I am ready to retire as a eurosceptic. The European Union is in trouble. But rather than smirking – which would be the normal reaction of a sceptic – I am alarmed.
In January 2001, I arrived in Brussels with several firm and unfavourable convictions about the EU. I believed that most ordinary Europeans felt far more loyalty to their nation than to Europe. I thought that steadily enlarging the powers of Brussels was undemocratic and dangerous. I reckoned that in a crisis, nationalist instincts would come to the fore. I suspected that the EU’s new currency – the euro – was liable to run into trouble. And I believed that the Brussels-based elite was a “new class” that had confused its own interests with those of the continent of Europe.
Eight years on, I look back at these old prejudices – and smile at my foresight. The past few years have provided a graphic demonstration of the feeble popular support for the European project. A proposed EU constitution was rejected in referendums in France and the Netherlands – then promptly repackaged as the Lisbon treaty and rejected again, this time by the voters of Ireland. But “Lisbon” will still be shoved through, one way or another. This is a pretty shoddy exercise.
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