© REUTERS/Vincent Kessler

(1) The Key Decision

During the first months of its term, the new European Parliament will need to confirm the new president of the European Commission. According to the treaties, it is the heads of state and government who nominate the commission president—the most powerful position in the EU—and the parliament only gets to confirm or reject her or him. But in 2014, the European Parliament instituted the Spitzenkandidat (lead candidate) system and elected Jean-Claude Juncker as president of the European Commission.

2019 will show whether that system is here to stay, but a bit of background is needed to understand how it works (or why it might fail): the various national parties represented in the European Parliament organize themselves into political groups. They whip MEPs in votes just like in national parliaments. Each of these groups has fielded a Spitzenkandidat, and parliamentarians have vowed to make that choice stick: In theory, only a Spitzenkandidat who can command a majority in the parliament is supposed to become the next president.

If you listen to the EPP, the next president will almost certainly be their Spitzenkandidat, Manfred Weber of Germany, since they are projected to come first in the election. The EPP is also currently the largest group in the parliament, with almost a third of the seats. It is a broad tent that includes liberal parties like Finland’s NCP, centrist parties like the German CDU/CSU, and right-wing parties like Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz of Hungary, which is currently suspended as part of the civil war between the right and left flanks that is wracking the party.

Other groups in the Parliament, however, have soured on the Spitzenkandidat process and are unlikely to anoint Weber simply because the EPP comes first. He needs to command a majority, which the EPP will not have on its own. The center-left Socialists & Democrats, presently the second largest group with a quarter of seats, have fielded Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans from the Netherlands as Spitzenkandidat and may not be willing to support Weber.

The process is also meeting headwinds from national leaders, particularly from French President Emmanuel Macron, who says it is the right of the European Council to appoint the commission president. So the council may choose to disregard the Spitzenkandidat system altogether and appoint someone who was not a candidate, such as Frenchman Michel Barnier, who distinguished himself during the Brexit negotiations.

Margrethe Vestager, the high-profile competition commissioner from Denmark, could be a choice that satisfies both the parliament and the council, since she has somehow managed to run as a Spitzenkandidat for the third-largest group, the liberal family of ALDE, without endorsing the system.

(2) The Biggest Issues

In contrast to national parliaments, the European Parliament is not allowed to draw up legislative proposals of its own—that’s the privilege of the European Commission, which therefore tends to set the agenda. But European laws need to be approved by both the parliament and the council, which is made up of ministers from each national government.

The parliament tends to be more ambitious and strengthen commission proposals, while the council is more conservative, watering down proposals more often than not. National governments complain that the European Parliament adds unrealistic amendments to legislation because MEPs aren’t the ones who have to implement the laws—that will fall to the national governments represented in the council.

MEPs also have a say about spending. While the outgoing Commission makes a proposal for the EU’s upcoming seven-year budget, and the member-states must reach unanimity in the council, the Parliament must give its final consent. As usual, the current parliament has asked for higher spending than the Commission has proposed for the 2021-27 budget round, particularly in areas related to climate protection.

In the coming term, the new parliament may take up Macron’s ideas for reforming the eurozone’s financial rules. MEPs will need to take up recent proposals to establish a European Defense Union and a beefed-up defense capability that is more independent of the United States. With political pressure mounting over the migration issue, MEPs may also take up a proposal to change the EU’s border policies.

With EU-US trade talks having resumed in April, the parliament will likely also need to vote on whether to approve such a deal. The result is anything but certain, because MEPs passed a resolution last year saying the EU should not sign free trade deals with countries not party to the Paris Climate Agreement.

During the 2014-19 term, the parliament voted on almost 1,000 legislative proposals from the Juncker Commission. On a macro level, the big issues MEPs grappled with over were navigating a way out of the economic slump, handling the migration crisis, and reacting to Brexit.

But the more important achievements came in individual pieces of legislation. MEPs voted on a new set of privacy laws, and just before the end of the term they approved a controversial reform of the EU’s copyright rules—a law some have labeled the “meme ban.”  The parliament also held a hearing with Mark Zuckerberg to demand answers about what data Facebook is collecting on its users and how it handles political advertising.

One of the decisions that has had the biggest immediate impact on EU citizens was the 2015 vote to end mobile phone roaming charges within the EU in 2017. The parliament also voted to end card payment fees in the EU. Furthermore, it enacted a number of climate laws, including new CO2 reduction targets for 2030, car emission reduction requirements, and requirements for energy efficiency and renewables. It also cracked down on plastic carrier bags and other single-use plastics.

(3) The Dangerous Split

Polls predict a sizeable rise of far-right populist parties in the new parliament—parties who will certainly try to use their clout to hinder European legislation. To be effective, they need to organize in political groups, but given the many competing agendas, that may prove difficult.

In the old parliament, the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group were the largest group of the right-wing. It was formed by then British Prime Minister David Cameron in 2009, when he took his Conservative Party out of the EPP and instead got into an alliance with Poland’s right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) and the Czech Civic Democrats (ODS).

It has been unclear what will happen to this group in the next term. If Brexit goes ahead before May 23, ECR would be dominated by the Poles, or it could take on like-minded allies like Fidesz and Italy’s Lega. However, the two party leaders, Orbán and Matteo Salvini, seem keen to form new groups that revolve around them. But even if the United Kingdom takes part in the election, it’s unclear whether the British Conservatives would want to disrupt the group formation process by continuing to be part of the ECR.

The other current groups on the far right are Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy (EFDD) and Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), which hold 5 percent of seats each. Former UKIP and now Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage heads the EFDD, and the group was long dominated by UKIP. This changed in 2014 when they admitted the Italian Five Star Movement (M5S), with both parties having a roughly equal number of MEPs.

However, UKIP and M5S have had a tumultuous relationship, and it is unlikely they would sit together again in the next term. UKIP has since almost collapsed and about half of its MEPs have quit the party, including Farage (though he has remained as leader of the EFDD).

(4) The Biggest Unknown

Speculating about UKIP and Farage brings us nicely to a short and particularly thorny question about the European elections: Will the United Kingdom take part? Prime Minister Theresa May certainly has an incentive to try and push through a deal before May 23—having to take part in the elections will deepen the splits within her Conservatives. What’s more, given her performance on Brexit over the past several months, the party is likely to take a beating in the elections.

For the time being, the specter of Brexit continues to loom over the parliament, and because of the latest extension it’s not even clear how many MEPs there will be after the election. The number and distribution of MEPs had been changed in anticipation of the UK departing, but now that will have to be shelved. And not to forget: MEPs will have to approve any final Brexit deal.

(5) The Great Hassle

With or without Britain, one thing is not going to change for the new European Parliament: MEPs will continue to split their time between the French city of Strasbourg and Brussels.

The treaties stipulate that the parliament’s seat is in Strasbourg, but in 1985 MEPs unilaterally built themselves a new home in Brussels in order to be with the other two EU institutions and not be shut out of decision-making. France took the parliament to court, and a compromise was reached, whereby MEPs must spend one week a month in Strasbourg.

Recently, CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, possibly the next German chancellor, dared to suggest dropping Strasbourg. Most national governments would probably be happy to agree—but certainly not France, champion of the city of Strasbourg and its flourishing hotel and restaurant trade. And as changing the seat of the parliament would need a change to the European treaties, unanimity is required.

In other words, the “traveling circus” will continue, and new MEPs had better get used to that quickly.

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© REUTERS/Yves Herman

In the run-up to the European Parliament elections, none of the German political parties has shown quite as much ambition as the Free Democratic Party (FDP). In its election program, adopted at the end of January 2019, the pro-business liberal party calls for the convening of a (second) European Constitutional Convention by 2022 at the latest. And it also clearly defines such a convention’s mandate: to create a Europe that is democratic, decentralized, and federal.

The noble aim of transforming the existing association of states into a single federal state has rarely been invoked in recent years. Back in January 2012, in an interview with the Süddeutsche Zeitung, Chancellor Angela Merkel outlined her vision of a federal future for the European Union: in the course of a long process, the EU member states would transfer more competencies to the European Commission, “which will then work like a European government. This requires a strong parliament. The European Council, which brings together heads of government, will form the second chamber. Finally, we have the European Court of Justice as the supreme court. That could be what Europe’s political union looks like at some point in the future, as I say, and after many interim steps.”

One and a half years later, during the Bundestag election campaign in August 2013, Merkel set a starkly different tone in an interview with the Phoenix television station, arguing “More Europe is more than just a transfer of competencies from the nation state to Europe, rather I can also have more Europe by getting involved more strictly and intensively in coordinating national action with others. That is also a form of more Europe.”

Fourteen years after the introduction of the euro, the German position on European policy began to converge with that of the British. The desire to keep the United Kingdom in the EU was one of the main reasons for Merkel’s commitment to intergovernmentalism. The chancellor’s change of course was also a signal to then French President François Hollande, who was elected in May 2012 and with whom no agreement had yet been reached on political union and the reform of the EU. It was not by chance that Merkel referred in the interview to the example of the Netherlands. In June 2013, its Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans had declared in a letter to the Dutch Members of Parliament that the time of an “ever closer union” in every possible policy area had come to an end. In the future, the motto should be: “European where necessary, national where possible.”

