Britain's big tent

Blackleaf

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Britain's Big Tent
The real 'new Europe' is an arc of countries that share a very English approach to the region
By Stryker McGuire
Newsweek International

Sept. 27 issue - In a construction-clogged corner of Brussels, the sterile towers of the European Union rise above Schuman Circle. As they should. Robert Schuman was among the French statesmen who helped create what has become a formidable union of 25 nations and 450 million people. From Schuman's postwar European Steel and Coal Community to the Common Agricultural Policy to the single currency, the great European initiatives of the past half century have always been French and served French interests.



Around Schuman Circle today, the symbols of France's vanished hegemony in Europe are equally evident. Last week, as 25 Europe ministers met over lunch in the European Council building, they spoke English. French remains a lingua franca only behind the counters at EU bars and cafeterias. Fewer than a third of all EU documents are now translated into French. Out in the middle of Schuman Circle, the Dutch, who hold the EU's rotating presidency, have erected a circus tent for an exhibition on the history of European integration, titled the "Image of Europe." It's in a single language—English.

Were it just a linguistic quirk, the triumph of Anglophone Europe would mean little. But language is about more than that. The rise of English and the fall of French are signs of deeper shifts reshaping Europe. All but gone is the old notion of a "Core Europe" led by France and Germany. In its place a new vision of what Europe should be—and who should lead it—has arisen. Call it Anglophonia, a crescent of nations stretching from the British Isles through the Nordic countries to a clutch of nations once under Soviet domination. For them, English is a first or second language—and a symbol of their shared, cooler and very BRITISH view of Europe and its mission.

This is not Euro-skepticism. The new dichotomy is between "Eurorealism" and traditional postwar "sentimentalism," as Alasdair Murray of the Centre for European Reform in London puts it. This is the real "new Europe," not the one that U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld stumbled upon when he sought to draw a line between European countries that supported America's war in Iraq and those that did not.

Anglophone Europe is a very different place from Europe's continental core. Its approach to integration is more economic than political. It seeks to topple barriers to trade, inward investment and free movement of labor. It cares less about political union and a common foreign policy—particularly if that foreign policy is anti-American. It thinks EU institutions are modeled too closely on the French state machine, with its petty bureaucracy, corruption and ponderous inefficiency. Especially along the EU's new eastern border, countries like Latvia and Poland look for their security to NATO and the United States, not to the EU. (As Britain, the leader of New Europe, does)

Because these changes are in part generational, they infect old Europe as well. The Netherlands, once a member in good standing of Core Europe, is a case in point. The Dutch are down on the EU these days; only 43 percent report a positive view, according to a recent Eurostat survey. Per capita, no country contributes more to the EU budget each year (4.5 billion euro) and gets less back (1.6 billion euro). Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende captured Dutch ambivalence when the Netherlands began its six-month turn in the EU presidency: "There's one thing Europe doesn't need—to be loaded down with a lot of new themes by the incoming presidency." No worries there. The Dutch presidency's official slogan? "Europe. Quite important."

Quite. Imagine how that played in Paris, where for decades conniving over EU leadership has been a national obsession. Through their partnership with Germany, long content to follow the Elysee's lead on key European issues, the French have traditionally waltzed through the corridors of power in Brussels as though they owned the place. Which they pretty much did. But now, increasingly isolated in Europe and abroad, the French are not adapting well. Socialist M.P. Jacques Floch, a member of his country's delegation to the European Convention that drafted the new constitutional treaty for the Union, warns that France risks being "marginalized" by its "arrogant image." One sore point: France's insistence that the European Parliament continue to be based in Strasbourg, far from Brussels and the EU center of power. "An absurdity," says one EU government minister. As if to add insult to injury, even there French members of the Parliament have one of the worst attendance records of any member nation.

