It has been one of those weeks when the grand themes of European politics have promised much but delivered little. The French have given Lady Ashton a bashing, but few people, including Lady Ashton herself, appear to have taken much notice. Mr Van Rompuy has remained below the parapet (though doubtless doing valuable work down there).
The Ukrainian elections have been declared free and fair (or thereabouts) and though the result has been close it now looks likely that Prime Minister Iulia Timoschenko will have conceded defeat and arranged an orderly handover of power before you read this.
The European Parliament looks likely finally to approve the new European Commission. Which has about it the feel of being distinctly underwhelming. There are worries about the euro collapsing; but then there are always worries about the euro collapsing. The euro won’t collapse and life will go on.
What the week has offered is more evidence that the Iranians are closer than ever to building a bomb. I wrote various things about Iran last week in a blog that attracted 67 comments, none, so far as I could see about Iran.
What I said then in a nutshell was that it would be sensible to recognise that Iran had legitimate security concerns, being as it was surrounded by nuclear armed states and with American troops in two countries on her borders. The response of trying to acquire a nuclear weapon seems to be as rational as anything the Iranians have done. As someone pointed out the other day it is not the states with nuclear weapons – like North Korea – that are invaded; it is the states without such weapons, like Iraq, that are.
I cannot conceive for a moment of Iran using a nuclear weapon aggressively – for to do so would be certain suicide. A retaliatory strike would wipe out Tehran in an instant. I may be in something of a minority of one but I would rather we didn’t fuss over whether Iran actually acquires a nuclear weapon and instead concentrate on making available to the Iranian government the technology to help prevent accidents of any sort and the leakage of nuclear material to terrorists.
(While Iran has sponsored terrorism – it seems unlikely she would take the risk of providing terrorists with nuclear material. The biter could too easily be bit).
The blog I wrote last week did indeed attract many comments. Apart from Iran, very few of them had anything to do with anything else I wrote either. (Indeed more than two-thirds of the comments were supplied by just two individuals who appeared to be having their own private discussion).
As far as I could gather this thread – in which others joined from time to time – was essentially about whether ‘Europeanism’ – that is a natural shared sense of identity between Europeans – exists.
That is indeed a question that crops up on many blogs. And it seems to me one of those futile arguments that can never be settled. Some people feel ‘European;’ others don’t. It is something subjective. It is not something that can be demonstrated by arguing whether one country is more or less like another. I think European, therefore I am European; or not as the case may be.
What we can be pretty sure of is that however you define ‘Europe’ you will find a majority of people prepared to defend this concept of Europeanism. That doesn’t mean they reject the nation state in which they live (although they may do this). Most feel a national as well as a continental identity and of course they have other more local allegiances as well, determined by geography, tribe or clan.
The allegiances are voluntary. No one makes me European, or British, for that matter. It’s what I choose to be, though living here and having European ancestry helps. And if this majority – and repeated opinion polls have shown a majority – chooses to co-operate economically, politically, culturally to give effect and purpose to this shared identity in the knowledge that more can be achieved in collaboration with others, then of course this is legitimate.
Those of us who espouse the European cause may indeed disagree on all sorts of things to do with the way Europe is being built. I have written repeatedly of my dissatisfaction at the democratic deficit at the heart of European government; I am infuriated at the lack of strategic thinking about the long term evolution of the European Union and the taking of decisions in a manner that without knowing these long term goals is often ad hoc. But that does not make me doubt my basic identity.
Those who disavow the concept of Europeanism and deny it exists are in the minority. But this is politics. We are all in minorities in something or other. Democracy cannot exist without there being as many minorities as majorities. Politics would not exist if people did not disagree.
***********
I have to confess that I contributed one of the 67 comments on last week’s blog myself. I was trying to stand up for the Little People – specifically the Leprechauns, which I feel obliged to do seeing as my Grandmother came from Ireland. I have always felt a particular attachment for this species of fairy folk about whom much has been written.
Anyone wanting to make their acquaintance could do worse than to read James Stephens delightful book ‘The Crock of Gold,’ written now a century ago in that sunny interlude between the ‘Entente Cordiale’ and the sad events of Sarajevo that started the First World War. It is still in print and available cheaply in paperback from online booksellers. It is a part of our European heritage.
