Sanssouci Colloquium, Potsdam, 2 September 2005

Response to keynote address by EU Vice-President Günter Verheugen

I agree with one thing that Herr Verheugen said, and one thing only — that the EU is in a state of crisis. He appears, however, to be baffled by what this crisis is about. It seems clear to me that it is a crisis of democratic legitimacy, which will not be resolved by Herr Verheugen’s managerial remedies.

The EU constitution that has now been so spectacularly rejected was supposed to cement European integration, to take the EU onto a new plane altogether, to create a wholly new political entity. It turned out to be a step too far. It imploded, and thus exposed the fundamental flaws in the entire EU project.

Herr Verheugen brushes aside the very idea of a European superstate as an ‘impossibility’, and he implies that it always was so. But the EU constitution was creating an entity with its own flag, its own anthem, its own currency, its own laws, its own foreign policy, its own defence policy, its own economic policy, its own social policy. Member states would have been left with little more power than a heritage theme-park. In my view, if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is idle to pretend that it is not a duck.

Moreover, this was to be a virtual reality state, a free-floating entity with no political, legal or cultural anchorage and created instead entirely by bureaucratic legerdemain. In Britain there was once a much loved magician called Tommy Cooper, who would pull rabbits out of his hat. He had a catch-phrase: ‘Just like that’. Well, the constitution was going to magic up a state which defied all known political laws — just like that.

But the peoples of Europe, who know a duck when they see one, rose up and said no to this project. What the EU seeks to deny — the particular and local attachments that constitute a nation — turned out to be mighty important to the citizens of these countries. The only people who were surprised by this were the European élites.

Herr Verheugen is surprised that people are so alarmed by demographic change and mass migration. The only people who are surprised are those who think that national identity and identification with the values of a nation are somehow illegitimate — one of the founding dogmas of the EU supra-national project. But amazing as it may seem to these élites, people actually want to govern themselves in their own nations in accordance with their national traditions, cultures and laws.

This is all, of course, music to the ears of eurosceptics like me for whom the scuppering of the constitution appears to have brought us in from the cold. Hitherto, we have been scorned as isolationists and protectionists. Herr Verheugen talks of reforming the EU by making it embrace competition. It’s a bit rich to hear this at precisely the time that the EU has provoked a crisis by preventing the import of clothing from China — demonstrating that it is the EU, rather than its critics, that is protectionist and anti-competition.

The great mistake the EU makes is to confuse attachments to nation with isolationism. The desire for self-government is not isolationist. It is simply the precondition for democracy. Herr Verheugen tells us that the nation state is not big enough to cope with the problems of the modern age. On the contrary — it is only a properly functioning nation state that will enable us to cope with these problems.

The EU is a profoundly anti-democratic project. Its concept of democracy amounts to the will of the collective trampling down individual national interests — a collective without even a language in common.

Herr Verheugen tells us that the EU is now engaged in a period of reflection. He tells us there is to be a new model for integration reflecting diversity. But on this very day we read that Commissioner Frattini wants us all to swear an oath of allegiance to the EU, to its laws and to its Charter of Fundamental Rights. This is monumentally arrogant. People owe their allegiance to their own country, because they are part of a community of people shaped by common laws, history, customs, religion, culture. Because of this attachment, people will die for their country. No-one would ever die for the EU.

But then, who can be surprised at such arrogance when it was Herr Verheugen who presented a copy of the EU constitution to an Italian astronaut to take to the International Space Station — presumably to demonstrate that its cosmic appeal should also colonise outer space. No doubt this is the significance of the stars on the EU flag.

The fundamental myth at the heart of the EU is that it embodies one common culture. Obviously, member states have a number of interests or characteristics in common. But there is no one European identity. Instead the EU represents an attempt to manufacture an entirely artificial one. But this one-size-fits-all approach is wrong, and will not work.

Nations have a duty first and foremost to look after their own citizens. That’s why the attempt to foist upon us, for example, a common immigration policy is anti-democratic and ruinous, particularly for Britain which has borne the brunt of mass illegal immigration. This is largely through Britain’s own incompetence. But that is for the British government to sort out and to be held to account by the British people. It is not for the EU to dictate its immigration policy. If Britain wants to deport foreign extremists, this is a matter for the British Parliament and the British people to decide. The attempt by the EU to frustrate this democratic compact is intolerable, and one of countless incursions into democratic sovereignty.

The EU is now divided into Old Europe, which still wants to supersede national self-government, and New Europe, which does not. New Europe wants a trading alliance of sovereign nation states. New Europe hasn’t just emerged from the long nightmare of Soviet totalitarianism only to be sucked into a European totalitarianism.

But there is another division in Europe, between the people and the elites. The people want to govern themselves. But the élites remain wedded to the doctrine of which the EU is a principal exemplar — the doctrine of transnational progressivism. This holds that the nation state is responsible for all bad things in the world, like war or prejudice, which derive from local and particular attachments rooted in backward-looking and reactionary ideologies like religion or national stories which merely set people against each other. Utopia, by contrast, will be delivered by transnational institutions — such as the EU, European Court of Human Rights, UN, International Criminal Court — which by denying all the constraints of the past and particularly those rooted in religion or local traditions will impose values which are universal and therefore brook no opposition. This transnationalism of which the EU is such a pillar is therefore nothing less than an out and out assault on democracy, freedom and the attachments that make us into functioning communities founded on a shared sense of identity and interests.

Herr Verheugen referred to the fact that the EU was born in the aftermath of World War Two. The EU was founded on the premise that the greatest threat to civilisation arose from war between nations. But that is no longer the case. The greatest threat to us today is coming from a war that recognises no national boundaries, a global war of religion being waged through the asymmetric and transnational warfare of terror. And the only way to defend ourselves against this new threat is for nations to have a strong sense of and belief in themselves, a commitment to defend their democracies and if necessary to die for them. Yet it is that sense of national identification that the EU has been busily destroying, thus dangerously weakening the ability of European nations to fight in their own defence.

That’s why this period of reflection should be used to radically rethink not just the structures but the whole philosophy of the EU. Herr Verheugen’s prescriptions merely amount to more effective ways to present the same old democracy-denying, nation-superseding programme in a more palatable form. Well, it won’t wash. We’re not going to have the wool pulled over our eyes again. The times are far too dangerous.

Posted by melanie at September 5, 2005