It started like a good idea and with good intentions in line with "Let us cooperate to avoid future conflict." Now eleven leading European intellectuals warns that Europe is dying, they claim that Europe is heading towards the darkest chapter in its history. They claim that the Europe their parents built for peace after the war is disintegrating before their eyes. The cause for this is reported to be the Euro crisis. They call the crisis in Greece a Greece that is disintegrating before the eyes of the world followed by crisis in Italy, Portugal and Spain. The "11" suggest that an increase in the political cooperation in the European Union is the solution, basically to create a United States of Europe.
I think there's only one downside with this approach, it won't work. If I look back in history I can see that every time someone have tried to unite Europe it always ends with basically everybody trying to kill everybody, not a good indicator of future success. I seriously doubt that Greece is disintegrating. The Greeks have managed to handle the Persians, the Romans, the barbarian invasions in the 5th century, 400 years of ottoman oppression, the Nazis and military juntas, I'm pretty convinced that it takes more to bring down Greeks than some bureaucrats in Brussels. There will be hard times for the Greeks ahead of course, but they will survive.
There are two types of people in Europe, generally speaking. There are the ones wanting to build a super structure and then there are those that just want to be able to live a descent life. The problems arise when it is the first group that makes the decisions and the latter that must bare the consequences of them. I've heard politicians say that if people only would understand that this is the best way forward for Europe they would support it. The only problem with that is that it is totally irrelevant what would happen if the political decisions were understood, democracy is based on the opinions of the voters, not their understanding. The notion that the political leadership is the avantgarde that shows the way to the "glorious future" in opposition to the wishes of the people is actually a Leninist concept.
One thing that probably can be stated with a certain amount of certainty, is that if you don't address the right problem you don't get the right solution. I think that it is a mistake to blame the Euro crisis. The Euro crisis is just a symptom of the real problem. It should be indisputable and universally accepted that it can't be the Euro crisis that is the cause of the Euro crisis. Greece doesn't have problems because of the Euro crisis, Greece's problems with the European Union is the cause of the Euro crisis. The solution is not more political centralization and an expanded political system within the EU that already is lacking in legitimacy. It never fails to surprise me to what extent people think that more of that which caused the problem is the solution. People generally don't take well to leaders that runs them over, patronize and ignores their wishes, especially when the leadership is lacking in legitimacy. The solution is not more centralization with a disintegrating democracy and a monstrous European bureaucracy, it is the opposite. Another mistake is to use the European Union as a synonym with Europe. It might be that the European Union is facing difficulties that are fatal to its existence as a political organisation, that is necessarily not a bad thing. It might as well be interpreted as a sign of democratic health, the result of Europeans protesting against lacking democracy and lacking legitimacy in the leadership, a sign of vitality, the people saying "don't push us around." Europe is not dying, Europe is very much alive.
Europe is not like the United States, created upon shared ideals and beliefs, and even under those conditions the United States had to go through a cataclysmic civil war before it was consolidated. Europe is diverse with a long and complicated history, if oil and water doesn't mix, why insist on mixing it? Given that the original objective as a peace project is true, why not concentrate on peace instead of creating problems that is counterproductive to peace? Generally, I think people that are left to make their own decisions tend to be happier than those that cannot. It's not exactly rocket science, happy - good, unhappy - not good. Happy people rarely cause conflicts.
(The eleven signers are: Juan Luis Cebrián, Umberto Eco, António Lobo Antunes, Gabi Gleichmann, Julia Kristeva, György Konrád, Bernard-Henri Lévy, Claudio Magris, Salman Rushdie, Fernando Savater,
Peter Schneider)
