Europe’s self-destructive article of faith

Stefan Auer, Eurozine

European leaders’ unwavering commitment to ever closer union is causing more harm than good, argues Stefan Auer. Europe doesn’t need more integration; it needs more democracy to enable its nations to regain control over their destiny. Partial and well-managed disintegration may be preferable to a chaotic implosion.

Europe’s better times were meant to be ahead of it. Not so long ago, “the European dream” was believed to have provided the best “vision of the future”;^[1] Europe was going to “run the twenty-first century”,^[2] having created “an entirely new species of human organization, the likes of which the world has never seen”.^[3] If the West – and most of the world – was American in the twentieth century, the twenty-first was going to be European. But not in any crude, old-fashioned, imperial, my-values-are-better-than-yours kind of way; rather in an open and open-ended reflexive, self-critical, you-are-as-good-as-or-better-than-me way. Europe was going to lead the world by example; do it gently. “Soft power Europe” would rule without anyone noticing but everyone benefiting. All these assumptions proved hubristic: Europe’s turn of fortune is humbling, humiliating and, perhaps, irreversible.

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