The EU’s Democratic Deficit

Timmermans, who is now vice-president of the European Commission and the European Social Democrats’ Spitzenkandidat for the European elections, was saying what most European governments thought. If one interprets the formula of “ever closer union” in the sense of a federal deepening of the European Union, today there may still be some approval for that notion in Luxembourg and Belgium and in parts of the German public, but hardly anywhere else. Anyone who, like the FDP in their election program, wants to commit EU member states to this goal won’t bring Europe closer together, but will instead divide it. This is not a consequence of the growing national populism throughout Europe. It is rather a consequence of the EU’s democratic deficit or, to put it another way, of the progressive independence of the European executive power—a development which was accelerated with the Maastricht Treaty at the end of 1993 and which gave populist, anti-EU parties a significant boost in many member states.

One frequent suggestion for tackling the EU’s democratic deficit is to strengthen the European Parliament and thus gradually turn the European Union into a parliamentary democracy. What speaks against this is the fact that the European Parliament has far less democratic legitimacy than national parliaments. If it were composed according to the democratic principle of “one person, one vote,” it would need to comprise of several thousand MEPs in order to provide adequate representation for the population of small member states. There are therefore good, even compelling, reasons for favoring the smaller member states at the expense of the larger ones. Given the parliament’s still limited rights, this lack of democratic legitimacy is acceptable. But it should not be denied. Dieter Grimm, a former judge on the German constitutional court, was right when he wrote in 2015, “The EU does not have sufficient resources for self-legitimation. For some time to come it will depend on the legitimacy it receives from the member states. A full parliamentarization, however, would immediately put a stop to this. It is therefore not in the democratic interest.”

“More Europe” even if the price is less democracy: to pursue such a policy is to harm the European project. Those who want to further develop this project according to the basic principles of democracy must therefore strengthen the “responsibility for integration” of the national parliaments. (It was Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court that introduced this term into the public debate with its ruling on the Lisbon Treaty in June 2009). The European policy decisions of the national parliaments can be better coordinated and synchronized; a joint committee could be helpful here. The democratic legitimacy of the EU relies on the support of the states that make up the bloc. Those who think that the European Parliament can replace the national parliaments in the longer term are chasing an ahistorical utopia and inadvertently promoting what they believe they are fighting against: nationalism.

Shifting to “Ever Closer Cooperation”

Europhiles have grounds for self-criticism. The nationalist parties would not be so popular if the proponents of European integration had not for so long stubbornly avoided fundamental issues such as the future of nations and nation states in a united Europe and with it the finality of the unification process. The paradigm shift from “ever closer union” to “ever closer cooperation,” which Germany and its Chancellor also undertook incrementally, was not the subject of a government declaration and parliamentary debates. The European political initiatives that French President Emmanuel Macron put forward in the summer of 2017 didn’t just remain unanswered because Germany first had to hold a Bundestag election and then protracted coalition negotiations. Rather, there was a lack of strategic clarity in the Chancellery and in the party headquarters of both Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their coalition partners, the Social Democrats, about what Germany actually wanted.

European elections are much more likely than national elections to tempt parties to promise their supporters heaven and earth. The propagation of a federal European state by the FDP is just one recent example. The Greens, for example, are demanding a European immigration law, the Left Party a one-off millionaire levy in all EU states, a ban on arms exports, and the dissolution of both the border control agency Frontex and the border surveillance system EUROSUR. Meanwhile, CDU leader Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and the SPD are calling for a joint permanent seat for the EU on the UN Security Council, and the SPD also wants the transformation of Europe Day on May 9 into a trans-European Union holiday. A more plausible demand from the Social Democrats is to replace the unanimity principle with majority decisions when it comes to foreign policy decisions in the European Council of Ministers. But apart from the fact that this change would first have to be decided unanimously, there is another problem: as became apparent during the migration crisis in autumn 2015, politically controversial majority decisions can deepen existing divisions. The abolition of unanimity is therefore unlikely to have a unifying effect.

Talking European, Acting National

It is not just German parties that like to make promises during European election campaigns, which sound good but are unenforceable in practice. When Emmanuel Macron, in his “Letter to the Europeans” in early March, spoke out in favor of a “minimum wage adapted to each country and renegotiated every year,” he was just appealing to left-of-center voters in his own country. But he can hardly think that a country like Bulgaria would agree to a regulation that it believes would damage its competitiveness. Should other, economically stronger countries, such as Germany and France, step into the breach? That all remains unclear. As far as europhile rhetoric is concerned, Macron surpasses all other EU heads of state and government. But when he talks about European sovereignty and a European army, he does not mean surrendering French sovereignty. France’s exclusive control over both its permanent seat on the UN Security Council and its nuclear weapons is sacrosanct. What may at first sound supranational are in reality ambiguous metaphors from Macron.

Of course, German politicians also understand the art of talking European and acting national. The construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline is one particularly striking example of this. Another is the SPD call for a joint European army. The party seemed to barely give a thought to the fact that the German parliament has to consent to any out-of-area Bundeswehr deployments—unless they are hoping to persuade all the European states to allow the European Parliament to have a similar oversight role, i.e. to create a “German Europe” in terms of defense policy. As far as asylum and migration are concerned, the same applies: as in 2015, there is still today a tendency on the left to elevate Germany to the rank of Europe’s leading moral nation. In the 19th century, a satirical verse from Adelbert von Chamisso’s “The Night Watchman” that mocked conservatives was often quoted in Germany, “And the king absolutely/If he does our will.” These days, the center-left in Germany seems to be following a slightly different motto: “And Europe absolutely, if it does our will.”

At the same time, a number of vitally important issues are barely being mentioned during this year’s European election campaign in Germany. Is the EU still a community of values? It has so far been unable to do much about Hungary, Poland, and Romania’s open disregard for the rule of law, as laid down in the Copenhagen Accession Criteria of 1993 and the Lisbon Treaty of 2009. With some member states having made themselves so economically dependent on Putin’s Russia or China that they no longer willing or capable of supporting EU decisions critical of Moscow or Beijing and therefore repeatedly block them, what remains of the argument that Europe must speak with one voice on important foreign policy issues ? How can the EU counter Donald Trump’s unilateralism when it is currently so divided on fundamental normative issues? What remains of the idea of an avant-garde core Europe when even Italy, a founding member, is set on a collision course with “Brussels” and the EU’s common set of rules?

Since amendments to the European treaties require the agreement of all member states, it is in most cases an illusion to believe that obvious grievances can be eliminated by amending those treaties. But there is nothing to prevent liberal democracies in the EU from working more closely together and thus creating a counterweight to the “illiberal democracies” before their number increases, for example with the possible accession of problematic candidate countries like Serbia.

Modesty and Realism

A better coordination of liberal democracies is also urgently needed outside of the EU. Even after it leaves, the United Kingdom will continue to be closely linked to the states of the EU due to its political culture. The same is true for the former British colonies of Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. And despite Trump, this also applies to the United States. It’s not only in the area of defense that Europe remains dependent on close cooperation with the US. What we like to call “European values” are, in fact, Western values, that have to a large extent been shaped by America. If the West is to have a future, the liberal democracies of Europe must do their utmost to counter further transatlantic estrangement.

Populists and nationalists are benefiting from the omissions and mistakes made by the defenders of liberal democracy. A particularly serious mistake was and is the fact that they are evading and even suppressing the question of the finality of the European unification process. The EU is a group of post-classical nation states. Post-classical nation states differ from older, classic, fully sovereign nation states in that they jointly exercise some of their sovereign rights and have transferred others to supranational institutions.

Those who say that it is necessary to dissolve the nation states into a United Europe overlook the fact that the overwhelming majority of Europeans would not even consider giving up their traditional nation state. Moreover, the nation state in Europe is still the safest haven for the rule of law, the welfare state, and democracy. In order to preserve and further develop these achievements, there is a need for ever closer cooperation between those European states that are committed to these values. This goal is more modest than that of a European federal state or a European republic. But it is more realistic and democratic than any supposedly europhile utopia.

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Artwork © Katinka Reinke

It all began with the lights going out in the Baltics. In the autumn of 2021, as it was getting cool in northern Europe, but not yet properly cold, the Kremlin decided to venture a small experiment. For years, Moscow had been working to restructure the old, Soviet-era electrical network in Europe’s northeast so that it would be possible to disconnect Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania without cutting off Kaliningrad in the process. In order to achieve its full effect, the operation had to go ahead before 2025, the target date for the former Soviet republics’ independence from Russian nuclear power and its supply network.

And so, in early October 2021, the power went out from Narva in Estonia’s East to Lithuania’s border with Poland in the West—and didn’t go on again for a full three weeks. Computer systems, Internet, monetary transfers, traffic control, industrial production, sewage and cooling systems, heating and telecommunications: all of society’s vital functions were brought to their knees. Emergency services were able to supply a few nooks and crannies with power, but that couldn’t prevent catastrophe.

