America increasingly may wonder why it bothers. Xi Jinping will take Macron’s calls while it suits him. But the conceit that size alone would make it a serious player on the world stage is over. The EU will lumber on, kept safe by the Nato defence umbrella, and just productive enough thanks to technological advances dreamed up in more dynamic economies. But the challenges of the twenty-first century will reward the small and the nimble, not giants. It is running on empty.ħ3 years after Robert Schuman proposed the European Coal and Steel Community, the Eurocrats have built a bureaucratic giant. Deaths have exceeded births in the bloc since 2012, and by 2021 even immigration was not enough to keep the numbers up. Perhaps the bots can replace Europe’s shrinking workforce. Perhaps in one respect, the tottering dreams of the EU may be shored up by the arrival of new AI technology. How will such an approach fare, as rapidly-improving AI cuts a swathe through established business models and upends employment? Yet its response is not to unleash European talent, but to spin a cocoon of regulation around the continent. The EU’s share of the global economy is shrinking fast. The EU has always preferred high-minded talk to the hard reality of spending what is necessary to protect freedom and democracy. Now President Macron seems eager for Europe to go cap in hand to Xi’s China – even as China seeks to rip up the rules-based international order the EU was supposedly built to defend.Īnd when it comes to defence, let’s face it: it is Nato, in very large part thanks to America’s contributions, that remains Europe’s essential peacekeeping institution. First it was wrongfooted by Putin’s energy blackmail. Most remarkably of all, it has been left to Brexit Britain to lead the continent in supporting Ukraine against Russian aggression.įor a club that was supposed to be greater than the sum of its parts, the EU is curiously weak. As an independent, globally-engaged nation, we have forged a vital new defence alliance with Australia and the US in the Indo-Pacific. For all the mis-steps during Covid, the UK was able to move faster on vaccines outside Europe, saving lives. In the same way, it was recently able to negotiate its own membership of the fast-growing CPTPP trading bloc. By leaving the EU, the UK took its own seat at the World Trade Organisation and immediately had more say. Coordinating so many partner nations with such different economies makes the undemocratic EU sclerotic and ponderous. The world, it turns out, doesn’t work that way. This has always been one of the biggest arguments made against Brexit: only within the giant bloc of the EU could our island nation hope to have even a shred of influence in the twenty-first century. The EU’s drive toward integration has been a drive to build a unified power that could stand alongside the US, Russia or China as a co-equal. Noble, vital and worthwhile as those goals were, the great powers of Germany and France, and all the other ancient and proud nations of Europe, came together and have stayed together in the hope of creating a new political force. The EU project was not just about preventing further war in Europe or preserving human rights across the continent or even creating a unified market for goods and services. The EU thinks of itself as an 800-pound gorilla in the room, but when it started beating its chest, no one seemed to notice. In the face of Europe’s protests, Washington shrugged. But it turned out there wasn’t much it could do about it. When President Joe Biden introduced the protectionist Inflation Reduction Act, with $370bn of green subsidies, the EU was scandalised. Is the EU’s global influence in terminal decline? Lately, it’s starting to feel that way. But while Brussels once again pauses to admire its own reflection, maybe it should stop to ask why no one else seems to care any more. It was Europe Day earlier this week, a traditional holiday during which the bureaucrats and boosters of ever-closer union turn their gaze away from the EU’s disappointing reality to celebrate the moment it all began.
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