The book is loosely about a dispute between a Philosopher and his neighbouring leprechauns in which the police become involved. The account of a posse of frightened and truculent policemen guarding the Philosopher whom they have arrested and are marching down a dark country road somewhere in middle Ireland only to be attacked in the blackness by a group of leprechauns is one of the finest passages of comic writing anywhere in the English language.
It is Irish writing, indeed, but it is also European writing. And it is from this and from ten thousand other such passages and from our heritage generally that our common European culture – our Europeanism – springs. Culture first, politics after.
Photograph is of James Stephens
Tags: Europeanism, Iran, Iulia Timoschenko, James Stephens, Leprechauns, The Crock of Gold
#1 by Lucian on February 9th, 2010 - 3:07 pm
I am Romanian and I feel Romanian, but also I am European and feel European. We might be different, there are differences between Romanians and Britons or between Italians and Finns, but we are much more alike than people from other parts of the world.
I think that one day the whole world will be united, but until then, Europe is the first step, the first beacon of light for peace and cooperation among nations.
Europe must be a model for the future world. United in diversity!!!
#2 by Lucian on February 9th, 2010 - 3:12 pm
Also, I want to say: Great writing Mr. Peter Sain ley Berry.
If I can read your text from over 3000km distance in a foreign language and totally agree with your views of Europe, than it means that there has to be something called Europeanism.
#3 by Joe on February 9th, 2010 - 6:37 pm
To call something an “-ism” requires that it posess some unique and discernable, and be founded in an ideology.
The basic fact of formerly eternally balkanized nation states who have stopped warring with one another does not make an ideology.
I would not confuse the use of such a term with a continental identity, because the only historical “ism” one can find binding the continent’s societies is a blind faith in unchecked, top-down government authority until it’s too late.
#4 by Desmond O’Toole on February 9th, 2010 - 8:21 pm
It’s interesting, Peter, that you mention a book about leprachauns in an article on identity. One of the most paralysing aspects of the long and ultimately futile conflict in Ireland between British unionists and Irish nationalists is/was the refusal of one side to accept that the other’s identity had any value at all or was even real.
I find the debate that some people insist on having about whether there is such a thing as a “European identity” to be just as futile, albeit less likely to involve being dragged from your bed in the middle of the night and shot … well, not yet, anyhow, in spite of what that xenophobe Farrage said in the European Parliament this afternoon.
I have a European identity … and an Irish identity and many more ethnic, political and social identities besides. And that’s the point of identity, it’s largely a choice, as you said, informed by accidents of birth or upbringing and passing temperament. But it binds me to people across this beautiful continent and makes me part of something bigger than myself. It has value and is real … for me and for many others.
Where that European identity is inclusive, progressive and challenging (but in a nice way!) then I’m all for it. I can even be persuaded that national identity has those qualities also … well, sometimes. But make that identity an excuse for arrogance, exclusiveness or beligerence and I walk away.
The amazing thing is that this positive internationalist identity is exactly what we are creating in the European Union … an open, inclusive, invigorating identity that reaches across ethnic labels and embraces solidarity, freedom and equality between and amongst each of us who share this large piece of geography.
If identity is, as Anderson claimed, being part of an “imagined community” then I might just be able to imagine leprachauns at the bottom of my garden here in Dublin as well
I wonder would they consider themselves to be Europeans?
Desmond O’Toole
PES activists Dublin
(personal capacity)
#5 by al on February 10th, 2010 - 9:59 am
There is one particular top-down government that has troubled the continent more than any other, and Otto von Habsburg made mention of it in 1989. Having a look at the Treaty of Lisbon, with its “principles of subsidiarity and proportionality” (straight out of Catholic social teaching and part and parcel of top-down government), makes that identity all the more evident. (Must I go into greater detail? or has it become obvious what this “European identity” is a cloak for? Consider who is poised to bail out Greece right now.)
