, and it seems as though Europe may not survive it. This is a testament to the failure of manufactured consensus – a failure of democracy really, which requires dissent and debate as its lifeblood. This is why we are in Europe’s only real recent crisis, and one which will truly forge the Europe of my generation. Whether it survives, and in what form, we will have to see.

V. Old Europe, New Europe, Federal Europe

Guy Verhofstadt recently noted the atmosphere of Americans in Washington as they look to our sub-continent, “Wondering whether Europe has any life left in it”. It’s easy to see why in mind, given that we stand are beset by crisis, resurgent nationalism, crumbling neighbours and an ever-declining place in the world. Strangely, this is not the sense that many Europeans seem to have today, or at least, don’t seem willing to acknowledge. It seems to me that all of Europe is in the same place Britain is often said to be in – having lost its imperial role around mid-century, and having failed to find a new place in the world. When referring to place, this does not just reflect role, but also one’s image to the outside world and one’s own sense of identity. Europe has lost its identity and sense of itself, lost in the broader idea of ‘the West’, Globalisation and subjugation under the American imperium. Europe has always been the land of conflict: fundamentally between ideas, but spilling beyond that, between peoples and classes. This is what makes us so fundamentally different from America: unlike there, the liberal consensus was never the one of the majority in Europe. As democracy grew to encompass more and more of European society, liberalism as a political force only shrank in its support among the people. Certainly this is the case today, where liberal parties rarely hold a grip on a wide section of the electorate. Europeans have long looked for something not quite so bland and moderate. In Britain it took one election for the Liberals to be replaced by Labour as the main party of opposition, in 1922. This combativeness is at the heart of European culture and society, and in trying to temper our worst excesses, this core element has almost been forgotten.

The situation which Fossum & Menéndez outline in their writings is clearly an unsustainable settlement; with law pulling in the direction of utter homogeneity and the institutions continuing to form an ever more fragmented patchwork, Europe will be torn in two by these polarising forces. Underlying it all is Europa’s will to diverge from itself, which will rip any restrictive settlement apart in the end. Therefore, while the assessment of the problem is necessary, action is required before too long. We have already seen the seams of our seemingly peaceful consensus fray, with Brexit in 2016, rising nationalism across the continent and politics becoming increasingly lukewarm and even hostile to the European Project. We are no longer living the World of Yesterday. Stefan Zweig wrote about how in the early 20^th Century, the signs were quickly developing pointing to the crumbling of the old liberal order and the return of more radical elements to politics, bubbling up from under the pristine surface of consensus, established politics. It appears that we are seeing the exact same turn of events, and if we do not arrest this slide, they will overtake us completely and catapult Europe back into a place is far from expected to ever see again.

They say you don’t need to love the EU to love Europe. To start with, this seems to be the wrong way of looking at the picture: the EU is modern Europe. Of course, it’s not everything, but an end to the EU would mean an end to Europe as we know it. The current settlement is built entirely on the existence of the Union. Furthermore, the acceptance of a union and the acceptance of this union are not one in the same. I certainly don’t love the Europe of Offices that is the current EU; nevertheless, I have thought it necessary in the past for the survival of a truly peaceful Europe. Do I now believe we need the EU of today for a Europe of peace and transnational harmony? I don’t know. The Europe envisaged by Immanuel Kant, the Europe of peace, culture and commerce, is a far cry from the Europe of today, despite Bauman’s optimism; read Verhofstadt’s manifesto on where Europe should be headed (it represents where mainstream politics currently is on the main issues) to show you how we’ve diverged from Kant’s dream of a pacific federation. Jürgen Habermas makes it clear he does not see a federal state in our future, and believes, like Bauman did, that we in Europe will eventually stumble upon the answer leading us to a transnational and post-power political community of equals. But naturally he still hasn’t fleshed out ideas on how to realise such an entity. What are fleshed out though, are the paths that the Union could take which would destroy all of what Europe is at its heart, in its soul. This would be the greatest tragedy of them all.

In preserving diversity of culture and the dispersion of political power, it is not national diversity for which I’m arguing here. The continued presence of nations in Europe, and their power over our affairs, is precisely at the heart of the problem. Now their champions are once more rearing their ugly heads, it is clear they could not present more of a danger for Europe. Without the moderating influence of Europa United, our transgressive, dissenting way of life will be manipulated and used in the interests of the powerful to manufacture false difference and advance interests that are not ours. However, this is our fate, the fate that results from the disintegration of the Union, if we do not change course now. The conflicting, contradicting path of Europe pulling in different directions is not a sustainable state of affairs; this strange limbo between nationalist Europe and federal Europe without any sense of what we want or where we are going. The question becomes now however, one of since disintegration inevitably strengthens nationalism, would total federation inevitably strengthen capital? Would the formation of a federal state and a superpower, in the sense of Thomas Hobbes and Bismarck’s Realpolitik, only lead to the worst reflexes of imperial Europe of the Victorian Era? All the militarism and unleashed monopolistic capital and power that came with the formation of states at the national level. Do we want majestic imperial monuments to Europe, altars of our new fatherland? Could we forgive ourselves for turning Europe into such a monstrosity; Brussels into a seat of power which would require a European nationalism in order to maintain its existence? The first stages of this, perhaps, have happened already, more integration or none.

