Europe is overcrowded with people and with
nations. Six decades ago, the need to suppress the dangerous forces of
nationalism led to the unprecedented political, economic and social experiment
now known as the European Union. The hundreds of thousands of EU citizens
working across the Continent and the lack of border controls between member
states show that the experiment has been successful in many ways. However,
rising nationalism, pervasively high unemployment and a growing sense of
frustration with governing elites also highlight the serious limitations of the
European project. Over the past 12 months, I have traveled extensively
throughout Europe, observing firsthand how the global economic crisis is
reawakening dormant trends along the Continent's traditional fault lines.
The crisis is having an uneven effect on EU
member states because the eurozone locks countries with different levels of
economic development into the same currency union. Europe's geography helps
explain these differences: Countries in the south have traditionally dealt with
high capital costs and low capital-generation capacity, while countries in the
north have seen the opposite.
In December, I drove from Barcelona to Madrid.
The endless succession of mountains along the route encapsulates Spain's
traditional struggle against geography: Merely moving people and goods from
point to point on the Iberian Peninsula has always posed formidable challenges
for governments and traders. This rugged geography also led to the development
of small pockets of populations with strong national identities, creatingtension between Madrid and the
Basque Country as well as Catalonia. Spain has traditionally been a
resource-poor country that has had to look to the Atlantic to find wealth while
frequently resorting to violence to secure unity.
In contrast, most of Germany is flat. In May, I
drove north along the Rhine, one of the country's major economic
arteries. The
river and its tributaries have blessed all of the people living near them,
bringing incalculable wealth to trading cities such as Frankfurt and Cologne.
The same holds true for the two other major German waterways, the Elbe and the
Danube. But wealth does not necessarily mean peace. Both sides of the Rhine
host multiple castles and fortifications, a reminder of the state of
fragmentation that defined the Germanic world for centuries. The lack of any
real physical borders to the east and west also helps explain Germany's
historical conflict with its neighbors.
Highways in Spain and Germany highlight a more
significant difference. During my journey between Barcelona and Madrid, I
barely saw any cars, let alone trucks. At times, it was hard to believe I was
traveling between the two major cities in the eurozone's fourth-largest
economy. By contrast, Germany's autobahns are crowded with vehicles going from
one point to another. The same geography that made Germany a place of conflict
also explains its economic power: Germany is the center of
Europe from almost every possible point of view.
The farther one moves from Germany, the more evident the crisis becomes. Traveling by train from Thessaloniki to Athens lets one see Greece's complex geography firsthand. Greece is a rugged country with narrow coastal plains that swiftly give way to mountains. Complicating matters, the country has some 6,000 islands and islets, only a handful of which are inhabited. Greece's extremely fragmented geography and its strategic position on the eastern Mediterranean helps explain why it has struggled throughout history to get anything done. Developing an integrated economy and collecting taxes has proven difficult, especially while repelling a never-ending series of invasions.
Walking down the streets of Athens reveals that
this is where the crisis struck first and has had the deepest impact. The
city's downtown is full of closed shops with broken windows, graffiti and other
signs of long-term neglect. In Athens, I saw far more police than in any other
major European city. But at no time did I feel unsafe. Police are not out in
force because of crime but because of social unrest. Though Greece is
relatively tranquil these days, the social situation is still a ticking time
bomb.
At the other end of the Continent, Portugal looks similar. I arrived in
early October, excited by recent figures showing a drop in unemployment and an
improvement in the economic outlook. What I found, however, was a place where
only tourism seemed to be working while everything else remained static. Lisbon
and Oporto are bittersweet places where magnificent monuments and spectacular
views coexist with poverty and economic depression. Though Lisbon ended its
rescue program with the European Union and International Monetary Fund early
this year, for many Portuguese, life remains hard.
Talking Politics Across the Continent
Whenever I'm in a foreign country, I make an
effort to visit bookstores because the books people read and write offer
insights into the social mood. Bookstores in Southern Europe are a reminder
that the Continent's economic problems have become political ones too. The gap between voters and traditional
elites keeps
widening as people are becoming increasingly tired of the policies designed by
Brussels and backed by domestic politicians.
Perusing the shelves, I saw numerous books with
significant anti-austerity and anti-establishment themes, which in some cases
took an anti-German flavor. In an Oporto bookstore, among the bestsellers was a
book called We Are Not Germans, while a Rome bookstore had a book
called It's Not Worth a Lira, a plea to leave the euro and return
to Italy's old currency, that appeared to be quite popular.
Southern Europeans fear and admire Germany at
the same time. On one hand, Germany is seen as a country where everything works
and governments are efficient. On the other hand, it is also seen as a hegemon
that doesn't understand or care about the situation in the nations it is trying
to lead.
Europe's economic crisis is particularly
puzzling for the center-left. Social Democrats have traditionally embraced the
process of European integration because it offers economic prosperity based on
big welfare states and strong labor legislation. But this model is in crisis in
many countries, and even center-left governments are applying spending cuts
under pressure from the European Union.
In Italy, I had dinner with a former union
leader as the center-left's Matteo Renzi -- who had just been appointed prime
minister -- was proposing reforms in several areas, including labor. "I
don't like the direction Renzi is going," the former union leader told me,
"but I will vote for the Democratic Party again because it's either them
or the (anti-system) Five Star Movement." While conservative forces are
moving to the right and nationalist forces are gaining strength, the
center-left is going through an identity crisis that is generating frictions
within the parties and confusing their traditional voters -- something French
President Francois Hollande is learning the hard way.