Driven to desperation, the Baltic governments called on NATO to invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty, the mutual defense clause, yet the alliance had become sluggish. It took a full two weeks to reach agreement, and several western European NATO members didn’t cover themselves in glory with regard to their duty of solidarity. Of course, Russia had not dared to launch a military attack on the helplessly vulnerable Baltics, but it had demonstrated its power, divided the alliance, and laid bare the weak points of the Western alliance in terms of both political unity and its preparedness to deploy and fight. The Kremlin eventually decided, on the 21st day of the blackout, to let the three countries back into the network. The act that had cost a few thousand people their lives and caused devastating economic damage was generally described as a wonderful success by Moscow strategists.

What Moscow hadn’t counted on was the long-term impact the operation would have. If it had known which processes the operation was going to trigger, and how these would change the strategic situation, the Kremlin would presumably have kept its finger off the trigger.

The Migrant Boom

Today, in the summer of 2040, the European Union is a fully developed regional power with a small but impossible-to-ignore capability to project power globally. The catchword “Common Foreign and Security Policy” no longer leads to giggles and eye-rolling on the international stage, but is rather a factor that Washington, Beijing, Ankara, Moscow, Tehran, and Delhi have learned to take seriously.

This development became possible thanks to multiple parallel, mutually reinforcing developments. The shock of the “Baltic Blackout” unleashed unforeseen powers in the member states. Not only did defense spending race upwards, but the streamlining of military structures in the five decisive member-states—Germany, France, Italy, Poland, and Spain—and the adjustment of the outdated procurement system provided for an unexpected increase in capabilities. An agreement was reached with NATO on so-called European Redundant Battle Structures (EBRS), which made the command structures of both organizations fully compatible, limited duplication of weapon systems, and pragmatically spelled out reciprocal coordination.

It was helpful that in 2024, the recession finally came to an end and the so-called Migrant Boom began, a phase of high economic growth triggered by the extensive integration of the young, hungry people that had entered Europe in high numbers since 2015. The boom also drew power from the fact that the Chinese economy had picked up since 2025, and from the completion of the Transatlantic-Pacific Integrated Markets Program (T-PIMP) between China, ten countries in the Pacific region, the EU, and the US. Donald Trump’s successor in the White House had rapidly taken up the dormant global free trade negotiations, and fear of a major global recession had brought together a wide, previously unimaginable global coalition.

This liberal renaissance even rubbed off on the Middle East. After the peaceful revolution in Iran in 2022 and Turkish President Erdogan’s departure for exile in Sochi, Russia—where a floor in the brand new Trump MAGA hotels was specially decorated for him in neo-Ottoman style—the path was clear for an extensive integration of the region’s markets. Iran and Turkey joined the Arab Regional Mercantile Pact for Investment and Trade (ARMPIT), which had been founded by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the Gulf States. This federation then joined a customs union with the EU’s now-complete internal market.

Russia’s Decline, Europe’s Opportunity

For the EU, these favorable economic conditions were like a fountain of youth. Comprehensive social programs eroded part of the basis for the populists’ criticism of elites and globalization, and Europe was able to strengthen its diplomatic, military, and development instruments without any toxic, polarizing battles.

But the decisive factor was the durable political consensus that the newly aspiring Europe had achieved after the crisis in the Baltics: it had become clear to even the most boorish de-integrationists that the self-destruction of the continent couldn’t be allowed to continue. The price was simply too high.

Moscow’s creeping departure from the biggest international stage gave Europe’s reawakened ambitions another boost. Just two years after the electricity war in the Baltics, Russia had slipped into the massive recession that economists had long predicted, which eventually led to the departure of Putin’s inner circle from power in 2024 (destination: MAGA Hotel in Sochi).

Russia had been pulled so deep into China’s tributary orbit that it was to some extent neutralized. It simply didn’t have the resources needed to continue its wastefully massive military presence on its own western border, the border that had in any case been its most secure and predictable since 1990. Chief Ideologist Dugin moved into a basement apartment in the MAGA Hotel and sulked. As China’s junior partner, the country was allowed to perform auxiliary services in Central Asia; in return China guaranteed Russia’s territorial integrity.

A New Deal With Washington

Europe’s core foreign policy actors had, then, more than just the leeway to do their own homework. In the wake of Europe’s realignment, Europe’s core also found a new way to divide up tasks in the European neighborhood between itself and the US. Washington still had no interest in Europe rising to become a true world power, let alone a nuclear one, but on that point the Americans and Europeans largely agreed. So the US stepped up its engagement in Europe in ways agreed with Brussels down to the smallest detail. The nuclear umbrella, as well as a solid presence of US troops on European soil, stayed put. Fort Trump in Poland was renamed Fort Brzezinski in 2023, which on the one hand had the advantage of making it almost impossible to pronounce, but on the other replaced the truly unspeakable with the name of one of Poland’s greatest sons.

The EU and the US also agreed on burden-sharing in Europe’s geopolitically tricky neighborhood. America took on the role of a shaping power in the Arctic, in Eastern Europe, and in the Levant, while the Europeans dedicated themselves to the Baltic Sea, the Balkans, and North Africa. NATO’s standing maritime groups in the Baltic Sea and Mediterranean could now be replaced by European operational fleets.

This doctrine (named SMURF for Stability and Mutual Reassurance for Freedom), which the EU and NATO had gotten off the ground together, had the advantage of freeing up important American forces for the actual geopolitical hotspots in Asia. For China, despite its accommodating posture in the framework of T-PIMP, had by no means given up its aggressive hegemonic claims in its backyard.

Victory Over Populism

Europe supported the new division of labor through a significantly expanded presence on the seven seas, in order to secure international trade routes and choke points and be able to react locally at any time to conflict flare-ups. One participant in these naval operations was the small German task force around the brand-new Amphibische Kampf- und Konsularschiff (AKK) “Johannes Kahrs,” the German aircraft carrier, named after a former budget politician who had once represented the pretty port city of Hamburg in the German Bundestag.

But how could Europe’s new foreign policy role be secured at home? After the “Baltic Electric Shock” (Bild, October 5, 2021), there was sufficient political capital for more than just an enhanced foreign and security policy. And the brutal, long-lasting recession that Brexit had triggered in the UK helped concentrate minds in the remaining member states. Even more important was the small euro crisis of 2022, which fueled the point of view that Europe had to put the common currency on a new foundation. With this new crisis, the new European thinking came full circle. While the crisis in the Baltics had demonstrated to the European left that one gets nowhere with breezy pacifism and “understanding” for Russia, the latest euro scare convinced European conservatives to give up their fundamental opposition to political union and a transfer union in the eurozone.

Indeed, it took until 2030, but within that decade the “inclusive turnaround” (Janning, 2026) took place. It was a movement against euroskepticism, renationalization, populism, and authoritarian temptations.

A Single Phone Number

The European republic that was meant to replace the nation states remained an illusion, as expected. But Europe’s foreign policy core, which had emerged after the crisis in the Baltics, also developed a domestic policy power center that reformed the EU’s political system in two steps. First, the single market was completed, which had a significant positive effect on growth in the EU. Apart from the European asylum compromise of 2023, it was above all this boom that raised Europe’s credibility and thereby expanded the room for maneuver of pro-European elites. The result was step two: a truly Europe-wide direct election of the president of the European Commission in 2029.

In the course of this revision of Europe, Brussels was able to abolish the European External Action Service and transform it into the European Security Council, in which the heads of state and government met monthly under the chairmanship of the directly elected Commission president and brought the foreign policy of the member states into a common whole. This did not completely prevent nations from going it alone, nor did they magically come to complete agreement on all issues. But since Europe had linked the weight of each member state’s voting rights to its voting behavior on foreign policy questions, the incentive to undermine the common foreign policy was quite low. Observers agreed that this state of affairs was the closest thing to the EU “speaking with one voice,” a goal that had been evoked for so long.

This new institutional constellation earned legitimacy when it, in a series of crisis situations, including in the Middle East and in the relationship to China, formulated a strong European position and asserted European interests in a previously unthinkable way. Not least because of this new foreign policy strength, Great Britain applied in 2038 to rejoin the EU. The outcome, though, was up in the air until 2040 because of disagreements about the recognition of British agricultural products ( “Ceci n’est pas un fromage,” Le Figaro, July 23, 2039).

“Learning through suffering,” the most cynical of all the maxims about progress, allowed the EU, within 20 years, to transform from a quarreling, internally shaky structure fearful of the changing world order into a guarantor of regional and global stability. Given the multiplicity of forks in the road where it could have taken a wrong turn, one can—without diminishing the achievement of political leaders—sigh and admit: we got lucky.

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© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

From its very beginnings, the European Parliament has often been the target of scorn from commentators. They claimed it was a mere bauble of European integration with little power to challenge the member states of what was then the European Community. This reputation for institutional weakness fostered a tendency to treat elections to the European Parliament as a sideshow, where the strength of parties on a national level could be assessed in contests that were unlikely to cause them existential trouble. Yet through the Lisbon Treaty of 2009, the power of the European Parliament to shape legislation and affect the composition of the European Commission has expanded to a level far beyond the expectations of those first MEP candidates who stood in 1979.

