Today, a new European politicization is urgent, a new impulse for innovation, political and institutional integration, and generational renewal. Otherwise, things could go very badly in Europe.
Since the double financial and economic crisis of 2008 and 2011, there has been no shortage of traumatic events in Europe: Brexit, the migratory crisis, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the climate crisis, the urgency of the energy transition, the expansion of new disruptive technologies, etc. Some of these problems have had adequate responses from the European Union; others don’t. Jean Monnet’s oft-repeated phrase (“I have always thought that Europe would be formed in crises, and that it would be the sum of the solutions that we provided to those crises”) has only been half confirmed. It should not be abused as a routine consolation.
Today, a new European politicization is urgent, a new impulse for innovation, political and institutional integration, and generational renewal. Otherwise, things could go very badly in Europe. Taken together, the current accumulation of crises poses an existential question to the European Union, which Trump’s return to the White House has accentuated.
The European Union, which many of us see as an irreplaceable salvation formula, will approach a moment of truth in 2025. Enrico Letta said a few days ago on X-Twitter that “Trump’s brutality may force us to finally face the truth. And the truth is that fragmented into 27, we are all small countries in a world of giants. Only by integrating at the European level will we be able, in economic terms, to confront the United States and China.” Forcing optimism, Letta added: “Perhaps Trump is a federator of Europe, forcing us to do things that in another situation we would not do. We, the Europeans, must decide.”
In a recent article, an opinion group from Barcelona (‘Treva i Pau’) crudely stated this current European dilemma: “In the centuries to come, history books will say one of two things: either that European countries, after half a millennium of dominating the world, they committed suicide with the two world wars, reaching ‘the end of history’; or that with political union they were able to lead a new Renaissance and become a great power in a multipolar world. For Europe it is the existential question: to be or not to be.”
The article added that “Germany and France, as the two main powers of the EU, are called upon to lead this enterprise.” However, this reference to the Franco-German axis, canonical for decades, is also in crisis today: this engine is seized. France, with a historic fiscal crisis, suffers its worst situation of political instability since the beginning of the Fifth Republic. Germany loses economic and political steam, dramatically. In both countries the threat of national populism and illiberal authoritarianism looms.
In this context of vulnerabilities, threats and uncertainties, it is not possible to make predictions about the future of Europe. There is something, however, that is evident: the current rise of nationalism, today visible in practically all the countries of the European Union, represents a growing danger. National populisms promise a return to the old world of sovereignty and borders, but in reality they propose a chimera that carries a double risk: of inefficiency and decline (the effects of Brexit are there, clearly visible), and of divisions and confrontations. intra-European relations, in a world of growing geopolitical rivalries.
In Europe, nationalist disputes have caused immense catastrophes for centuries, the deaths of millions of young people. Nor should those tragedies be repeated as a farce. We tend to fall into the cliché of assimilating realism to a resigned, fatalistic and passive acceptance of history. But today it is obvious that being realistic in Europe means exactly the opposite. It means keeping in mind that with all its contradictions, the process of European unity has ensured decades of peace that should not be taken for granted. It means realizing that the situation we face on our continent is extremely dangerous, and that we must do what is necessary to change it politically.
What Europe needs today, urgently and above all, is a new political generation of young people who are authentically realistic, and consequently ambitiously pro-European. What should be done is quite clear. In recent times, three reports have been published (by former Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, former President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi and former Finnish President Sauli Niinistö) that lay out some concrete clues. All three point to the same objective: to stop the possible decline through a common European approach, with greater political and institutional integration. The considerable challenge is to carry out a European program of renewal and transition that ensures a triple objective of productivity and economic efficiency, social security and political freedom.
Otherwise, the outlook will be ominous. Now, are young Europeans aware of the danger? Every new generation tends towards Adamism, a healthy attitude as long as it is not strictly applied to the letter. The phrase ““Not to trust anyone over thirty” (“Don’t trust anyone over thirty”) became very popular in the American student movement against the Vietnam War, in the sixties of the last century. It was from Abbie Hoffman, one of their leaders. It was learned years later that when he repeated that phrase he was well over thirty.
I almost triple it, but despite the distrust that I take for granted, I cannot help but leave a warning and a wish for the new year. There are dangers on the horizon and only politics can save us from those that stalk us in Europe. I would like, by 2025, for the emergence, even if it is just incipient, of a new political generation without borders, which promotes a new and ambitious Europeanism. For pure realism.
#year #live #dangerously