#6 by Desmond O’Toole on February 10th, 2010 - 11:36 am
Note to people reading this thread. The previous poster on this thread, AI, reads very much like the individual “AI” who posts on an Irish political forum at http://www.politics.ie
This individual is notorious for his racist attacks on anything German. He believes that the EU is a conspiracy between the Federal Republic of Germany and the Vatican (the Pope is German … geddit!) to usher in the Fourth Reich. His previous post on this thread is an example of his anti-German fantasies.
I would strongly advise other posters to this site not to feed this particular troll.
Desmond O’Toole
PES activists Dublin
(personal capacity)
#7 by Marcel on February 10th, 2010 - 11:50 pm
Well, just because one is European does not mean one supports the undemocratic EU.
I’m a European in the continental sense, and I feel the EU is bad for Europe and Europeans in general. Only the political elite, political activists, bureaucrats and corporations have profited.
I am utterly opposed to my country Netherlands giving money to help bailing out corrupt socialist countries like Greece.
#8 by Marcel on February 10th, 2010 - 11:53 pm
And of course, what I forgot to mention, never trust any -ism. Particularly not the ones who want to superimpose a ‘common’ identity from above.
Communism, fascism, imperialism all tried that. Yugoslavia, Soviet Union are great examples of failure of imposing a ‘common’ identity from above. The EU is trying the same and will equally fail, except with a small minority (politicians and other elitists) of course.
#9 by Bob Gillespie on February 11th, 2010 - 7:17 am
Hello,
My apologies if I’m not in the line of the previous argument; I’m new to the site.
I’m looking for advice on how to get my ideas known which have been put into a book; they concern a European behavioural typology based on religion and politics. I am sure the ideas have merit, but the book is selling very slowly!
Has anyone else tried and been successful in getting this kind of project mooving.
Kind wishes,
BG
#10 by Jacob on February 11th, 2010 - 10:23 am
@Marcel
Funny that you would mention failed examples of common identity especially considering that you live in a country (Netherlands) which successfully managed impose a common identity. France is another good example.
Also Yugoslavia didn’t impose a common identity, I’m not sure where that myth came from.
#11 by Freeborn John on February 11th, 2010 - 7:28 pm
Europe is a geographical concept like Asia and South America. Democratic politics is about representation of people and not geographic entities. Quite simply there is no European people; and the political institutions in Brussels represent no-one except the self-interest of those who work n them.
All international organisations (other than the EU) that take serious decisions binding on their membership use decision-making by majority in order not to coerce a nation against a majority into doing something that its majority opposes, which would not then be democratic. The EU began to shed democratic legitimacy at the very moment 1992 and Maastricht) when it began to replace unanimity by QMV. Peter Sain ley Berry has no explanation for why the EU is becoming increasingly unpopular, or why that trend began with Maastricht, and is mentally incapable of proposing any remedy other than the continuation of precisely those same policies that led to the current EU crisis of legitimacy in the first place.
Peter prefers instead to retreat to a fantasy world in which you can draw arbitrary geographic lines around hundreds of millions of people who cannot even speak to one another in the same language on any topic and pretend that representative government of these people is retained if they can elect MEPS (though never to question if there should be MEPs or what their powers should be) even when these same same MEPs vote not to respect the results of the 2005 referendums in France or the Netherlands or the 2008 referendum result in Ireland. Ultimately Peter writes a nice turn of phrase and is able to throw in some beautiful reference to classical Greek antiquity and the like. But in the final analysis everything he writes about the EU is intellectual mush because he does not understand the basic s of representative government itself. You cannot have government of the people without a people, and the EU does not have one.
Every article from Peter unfolds the same way. He starts out bemoaning the EU democratic deficit and ends up proposing to remedy it by applying more of the same old federalising agenda that led to the democratic deficit in the first place. In short, he proposes to solve the problem by making it worse. In this article he ends up recommending emulating Stalin’s failed attempt at creating a common Soviet culture out of the various nationalities he ruled from Moscow, with a program of ‘Europeanisation’. His is the madness of a federalist so fixated on the one narrow conception of the future that his imagination is capable of holding that he demands the greatest social reengineering project in the history of the world to re-mold 500 million people such that they will fit in with his simplistic conceptions of what the world should look like. European federalism is in truth a form of insanity, with every article from Peter indicating his case is an incurable as remedying the EU democratic deficit by the forced imposition of the federalist Lisbon Treaty following its defeat in three referendums.