In the process, gaining MEPs in European elections has become a central goal for any party or movement that wants to exert decisive influence over a European integration process that is reconfiguring Europe. Moments of turmoil such as the eurozone crisis, the Syrian refugee wave, the tensions between Ukraine and Russia or the end of old regimes in North Africa have underlined how the fate of member states is intertwined with the development of the EU and the states along its collective borders. Moreover, the Brexit crisis has starkly demonstrated the extent to which EU institutions can exert enormous pressure on states who attempt to challenge the structural foundations of European integration.

The ongoing nature of this process of institutional transformation has turned this year’s European elections, on May 23-26, 2019, into a crucial test for the political survival of newer as well as more established political groups, as part of the wider struggle to shape Europe’s future course. In the process, the long-term trajectory of key party families could be crucially affected by successes and failures on the European level. Right-wing populist parties, the Green movement, traditional Social Democrats, the alliance of center-right parties organized in the European People’s Party (EPP), and groups oriented toward liberalism as well as the far left could each experience a massive boost through these electoral battles or be plunged into a difficult position if its results point to further setbacks to come.

Far Right’s Change of Tactics

Of all these different political forces, right-wing populists have attracted the most attention. The recent entry of such parties into government in Austria and Italy in combination with the successes of the Leave campaign in the United Kingdom have fostered a misleading tendency to portray such movements as a new force within European politics. In reality, French parties under the leadership of the Le Pen family have been a force to be reckoned with since the 1980s, while Italy’s Lega and Austria’s FPÖ have gained power on the local and national level since the early 1990s. Even in Germany or Spain, where right-wing populist parties have only broken through at the national level since 2014, they have built on activist networks that have been operating on a regional level for several decades.

This history of right-wing populist parties in the EU means that there is also a track record that can be examined when it comes to assessing their ability to build a cohesive EU-wide party family. Such efforts have often foundered as the particular national interests of such movements hampered their ability to cooperate effectively on the European level. Yet the emergence of figures who have become Europe-wide household names, such as Lega leader (and Italian interior minister) Matteo Salvini, could well mark the beginnings of a decisive shift toward cooperation within the European Parliament and other institutions. Also, transnational far-right networks such as the Identitarian movement show an increasing interest in capturing EU institutions rather than bringing them down

European parties committed to defending an open society face many of the same strategic dilemmas as their right-wing populist rivals. Yet though they share an abhorrence of the populist right, the liberal parties grouped in ALDE as well as France’s La Republique En Marche, the German Green Party, Poland’s Wiosna or Romania’s USR, to name just a few examples, each draw on their own distinct set of ideological traditions. The way the Remain movement in the UK has splintered politically is typical of how attempts to push back against right-wing populism do not make other ideological dividing lines disappear.

Green Surge, Flailing Center-Left

Green surges in Germany and the Netherlands are likely to bolster the number of Green MEPs, who will want to carve out their own distinct ideological niche. By contrast, the way the votes of those who identify with social liberalism have fractured across different parties will make coordination more difficult for the ALDE party family. Far-left parties like Spain’s Podemos that enjoyed rapid growth in the wake of the Eurozone crisis face their own struggle to retain voters. They may be tempted by new populist options while still trying to maintain a coherent ideological identity to ensure that core supporters who abhor far right ideas remain loyal.

As elections in Europe increasingly become affected by mobilization for the populist right and counter-mobilization against it, parties that are not strongly identified with either position are struggling. Having presented itself as being neither left nor right, Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S) has become ground down as the voter coalition it constructed has become difficult to sustain. Perhaps most severely affected have been traditional Social Democratic parties such as Germany’s SPD, who in trying to triangulate to appeal to voters on both sides of the divide in the battle over populism have ended up satisfying none. Others like Spain’s PSOE have been more successful. All in all, however, the center-left group, the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, is likely to return to the European Parliament in a weakened condition.

Dramatic Structural Shifts

In an environment where established party networks are fragmenting while emerging ones are struggling to coalesce, the EPP can still maintain dominance despite losses and internal tensions of its own. Even if Hungary’s Fidesz breaks with the EPP, all it needs to do is to remain stronger than any rival in a fragmenting party landscape is to control ad hoc processes of coalition-building and shape the composition of the European Commission. One of Europe’s many paradoxes at this juncture is that, at a moment where the EU’s emergence as a central global actor has accelerated the fragmentation of European politics, the political network most likely to take advantage is made up of center-right parties that have dominated the politics of member states for decades.

The relentless emphasis on the rise of right-wing populism in much of the US and British news media in particular has diverted attention from how the EU’s growing geopolitical power and the European Parliament’s rapidly expanding influence within its system have led to more dramatic structural shifts in European society. These dramatic structural shifts have fostered the emergence of different players as new parties have risen to prominence during moments of crisis that link the individual fate of voters with that of the EU as a whole. Yet while some parties that have dominated the European Parliament since that first election of 1979 have come under enormous pressure, others have adapted to sustain a strong grip on Europe’s future. In a period when so much in European politics is in flux, perhaps being the least noisy player in the game can ultimately be the cleverest move of all.

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Artwork © Katinka Reinke

Brussels, on a spring day in April 2040. Marie Épinard is fretful. A few months ago, the woman who started her career as a member of the young team advising the then French President Emmanuel Macron, moved into the Berlaymont at Schuman roundabout. As President of the European Commission, she sees herself as following in the footsteps of her compatriot Jacques Delors, committed to ensuring the dynamism of the single market. She sees it as the centerpiece of the joint project that is the European Union because this project now encompasses many different things. The common legal entity, the Union of “Equals,” has not really existed since the 1990s—with the euro and Schengen two major fields of differentiation have since developed. Nevertheless, the EU still holds on to its narrative as being about “unity.”

But in recent years, this kind of differentiation has evolved from being an instrument for overcoming blockages into becoming an active organizational principle in the EU. This has had a number of institutional consequences that have changed the way cooperation happens in Brussels. And Paris has been one of the driving forces behind this development.

The principle of unanimity in many of those areas that so urgently required joint action had caused constant blockages due to the primacy of national interests. As a result, groups of member states had finally taken the bull by the horns and started moving ahead in fields as diverse as cooperation on police and intelligence matters, defense policy, technology policy, and taxation policy.

One of Épinard’s most important tasks is to ensure that all of this continues to be done within the framework of the EU Treaties with commonly agreed rights and obligations—and that it remains open to all who want to join later. There is now something like a “common sense” approach among the EU member states as to how such forms of cooperation can be conducted in a way that is compatible with the common good. And this, after all, is a remarkable development, following the many years in which the mental maps in the member states regarding the EU had moved further and further apart. The realization of the extent of their own weakness in the face of an increasingly aggressive global environment certainly had an impact.

Too Complex for a Beer Mat

In the meantime, there is something like a truce in the EU: everyone is committed to the most ambitious single market possible—and some are doing even more. Yet the many different strands, which exist alongside each other without any connection, carry a risk of unravelling. Differentiation comes at the expense of transparency. In the meantime, as a result of the different speeds, the rights and advantages enjoyed by EU citizens are anything but equal, which increases political volatility.

As a consequence, the President of the European Commission spends a lot of her time digesting the opinions of her various legal advisers on the somewhat abstract question of exactly how much asynchronicity a union can tolerate and still go by that name. This morning, there is once again a great deal of differing opinions as to when the point will have been reached when competing systems gathered under one roof will no longer make sense. Épinard herself would like to have a model for the EU that could be written on the back of a beer mat. But that’s just not possible these days.

Most importantly, there is the single market, which is open to all EU member states that have committed themselves to democracy and the rule of law. “Big is beautiful” has been the motto here since the 2020s. Then there is the increasingly aggressive competition between the US and China and the rise of other powers and regions which have ultimately brought Europeans closer together and even allowed for progress on all four fundamental freedoms. After leaving the EU, the British, too, have gradually formed closer ties again with the single market and have strengthened the circle of friends in non-EU Europe. The Western Balkans states, meanwhile, have now become part of the single market, following a deliberate effort by the EU to support them.

Europe’s integration-skeptical governments have finally accepted that the single market cannot function without strong supranational institutions. And the prospect of no longer fulfilling the criteria for membership of the single market is also disciplining those political forces in Europe that had started turning their backs on democracy and the rule of law in their countries. All this has served to strengthen the EU institutions, above all the European Commission. It can now also use its regained strength within the single market to give the EU clout in international trade policy, which offers the potential for both conflicts and opportunities.

It was a long journey to get to this point. For many years, Europeans struggled to overcome the deep rifts that had opened up between sovereignists and advocates of “more Europe” over fundamental issues of democracy and the rule of law. It was only after 2019 and Brexit, which took place at the last minute in an orderly fashion but still hit the economic interests of London and the EU capitals hard, that EU citizens realized just how much internal cohesion they had lost: economically, socially and culturally.

A Hanseatic Alliance

This was also demonstrated by the European elections of that year, which significantly boosted nationalist forces in the European Parliament. Their power to shape policy remained limited, as they still had less than a third of the seats and few overlapping policies. But their repeated tactical alliances considerably increased the potential for disruption of the EU system.

In addition, there was the cooling of the global economy, the effects of which were clearly felt in the EU, particularly in Germany. The euro zone, with its still incomplete architecture, once again revealed its inner weakness. In Rome, Prime Minister Matteo Salvini played with fire: leaving the monetary union was out of the question, instead Italy wanted to change its rules from within.