In Athens, a journalist told me she did not
share the views of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, but at least it had never
been involved in a corruption scandal like those that have traditionally
surrounded the country's mainstream parties. Along with the concept of
democracy, Ancient Greece also developed the concept of kleptocracy. Whenever
you talk with Greeks about politics, a word comes to their mouths almost
immediately: "kleptes," which literally means "thieves."
Most Southern Europeans have similar views of their governments. And while
there is a big gap between what people say in conversations and the way they
vote, these anti-establishment sentiments are not going away anytime soon --
and will keep threatening the survival of the European Union.
A Continent of Expatriates
While the economic and political impact of the
crisis is evident in Southern Europe, its demographic consequences will take
longer to be noticed but will probably be deeper. Before the current downturn,
these countries had some of the lowest fertility rates in Europe, which,
combined with rising life expectancy, led to an aging and shrinking population.
The crisis made things worse because it generated high waves of emigration.
In the short run, emigration helps reduce the
pain of the crisis because there are fewer people competing for jobs and more
people sending remittances home. In the long run, however, it creates fiscal
and economic challenges for the countries that see a decline in their labor
forces. The economic crisis is returning Southern European countries to their
traditional roles as places of emigration, where the young leave and the old
are left behind.
But emigration is also problematic for the
receiving countries. The rising number of refugees coming from Northern Africa
and the Middle East is generating concerns in countries including Spain and
Italy as well as Austria and Sweden. At the same time, immigrants from Eastern
Europe are pushing Germany and the United Kingdom to find bureaucratic means to
discourage them. In early January, an old lady in Frankfurt asked me where I
was from. When I told her I was Argentinian-Italian, she smiled at me. She
thought about her words and, after a while, said, "Italians are fine. It's
Romanians and Bulgarians I'm worried about."
The irony is that the same process that is
creating political and social tensions in Europe's core is helping to mitigate
the negative effects of a demographic change. In Germany, I met many expatriates
from across Europe, most of whom work at English-speaking companies with large
Pan-European staffs. European enterprises can pick their employees from a pool
of highly skilled workers from across the Continent without having to file
significant amounts of paperwork. While the pressure to limit immigration is
gaining momentum in Europe, I also expect businessmen to fight it.
The View From Outside the Eurozone
The economic crisis is not only leading to
friction within the eurozone, it's also fragmenting the wider European Union.
With Europe's main powers focused on the problems within the currency union,
many of the newest EU members are feeling isolated. The re-emergence of a more
aggressive Russia is complicating matters for these new members.
Of all the places I visited this year, Poland
is probably the most interesting for the simple reason that its concerns are
different from those of Western Europe. I visited Warsaw in May to attend a
conference marking the 25th anniversary of the end of communism and the 10th
anniversary of Polish EU membership. The timing was also interesting because
the crisis in Ukraine was heating up, making the Poles increasingly nervous
about Russian moves in Central Europe.
I found that Poland was a country confident about its economic
strength but worried about its future. History has given the Poles a deep
understanding of geopolitics and too many reasons to be worried about the
events beyond their borders. I visited Warsaw a few days before the arrival of
U.S. President Barack Obama. The excitement caused by his visit was a
confirmation of Poland's strategy of developing closer ties with the United
States to help it cope with a politically fragmented European Union and a
hesitant NATO. The Poles are proud of being members of the European Union, but
they are not completely confident that Brussels will come to their rescue
should the crisis with Russia escalate.
One Europe, Too Many Europes
Strasbourg is an excellent place to reflect on
Europe because it is a synthesis of everything that is great and tragic about
the Continent. The city looks German but feels French -- because it's both.
Crossing the Rhine from Baden-Baden to Strasbourg and seeing that there are no
border controls, and nothing to indicate that you've moved from Germany to
France but a small sign that reads "French republic," is normal for
anyone who was born in the past 30 years. But from a French king's order to his
men to "burn the Palatinate" in the late 1680s to a German leader's
invasion of France in the early 1940s, having peace between the countries east
and west of the Rhine is an anomaly rather than the norm.
Six decades after the creation of the European
Union, this is still the key relationship to watch. The crisis has now reached
a point where its two main players are under extreme pressure. Germany joined
the eurozone under the assumption that no bailouts would be given to nations in
distress and no monetization of debt would take place. France joined the
eurozone under the assumption that it would remain the political leader of
Europe. The crisis has put all the promises and agreements that supported the
Franco-German unity in doubt.
Europeanists believe that things would be much
better if the European Union became a true federation. They are probably right.
The question is how to accomplish this. As Germany learned during its unification in
the 1870s and
confirmed during its reunification in the 1990s, building a large united
political unity out of smaller entities requires the redistribution of money
and power. But what should come first, money or reforms? The European Union is
currently seeing the worst of both worlds: A monetary union without a fiscal
union. In other words, it has sovereign states that don't control their
currencies and supranational institutions that don't control fiscal policy.
We tend to think of Europe as a cohesive unit
because there is an entity called the European Union that has headquarters in
Brussels and is represented across the Continent. To a certain extent, this
perception is correct. But if anything, the crisis serves as a reminder of
Europe's perennial state of fragmentation, which is the consequence of history
and geography. These divisions led to the current crisis and will hamper any
attempts to solve it.
Adriano Bosoni, Stratfor, November 6, 2014
Traveling
Through Multiple Europes is republished with permission of Stratfor.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário
Não publicamos comentários de anônimos/desconhecidos.
Por favor, se optar por "Anônimo", escreva o seu nome no final do comentário.
Não use CAIXA ALTA, (Não grite!), isto é, não escreva tudo em maiúsculas, escreva normalmente. Obrigado pela sua participação!
Volte sempre!
Abraços./-