One of the key elements of British conservative intellectuals and policymakers is their lack of understanding of European political culture and traditions once the UK is removed from the picture. This was on unfortunate display when my colleague Ethan Harvey addressed the recently published Draghi report which tackles a range of European issues.
European History under the lenses of British academia
There is a tendency in British academia, and as a consequence of politicians too, to talk about Europe through the lenses of British exceptionalism as part of the wider trend of what is called Whig History. This perspective tends to understand Europe in three different consequent stages. Stage one, is a Europe whose balance of power is being challenged by an overambitious hegemon, such as King Philip of Spain, Louis XIV of France, Napoleon Bonaparte, Kaiser Wilhelm II or Adolf Hitler. This unbalancing inevitably leads to a war in which Britain needs to intervene sometimes just on their own against this would-be hegemon, this can be seen in the way battles like the Spanish Armada, Blenheim, and Waterloo are presented. The third and final stage is Britain acting as a guarantor of stability in a new European balance of power whether this is the Congress of Vienna or some other sort of peace settlement. The creation of the European Union, though, has thrown this framing out of the window and many historians and policymakers no longer have the simplifying tools they used to rely on to understand the present. Britain’s minor role in the creation of the EU and the EEC also plays its part, as well as the fact the EU was constructed not through war but through diplomacy and compromise.
Many British historians and policymakers connected to the Tory sphere have tried to paint the EU as a sort of new hegemon that is ending the balance of power on the European continent. Who is behind that depends on who is an annoyance to Britain at that point. Sometimes it is the troublemaking French, sometimes the evil Germans, sometimes the lazy Southern Europeans, sometimes the greedy Northern Europeans etc etc. This is simple unfocused propaganda.
However there is more to this than a simple misunderstanding of history. Since Brexit, British policymakers among the Tories have obsessed over the objective of breaking up European unity through the negotiations. This is because Britain on its own can look toe to toe with France and Germany and be the stronger party in a negotiation with any other European state. Michel Barnier and the Commission did not allow for this and no country in the EU was induced to break ranks, which ended the whole strategy of Brexit to begin with. Therefore there is a palpable interest by the Tories to portray the EU as somewhat unnatural and antagonistic to the European peoples, with the idea of a divided Europe being the only real Europe. This point should be borne in mind.
Lack of understanding of the European project
There is a general ignorance about the European project from many British historians and politicians. The narrative they try to push forward is that the EU was meant to be a simple trade and free market agreement that somehow later got corrupted in the 1990s by people like Jaques Delors to create a massive European superstate, and therefore Europe should roll back political integration and return to a simple free trade zone. This is inherently false and ignores decades of intellectual and political developments which have argued for stronger European political integration. One of the first clues of this is that on every European treaty there is a phrase that should be noted "Ever Closer Union", included by Jean Monnet, who was an advocate of European federalism already in the 1950s. Not only that, already in the 1950s European leaders tried to create a Common European Defence Force, an initiative eventually blocked by France. Also, the European Parliament had its first democratic elections in 1979 and already in the 1950s Commission President Walter Hallstein was treated by many as a sort of Federal President. This was abruptly ended by his resignation after a confrontation with de Gaulle.
All of this contradicts the contention that the idea of European political and administrative integration is something recent, it truly isn't, rather the efforts were not designed to come to fruition until much later.
Mr Harvey furthermore ignores the period from the late 1960s to the early 1980s that was characterised by a strong European economic stagnation and by a halt to European integration. German economist Herbert Giersch describes this period as the “Eurosclerosis”. One of the reasons for this stagnation, I believe, was the halt since the 1960s of all processes of economic and political integration, since countries had experienced a great growth since the 1940s and now they started to compete between each other. The leadership of the EEC was struggling to enforce the norms of the treaties so therefore the EEC became an economic union in name only.
Brexiteers also erroneously tend to believe that the EU is a project carried out against the wishes of the citizens of Europe. This is categorically false. As many polls like Eurobarometer have shown European citizens actually want an even more engaged EU in issues like defence.
The Bureaucrats
When Mr Harvey suggests European bureaucracy is blocking innovation and complicating productivity he omits the many difficulties national bureaucracy has. Just to get us all on the same page, the EU employs less civil servants than the entire city of Rome. So if bureaucrats are choking up Europe’s economies then those responsible are national leaders. This is generally a misconception vis-à-vis the way the European Union functions. While it is true that the Commission has had a strong hand in regulating and controlling the way big tech operates it has done so as a way to avoid monopolising practices and put consumers first.
The solution to Europe’s admittedly ossified economy is not devolving EU powers since the impact of this would be that big business would need to navigate 27 different legal systems and if European companies want to achieve a similar level of global success to that of their American counterparts they first need to establish a solid customer base in the whole of the EU in the same way American companies establish a customer base in the US before going global. At the same time European economies are too small to have a commanding impact by themselves. For example, it would be very difficult to regulate the presence of Chinese made electric cars if just one country refuses to collaborate, as is the case of Hungary. As Mr Draghi specifies in his report one of the biggest hurdles for industry and innovation in Europe is the fact that many companies and entrepreneurs need to navigate many different legal systems.
Brexit, Brexit and always Brexit.
This brings us to one of the key elements to why Mr Harvey’s arguments are not convincing in the clutch, the absolute absence of a theorisation of Brexit. Brexit was in the end Britain's way of breaking with Europe’s bureaucracy in the hopes that this would lead to less bureaucracy, but this has produced the opposite result.
As any businessman from Canterbury will tell you, since Brexit Britain’s businesses have not experienced a decrease of bureaucracy but rather a rapid augmentation. This is because in order to actually reduce bureaucracy norms need to be standardised which means that Britain or any other country cannot simply unilaterally change its rules and regulations. This is in the end what Draghi means when talking about efforts to centralise some of the aspects of EU rules since if each nation decides to apply its own regulations the internal market wont function and as the Eurosclerosis of the 1970s showed us without a functioning internal market the EU’s economy won’t survive.
Conclusion
Mr Harvey’s piece is no doubt scintillating, but it is so arresting in part for its refusal to engage with the European perspective. He and his readers would benefit no end from perusing analysis on Europe beyond the Anglosphere. Only that way will the quality of understanding, and therefore the quality of relationships, between the EU and Britain improve.
Image: Wikimedia Commons/Ilovetheeu
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