For the Élysée, the loss of Italy as an ally was a real problem, particularly as successive governments in Madrid had been stymied for years due to unresolved internal divisions over the question of Catalonia’s independence. A new force field had developed in the EU in the form of the Netherlands and its new “Hanseatic alliance” of EU countries with conservative approaches to fiscal policy, a stance that Germany was also sympathetic to. This made it impossible for France to tip the scales to ensure a genuine reform of economic and monetary union.

Paris soon gave up believing in the Franco-German motor for reforming the euro zone. With enormous political effort, President Macron had managed to halt the protest movements in his own country, to moderately push forward his reform path, and to anchor his ideas for the future of the economy, politics and society in Europe in a coalition with the Liberals in the European Parliament, while also keeping Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in check. Berlin under Chancellor Angela Merkel, however, was not prepared to compromise despite all the lofty commitments to strengthening the European Union with regard to an economic union.

In this context, and against the backdrop of a weak global economy, the battles over distribution within the EU increased. The negotiations over the multi-annual financial framework for 2021-2027 were fiercely contested, with the different interests clashing as never seen before. During this period, the forces of the center were also significantly weakened in the European Council and the Council of Ministers. This was partly due to the ongoing electoral successes of nationalist parties and movements that then formed governments, and partly due to their own internal weaknesses and the lack of a common vision from Germany and France for the future of the EU. Had the Maastricht Treaty therefore finally failed, were the states and societies of Europe unready for a genuine political union, for deeper cooperation on issues of migration, internal security and defense?

Looking back, it’s clear that this disillusionment was actually helpful as it led to a new consensus among the member states. In this phase of fundamental differences, the decision was made to focus on the single market as the EU’s “main raison d’être,” something the Commission had already envisaged in 2017 as a possible scenario for the development of the EU.

Security and Migration

“Nobody falls in love with a common market,” Delors had once warned. Yet EU countries had gone through too many emotions in recent decades—negative emotions. So why not a new soberness? After all, without the single market, the EU would be nothing. A number of initiatives were launched to further enhance the single market. In addition to this, real progress in securing the EU’s external borders drew attention to the explosive issue of migration in the short term. However, without any agreement on a common asylum and migration policy, internal border controls tightened over time. In turn, it quickly became clear that the single market could not develop its full potential without being embedded in a more ambitious policy framework.

In retrospect, two developments were decisive for the start of a new phase of differentiation: Firstly, the shift of US security interests towards China and away  from Europe—something that happened gradually rather than with a bang. Secondly, the agreement on a genuine common asylum and migration policy by a group of EU member states in the face of continuing migration pressure, which threatened to trigger domestic political upheavals.

When it came to defense policy, Britain increasingly signaled its interest in genuine cooperation with the EU. The UK’s own position outside the EU structures proved to be advantageous, as the country’s public opinion was still divided about the EU. For France, which had early on made intensive efforts to involve the UK, this was a welcome development as it helped compensate for Berlin’s weakness. During his first term in office, President Macron had convinced the new German Chancellor, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, to join London, Madrid, Rome and Warsaw in making a genuine offer of cooperation on defense policy to any other EU member states that were willing and able.

The focus here were less on institutional issues than on a few examples of rapid, flexible and, above all, successful cooperation. Needless to say: since the British needed to be on board, the whole thing had to take place (at least initially) outside the treaties. This was hard to swallow for the officials in the chancellery in Berlin, but the EU had long been accused of relying on initiatives within the EU framework to allow it to hide its own lack of ambition. In view of the concrete security-related challenges, it was indeed necessary to demonstrate the ability to act. The European Intervention Initiative, molded on the French model, finally saw the light of day.

Germany’s Conversion

Overall, a clear willingness to change could be seen in Germany’s European policy with regard to a greater level of differentiation. While Berlin had previously placed great emphasis on the cohesion of the EU as a whole and was above all concerned about losing countries in Central and Eastern Europe as a result of closer cooperation with others, it now became convinced that cooperation with like-minded partners in promising core areas of its own interest could be attractive—and can also help demonstrate the value of Europe to the German people.

For although Germany had long been one of the countries that profited most from EU membership, the image of “Germany as paymaster for the crises of the others” had persisted in the country. Organizing the reform of European asylum and migration policy, which had long failed in the EU-27, into a group of EU countries was far more attractive for Berlin than the prospect of closer economic and social cooperation within the euro zone, which France had long demanded. On the issue of migration, differentiation could also be more easily organized on the basis of existing EU treaties by using the instrument of “enhanced cooperation.”

Paris, however, insisted that new forms of cooperation beyond the single market should still be linked to the EU institutions. At the same time, there should be a clear difference made between the member states that participated in these projects and those that did not. For example, only countries involved in a particular issue should take part in votes on those issues in the European Parliament. This should also apply to the Eurogroup.

Primacy of the Ballot Box

While the Commission should have some responsibility for defense, migration and the euro, its rights would vary according to the format. Berlin agreed to the premise that the strong role of the EU institutions in the single market of all EU members should be preserved. And so, the way was cleared for a new experimental field of flexible cooperation between groups of member states—vive l’Europe différenciée! The “New Hanseatic League,” for example, claimed the right to set its own priorities and developed a differentiation project in the field of new technologies. And in this way, new forms of cooperation began to emerge.

So now Marie Épinard is pondering the question of finding the right balance between everyone acting together and the Europe of differentiation—and she finally comes to the conclusion that only the next European elections can reveal what that balance should be. It will be up to the citizens of the EU to decide whether or not the first female European Commission president, together with the governments of the member states, has indeed managed through differentiation to bring the EU closer to its citizens’ expectations of security and prosperity. In 2040, it is now a matter of course in the EU for achievements to be measured not by the yardstick of history—but rather by what Europeans decide at the ballot box.

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Artwork © Katinka Reinke

The chaotic Brexit saga suggests that states in Europe are no longer able to settle their differences in a constructive manner. The 2019 European elections have already been marked by a renaissance of sovereignist rhetoric. Pro-European politicians are at odds with each other regarding the required EU reform agenda. Can integration thrive in an atmosphere of conflict and chaos? Can the EU prosper in a new era of national pride and glory? How many crises can the EU digest before losing its mission and purpose? And most crucially, is Europe disintegrating?

There are no convincing answers to these pressing questions. This is partly because it is difficult to understand the fast-moving events, and pessimists have been proven wrong many times in the process of European integration. Europe emerged stronger from previous crises, and the present-day challenges can again be overcome in due time.

It is also difficult to predict disintegration because we lack a plausible narrative, let alone the theory to discuss it. For mysterious reasons, successive generations of intellectuals, commentators and politicians have always focussed on European integration while neglecting the opposite scenario. This is like discussing peace without trying to comprehend war. We may well be in favor of peace, but peace cannot be maintained without any understanding of the causes and implications of war. Similarly, can we comprehend democracy without talking about autocracy?

No wonder we are so confused at present. We do not really know what causes disintegration and what are its symptoms. Is disintegration a process, or something resembling sudden death? Does Brexit weaken or strengthen the integration of the remaining 27 states? How can we stop or reverse disintegration?

In the absence of plausible theories of disintegration, we can try to envisage some scenarios of the EU falling apart. Three outcomes seem most plausible at present. The first sees Europe’s leaders losing control over financial or political events. The second involves leaders trying to address problems, but ending up making things worse. The third scenario envisages a benign neglect policy with not-so-benign implications.

The “Big Bang” Scenario

At the peak of the euro crisis, an economic avalanche beyond anybody’s control was seen as the most likely disintegration scenario. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel repeatedly declared that the plunge of the euro would mean the collapse of Europe. Poland’s Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski added that the outcome of this scenario could well be war. Neither came to pass, but numerous analysts still argue that the common currency without a common fiscal government is not sustainable in the long-term.

We will be able to verify this pessimistic claim only when faced with another huge financial crisis. Such a crisis is difficult to predict and locate. The last financial shock came from New York, not Brussels. The next one could come from Shanghai or Rio de Janeiro. Financial turbulence may well be caused by a security crisis.Another huge refugee crisis could also lead to the implosion of EU institutions. Environmental disaster or a pandemic could cause events to spiral out of anybody’s control. None of these things can be predicted for sure, but any of them could happen with or without the purposeful contribution of the EU.

During emergencies, chaos and conflict are a normal state of affairs. Germany as the most powerful country would be at the center of crisis management. Some countries would join a bandwagon behind Germany; others would try to form a counter-alliance. Since chaos is heaven for populist politics, nationalism would thrive. The politics of territorial claims and financial recriminations would ensue. It is hard to see the EU surviving an avalanche of mutual accusations, retaliations and recriminations. Under this scenario, disintegration would be spectacular. It would resemble a cosmic big bang or sudden death.

Such drama appeals to our imagination, but it is difficult to speculate about the “unknown unknowns” that could trigger it. Not every crisis results in an Armageddon. The EU has a record of impressive resilience. Brexit, for instance, will hurt the EU more than is currently being acknowledged, but it is unlikely to lead to disintegration. In fact, the UK is more likely than the EU to disintegrate in the aftermath of Brexit. Moreover, it is difficult to suggest specific policies that could prevent a European Armageddon caused by hypothetical threats, however frightening.