The rise of Anglophone Europe reflects more than the relative fall of France. It is also about the revenge of EFTA, the European Free Trade Association, established in 1960 by Austria, Denmark, Britain, Norway, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland as a counterpoise to the new European Economic Community. EFTA was in fact the brainchild of Britain, which had been excluded from the EEC. EFTA's so-called outer seven were literally in competition with the EEC's inner six—founding members Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany. But while the European Community's goal was always ever-closer political and economic union, EFTA aimed only to deepen trade ties.

To this day, the EFTA countries retain their special links—with Britain at the center—despite most of them being absorbed by the EU. (Switzerland and Norway are the last holdouts.) By contrast, with the enlargement of what has become the European Union, France has seen a steady erosion of its clout. This May's "Big Bang," the addition of 10 new members from Eastern Europe and elsewhere, was for France "the final nail in the coffin," according to Mark Leonard of the Foreign Policy Centre in London. The new EU has simply grown too big and too diverse for France to dominate, even with its old ally Germany. "From now on," says a senior Scandinavian official, "France will have to play the game as an equal partner."

Every passing month seems to chip away at French power. In June, Britain marshaled the support of new and old members to substantially amend the draft European constitution—an essentially French project whose very future is now in peril. At least nine members will hold national referendums on the draft over the next two years, and even in France a "yes" is not ensured. Since then, Britain and its allies have derailed France's candidate for the powerful job of president of the European Commission, engineering the appointment of former Portuguese prime minister Jose Manuel Duro Barroso. He subsequently nominated a team of 25 new commissioners with a new-Europe liberal economic bent—and a mandate to improve the EU's image among an increasingly disillusioned public.

For all the talk about the damage the Iraq war has done to EU-U.S. relations, the rise of Anglophone Europe is a plus for the United States. The economic liberalism embraced by these countries borrows more from America than from classic European socialism and is fueled by what Britain's minister for Europe, Denis MacShane, calls "Europe's M.B.A. generation"—those thousands of European professionals with business degrees from U.S. universities.

Beyond that, says Pepper Culpepper of Harvard University, "the Atlanticist current is much stronger with the new members of Europe. They have more in common with the U.K.'s foreign policy" than with France's. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw believes they always will. For the former Soviet-bloc states, turning west toward America (widely seen as their liberator) is a "paradoxical result" of the EU's enlargement to the east, Straw told NEWSWEEK last week on a flight back from Brussels. To defeat Nazi Germany, Churchill had to persuade America to engage with Europe. Today, Straw says, the challenge is to persuade Europe to engage with America's commanding economic, cultural and military global presence. "The U.S. used to have fundamental strategic interests in Europe in a way that it doesn't now," Straw said. "Therefore, we in Europe need to take a conscious decision to work the American account."

Ultimately, the changes that have swept across Europe are not so much signs of French weakness or Core Europe's decline as they are signs of Europe's maturity. Mark Leonard remembers growing up in Brussels during the 1980s and going to the European School, "where the lingua franca was bad French." Those days are gone. But the real point, he says, is that "Europe has been built. The single market is there. The single currency is there. Europe has been done. There's not very much to add."

A multispeed Europe, rather than one hitched to a single Franco-German locomotive, is not necessarily bad news even for Paris or Berlin. With 25 members, and more on the way, there's plenty of room in the EU for new and ever-shifting alliances. France and Germany last week were angling to bring Spain back on their side. They could try the same moves on Italy post-Silvio Berlusconi.

In this kaleidoscopic arrangement, knee-jerk Atlanticism is as unlikely as reflexive European federalism. Convincing France that its dominance is over—to be replaced by mere influence—will be tough. French President Jacques Chirac will almost certainly "rage, rage against the dying of the light," says one EU minister, quoting Dylan Thomas. And so in Brussels and throughout the work-in-progress that is Europe, the arguments will go on. In English.

With Peter Snowden and Marie Valla in London

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
 

Blackleaf

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Oct 9, 2004
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Sixteen common misunderstandings of the EU and why it is important that Britain leaves now -


The Euro-philes’ most important claim is that the EU is essential to keep peace in Europe. However, democracies do not provoke war, whereas forced or premature conglomerations of disparate nations do (eg the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and much of Africa). So the Euro-realist model of Europe’s democracies retaining their identity, and trading freely together under NATO, is less likely to end in conflict than is an undemocratic EU megastate.

