Poland’s new government and the future of the EU

The Guardian, Observer Editorial, Sunday 10 April 2016

The institutions of Europe are being seriously tested for the first time since the Second World War

Last week, groups of Catholic women walked out of church services in Poland in protest at a letter read out by priests calling for a tightening in the country’s abortion laws. As we report from Warsaw today, it is a sign of the growing influence of socially conservative Catholic values in the political sphere since the Law and Justice party was elected last October.

Across Europe, political parties that mix social conservatism, nationalism and populist economics are attracting support. Law and Justice argues that a secular, liberal EU and a multi-ethnic Europe are a threat to Catholic values and sovereignty. Its leader, Jarosław Kaczyński, has claimed refugees are bringing “cholera to the Greek islands, dysentery to Vienna”.

Since its election, Law and Justice has introduced restrictions that threaten the independence of the judiciary and the media. The government’s actions have sparked mass public protests in Poland and set alarm bells ringing in Brussels: the EU is now investigating Poland for endangering the rule of law.

The actions of national governments like those of Poland and fellow Visegrad bloc member Hungary invite an existential question that has barely featured in the British referendum debate: what is Europe for? And what does it now mean to be a member of the European club? How do we distinguish support for the EU from the actions of Kaczyński and others?

Should Europe’s top priority be the promotion of deeper economic and political integration among a group of similar countries? Or is its raison d’etre to encourage the spread of European liberal democratic values by bringing into the fold more countries, including those that border Russia and the Middle East?

The European project was founded to prevent war from plaguing the continent again. It succeeded. But the continent now faces its biggest challenges for 60 years: financial crisis and economic slowdown, twinned with the mass movement of people leaving conflict- and poverty-stricken states in Africa and the Middle East for the security of Europe.

The EU has not yet proved flexible enough to adapt to these challenges. There remains too much focus in Brussels on the political integration needed to make a single currency work, despite the fact that EU institutions do not have the democratic legitimacy to support this. The inability of governments to put aside national interests to agree co-ordinated refugee quotas is a stark illustration that further integration remains no more than a pipe dream.

At the same time, there is too little attention in Brussels given to the huge challenges involved in expanding the union eastwards to include countries where a commitment to liberal democracy – relatively recently embraced – may not run as deep in a nation’s psyche. Dutch voters’ rejection of the association agreement with Ukraine highlights the gap between the priorities of EU institutions and voters. The ineffectiveness of public and private remonstrations made to Viktor Orbán’s government in Hungary highlights the fact that Europe doesn’t yet have an answer to what happens if a government reneges on some of the principles of the rule of law that all countries sign up to when they join the club.

The EU is under great strain. It no longer has the political or financial authority or, indeed, confidence to assert itself and defend its founding principles when they are directly challenged by events in Poland, Hungary or elsewhere.

Europe faces many other challenges: what to do about a single currency when the democratic legitimacy for further integration does not exist, and whether the continent can continue to sustain freedom of movement. It has to adapt to its increasing diversity, not just in terms of GDP, but values and culture. It has to evolve to reflect the fact that its primary objective is no longer preventing another war between Germany and France. Its focus must shift well beyond Brussels and look east and north with the same passion and drive that brought the European Union into being in the first place.

The challenges facing our continent mean we need the EU more than ever. But they also mean that the institutions of Europe are being seriously tested for the first time since the Second World War. The EU’s survival depends on whether it is flexible enough to evolve to reflect the continent’s changing context.

Date: 2016-04-22; view: 890