As an optimist, I’m still willing to venture some hope. Succumbing to binaries is deeply un-European, so let’s muse a bit, to finish. Federal, social, democratic: these are three things that the Europe of today is not. Federalism takes the power-sharing required for large states and disperses it, institutionalising limitations on the power of the centre. Consider Germany today: Berlin may be the capital, but it is not the metropolitan centre that London and Paris are in Britain and France. Likewise, Europe needs a codified legal framework to bind its disparate regions and mitigate the overflow of conflict into violence, and yet without causing a centralisation of power. With a single political sphere, we have the opportunity to democratise our politics rather than allow them to devolve into the anarchism that is Realpolitik, which has characterised our international relations for the past thousand years.  Furthermore, there needs to be a free interflow of ideas that is best enabled and encouraged by open borders, free flowing commerce and culture that the Union guarantees; everything ‘Schengen’ means today. This free flow is at the heart of democracy, but this democracy must be represented at the level of European politics, and not to legitimise the power that is being wielded in Brussels, but to limit it. Finally, the social pillar. Europe will never be of the people if it serves only international industrialists and financiers, and not the ordinary working man. Internationalism cannot be the province of the bourgeois classes alone; it must truly also serve the working man and woman.

This is what should be at the heart of the European Project. Coincidentally, these are also what Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi argued should be at the heart of the post-war construction in 1941, when they wrote the Ventotene Manifesto. They knew even then, that any rescue of the nation-state would lead to the return of Kleinstaaterei, and the powers of reaction, imperialism and totalitarianism. Europe had to make the overcoming of these, which were at the very heart of our civil war, its primary objective post-war, to guarantee its culture and way of life. When it comes to the question of a place for a single voice for Europe, there are perhaps limited spheres for this: chief among them, the representation of European values on the international stage, and the defence of those values. Now, there have been historically many definitions of these, but I’ll take the most obvious ones: ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’. Social Democracy, the primacy of culture and the rule of law as the guarantor of real peace and freedom. As Wolfgang Münchau put it: “freedom paired with openness and tolerance; equal opportunity; and a strong defence of the public good”.

As a federalist, a socialist and a democrat, I truly believe that for Europe to truly fulfil its calling as a place of diversity, of culture and of dissent, without this coming to violence, we need a federation of the kind Kant called for. For this pacific union to hold, it must be a federal arrangement. On the other hand, I am not an imperialist, and I do not want a European superpower emerging to challenge the rest of the world and assert itself economically and geopolitically with a belligerent military; in fact, I believe this would kill the European idea, crush Europe’s soul and bring the world down on our heads, creating the sort of situation which Germany encountered upon its unification in 1871 – a hostile neighbourhood. I do believe that Europe is large enough to affect the development of global capitalism, and bring about social peace and democracy. To achieve this, in some cases Europe must have a voice.

What it mustn’t succumb to however, is the consuming accumulation of power of bureaucracy, the tyranny of Technocracy, and a life of soulless, passive consensus. It is possible that Bauman and Habermas are right, and the potential federal democracy which could save us, and restore the lifeblood of European culture and civilisation, does not require a state. This is our chance to go beyond the nation-state then. Europe has long been a land of cities and regions anyway. To achieve any of this though, we need a sense of who we are, and that means giving up the skeleton of an identity we’ve clung to since 1945. We are Europa. This is not the land of the free, nor the home of the brave, necessarily, either. What it is, is the land or the rebels, the revolutionaries and the radicals, the dissenters and the daring. Daring in their politics and creed. Transgressive in their beliefs. The status quo is there to be fought, the establishment overturned, the mainstream rerouted. That is the spirit of Europa. We must be the Indignados which Europe has so desperately needed, and infuse the Union with that spirit.

It is true that Europe is sliding into a bad place now, but the one it came is not where we wanted to be either; in fact, it may well be entirely to blame for where we’ve come. So it is with the twists and turns of history: “Sometimes we have no wine, sometimes we have no glass”. Without recognising the need for a third way, for a break with the past and a rejection of the current alternative, there will be no Europe to save. We have to make people see that third way; we must fight to forge a true vision of it, and at the same time keep holding onto the European idea for as long as possible. Those of us who believe have to hold on, we must keep the flame alight. Like Tadeusz Rejtan, who desperately tried to halt the partition and disintegration of his country 1773, we must block the door of the room that is the European idea even as others begin to make their discreet or not so discreet exit. If we do not, then Europe’s slide will be unstoppable, and our great civilisation will pass to history. We cannot allow people to forget the idea, to disregard the original inspiration, to fall into the trap of the same false assumptions and illusions of our predecessors. To forget the Dark Continent, is ultimately what will prove to be our downfall. It is we who will decide whether to learn or forget. Après nous le déluge.

Photo Credits: The Fall of Poland, by Jan Matejko, 1866