The old ideal of integration risks its future in the face of the rise of the “Europe of nations”

The story of Europe seemed like a perfect story: how old enemies, still reeling among the smoking ruins after the battle, hold hands and conceive of a future of peace. It has traces of an optimistic parable, or even an “epic,” by bringing together “flight, crossing the desert and the promised land,” in the words of historian Antonio Moreno, author of research on this subject such as The end of the European story. This “promised land” would be an entire continent united in democracy and progress, in what the American economist Jeremy Rifkin called “the European dream,” a social countermodel to the “American dream.” Yes, that narrative forged after World War II seemed to have everything, from echoes of the Enlightenment to “founding fathers” – such as the Frenchman Jean Monnet, the German Konrad Adenauer or the Italian Alcide De Gasperi – to whom to sing praises. And yet, it is a receding narrative.

The canonical European narrative suffers from “exhaustion,” warns Moreno, who has studied the evolution of the community narrative. “While individualism and every man for himself advance, there is a weakening of the discourse that links the EU project with the Enlightenment, equality and social progress,” observes Javier de Lucas, founder of the Institute of Human Rights at the University of Valencia and author of Mediterranean: the shipwreck in Europe. Ruth Ferrero, professor of Political Science attached to the Complutense Institute of International Studies, concludes: “The words are already lacking in content. What is Europeanism? “Right now it’s not clear.” In her opinion, these elections will be decisive not only in defining EU policies, but also in the European idea itself.

A succession of crises and problems in the integration process have opened space for a new narrative to progress, driven by far-right forces. His story attributes to Europe a Christian identity presented under the threat of multiculturalism, which would be leading to a loss of traditional Western values. The bloc against this alleged natural order is joined by a cultural enemy, sometimes called “gender ideology,” other times “left.” woke up”, concepts that cover the fight against the supposed excesses of feminism and diversity. The historian Xosé Manoel Núñez Seixas, author of Sighs of Spain. Spanish nationalism (1808-2018), thus synthesizes the DNA of this project: “Less power in Brussels”, “strong borders” and “a other very clear” that it is no longer Russia, as in the Cold War, but the immigrant, “especially Islamic.”

After the lesson of Brexit, the parties of the diverse ultra family – including Vox – no longer want to leave the EU, but rather redefine it as “Europe of nations.” In a less explicit way than in the fascisms of the 20th century, everything hidden by the alibi of the cultural, the religious marker reappears and the ethnic marker is even glimpsed in the definition of the nation. Despite the emphasis on each homeland, the promoters of this discourse do not deny the concept “Europe”, but rather try to appropriate it, and even go so far as to present themselves – Ferrero observes – as the heirs of the original European project, promoted by “men Christians, white and heterosexual”, pattern among the pioneers of the EU.

That is the narrative arsenal that stalks the European ideal. It seems simple, but it is politically effective, warns Timothy Garton Ash, professor of European Studies at the University of Oxford, a reference among thinkers concerned with the community’s future, who has just published Europe. A personal story. Faced with the pro-European narrative, according to which countries were going “from a worse place to a better one,” the Euroskeptic sells just the opposite, a supposed worsening for which they blame the Union. A speech like this, adds Garton Ash, constitutes a real “challenge” for the European project.

One blow after another

What we call the EU today is the product of decisions guided by pragmatism and lessons learned. After World War II, it was essential to avoid the mistakes of the interwar years in order to get back on track by taking advantage of American funds. The germ of the club is made up of Benelux, Germany, France and Italy. On that basis, the project began in the 1950s. The Treaty of Rome (1957) precedes about sixty years of economic strength. The project promises. And even though the crisis of the seventies arrives, integration does not stop. Just the opposite.

Precisely to take that step forward you need to rely on a story that avoids the withdrawal typical of crises. “Narratives are used when necessary,” explains Moreno, author of Memory of Europe. The accession of Spain to the European Communities. And in the seventies and eighties one was needed. United Europe went from being a space for collaboration to a project defended by the leaders of the countries. With what idea? That of “a civil superpower between two military superpowers, with its own welfare model and a commitment to peace and democracy,” summarizes the historian. “They were the values ​​that were already there in the fifties, but now grouped and intellectualized,” he adds.

