Strategic Europe is, first of all, a European Union that develops a realistic view of its own potential and limitations. Second, it is an EU that gets its act together domestically. And it is, third, an EU that tackles its global goals in a close alliance with the United States.
All three of these definitions seem to fly in the face of what is considered “strategic” in Brussels today. The Brussels consensus has, for too many decades now, pretended that Europe resembles the proverbial man on a bike going uphill who needs to pedal forward if he doesn’t want to fall. Upon which John Bruton once quipped: “That’s nonsense. All one ever has to do is firmly put one’s foot on the ground!” In that sense, in being realistic about what the Union can be and what it cannot be, in tackling its real instead of its imaginary challenges, and in returning to our real instead of our imaginary friends as well as foes, we can metaphorically put our foot on the ground and redefine strategic Europe.
A realistic view of its own potential implies the recognition that for a long time to come, there will not be anything resembling a United States of Europe, but that whatever emerges from the current economic and financial calamity, improvement will be incremental and will contain strong elements of intergovernmental cooperation. Progress in European integration has always come in moments of drama and crisis, but if we want to keep the citizens on board, we need to make it clear that whatever competencies we exercise jointly in terms of financial and economic policies, there have to be palpable advantages.
To play any credible role on the world stage, the EU needs to get back to sustainable growth and dynamic competitiveness, instead of constantly debating the next institutional reshuffle or the next instrument of a Common Security and Defence Policy. Saving the euro is only one component of this domestic angle. Effective economic governance is a necessary but not sufficient element of this. The underlying values must be solidarity and subsidiarity: a solidarity that works both ways—partners are not only morally committed to helping each other, but the recipients of that help must make credible efforts to help themselves as well. Subsidiarity simply means that effective economic governance must not become an oppressive economic government that strangles Europe’s strengths of diversity and economic dynamism.
Consequently, it must be accompanied by further liberalization of the single market. All our investment into “social Europe” and the next big industrial project and all improvements in research and development and in education and training will come to nothing if we don’t tackle the elementary problem of making the EU economy more competitive. That will only happen by removing existing obstacles to growth and profit. The same is true for arguably the second biggest mega-challenge Europe’s societies face now and in decades to come: the ostensible paradox that in order to address the problems of an aging population, we need immigrants, but at the same time, immigration without efficient integration seems to have reached the limits of societal acceptability. Here, too, no state-sponsored antidiscrimination program will develop the leverage that the prospect of success and a culture of achievement will have in attracting the immigrants we need and avoiding the parallel societies we don’t want. Strategic Europe creates the framework for this.
In other words—and that brings us to the third element of strategic Europe—there are still a number of things Europeans can learn from Americans, and I am not talking about lessons on what not to do here. I am talking about the simple idea that the success or failure of an individual is, above all, dependent upon the individual. That may be self-evident to a lot of people. In the corridors of Brussels, it is not. Let’s face it: the United States looks to many of us (and to some Americans themselves) like a staggering giant, an overstretched, unsustainable empire stuck in a glorious past. Funnily, many Americans think exactly that about Europe in its present state and shape.
Sure enough, the rampant success of Chinese state capitalism, the youthful punch of the Arab revolutions, the Iranian and the Turkish versions of Islamism, and to some even the cynicism of Russian or Central Asian autocracy, look so much fresher than Europe and North America, and their cumbersome democracy and dogged insistence on human rights. And precisely at this point in time, like in an unwitting alliance, the anti-Europeans in America (both on the left and the right of the spectrum) and the anti-Americans in Europe (both on the left and the right of the spectrum) blow the trumpet of a post-Atlantic world. But not only are there still numerous advantages to be gained from improved transatlantic economic and security cooperation, there is also no alternative of other strategic partners in the world that would share the same basic values that Europe and North America have in common.
There is nothing wrong with visions. But these must be visions our people can actually share. And that is simply not the case with the mantra of “more Europe is the solution.” More Europe, in the sense of more power for a centralized bureaucracy, belongs to the twentieth century. More integration sounds more like the future, when it makes palpable sense to our citizens and where it is backed up by the self-evident interests of a maximum number of Europeans. And that includes leaving some important competences with the nations, the regions, and the municipalities of our multilayered Europe. In order to make Europe strategic, we have to stop piling treaty upon treaty and institution upon institution. The best role the EU can play now is to safeguard and improve the framework for free citizens to reclaim the momentum we all have lost over the first decade of the twenty-first century.
Roland Freudenstein is the deputy director and head of research of the Centre for European Studies, the political foundation affiliated with the European People’s Party. The views expressed in this text are entirely his own.
To reinvigorate debate over European foreign policy and Europe’s role in the world, Carnegie Europe is publishing a series of essays from leading policymakers, diplomats, experts, and journalists on Strategic Europe over the coming weeks. A new essay will appear every day.
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