European complacency
The European Union will not survive if it sticks to today’s course. This is the blunt message of the person responsible for the bloc’s external affairs and security. Speaking at the annual conference of the EU’s ambassadors in Brussels on Monday, High Representative Josep Borrell presented a harsh vision of a changing world, and he focused on a great weakness of the EU: the complacency, the illusion of superiority which forces the EU to play “catchup” with events.
“We are living in crisis, you have to be in the crisis mode,” Borrell told his team. “Sometimes, I knew more about what was happening somewhere by reading the newspapers than by reading your reports,” he said. “Having all of you around the world, I should be the best-informed person in the world.”
The problem is widespread. It goes to the very heart of the project of Europe. Whereas the Union’s success was based on the United States providing security, on Russia providing cheap energy and on China supplying cheap goods, European officials did not realize how vulnerable the bloc and its member-states were to any change in this situation, nor the extent to which the rest of the world is changing.
The Union is in danger of becoming a victim of its success. The decades of unprecedented peace and prosperity encourage a sense that the “soft power” of liberal democracy and the untold sums of development funds spent across the world are sufficient to keep things as they are. The scornful laughter of German diplomats at the UN when Donald Trump warned that their country was dependent on Russian energy is a striking image of this shortsighted arrogance.
It is not just the EU’s diplomatic service that needs to understand that titles and principles are not enough to keep the Union standing when it faces threats to its security and to its internal cohesion. Every institution and service, from the Commission to the Parliament, every government that takes part in the EU’s many councils, must realize that the Union is in a fight for survival. The blue flags, the grand titles, the worthy principles and very high salaries mean nothing when the guards are asleep.