The word 'Europe' has been appropriated by the Euro-philes to mean both the continent of different nations and the emerging EU megastate. So when a Euro-realist is rude about ‘Europe’ – referring to a product of the Treaty and Brussels – he is easily cast as ‘Euro-phobic’, a ‘little Englander’, or a ‘dangerous nationalist’ etc. Most Euro-realists love the Europe of different nations, but hate the Treaty and the dictats from Brussels.

The Luxembourg Court of Justice is not a court of law. It is the engine of the Treaty and must always find in favour of the ‘ever closer union of the peoples of Europe’ ordained by Article 1. It can and does overturn British law.[17]

(a) Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) – the ‘Single Currency’ – is a political project, designed to force the creation of the megastate. Only in the UK do politicians pretend it is an economic project.

(b) As at July 2000 the pound is not ‘strong’. It is standing at a 6 year low against the dollar, and 60% of our exports are dollar related.[18] The euro is weak against all currencies.

The Prime Minster and other Euro-philes often claim that ‘nearly 60% of our trade is with the EU’. Not so. What they mean is that nearly 60% of our exports of goods goes to the EU. Only some 40% of our total exports goes to the EU (goods plus services plus investment income).[18]

But Brussels’ dictats are inflicted upon the whole of our economy, so the real point is that only some 10% of our jobs[22], and 10% of our Gross Domestic Product[19], are involved in trade with the EU (declining and in deficit). Rather more than 10% of our GDP goes to the rest of the world (growing and in surplus.) The remaining 80% of our jobs and GDP depend on our domestic economy. So the mangy 10% tail is wagging our healthy 90% dog.

We do not ‘trade with the EU’. We trade with the individual countries of the EU, and do more trade with the USA than we do with France and Germany combined.[24]

Insignificant amounts of inward investment into the UK are attracted by our membership of the EU. Most foreign investment comes here because we have a large business-friendly economy, with light regulation, low tax and a reliable workforce; we also speak English, are free of corruption, and are not in EMU.[20]

Measured by earnings, Japan has accounted for less than 1% of inward investment into the UK. 66% has come from the USA, 7% from France, 4% each from Germany and Australia, and 3% from Switzerland.[21]

It is silly to pretend that our 3 million or so jobs which support our trade with the Single Market would be lost if we left the EU. The trade would continue, and so would the jobs.[22] (See point 57).

The World Trade Organisation has brought average international tariffs down to 3.8%, and is aiming for zero.[23] This makes the EU largely redundant commercially, leaving us only with its dangerous political ambitions.

Contrary to Euro-phile rhetoric, we have not ceded any of our sovereignty to NATO. We could leave it at any time, and it does not interfere with our legislation or taxation.

If the UK were to join NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement between the USA, Canada and Mexico), we would not become the USA's 51st state, as Euro-philes often claim. NAFTA is a free trade area, not a customs union like the EU. All three countries have retained their currencies, which float freely. NAFTA relies on inter-governmental collaboration, and does not employ a single bureaucrat.

There is no such thing as ‘EU aid’ to the UK. The UK pays about £11 billion annually to the EU, which is graciously pleased to give us back some £5.5 billion[24] for projects designed to improve its own image. We could spend the whole £11 billion much better ourselves, without the superfluous, corrupt and bureaucratic filter of Brussels.

UK businessmen say they support the Single Market because they have not understood the difference between it and the former Common Market. What they really support is free trade, which we would keep if we left the EU. (See point 57).

Leading Conservatives say they support our membership of the EU because they took us into it, and politicians are not good at public confession. That is why they say that a policy to leave the EU would ‘frighten the horses’. It wouldn’t frighten the voters (see point 60).

It is not ‘inevitable’ that we must continue to sleepwalk into the emerging EU megastate. Our policy toward the EU should be like any other, and therefore subject to change by Parliament as the national interest requires.