That is the story that drives four enlargements in just over 20 years: 1973 (Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom), 1981 (Greece), 1986 (Spain and Portugal) and 1995 (Austria, Finland and Sweden). If for all countries getting on the boat was access to a growing market, for those that emerged from dictatorships it was also a promise of modernity. In the case of Spain, accession gave a seal of democratic quality to its own story of the Transition. Although it will be mainly social democrats and conservatives who pilot the institutions, integration has widespread support during the long end of the 20th century – with critical nuances and accents. “Euroscepticism” was the stuff of “bitter clowns whose breath sings,” in the words of Wolfgang Münchau, director of Eurointelligence.

So, when and how did the pro-European narrative lose credibility until it opened an entire flank to those opposed to integration, from the brexiters to Marine Le Pen, from Giorgia Meloni to Geert Wilders, from Viktor Orbán to Santiago Abascal? The responses collected do not refer to a single cause, nor to a single milestone. They are many. Setbacks have been happening for two decades. The noes of France and Holland to the European Constitution in 2005 dispelled the illusion of consensus prointegration, a fiction that would disappear in 2016 with the vote in favor of Brexit. It was the end of the pan-European utopia. However, the most forceful blow came with the crisis that began in 2008. It is then that the official narrative is most clearly “denied,” by undermining the key idea of ​​“solidarity,” says Áurea Moltó, director of the scientific council of the Real Elcano Institute.

A custom suit by Meloni

If the economic
crisis discredited the idea of ​​economic solidarity, the refugee crisis of 2015 spurred far-right forces, which since then have not stopped pushing to place immigration at the center of the European debate. Both De Lucas and Ferrero, vice president of More Democracy, emphasize that this flank, the migratory one, demonstrates that the retreat of the Europeanist narrative is not only due to the opposite advance, but also to the weakness of the supposed guardians of the founding values. And they point to the recent Migration and Asylum Pact, promoted by conservatives, social democrats and liberals, as a serious cession.

De Lucas, professor of Political Philosophy, also warns against the current process of “redefinition of Europeanism”, whose requirements become “Atlanticism and economic liberalism”, as set by the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and accepted by the European People’s Party. A tailored suit for the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, which many other far-right forces, including Vox, can try on. “If that is the bar, if just by being anti-Putin Now you are on the good side, false European identity signs replace the original ones,” warns De Lucas, former PSOE senator.

To do? To revitalize the EU narrative, Núñez Seixas proposes a discourse based on a double defense. The first, “democratic values.” This will require a convincing response to any authoritarian drift. There are many voices that have already warned about it. In 2021, the Belgian Prime Minister, the liberal Alexander de Croo, raised his voice, looking at Hungary and Poland, countries incorporated in an enlargement (2004) where the capitalist and anti-communist conviction predominated over the anti-fascist one, basic in the European forge. “The EU is a union of values,” he said, “not an ATM.” The second red line, Núñez Seixas continues, must be the defense “of the welfare state against the savage ultraliberalism of the United States” and the mixture of “state dirigisme, controlled economic liberalism and authoritarianism of China.”

The fight against inequality is for De Lucas the basic ingredient for a credible EU. If social democracy is content to be a “corrected liberalism” that accepts, for example, that housing is a market good, it will not be loyal to the original European project, he adds. Ferrero follows the same line, recognizing the favorable results of the European reaction to the pandemic, but remembering that a European-wide tax reform is still pending. Without such reform, he adds, “a redistributive Europe is impossible” that would generalize a crisis-proof feeling of belonging.

Áurea Moltó, of the Elcano Royal Institute, does not believe that the answer lies in rhetorical devices to pull out of the hat. “The EU does not need to invent a new narrative, what it has to do is comply with the one it has and show that it believes it and that it continues to be its reason for being,” he says. The problem, she emphasizes, is not one of story, but of “performance,” and she cites the recent Letta report to drive growth.

A direct phrase sums up the issue for Garton Ash: “You can only tell a good story if you have a good story to tell.” If young people do not have access to housing or employment, the elderly feel “disoriented” and both are “insecure”, you can already have “the best story in the world”, which will not work, says the British intellectual. Now, there is discursive work to be done: with “clear and direct” language, Garton Ash concludes, Europeanists must explain that “in historical and global perspective,” the EU is “an abnormality” in a positive sense, a “ exceptional achievement.” And that “it can break easily.”

_