The Gorbachev Scenario

The Soviet Union collapsed after Mikhail Gorbachev began introducing economic and democratic reforms. Gorbachev wanted to strengthen the Soviet Union, not dismantle it. Historians point to the reforms of the Hapsburg Empire as accelerating its demise. The so-called Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1867 that led to the creation of a dual monarchy with two separate parliaments and prime ministers in Budapest and Vienna provides a good example.

The EU has not attempted major reforms for the last three decades, but the lower-key measures that member states did agree proved highly contentious. This especially applies to the 2012 Fiscal Compact. Its critics say it is driving the eurozone apart because it imposes unjust and excessively rigid, counter-productive policies on the debtor states. Efforts to reform the EU’s asylum system have proved equally contentious with numerous states, especially from Central and Eastern Europe, refusing to accept the central redistribution of refugees.

In the run-up to the 2019 European elections, politicians launched numerous reform proposals—many of them contradictory rather than complementary. If the most ambitious of them were to be implemented, this would generate not only conflicts, but also unwanted or unexpected side effects.

Plans to create a more ambitious economic and political union are likely to have the most profound implications. A political and economic union of many distinct entities, however interdependent, would struggle to identify a set of common interests that could guide its policies. It would only work if composed of a few like-minded and similar looking European states.

Such a core of Europe would create a new divide across the continent, raising fear and suspicion. Some EU member states would be worried about being excluded, while others would fear that joining would subject them to domination by core members. In other words, the jump into a fully-fledged union would likely destabilize relations among European states, and break cooperative arrangements. A federation, however light, may well be attempted with the intention of saving EU integration—but in reality it could prompt disintegration.

Even less contentious reforms, such as those aimed at strengthening Europe’s defenses, especially against cyber-attacks, may require treaty changes—and in some countries referenda. Those have proved to be a festivals of populism benefitting euroskeptic campaigners. As such, they could be a vehicle of disintegration.

Reforms aimed at the repatriation of certain powers from Brussels to national capitals and the reduction of budgetary contributions may also drive the EU apart. These reforms are chiefly sponsored by euroskeptic parties and not those supporting tighter integration. After all, repatriation of power from Brussels is usually associated with disintegration rather than integration.

The “Benign Neglect” Scenario

Reforms, especially the major ones, are always risky, and politicians usually avoid risk. Moreover, in a Europe split along numerous political and economic differences it is difficult to agree any reform, let alone a highly ambitious one. Pro-European liberals would be particularly opposed to reforms coming from the anti-liberal camp even if decentralization may make the EU more flexible and competitive.

Under the “benign neglect” scenario, disintegration would take place by default or in disguise. Rather than trying to look for European solutions to national problems, member states would increasingly try to solve problems on their own or in a non-EU framework. They would not openly abandon the European project, but use it merely as a public relations tool.

The long history of the Western European Union (WEU) is a good example of such a symbolic cooperative frame. The WEU existed for many decades, but was hardly ever utilized for its envisaged security purposes. Members of the WEU met regularly and adopted resolutions. The WEU administrative structure and even the parliamentary assembly functioned seemingly normally.

And yet, when serious challenges arose in the field of defense and security, WEU member states ignored the WEU structure and used NATO, the EU, the UN, the OSCE, or informal frameworks instead. The 1990s war in the Balkans uncovered the price of this policy: Europeans found themselves without a common security strategy, divided on the question of which institution should handle the war, and without the effective military capabilities to do anything meaningful.

A policy of benign neglect and of muddling through comes at a price, but it is better than endorsing highly ambitious, hazardous projects. In a period of economic turmoil and ideological confusion, pragmatism is a valid alternative to idealism; a gradual approach may work better than a revolutionary one.

This probably explains the policy of European leaders at present. They are clearly reluctant to invest their careers and resources in policies with highly uncertain outcomes. While they will do the minimum to avert financial meltdown and political confrontation, it will not be enough to halt the process of creeping disintegration. The EU itself is the obvious victim of such an approach, with some of its key institutions progressively marginalized.

However, institutions have a very long half-life, even when they are not working, which suggests that the EU—or rather its façade—will survive. Europe will increasingly resemble a maze with different actors moving in opposite directions, whilst maintaining the appearance of dialogue and cooperation. The informal mode of decision making will become more important than dysfunctional treaties. Stronger states, especially Germany, will find themselves in the position of kingmaker by default rather than design. Emerging problems will have to be addressed, and if Brussels proves unable to do anything helpful, the public will expect solutions from Germany. This may prove a mixed blessing.

Grassroots Reform

None of the three envisaged scenarios bode well for Europe and Germany. Yet the measures currently being entertained to prevent disintegration seem inadequate. They also lack broad public backing.

Perhaps the only way to prevent disintegration is to reverse its dominant logic. Integration does not need to be a matter of nation states only; cities, regions and civil society organizations can be given tangible access to EU decision-making and resources. Integration can well be forged along functional rather than territorial logic because different fields require different memberships and modes of governance.

Spreading out power within Europe and bringing it closer to the citizens may help legitimize European policies more than the current centralized system. Such changes will not come from the top; they need to be pushed from the bottom. Are Europeans prepared to take things into their own hands?

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© US National Park Service/Handout via REUTERS

There really aren’t two ways about it: the outlook for Europe is bleak. The historic opportunity to unite the continent politically that presented itself in the wake of the 2007 financial and sovereign debt crisis has been frivolously squandered. The transatlantic order, guarantor of prosperity and security since the end of World War II, is showing signs of disintegration. Once at the forefront of innovation, Europeans are now seriously debating whether critical technological infrastructure should be imported exclusively from the United States or perhaps also from China.

In addition, there is Brexit; a still fragile currency union whose stability will be put to a severe test in the next recession; the political mess with regard to a common policy on defense procurement; the deep moral failure in the Mediterranean; and an increasingly confused political culture, with European societies on the verge of losing their ability to engage in rational discourse.

In short, we are facing a situation that just a few years ago would have been relegated to the realm of fantasy, regarded as unthinkable, intolerable even. Today it is being recognized with alarming nonchalance as the new normal.

Berlin and Brussels have come to terms with all this. In a world where compromise is the highest form of political craftsmanship, losing the ability to act does not appear to be as a bad trade. The painstakingly negotiated deal, the path of least resistance, the option with the fewest opponents, has replaced openly struggling to address conflicting positions and forge majorities. This leads to endless procrastination: better to stand still than to risk taking a few steps in the wrong direction. We don’t have a word for it when political entities so aimlessly revolve around themselves. If we saw the same symptoms in a human being, we would probably speak of depression.

Catastrophe Looming

Given this lethargy, the upcoming European elections could well end in catastrophe. It is questionable whether another low turnout and the expected gains of right-wing populist parties will lead to a rethink. More likely, Brussels will retreat back to the view that the advantages of the EU have simply not been sufficiently communicated—the people still don’t really understand what they have in Europe. If anything, external factors are to blame for the dissatisfaction: global trends that make European jobs uncertain and promote inequality. All these things are outside the control of politician, the argument goes. The fact that Europe has a serious problem with democracy and effective governance is very rarely acknowledged, and if so, only behind closed doors.

How then can Europeans regain their sovereignty, as France’s President Emmanuel Macron so eloquently demands? The answer is as simple as it is difficult for many to imagine: sovereignty or power is like money. Where there is none, none can be distributed. That’s why Europe itself must “become a power,” as former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer aptly put it at a recent conference.

Like a Faulty Valve

It is much harder to see how this path can be taken. For the longest time, the hopes of many rested on the notion that a continuously deepening confederation would eventually become so intertwined that, one day, almost without us noticing, it would have evolved into a complete political union. But this idea had to clash, sooner or later, with the narrowly defined interests of the European nation states.

The result of this conflict between the idea of Community and the meager remnants of the nation state did not lead to shared sovereignty, the claims of EU optimists to the contrary notwithstanding. Nor is sovereignty really ceded to Brussels, as anti-EU populist like to lament. Rather, political power is simply leaking out of the system like gas from a faulty valve, evaporating somewhere between Brussels and the national capitals. As a result, none of the actors involved—nations, parliaments, governments—are really capable of action. Rarely in history has there been a comparable failure to translate economic potential and sheer demographic size into political power and ability to assert oneself.

This is particularly evident in fiscal policy. Although national solutions don’t work anymore in this political field, the EU member states are unable to escape their respective national political contexts. While large parts of Europe are currently failing to make urgently needed investments in infrastructure and education, the size of the German budget surplus (€60 billion) is steadily catching up to the Greek total budget, roughly €90 billion.

A Fundamental Flaw

Without automatic transfers, no monetary union is able to function for sustained periods of time. This applies to the euro as it does to other currencies. Take the dollar. The United States taxes citizens of New York $100 billion more per year than it spends on the state. The surplus is redistributed through federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, as well as infrastructure and the military. Florida, Michigan, and Kentucky, on the other hand, each year spend billions of dollars in federal funds that citizens from other states have to pay for. Taxpayers do so without much complaint. After all, a union holds more than just economic benefits. In Europe, we are effectively trying to reap these rewards as well but remain unwilling to respect the fundamental laws of gravity that govern any such arrangement.

