A Europe in Whose Image?

Over at New Statesman, Prof. Brendan Simms presented and extended a review of the 'European problem' in July.

The two essays together trace a fascinating arc of the relevant history and make for necessary reading. It was amusing though to see USA and UK painted as more perfect unions than the EU, not to mention sort of disinterested bystanders in the European project. (In the case of UK, a particularly prescient bystander, quietly shaking her bowed head just outside the ring. In the first article, he upholds a case of British exceptionalism not dissimilar to one that he singles out France to be chided for in the second.)

Characterizing the British and American unions as exemplary is particularly curious in 2015. Federal-state friction in the US has crippled policy areas from healthcare and immigration to marriage and gun laws. Since the last general elections in the UK, meanwhile, Scots have one foot out the door with all the new MPs taking every opportunity to dole out statistics as to how well they'd do on their own. Sure, Europe has dug for itself a unique fiscal-monetary predicament, but judging on solidarity alone, judging on what eventually happens every time the union is threatened, I'd give the EU a soild 8/10, the UK, a 6.2. And the US? Ask me again in 2017.

I agree, of course, with the main thrust of both articles.

Scale Europe up

The peace prize for the European Union is the most fitting accolade, even if this year the Norwegian committee has chosen to replicate the decades-long gap between the work recognised and the award as with the academic prizes awarded by the Swedes. While observing its war-preempting and human rights credentials, the citation actually omits significant impacts of the bloc’s environmental stewardship role.

Vrijthof, the main square in the city of Maastricht, the birthplace of the EU, where this blog is written. © oy0.org 2012

The primary goals of the experiment with an overarching union may well have been facilitating trade and perhaps to promote a sense of political integrity across the continent to avert further wars. Regardless, border-blind policy spheres such as the environment have benefitted immensely from the European experiment. When confronted with environmental problems and with a political motivation to set itself apart from other economic behemoths on some value, the European Union rallied its members around a strict code of environmental stewardship. Regulation that would be considered too stringent at a national level in some states found a supranational back door to get formalised into binding law. There is clearly something about transacting policy beyond the arena of national politics that makes for the adoption of otherwise unpalatable solutions.

The global issues of today seem intractable - from impending currency or trade wars to balancing securities of many kinds with fiscal discipline. Nations seem to waiting with bated breath to see who blinks first. Perhaps it is time to scale-up the European experiment and institute a supranational structure that will synchronise the blinking?

Posed in the context of a big idea, the titular question ("Why not?") doesn't sound quite as rhetorical as usual, does it?