#eu problems

By Steven Erlanger, NY Times, Dec. 11, 2018

BRUSSELS--This was supposed to be the year Europe put its house in order. It would finally ratify a deal with Britain on its departure from the bloc. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, with his grand plans to revitalize the Continent, would succeed Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany as the union’s de facto leader. Democratic backsliding in Hungary and Poland would be curbed. Populism would be contained.

If only.

Turmoil is now business as usual. The difference as another angry year comes to an end is that the European Union no longer has a strong leader to guide it through the crises that keep upending its agenda. Ms. Merkel played that role but is now a lame duck, her voice quieter on European affairs. Mr. Macron is confronted with violent protests and a full-blown domestic crisis of his own making in France, his presidency at risk.

The political upheaval was obvious on Tuesday with the latest turns in the great British psychodrama of Brexit. Prime Minister Theresa May spent much of the day flying to European capitals for emergency meetings, like a penitent on some dire continental Calvary, desperately seeking new help from the Europeans to resurrect a Brexit deal that she had pulled from a parliamentary vote to prevent certain defeat.

“This is a moment of truth, a moment of recognition that things are more difficult than they seemed a year ago,” said Pierre Vimont, a former French ambassador and former director of the European foreign service.

That the recent turmoil is coming from the three historic powers of Western Europe--once considered sources of political stability--speaks to how no corner of Europe has been immune to the political fractures that have spread across the Continent since the 2008 financial crisis and then gathered speed with the migration crisis in 2015.

Later this week, European leaders will gather in Brussels for an end-of-the-year summit meeting that was supposed to offer a chance to get Britain’s departure from the union, or Brexit, off the agenda and set the terms for next May’s elections for a new European Parliament. European elections have usually mystified voters in the bloc’s 28 member states, yet the results could be pivotal this time, as far-right parties hope to use the races to increase their power in Brussels.

The immediate burning question is who can organize and lead Europe now, as a new generation of politicians, in Germany and elsewhere, slowly emerges, said Daniela Schwarzer, the director of the German Council on Foreign Relations. With the current European Commission and Parliament nearing the end of their mandates, and both Ms. Merkel and Mr. Macron weakened, there is no compelling pan-European leader.

“With Brexit and increasing tension and polarization between governments in the E.U. and the weakness of the Brussels system, there’s more of a role for national and multilateral initiatives,” Ms. Schwarzer said. “But if we move that way, we need leaders, at least people who can motivate and lead smaller groups of countries.”

No question the bloc has a litany of problems--populism, the challenge to the rule of law from Hungary and Poland, the threats to the euro common currency, the Italian budget challenge, Russia’s cyber-assault on democracy and threatening moves in Ukraine, and President Trump’s hectoring contempt.

Dominique Moïsi, a French political scientist at the Institut Montaigne, a research group, said European leadership was diminished because the leaders of key countries such as Britain, France and Germany were now all focused inward and “hold little power in a game of competitive decay.”

“This is the moment when Europe should be playing an important role, but Europe is totally self-centered, obsessed by itself and what will happen tomorrow in Britain, France and Germany,” he said, adding that “most worrisome is Macron’s France. Macron was the carrier of hope, but now he’s the carrier of despair and anger.”

Mr. Vimont, the former director of the European foreign service, warned that the bloc’s problems transcended Britain, France and Germany to include countries like Sweden, which is still without a government after a strong populist vote; Belgium, where the populist right-wing party just quit the government over migration; and Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark, where government majorities are thin and popular anger is rising over issues of migration, Islam and identity.

“There are different forms, but the same cause: economic policy, globalization, new technology, a new multipolar world, the rise of China,” Mr. Vimont said. “It boils down to the dissatisfaction of a large number of our citizens, who are saying so loud and clear, and no one has been able yet to propose a future that takes account of that discontent.”

Mr. Vimont sees only more turmoil to come. The current governing coalition in Germany is very fragile. The Italian populist coalition could also splinter, while Sweden, Belgium, Spain and other countries also face uncertain futures.