If such issues were subject to all-deciding parliamentary debates, they could be negotiated and fed into a democratic decision-making process. The EU, however, although it calls itself a union, is a de facto confederation and does not allow for this type of resolution to take place. One of the greatest features of democracy, namely that it enables the resolution of irreconcilable differences through majority decisions, is absent from European decision-making.

For convinced Europeans, the challenge is not to explain to the populace why Europe is good for them. It is more about making clear why it cannot do anything for them in its current configuration, why it no longer works—and what we can do about that.

Young America, Old Europe

All of this does not mean that we have to reinvent the wheel. There is one example in history that has a great many parallels with today’s Europe: the founding of the United States of America. The 13 former colonies had emerged from the War of Independence against the United Kingdom with enormous debts. At the same time, the young Union was threatened by Spanish Florida to the south and by the British to the north, who had retained their presence in Canada. The loose set of rules that the former colonies had adopted were totally unsuited to meeting the financial and foreign policy challenges. There was no real executive, and Congress did not have the right to levy taxes to fund national projects. All international treaties had to be ratified individually by each Member State for them to enter into force. Young America, therefore, found itself in a similarly untenable situation as the Europe of today. In many ways it were concerns all too familiar to us today, that informed the constitution, that was drawn up in Philadelphia in 1787. The rest is history. The US became the most powerful political union in the world.

Learning from America does not mean repeating all the mistakes made in Washington since then. Rather, it is a matter of recognizing the three central achievements of the United States of America: the empowerment of the union parliament, the transfer of the supreme command of the army to the government in Washington, and the consolidation of the debts of member states into a common national debt, secured by the “full faith and credit” of the US government.

The conditions for a successful and effective European Union are essentially the same as they were in America 250 years ago. Whichever can only be done together must be lifted to the European level, shaped by the European executive and legitimized by the European Parliament.

History shows that successful unions do not emerge from gradual processes in times of peace and tranquility, but rather as a consequence of sharp disruptions during periods marked by extreme crises. Successful unions happen as a result of events, of collective efforts by its citizens. Europe now needs such an event: a full debt and defense union underpinned by parliament is the only way to resolve Europe’s crisis and sustainably mitigate external threats. Only then can Europe finally become the positive force on the world stage that it should be.

Goodbye, Monnet!

To accomplish this, we first must overcome the myth of the “Monnet method”. We are faced with what is essentially a binary decision: political union or relapse into 19th-century nationalism. Many organizations committed to the European cause have not really grasped this yet. Adhering to European multilateralism is a dangerous miscalculation, which at best will end in the paralysis of the European project.

Second, Brussels must become capable of admitting criticism. It is time to acknowledge the very real construction errors of the EU instead of constantly preaching its advantages to its citizens.

We should, third, stop overusing the peace narrative. It barely appeals to younger Europeans and is intellectually flawed for the simple reason that is was mainly NATO, and not the EU, that deserves credit for preserving peace in Europe after World War II.

Finally, the fact that Macron’s reform efforts have failed is not only a sign of the Monnet method having reached its limit. It points to the need to overcome the idea of European unification as an evolutionary process. We must also rethink in whom we place our hopes.

The European nation states and their governments have gone as far as they could. Any further step toward integration is tantamount to a self-sacrifice that can never be covered by a national mandate. To expect France and Germany to take this step together is folly. In fact, a new Europe will not be built with or through the nation state, but only against it.

This calls for a massive politicization of European civil society. The new bearers of the European idea must henceforth be the European regional governments, companies, interest groups, parties, trade unions, in short: the citizens themselves. It will take many small actors to finally put an end to the pettiness of the supposedly large ones.

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán does not like to talk to the independent press, preferring more managed media appearances. However, in November 2018, followers of his Facebook page were made privy to a video he made with the action star Chuck Norris. “I’m a streetfighter basically,” said Orbán, as he drove by Budapest’s Heroes’ Square, the setting for his epochal “Russians go home” speech in 1989. “I’m not coming from the elite, I’m coming from a small village.”

Orbán’s PR was canny as ever. Norris is a cult figure in Hungary and the memory of Heroes’ Square is a gift that keeps on giving, even three decades on. But he was also showing a self-awareness that is not always apparent to Hungary observers. “Orbán loves to fight,” his biographer Paul Lendvai told the Berlin Policy Journal. His Fidesz party and Orbán project themselves as the only real genuine fighters for the national interest, for Christian values, against the barbarian invasion,” Lendvai added.

The Viktor Orbán story is one of ambition and opportunism. It began with opportunism, too. It began in 1989 with a speech that Orbán made to some 250,000 people at the symbolic reburial of Imre Nagy, the martyr of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Orbán decried the Soviet Union and called for the withdrawal from Hungary of Soviet troops. It was an opportunistic move—the speakers that day had allegedly agreed to demur on the topic of Russia’s departure—but with it, he entered the history books. As one of his biographers Jozsef Debreczeni described it, “it was the meeting of an extraordinary luck with an extraordinary talent.”

Orbán has been a legacy politician from the start, even though a video from around that time shows him denying any interest in a political career, saying he would rather be a professor. Yet one of his university teachers has recalled having to break the news to a young, crestfallen Orbán that he would never fulfil his ambition to become US president, because he was not born in the country. His years in liberal circles left Orbán with a bitterness from being mocked by Budapest’s intellectuals. But if he was outclassed on an academic level, his political instincts have helped him prevail.

“He Has Become Illiberal”

Given his current dominance of Hungary’s political landscape, it is easy to forget that Orbán failed to gain an outright majority in Hungary during the first 20 years. However, since 2010 he has won three supermajorities that have allowed him to rewrite and amend the constitution at will. After three decades in politics—Orbán, now 55, has been at Hungary’s top table since he was 26—voters want him because of his personality.  That’s how the one genuine pretender to his crown, János Lázár, a leading member of Fidesz, has described Orbán’s enduring success.

According to political scientist and researcher Zoltán Gábor Szűcs, “Orbán is smart, self-reflective (but not a philosopher), aggressive, manipulative. I’m not sure if he knows that people are not just his means and instruments,” he added. Orbán always wants to win and he’s simply unable to play by the book. Through all the ideological about-turns—since 1989 Orbán has changed his stance on liberalism, the clergy, Russia, and Europe—it is relentless ambition that has been the common thread that runs through his career. What motivates him is “winning, crushing his rivals,” said Szűcs. “He is always pushing the boundaries. Usually it works for him. During his first term (from 1998-2002) he was much less relevant than now. It was a different time, a different Europe, and Hungary was not in the EU,” Szűcs added.

Orbán’s early academic ambitions are still manifest in his willingness to meet star intellectuals. The latest academic to receive an audience with Orbán was French liberal philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, who said after a coffee with him this month that he had “deciphered Orbán’s secret.” Lévy recalled that he met Orbán 30 years ago as a member of President François Mitterrand’s delegation.  “Orbán was completely different. A liberal, anti-totalitarian person,” Lévy said. “He has become indeed illiberal.”

Razor-Wire For the Borders

Since 2015, Orbán has made immigration a signature issue. He has called migrants “a poison,” and has said that “Hungary does not need a single migrant for the economy to work, or the population to sustain itself, or for the country to have a future.” However according to Szűcs, the rise of Orbán on a European level was as much down to the lack of reactions of his political opponents, as the speed with which Orbán himself acted.

“He was incredibly cynical and also extremely lucky that neither his opposition nor the EU were able to take advantage of his shocking mismanagement of the migration crisis. It was a total failure, a complete meltdown of the Hungarian administration,” Szűcs said.

“For months they were paralyzed. But still the opposition missed this unique opportunity just like the EU did. Ever since then the migration issue pays off for him way more than he could have reasonably expected when he started this whole gamble.”

So, while Orbán built razor-wire fences along Hungary’s southern borders with Serbia and Croatia, an inactive EU allowed him to set the agenda, which Orbán will seek to profit from in the European Parliament elections at the end of May.

In a Favorable Position

Orbán’s turn to the right has seen Fidesz suspended from the major center-right group in the European Parliament, the European People’s Party. It remains to be seen whether the party will make amends with its EPP allies or seek other alliances after the European elections in May.

Europe is increasingly important to him. “He is not endangered on the home front. He plays it by ear; that is, if the radical right from Matteo Salvini to Marine Le Pen and Austria’s FPÖ is strengthened, he is in a very favorable position,” said biographer Lendvai. Fidesz will then likely forge an alliance with those who think similarly to the Hungarian governing party, and fight for a ‘Europe of nations,’” he added.

“I guess his most optimistic scenario is that the status quo will end for good and he can profit from the subsequent chaos,” Szűcs said. “Maybe he can strengthen his position in the EPP, maybe he can find new friends. Perhaps his worst-case scenario is that the EPP won’t need him anymore. Anyway, as long as his position in Hungary is stable, he has plenty of time to wait for the next opportunity.”