#12 by Kazimierz on February 12th, 2010 - 3:18 am
Europe is not only geography.
Europe is primarily shared history and culture.
Feudalism with knights and castles
Christianity with cathedrals and churches.
Exploring and bringing European civilization to other lands.
Leading in both industrialization and in revolution of social organization, including failures. And more, and more.
#13 by Marcel on February 12th, 2010 - 2:04 pm
@11 (Freeborn John)
I keep wondering about it too. The federalists only ever propose ‘more integration’ or ‘more EU’ as a solution to any random ‘problem’ they come across.
We have to remember, the EU federalist movement was mostly funded by the CIA and the American state department. EU federalists therefore should be looked upon with suspicion as American agents.
And what I have noted many times before, the EU was designed so politicians would increasingly be able to sideline the elected national parliaments and increasingly centralize all power in Brussels in the hands of an unelected and unaccountable crowd of appointed politicians. Monnet all but said so in his memoirs. The man utterly despised democracy and the common people.
Of course, they cannot and won’t say so in public, but it is there very clearly for all to see. If you want to see it, that is. Because if you think people should shut up and just listen to a bunch of appointed politicians, then surely the EU is something you love.
The EU-ites will just harp on about peace and prosperity but forget that without the EU, we’d be more prosperous and there wouldn’t be any less peace. The EU existed before the ‘crisis’ and didn’t prevent it so why are the EU-ites promoting the EU as a solution to the next crisis? And with the common currency that no one ever asked for, countries like mine (Netherlands) will increasingly have to pay for the deficits of others. We (Netherlands) would be better off with our own currency. Screw Greece.
#14 by Freeborn John on February 12th, 2010 - 4:17 pm
Hi Marcel! Great to hear from you. BTW i discovered that one of the commentators on the BBC Euroblog calling himself ‘britishandeuropean’ is none other than the federalist zealot and former-MEP Richard Corbett.
I mention it because i particularly enjoyed the reply from ‘britishandeuropean’ to a comment (84) from you that began “What a truly glorious moment that such a contemptible figure as Richard Corbett was voted out.”!
Enjoy…
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/2009/06/eurosceptics_triumphant.html#P81485773
I hope the Labour party absorb the lesson of their 2009 campaign in Yorkshire: If you run with a federalist zealot like Corbett on the party list, you let in the BNP.
#15 by Freeborn John on February 12th, 2010 - 4:33 pm
P.s.to Marcel: i know ‘britishandeuropean’ is Richard Corbett because he posted the same text at the same time on both his own blog and the BBC blog.
On the Richard Corbett blog at 9:19am CET Dec 31, 2008
In my view, the biggest EU achievement this year has been the climate change package, and he (Mark Mardell) could have dwelt more on that. The package does not just proclaim targets, but brings in measures to achieve them. It creates binding Europe-wide laws on emission limits for vehicles, renewable obligations, carbon trading and so on. It finances pilot projects for carbon capture and storage. …. This is a good example of using the EU to do more than we can achieve just by ourselves, and where Europe is leading the world ahead of the Copenhagen climate change talks.
http://www.richardcorbett.org.uk/blog/2008/12/2008-good-year-for-eu.html
As “britishandeuropean” on Mark Mardell’s BBC blog at 8:19am GMT Dec 31 2008 (i.e. the same minute)
Surely, Mark, the biggest EU achievement this year has been the climate change package. It is not just about targets – it creates binding Europe-wide measures on carbon trading, emission limits for vehicles, renewable obligations, and so on. This is a good example of using the EU to do more than we can achieve just by ourselves, and where Europe is leading the world ahead of the Copenhagen climate change talks.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markmardell/2008/12/ring_out_the_old.html#P73702755
Maybe if he had spent more time working on real issues of concern to the good folk of Yorkshire and Humberside, and less on his lifelong pet obsession with Euro-federalism then there would one less BNP MEP today. Perhaps Desmond O’Toole might want to reflect on that too.
