Year LXIV, 2022, Single Issue, Page 10
The Return of War in Europe: One Year On
It is now a year since the start of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, and while the war continues to rage with extreme violence and brutality, and there remains no prospect of a truce, the reflections we published a year ago in this journal about the dangers this war poses for the European Union (in the introductory remarks to a text, in the Documents section, setting out the Treaty reforms needed to turn the EU into an effective political union built on a federal basis) continue to be valid and to constitute a warning that we simply cannot afford to ignore.
“Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has opened a new chapter in European history. This brutal war looks set to be protracted: there seems to be little scope for a truce, and the Ukrainians will not cease to offer resistance — a resistance that we Europeans have a moral and political duty to support. This war is driven by a determination to stop the spread of Western values and their adoption by states that, until recent years, were far removed from the Western political and cultural model, being instead an integral part of the Soviet bloc that Russia is now striving to recreate as a geopolitical reality”, we wrote a year ago, before making the following further considerations: “Ukraine’s resistance has forced Europe and the USA, and much of the world with them, to react; it was not to be taken for granted and it has made all the difference. This, however, is just the start of a long war — a war for which we must be equipped, on all levels: economic and military, but above all political. And in this context, the ultimate battleground is that on which we will be fighting to conserve the strength of consensus and the unwavering support of public opinion.
It now falls to Europe to lead the free world, and it must do so not only because the enemy and the war are on its doorstep, but above all because of the superior contribution that Europe can make through the political and social model it offers. However, it is not our national democracies that can make the difference, rather the strength of our process of unification. The real enemy of autocracies, which are based on aggressive nationalism, tyranny and contempt for human life and freedom, is indeed this process, which must now be completed by returning to the roots of the Ventotene Manifesto. The threat before us now is the same as it was then, and therefore the response must once again be worthy of the challenge: today, this means finally implementing reforms designed to give rise to a federal Europe. In other words, we must complete our unification by creating efficient institutional mechanisms that strengthen the convergence of our economic and geopolitical interests. Above all, we must politically defeat the scourge of nationalism, which has once again brought war to our continent, and we must do so by creating institutions that are immune to this affliction, and constitute an alternative model that may also be an example for the rest of the world.”
Our reason for reiterating these considerations here is that they offer useful criteria for taking stock of what Europe has managed to do thus far; and this, in turn, allows us to evaluate the (important) positive as well as the (too many) negative aspects of the situation before us.
One positive takeaway is the fact that the European Union has remained united in its support of Ukraine, and made some important steps, like freeing itself from its energy dependence on Russia; at the same time, however, it has not managed to make the forward leaps that are needed in relation to strategic sectors, such as foreign, security and defence policy, despite having previously proved able to mount a decisive response to the pandemic, in the form of the Next Generation EU package. Even though Europe faces a very real threat to its values, model, and security, and must also reckon with the further challenge of EU enlargement, the Union continues to be stuck midstream, seemingly unable to finally decide to create the political instruments of government at European level that it has to have in order to address the new problems of security, tout court, that can no longer be avoided.
For all these reasons, it remains significant that, a year ago, as Putin’s tanks were launching the attack and making for Kyiv, the Europeans were completing the work of the Conference on the Future of Europe. Discussions during this conference focused on the question of exactly how we should build our future as Europeans. The fact that this exercise in democratic participation (an experience increasingly driven by the aspiration that it might evolve into a constituent process) coincided with the return of war in Europe created a situation that has not only made it possible to channel widespread expectations and arouse new energies, but also lent considerable impetus to the European Parliament. Indeed, the Parliament is now taking serious steps to respond in a concrete way to the requests that came out of the Conference, both by calling for the launch of a Convention for Treaty reform, and by working on a report setting out reform proposals that address the conclusions of the Conference and aim to change the legal and political nature of the EU.
Without this change — in a federal direction — the EU will remain a union of 27 sovereign states with 27 heads of state or government, based on a delicate balance between its various institutions that makes it incapable of taking charge of the security of continental Europe and also prevents it from being an institutional model that goes beyond the nation-state.
Just a few days ago (March 7, 2023), Martin Wolf, writing in the Financial Times, explained very clearly precisely why it is so necessary for the European Union to strengthen itself by equipping itself with federal institutions. If, in a world characterised by disorder, nationalism and conflicts between major powers, the Europeans want “to preserve their great experiment in peaceful relations, [then they] need to strengthen it for the storms.” The EU has three options: “Globally, it needs to decide whether it wishes to be an ally, a bridge or a power. So long as the USA remains a liberal democracy and committed to the western alliance, the EU is (…) most likely to be a subservient ally.” But this would make it difficult for it to act also as a bridge, even though this role “would come naturally to an entity committed to the ideal of a rules-governed order.” It would, indeed, be difficult “to be a bridge in a deeply divided world in which the EU is far closer to one side than the other.” The third option is “to seek to become a power of the old kind in its own right, with resources devoted to foreign and security policy commensurate with its scale. But for this to happen, the EU would need a far deeper political and also fiscal union.” Wolf concludes that “The more active and independent [the EU] wishes to be, the more crucial it will be to deepen its federalism.”
This is precisely the crossroads we are now at: to defend our model and retain our peace-making and stabilising function in the world, we have to become independent and turn ourselves into a “power”, albeit one pursuing positive ends. But to do that, we need to become a federal union, both politically and fiscally. Ultimately, what is at stake in this EU reform process put on the table by the Conference on the Future of Europe is our destiny and that of the whole world. May awareness of this fact drive us to fight every single step of the way in this complex but crucial phase.
(March 2023)
The Federalist
