For better or worse, my time is up as Brussels bureau chief for the Financial Times, so this is my last post on this blog. My successor, Peter Spiegel, will arrive in September. I wish him, and all the readers and contributors to the Brussels Blog, the very best.
Leaving Brussels after three years feels rather like exiting an intensely gripping drama at the end of Act III instead of staying to the end. The fate of Polonius in Hamlet comes to mind. What was his sententious advice to his son? ”Neither a borrower nor a lender be/ For loan oft loses both itself and friend/ And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.” Now there’s something for Angela Merkel and George Papandreou to chew on.
In Brussels there are days when you feel the European Union is a magnificent creation, one of the most inspired experiments in mankind’s history. Then there are days when you feel disgusted by the pettiness, the short-sightedness, the incoherence of it all. As followers of this blog will know, I count myself a European in heart and soul and I desperately want the EU to succeed.
But there is no point in denying that the EU has lost its way in recent years. I don’t just mean in an economic sense, though Europe’s relatively weak economic performance and the crisis in the EU’s public finances speak for themselves. It has also lost its way in terms of its ability to act as a powerful, usually benign influence in world affairs. And, sadly, it has lost its way in terms of democracy and accountability – the very values of public life where it could and should be a beacon to the world.
These are the three areas where the EU has to make a big effort in the coming years. It must demonstrate that it can indeed liven up its economic performance and reverse what is beginning to look like an irreversible decline into late middle-aged infirmity. It must show that it can be an effective force for stability and prosperity in its immediate neighbourhood, especially countries such as Bosnia-Herzegovina, Ukraine and Turkey. This matters far more than all the dreams about global power projection. And the EU really must do something about the so-called “democratic deficit” – the alarming gap between the EU institutions and European citizens. This problem is, quite frankly, reaching embarrassing proportions.
If the EU fails to make progress on these three fronts, there is a risk that it will sooner or later face a crisis of legitimacy that will be even more serious than this year’s sovereign debt troubles. No one in Europe should wish for this. In spite of all its faults, the EU has immense achievements to its credit and we Europeans have a lot to thank it for. But the time for delaying, squabbling and pretending the problems are not that serious after all is over. From the bottom of my heart I hope Europe’s leaders get it right.
Across the globe: Gideon Rachman and his FT colleagues debate international affairs on