LONDON — Europe’s problems may yet spin us towards a
depression, but at least they offer a sweet catharsis for
“euroskeptics” — those of us who have always thought the euro a
misguided project.
Euroskeptics have been through it, both in Britain and
elsewhere. The haughty laughter, the insults, the patronizing
comments, like “little Englander,” suggesting both stupidity and
insularity. Despite the fact, or perhaps because, Margaret Thatcher
was the biggest and most famous euroskeptic of the lot,
“euroenthusiasts,” among them Tony Blair, took every opportunity to
suggest that our argument was based on emotion rather than
reason.
In fact the reverse was true. Euroskeptics realized that
it was crazy to have a single exchange rate and interest rate
applied to somewhere as massive and diverse as the European Union.
For unlike Americans we Europeans share no common loyalty to our
Union. There is no sense of European nation, and therefore no
intrinsic acceptance that our own countries within the Union should
be prepared to accept economic hardship for the wider good. Quite
the reverse; each country is in it precisely for what it can get
out.
To ignore this self-evident reality was Europe’s big
mistake, even if it took more than a decade to show just how big.
Simply, economic union requires political union. And you can’t
sustain that without the will of the people.
Ah yes, how inconvenient for the technocrats in Brussels
and Strasbourg that we dastardly voters get in the way of their
grand plans. Not that it’s stopped them. If we give a non, nein, or
nee to one of the many referenda on closer union, they merely tell
us that we’ve chosen “the wrong answer,” and shamelessly ask us to
vote again. (Democracy has never been the EU’s strong
suit.)
Many American visitors to Europe quickly recognize this
disconnect — though often they’re too polite to say so. They see a
continent that is a joyous medley of languages, cultures, attitudes
and beliefs. Spain is no more like Finland than India is like
Iceland. Greece is as different from Germany as the US is from
Mexico. Yet would the U.S. ever consider monetary union with its
neighbor across the Rio Grande?
If the travails of the euro have taught us one thing
(which euroskeptics instinctively knew anyway), it is that you
cannot straightjacket hundreds of millions of people. You cannot
change the speed or course of the giant, ponderous waves of
humanity. They go at their own sweet pace.
Those in favor of the euro ignored this inconvenient
reality. They ploughed on, elbowing past human sensibilities,
denouncing those who objected. The result? Europe’s biggest crisis
since the Second World War.
Now that the euroskeptics have been proved right all
along, one or two honorable opponents are eating humble pie. Even
Jacques Delors, former European Commission President, one of the
chief architects of the euro, and bête noire of
British Conservatives, now admits that the euro was flawed from the
start. We thank him for this belated candor.
And the editor of the Financial Times between
2001 and 2005, Andrew Gowers, has issued what amounts
to a grovelling apology for getting the biggest
economic issue of recent decades spectacularly wrong. He declared
last month: “All of us paid too little attention to
the arguments of those who opposed the project and worried about
its viability.” He’s quite right about that, at least.
Rather than arguing for the euro on its merits he and
his colleagues all too often chose the lazy, insidious route of
implying that euroskeptics were irrational and sentimental.
Interpreting the motives of those opposed to the euro a decade ago,
Philip Stephens, who is still the newspaper’s chief political
columnist, oozed condescendingly, “Immaturity is the
kind explanation.”
The best known early proposal for a “United
States of Europe” was made in 1847 by the pacifist Victor Hugo, and
when the European ideal took shape a century later it had at its
heart a keen desire that the nations of this continent would never
again go to war against each other. But more recently a less lofty
ideal took hold: that Europe should unite in ever-closer union to
compete on a global stage. Any instinctive reluctance by the
peoples of Europe to accept this unity and live happily under one
roof, rather than as neighbors, was trumped by theory-wielding
economists in Brussels.
Now European leaders are poised to decide whether to forge
fiscal as well as monetary union. If they do so, thereby saving the
euro, the world will no doubt sigh with relief as short-term
catastrophe is avoided.
Yet celebration might be premature. The drive towards
ever-closer union has already caused one crisis. The next could be
even worse.
