The President of today’s European Central Bank could hardly have put it better.
Adolf Hitler can with good reason be seen as following in Napoleon’s footsteps in his ambitions for European domination. Indeed, the Nazis spoke in terms that may strike us as eerily reminiscent of today’s Euro-federalists. Thus Hitler could refer contemptuously in 1943 to ‘the clutter of small nations’ which must be eliminated in favour of a united Europe.6
It is not, of course, my suggestion that today’s proponents of European unity are totalitarians, though they are not well-known for their tolerance either. What we should grasp, however, from the lessons of European history is that, first, there is nothing necessarily benevolent about programmes of European integration; second, the desire to achieve grand utopian plans often poses a grave threat to freedom; and third, European unity has been tried before, and the outcome was far from happy.
In reply to this, it will certainly be said that the purpose of today’s projected European political union is quite different, because it is not to be achieved by force, and because its proclaimed rationale is to preserve peace. But this argument is no longer convincing, if indeed it ever was.
It is surely questionable whether either the European Coal and Steel Community, or the European Common Market, or the European Economic Community, or the European Union – let alone the incipient European superstate – played or will play any significant role in preventing military conflict. A defeated, divided and humiliated Germany was not in any position to cause trouble during the Cold War years – and it is a very long time indeed (since Napoleon, in fact) since any power other than Germany ever caused wars in Europe. The threat during the Cold War was, rather, from the Soviet Union, and it was an American-led NATO, not European institutions, which preserved Western Europe’s peace and freedom. Even today, it is still true that an American military presence in Europe is the most important guarantee of the Continent’s security, both in the face of threats emanating from the former Soviet Union and from any renewed German ambitions – not that I wish to exaggerate those dangers at present either. Finally, it does seem to be stretching the pacifist credentials of the Euro-enthusiasts beyond credibility to maintain that a united Europe is necessary to keep the peace, when it is energetically seeking to become a major military power.
The idea of Europe would, though, not have as powerful resonance if it was merely associated with cartels, Commissioners and the Common Agricultural Policy. As someone who has come to be profoundly disillusioned with and suspicious of all that is done in the name of ‘Europe’, I fully recognise this. The European myth is no less powerful for being that – a myth. And its power stems from its association in many people’s minds with most of what goes to make up civilised living. For example, the contrast is often made, particularly in France, with the alleged vulgarity of American values. In the eyes of many Euro-enthusiasts, Europe vaguely represents ideas of law and justice that stem from the Greek and Roman eras. For the aesthetically minded, it is Gothic cathedrals, Renaissance paintings and nineteenth-century classical music that hold sway. The European idea is, it seems, almost infinitely variable. Therein lies its appeal. If you are pious, it is synonymous with Christendom. If you are liberal, it embodies the Enlightenment. If you are right-wing, it represents a bulwark against barbarism from the Dark Continents. If you are left-wing, it epitomises internationalism, human rights and Third World aid. But the fact that this portentous concept of Europe is so infinitely malleable means that, in truth, it is simply empty.
‘Europe’ in anything other than a geographical sense is a wholly artificial construct. It makes no sense at all to lump together Beethoven and Debussy, Voltaire and Burke, Vermeer and Picasso, Notre Dame and St Paul’s, boiled beef and bouillabaisse, and portray them as elements of a ‘European’ musical, philosophical, artistic, architectural or gastronomic reality. If Europe charms us, as it has so often charmed me, it is precisely because of its contrasts and contradictions, not its coherence and continuity. It is difficult to imagine anything less likely to be moulded into a successful political unit than this extraordinarily uneven mix of unlike with like. I suspect that in actual fact even the most fanatical Euro-enthusiasts have, in their heart of hearts, understood this. They keep quiet about the fact and would protest the opposite, but actually they do not like the day-to-day human reality of Europe one bit. That is why they want to harmonise, regulate and twist it into something altogether different, rootless and shapeless that can be made to fit their utopian plans.
THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL MODEL
To the extent that there is a ‘European’ identity it can best be perceived in what is often described as the European economic and social model. This model, though it comes in several somewhat different shapes and sizes, depending upon the politics of the Europeans concerned, is clearly distinct from and indeed sharply at odds with the American model. In order to illustrate the philosophy behind it, and so as not to confuse it with old-fashioned socialism, one can profitably consider some words of Edouard Balladur, the then French Prime Minister: ‘What is the market? It is the law of the jungle, the law of nature. And what is civilisation? It is the struggle against nature.’7
M. Balladur is an extremely sophisticated and intelligent right-of-centre French politician. But he clearly understands nothing about markets. Markets do not exist in a void. They require mutual acceptance of rules and mutual confidence. Beyond a certain level, only the state, setting weights, measures, rules and laws against fraud, profiteering, cartels and so on, can make markets work at all. Of course, the market – any market – implies limits upon the power of the state. In markets the initiative comes from individuals, the prices reflect supply and demand, and the outcomes are, by necessity, unpredictable. But to describe the operation of markets as barbaric shows a particularly shallow and unrealistic understanding of what constitutes Western civilisation and underpins Western progress.
In France, the hostility to markets – and particularly to the international markets through which nations trade with another – is very deep-rooted. It may be that there is something in the French psyche which reacts better than the British to a large measure of state control and high levels of regulation. Certainly, the quite successful performance of the French economy in recent decades might confirm that.
But the European economic model also has a German variant, and this, given Germany’s size and wealth, is the more important one. Whereas the French prefer statism – they invented the word, after all – the Germans incline to corporatism. They are not anti-capitalist, but their conception of capitalism – sometimes referred to as Rhenish capitalism – is one in which competition is limited, cartels are smiled upon, and a high degree of regulation is provided. Another aspect of this system is revealed by the term ‘social market’. This expression was coined by Ludwig Erhard,8 though I believe that he later came to dislike it because it was used to justify too much state interference and expenditure. For Germans nowadays it implies the provision of more generous social benefits than anyone in Britain, apart from those on the left of the Labour Party, would normally consider appropriate to a ‘safety net’. And indeed the Germans are still wrestling with the need to curb that spending.
What both the French and the Germans can agree upon, however, is that the sort of economic policies pursued in America, and to a large extent in Britain since 1979, are unacceptable. Thus, writing in Le Monde, the French and German Finance Ministers proclaimed: ‘The obsessive insistence of the neo-liberals on the deregulation of labour markets has contributed more to the blocking of reforms than to the creation of jobs. We are convinced that the European social model is a trump card, not a handicap.’9
In fact, a number of authoritative studies have quite convincingly proved the opposite. Examining the impact of moves in France and Germany to stimulate employment by limiting working hours, Keith Marsden noted that at the same time as the average number of hours worked had fallen, the two countries’ unemployment rates had risen. By contrast, in the United States where people were working longer, and in Britain where working hours had remained stable, there had been significant falls in unemployment. Similarly, early-retirement programmes