By James Kanter and Stephen Castle, NY Times, Oct. 20, 2016

BRUSSELS--It has come to this for the European Union: Its trade policy was being held hostage on Thursday by the Walloons.

Facing a set of debilitating crises, the bloc’s leaders assembled on Thursday for a two-day summit meeting that only underscored how the fractious domestic politics of its 28 member countries are undercutting its ability to confront mounting challenges and restore a sense of common purpose.

An accord with Ukraine backed by every other country risked being derailed by the Netherlands, highlighting again the European Union’s inability to carry out a muscular foreign policy. Consensus over a toughening of sanctions policy toward Russia appeared as elusive as ever despite Moscow’s escalation of the conflict in Syria, reflecting the varied economic and political interests in European capitals.

The budget discipline that Brussels, urged on by Germany and other northern nations, tries to impose on member governments as a condition of membership in the euro currency, is fraying as calls grow, especially from poorer southern countries, to move away from austerity policies after years of lackluster growth. And then there is the proposed trade deal with Canada, a centerpiece of European Union policy, which is being blocked by the French-speaking Walloons of Belgium.

“The E.U. is becoming more and more ungovernable,” said Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a research institute. “The stakes internationally are higher and higher, but politics is becoming more and more parochial.”

The scale of the trouble facing the European Union is hard to overstate. Across the Continent, populist, nationalist and far-right movements are upending traditional politics and promoting anti-Brussels sentiment. The effects of last year’s huge wave of migration continue to roil Germany and many other countries. The bloc is struggling to maintain stability in the single currency zone.

Most of all, Britain’s vote in June to leave the European Union hangs over the entire European project, a reminder that decades of work in knitting together disparate nations can be reversed in a relative instant.

Experts said the impasse created by tiny Wallonia threatens to plunge the European Union into troubled waters. “Europe is facing a new and profound crisis if the Canadian deal collapses,” said John Clancy, a senior adviser with FTI Consulting in Brussels and a former trade spokesman for the European Commission, the bloc’s executive.

“The odds worsen that Brussels can make similar kinds of deals with the United States, and perhaps China one day, to boost growth,” said Mr. Clancy, who advises European and multinational companies in sectors heavily reliant on trade, such as the mining, transport and logistics.

Reuters, Aug. 28, 2016

BRUSSELS--The European Union grinds back into action this week after its August break, still dazed by Britain’s midsummer vote to quit the EU and facing much the same “polycrisis” as a year ago: a mass of refugees, a fragile economy, hostile Russians and, yes, those Brits, now more awkward than ever.

When President Jean-Claude Juncker makes his annual State of the Union address to Parliament in Strasbourg on Sept. 14, he might easily repeat last year’s warning: the EU had a “last chance” to save itself from a tide of centrifugal nationalisms.

Last week, the EU’s remaining Big Three--German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and their host, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi--felt they needed to renew their vows at the wellspring of the union, the island of Ventotene, where in 1941 prisoners of Mussolini wrote a manifesto for a united Europe.

That they met on the deck of the aircraft carrier Garibaldi reinforced the sense of beleaguered leaders rallying to the EU’s defence as they contemplated an obstacle-strewn political calendar for the year ahead.

The EU leaders are first preparing for a summit on Sept. 16 in Bratislava--without Britain--that aims to sketch out a post-Brexit future for the Union.

On Oct. 2, Hungary’s right-wing prime minister, Viktor Orban, is set to deliver another slap to Brussels: a largely symbolic referendum to reject an EU quota system for relocating refugees among member states--a scheme Juncker invested much capital in a year ago, but which has barely got off the ground.

On Nov. 8, Orban is hoping for victory for a man he calls the “valiant” Donald Trump in the U.S. presidential election. Few of Orban’s EU peers are so enthusiastic. They see Trump as a disruptive maverick whose endorsement of and by Brexiteer-in-chief Nigel Farage marks him as no friend of the Union.

A Trump win could snap a transatlantic coalition on Russia that is already fraying in Europe, where governments from Paris to Bratislava are seeking a review of Ukraine-related sanctions when measures expire at year’s end. Trump might also inject a new dose of post-Brexit uncertainty for world trade.