#16 by Marcel on February 14th, 2010 - 7:44 pm
@Freeborn John
ah that explains it. Corbett of course was doing his best to hide the fact that 84% of Germany’s legislation between 1998 and 2004 was at the very least EU-influenced.
John, federalists like Corbett will never see the light. They have invested themselves and personal prestige into federalism so much it would be a shattering admission of defeat for them to retreat from their position.
Corbett is typical of EU-elites who think electorates are nasty inconveniences that have to be gotten around if they don’t vote the right way.
And is it a surprise that those who love the EU also love the idea of climate taxes and more regulation of our lives? The EU is looking for an area where it can scare people into giving it even more power and thought climate was the right one. Unfortunately for them, more people wake up each day to the fact that climate change = natural phenomenon. The only thing we can do is to adapt, because we don’t control it and it won’t adapt to us.
And also, types like Corbett love the euro and would not hesitate one second to give our money to Greece, all in the name of ‘the common good’. Which would really mean, Netherlands, Germany and Britain ought to pay for the prosperity of other countries. Britain is so lucky it isn’t caught in the eurozone trap.
#17 by Desmond O’Toole on February 15th, 2010 - 10:45 am
So an important debate initiated by Peter on European identity quickly becomes a whinge-fest for two europhobes locked in an eternal existentital embrace against the EU.
EU=USSR, democracy is dead, it’s all THEIR fault, etc, etc, etc … yawn … We’ve heard all these dismal mutterings before. It’s time to change the record.
Marcel and FBJ demonstrate once again the limited vision and corrosive self-absorbtion that typifies the wilder fringes of that mist-covered island called “Europhobia”. I’m glad I don’t live there!
In the meantime, in the real world …
Desmond O’Toole
PES activists Dublin
(personal capacity)
#18 by Freeborn John on February 15th, 2010 - 5:28 pm
“The allegiances are voluntary. No one makes me European, or British, for that matter.”
They are not voluntary when we are not allowed to vote on the powers that the EU exercise over us, for certain knowledge that the EU could not win any referendum to legitimate the powers given to it by the treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon. If the people of Wales want to hold a referendum on transferring powers from Westminster to the Welsh Assembly then no-one will stop them, and the result will be respected. But this is not the case with EU powers.
“Those who disavow the concept of Europeanism and deny it exists are in the minority”
The evidence says otherwise. If sufficient European identity existed to popularise and legitimate the powers that the EU has then why are referendums cancelled, ignored and repeated until the desired result is obtained?
Peter is making multiple mistakes here, starting with an assumption that a very low level of support for the EU can legitimate any amount of EU powers. It is clear that the level of EU power has long since exceeded the legitimacy base afforded to by the actual the low level of European identity that exists. Indeed the level of European identity is actually on the retreat, yet EU power has been increased, leading to the likelyhood the toppling of the Brussels Tower of Babbel.
Peter also mistakenly assumes that European identity is the only international identity that exists. He does not make any mention of other international (or ‘civilisational identities’) such as Western identity or Anglosphere identity. That is no accident because his argument collapses once you recognise there are other more popular international identities than European. Even if European identity was quite strong, it would be inappropriate for the EU to have powers to decide our relations with other parts of the world such as the USA or Commonwealth countries when the shared identity between these other parts of the world and all parts of the British Isles is stronger than any with a Continent with who we have no language in common, nor any shared political culture nor even a shared historical experience of having fought on the same side in the great conflicts of the 20th century that shaped our world outlook. As they same in Ireland, “Dublin is closer to Boston than Berlin”.
“Europeanism: Culture First, Politics After”
This was also the battle cry of Lenin when championing the creation of “New Soviet Man” or “Homo Soveticus”. It is a mentality which implicitly recognises the cause it champions has weak popular support and will fail unless society is artificially remolded to match the political institutions rather than the other way around. Peter’s attitude was famously summed up by Brecht when he accused the East German authorities of declaring that “the people had forfeited the confidence of the government” who should then follow through “by dissolving the people and electing another in their place”. This is what Peter’s “Europeanism” is all about, and it is as doomed to fail as the attempts at Sovietisation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Soviet_man