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EuropeElects; Data as of April 24, 2019

From May 23 to 26, 2019, voters across the European Union will head to the polls to elect a new European Parliament. With party politics undergoing a revolution at the national level and uncertainty over the future of the United Kingdom’s withdrawal from the EU, the European elections come at a pivotal time. How will these elections change the EU’s political and institutional dynamics? It’s up to the EU’s 400 million voters (not counting Britain) to decide.

Will the Center Hold?

The elections will likely end the long era of big party dominance of the parliament’s business and of its committees. Mainstream center-right and center-left parties have traditionally retained a comfortable majority in the EU’s main institutions, including the European Parliament. Now, however, the populists are on course to make big electoral gains that could disrupt the Christian Democrat/Social Democrat tandem that have run the chamber for over 40 years.

Rising socio-economic inequalities and the divisive 2015 migration crisis have had a damaging effect on the public’s trust in political leadership. Consequently, disaffected voters are increasingly casting their votes in favor of anti-establishment candidates who promise radical change. If the recent national trends continue, both the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the center-left Socialists and Democrats (S&D) are expected to lose many seats.

According to the latest data from Europe Elects (and assuming UK participation), the EPP will come in at 180 seats—a net loss of 41. It will, however, remain the parliament’s largest political group. The S&D is predicted to lose almost as heavily, with a drop of 30 to only 161 seats.
For the first time, the EPP and the S&D then may fail to jointly command a majority, which could empower other groups, especially the liberal ALDE, which is projected to become the third largest grouping. The Europe Elects model projects 104 seats for ALDE, should French President Emmanuel Macron’s projected 23 MEPs from La République En Marche join the group.

The question then arises as to whether the centrist parties will manage to agree on the most important topics. In the new parliament it will likely become more difficult to garner enough votes to pass legislation. While this may decrease the parliament’s legislative efficiency, the pro-EU political groups will still command a clear majority due to the Liberals and the Greens/EFA, who are set to win 51 seats. However, with the right-wing populists surging, all centrist parties will have to pull together to guarantee the regular functioning of the Parliament.

No Business as Usual

A number of reasons make us assume that the European Parliament will be less governable after the elections.

First, it is very difficult to predict the composition of the right-wing political groups after May. At a news conference on April 8, Italy’s Interior Minister and Lega leader, Matteo Salvini, announced his plan to form a new right-wing alliance called the European Alliance for People and Nations (EAPN), which would draw members from existing right-wing groups, among them the far-right Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF) alliance. Traditionally divided, the populist right will aim to join forces to challenge the power of the governing bloc.

It is too early to say how much influence the new grouping could have, but a strong performance of right-wing populist parties could shake up the dynamics inside the European Parliament. Assuming that all ENF members—which is currently projected to win 62 seats—join the new group, EAPN may be in contention to beat out ALDE and become the third largest parliamentary group, at 85 seats. The right-wing populists would thus be far from commanding a majority, but the resulting polarization may cause uncertainty for policy-making and risks paralyzing the EU.

The creation of EAPN will also lead to the breakup of the right-wing populist Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group, which was already likely to collapse following the departure of the British MEPs, and the shrinking of the conservative ECR group (64 seats projected). This would leave large parties like Italy’s Five Star Movement (M5S) and Poland’s PiS in search of new allies, and potentially able to tip the balance of the new parliament. With 49 seats (projected), the left-wing GUE/NGL group will likely repeat its performance of 2014.

These numbers assume that the UK will not leave the EU before May 23. UK participation will prevent the planned reduction from 751 to 705 MEPs—and an eventual UK departure would weaken the social democrats, possibly bringing them down to their worst result in EU history.

Indeed, an average of polls compiled by Europe Elects shows that the UK Labour Party is likely to win a landslide should the UK participate, picking up around 30 seats. Labour would then represent the largest national delegation in the S&D group. This would help close the center-left’s gap with the EPP, which would not gain a single seat from British participation, since the UK has no EPP party.

This swing could even be enough to tip the balance of power in favor of a progressive alliance between the S&D, ALDE, the Greens and parts of the radical left (the GUE-NGL group is more likely to make small losses than gains in May), sending the EPP into opposition for the first time. The UK participating in the European elections would have a disruptive impact, on Brussels as well as Westminster.

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

In an atmosphere of crisis such as the one we’re currently enduring, there’s no easier way to dismiss your political opponents—especially if you’re in a rush and you need to find the killer stroke in an internet-based brawl—than to call them a “populist.”

It makes things so easy because everyone knows what the word implies, if not what it actually means. It suggests a sort of childish disposition: a populist insists on their moral rightness, they’re not able to have a rational argument, they have no patience for liberal compromise, and—here’s the main thing—they are easily seduced by an “elites” versus “people” view of the world.

That last point is the key element of what has become the textbook definition of the term “populism,” developed by Dutch academic Cas Mudde. In his 2004 paper, the “Populist Zeitgeist,” he defined populism as “an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated into two homogeneous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite,’ and which argues that politics should be an expression of the volonté générale (general will) of the people.” This sharpened the focus of the academic understanding of populism, and though it was apparently little read on publication, it hit its moment emphatically a few years ago.

Mudde’s description of populism chimed particularly well with the global political upheaval that began circa 2014: new parties were suddenly undermining institutions that held the world together, winning elections by exploiting a lack of trust in the mainstream. These insurgents broke the grip of old parties, and they did it by pitting an indivisible “will of the people” against a rich urban elite.

Mudde’s definition proved even more useful because it talked about populism as something more than a strategy but less than a proper ideology. He explained that populism isn’t just rabble-rousing demagoguery—it is a kind of parasite, a simple set of ideas that can feed off either left or right-wing politics. This incidentally turned out to a good explanation for why the term has proved so difficult to define: populism is a boneless, shape-shifting creature, clinging onto other ideologies.

The theory proved a handy intellectual way of explaining the old “horseshoe” cliché about how left and right-wing extremists end up resembling each other. As a result, the doors were opened to countless alarming parallels with the rise of fascism and communism in the early 20th century, which brought with them the sense that a century-long cycle had come round again, and the would-be dictators were on the rise.

Creeping In From the Edges

To bring the point home, Mudde’s definition was adopted by The Guardian in its “new populism” section, which has been tracking the growing success of populist politics all over the world. In the past few months, the United Kingdom’s leading liberal newspaper published two major studies it had commissioned from a team of political scientists across dozens of countries, which came to two conclusions: firstly, that populist parties had tripled their support in Europe in the last twenty years, and secondly, that in the same period there had been a corresponding surge in populist rhetoric from political leaders.

This second survey showed “empirically,” Mudde wrote in the same newspaper in March, “what many have asserted and felt”: that populism was creeping from the edges into the middle. Political leaders from nominally centrist old parties were getting spooked by populist successes, and so “more and more mainstream politicians are using ‘pro-people’ and/or ‘anti-elite’ rhetoric to win voters—in part to fight off electoral challenges from true populist actors.”

The consequence is that populism appears to be a threat to democracy itself: the people’s gateway opiate to full-blown authoritarianism. That is a story told by many new popular politics books, such as How Democracies Die by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt.

It’s hard to argue against this reading, given the developments of the last few years across Europe. That populism is a direct threat to the democratic order of the European Union was shown by the UK’s Brexit referendum in 2016, when the Leave campaign shamelessly employed anti-elite rhetoric to make its case.

And for evidence that populists attack democratic institutions as soon as they gain power, one need only look as far as Poland, where the European Court of Justice has had to intervene to stop the ruling Law and Justice party (PiS) loading the supreme court with friendly judges. Or one could point at Hungary, whose right-wing Fidesz-led government has been sanctioned by the EU for undermining media plurality and suppressing civil society.

Populism Is Just Politics

But there’s a danger that this narrative widens the definition of populism so far it becomes meaningless: simply conflating populism with the ideologies it might enable doesn’t really help us to understand much. It certainly doesn’t help understand the more profound reasons why our democracy is under threat.

As political scientist Jason Frank of Cornell University wrote in the Boston Review last year, crying populist only perpetuates confusion over the nature of new movements. “Authoritarian attempts to centralize and expand the state’s executive power and wield it against ‘enemies of the people’—however defined by Trump, Erdoğan, Orbán, and others—should never be equated with the radically democratic institutional experimentalism of Podemos (in Spain) or the Farmers’ Alliance (in 1880s USA),” Frank argued.

Not only that, making populism the preserve of the radicals obscures the fact that apparently rational centrist politicians are just as capable of making blatantly populist moves—like Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) regularly announcing tax cuts just before elections.

The Mudde definition of populism has been questioned by other academics too. Chantal Mouffe of the University of Westminster in London is among those to argue that what gets dismissed as populism is actually just a necessary correction to a system that has seized up. As center-right and center-left government parties fused into a kind of management board whose main job is to oversee a neoliberal debt-based economy, Mouffe argued in The Guardian, something had to give when evidence mounted that that system was failing. No status quo lasts forever.

For Mouffe and others, the rise of populism is actually the sight of politics being reacquainted with its life-blood: a basic conflict about how society should be organized. In fact, one could conclude that the sooner the old centrist politicians start joining that debate, rather than desperately painting the new parties on the right and left as extremist threats, the more likely they will be to survive.

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