At home, all the Big Three leaders face their own electoral challenges from eurosceptics.

It starts with Renzi, today trying to persuade Italians he has the youthful energy for rebuilding after the latest earthquake in the Apennines, unlike the scandal-tainted Silvio Berlusconi at L’Aquila in 2009, when more than 300 people died.

Probably in November, Renzi will put to a referendum the constitutional reforms he says are needed to break a political deadlock that is choking the Italian economy. Polls are tight and the eurosceptic upstarts 5-Star are gunning for the socialist premier, who is expected to resign if he loses.

Hollande is threatened with a drubbing on April 23 at the hands of far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen in the first round of France’s presidential election.

Her appeal has been enhanced by Islamic State carnage in Paris and Nice and the summer row about burkinis on the beaches, although pollsters doubt she can win a May 7 runoff vote against Hollande or any other survivor from a mainstream party.

As for Merkel, she has yet to confirm she wants a fourth term at parliamentary elections due in just over a year. The biggest threat to her re-election remains her decision last year to welcome a million migrants to Germany as EU borders buckled. That has already weakened support for her conservative party.

Such threats to domestic survival have often spurred leaders to take potshots at Brussels--even if only the British have taken it to the length of turning most voters against the EU entirely. But even if little has changed in Brussels since last summer, optimists might see reason to hope for more unity now.

While rows go on about how, indeed whether, EU states should share out the burden of asylum-seekers stranded in Greece and Italy, what is new is how few are arriving, at least in Greece.

Rights groups were outraged this year by hard-nosed deals with non-EU Balkan states to bar the routes north from Greece and with Turkey to stop Syrian refugees reaching Greece in the first place. But those deals did slash the numbers arriving.

It’s something EU officials find hard to boast of. Many admit privately to unease at policies that, along with efforts to pay African governments to stop people setting off for Italy, sit uncomfortably with the Union’s lofty humanitarian ideals.

But look again at Merkel, Hollande and Renzi on the Garibaldi, flagship of an EU mission off Libya that is part rescue operation and military deterrent against people smugglers, and a slightly different image of today’s EU emerges.

All three spoke of Europe getting tougher and more cohesive on security. It is the kind of language that may resonate with sceptical voters dissatisfied with Europe’s struggle to thrive in a globalising world and with the likes of Orban and other eastern leaders alarmed by Merkel’s earlier open-door policy.

Relieved of the need to keep Britons from bolting, Juncker wrung howls of outrage last week from London’s europhobic press when he called national borders “the worst invention ever”. He also renewed his call for a “European army”, which was long just a pipe dream for the Luxemburger as long as Britain had a veto.

The past few days have seen Merkel and a succession of other leaders she has met, including Orban, echo such hopes of joint military structures, indicating one area where EU integration may now forge ahead in response to the British departure.

That still leaves a host of issues dividing European leaders in the coming year: whether to be nice or nasty to Britain once it decides to open negotiations; how to shore up weaknesses in the economic cooperation that underpins the euro; how far to ease sanctions in the hope of better ties with Moscow.

Associated Press, Dec. 31, 2015

BRUSSELS--If the year that was turned out to be daunting, 2016 is shaping up as the European Union’s year of living dangerously.

The cliffhanger to keep Greece from bankruptcy and in the euro currency during high summer was chilling enough, even before nations like Hungary ramped up their rhetoric over the influx of migrants and razor wire border fences were spun out over hundreds of miles, further highlighting the increasing weakness of the EU to speak with one voice.

Still, 2015 mainly involved minor countries with limited economic and political clout punching--and shouting--well above their weight.

The year 2016, however, will center on a juggernaut like Britain and an increasingly assertive Poland, both of which could become much more than a thorn in the EU’s side. An economic recovery that keeps stalling on cooling relations with Moscow doesn’t help. And none of that takes into account the looming possibility of another terror attack that could further damage the soul of the continent.

