Der einzige Weg, Europa zu retten: Der Kontinent muss sich wie ein Land verhalten
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/only-way-save-europe
Der einzige Weg, Europa zu retten: Der Kontinent muss sich wie ein Land verhalten
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/europe/only-way-save-europe
10 Kommentare
[Excerpt from essay by Maurizio Molinari, columnist and former Editor in Chief of *La Repubblica* and the author of *La scossa globale: L’effetto-Trump e l’età dell’incertezza* (*The Global Shock: The Trump Effect and the Age of Uncertainty*)*.* This essay emerged from the Lloyd George Study Group on Global Governance.]
Europeans have only one option for responding effectively to these dual threats: they must complete the project of European integration. The way forward is to connect the reform proposals of Mario Draghi, the former Italian prime minister and former president of the European Central Bank, with German leadership. Draghi argues for accelerating integration by crafting a common EU policy on artificial intelligence, defense, and energy. Germany is the only country with the political strength to push the bloc in such a direction, and its leaders understand the urgency of the moment: at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz acknowledged the unraveling of the international order and highlighted the importance of increasing EU unity and competitiveness in response.
A German-led reform effort could give the EU the supranational character it needs to move toward strategic autonomy and act as a single player on the global stage. Deepening integration would also generate the economic rebound needed to counter the rising tide of illiberal populism. Draghi argues that Europe needs to make a qualitative leap in integration to the point where the continent can “act more and more as if [it] were one state.” Germany must seize the moment and take the lead in helping European countries come together to make that leap.
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I think the biggest problem Europe is facing is the disconnect between the values it pretends to hold (equality, human rights, etc) vs what it actually stands for: fascism, oppression, hypocrisy, genocide, etc.
Trump and Putin are threats, and Europe still slow to act.
the draghi plan sounds good on paper but the real bottleneck is political will, not economic theory. germany’s got the leverage but asking them to basically bankroll deeper eu integration while dealing with their own domestic pressures is a tough sell. i get the strategic autonomy argument, especially with the us shifting priorities, but you can’t force countries like hungary or poland to align on defense and energy policy when they’re already at odds over judicial independence and nato spending. integration works when countries actually want the same things. right now europe’s more like a group chat where nobody agrees on the group rules.
Freaking absolutist columnists. I’m so done with nuance-less opinion pieces. They’re just noise.
„Let’s do in a snap what couldn’t be done for the past 40 years“.
Is there historical precedence to such wishful thinking? Nothing points at „Europe as a country“ being able to navigate any of those challenges (and I’m deeply pro Europe).
I see this federationist wishful thinking since decades but nothing is really happening, or it’s actually the opposite, with nationalist and right wing reaction growing, UK going out and every foreign actor making backdoor deals with separate member state, including Germany, France or Italy.
>Deepening integration would also generate the economic rebound needed to counter the rising tide of illiberal populism.
Just like that, pure magic!
It’s not going to work like that. You can’t just appoint the EU foreign representative, for example, and expect s/he will just have the same power as a FM of Germany, or any other member state actually. It doesn’t hurt, but it also doesn’t work as easy.
And on top of that, there’s the geography, you can’t just pretend that a country like Spain has the same security issues like Poland and both understand each other.
This is not a post colonial united states of North or South America where you can establish a fresh identity. We don’t have a common language, national identity, history and we should be glad that at least we don’t murder each others in devastating wars anymore…
Edit: forgive me for being so pessimistic and bitter but this kind of fantastic, magical thinking is not helping nobody.
I read the threads whenever they pop up on /r/Europe out of curiosity. Interesting to see any thread on European Federalism ends up reinventing the US Senate and/or Electoral College given how maligned it is in the present day by some in the US.
He is resting it on Germany’s political strength over economic. He is focusing on Germany without mentioning French political leverage in the EU.
He says it’s because France is weak and far right is on the horizon but latter is true for Germany vis a vis AFD. I am not convinced that Merz’s „sense of purpose „, as he calls it, is enough to curtail populist moments.
About that unified defence thing: FCAS got cancelled just this month and Germany was not able to reign France in. I can’t imagine Molinari is proposing to ignore France while unifying the defence. He is ignoring a lot of ground realities to center Germany for his proposed reform.