“The past year was full of unexpected plots and turns and the new year will be no different,” said Professor Hendrik Vos of Ghent University.

Where even to start? Well, British Prime Minister David Cameron made that easy by setting a February summit of government leaders to find a deal on how to revamp the EU so that Britain could remain a member, and a more committed one at that.

“Uncertainty about the future of the UK in the European Union is a destabilizing factor,” said EU Council President Donald Tusk ahead of the year-end EU summit. Many differences remain within the realm of compromise but British insistence to make it harder for EU citizens living and working in Britain to get social and welfare benefits remains a fundamental dispute in a bloc that strives for equality among all.

Talk is that a referendum on whether to stay in the EU could come as soon as next summer, well ahead of the end-of-2017 deadline, and the result could become the EU’s defining moment of the year.

“I certainly don’t exclude that the British will decide to leave the EU,” said Vos. And, some high up in the meeting rooms of the EU institutions, fear that could be the tipping point that starts the bloc unraveling for good.

The EU has been on a slide after the major expansion into eastern Europe in 2004 with treaty rejections, financial crises and internal dissent. And after helping new eastern members raise living standards and confidence, it is now getting a backlash of criticism from nations like Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland.

EU relations with Poland have taken a dip since a new conservative and nationalist government took office in November and started stressing Polish interests at the cost of the common EU good. As a symbol, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo removed EU flags as a backdrop to weekly government news conferences, saying they will be held only against the backdrop of the “most beautiful white-and-red” Polish flags.

The European Commission, for its part, has started criticizing Poland much like it has Hungary under Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who has consolidated power by weakening the judiciary, the media and other institutions.

Germany’s EU commissioner, Guenther Oettinger, told Wednesday’s edition of the Bild daily that an increase in populist governments within the EU worries him. “For the first time, I see a serious danger that the EU could disintegrate.”

When it comes to the refugee crisis, unity was even harder to come by with many eastern nations flat-out refusing to take in a share of refugees who have flocked to wealthy heartland nations like Germany. The 2015 figure of people fleeing conflict or poverty who have arrived in the European Union by sea this year hit the one-million mark and after the traditional winter lull, the challenge will be to keep the number much lower next year.

The role of German Chancellor Angela Merkel will be key again. She will try to galvanize the EU into a united response and to get others to share the refugee burden that already created massive political pressure at home to stem the influx.

Merkel still hopes other EU nations will get the message and things will click into place. “We must now learn how to deal with a completely new phenomenon,” she said. “And I trust that, with goodwill, this will then happen slowly and step by step,” she said.

And it’s unlikely the economy will be of much help in shoring things up.

Even if Europe enjoys a modest economic recovery in 2016, it will only be with the help of very low oil prices and massive monetary stimulus by the European Central Bank. The European Union’s executive commission in Brussels forecasts growth of 1.8 percent in 2016. Unemployment should fall modestly to 10.6 percent from 11.0 percent this year, but massive disparities between nations like Germany with low jobless rates and Greece and Spain with painfully high ones are expected to persist.

After a year in which its woes almost pushed it out of the shared euro currency, Greece faces more economic and political struggles in 2016. The government must push through painful reforms to keep getting additional payouts from its 86 billion euro bailout agreed to at a crucial summit in July. With only a three-seat majority in parliament, left-wing Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras faces a struggle to pass potentially unpopular legislation raising taxes on farmers and putting the pension system on a more sustainable basis through benefit cuts or contribution increases.

The bigger question is whether the country’s latest bailout has any chance to right the government’s finances without forgiveness of part of Greece’s debt burden, the biggest in the eurozone at, according to Greek predictions, 187.8 percent in 2016. Some economists say that amount of debt is too big to be brought down to more tolerable levels.

Adding to the unpredictability of the year, Spain, the EU’s fifth biggest economy, entered the new year with a political stalemate following inconclusive elections and was heading for uncertainty that could affect the EU too.

In a sense though the EU has dealt with a relentless crisis atmosphere for much of the past decade, and by now knows about every trick of the political trade to survive.