@article{2017:james:europe_gr,
title = {Europe: Grand deal, big deal, or no deal?},
year = {2017},
note = {2016 will be remembered as the year when globalisation turned sour and
deglobalisation began - with the Brexit vote in the UK, and then the
Trump election in the USA. By 2017, it also looked as if Europe had
lost its mojo. The reversal of globalisation and populist mobilisation
pose a fundamental challenge to the EU. Each election - in the
Netherlands, then in France, then in Germany, then in Italy - looks
like a cliff-hanger, not just for that country but for the whole of
Europe. Jyrki Katainen, vice-president of the European Commission,
recently explained the need for reform in order to “avoid the
situation where every year, in some member states, elections create an
existential threat to Europe. It is not sustainable.” The departure
of the UK is an obvious sign of a problem, or, as an often used
analogy has it, of a marriage that is not working. The new European
Commission White Paper sketches out a menu of five alternative
options, including carrying on in the same way, retreating to just a
single market, coalitions of the willing on particular issues, doing
less more efficiently, and moving to much further and deeper
integration. The first and last look doomed to failure, and
Jean-Claude Juncker is certainly right to think that new and
imaginative approaches are needed. But the document is fundamentally a
confession of helplessness and of failure, a statement of the
fragility and vulnerability of multilateral institutions and
governance in a world of de-globalisation. The European integration
process was imagined in the mid-twentieth century as a way of thinking
about issues that look very actual - how to manage political
discontent and the instability of democracy; and how to handle
transformative economic change. But in both cases the answers that are
hard-wired into the Brussels outlook appear rather out-dated in the
second decade of the twenty-first century. Thus while the problems are
still there, in an acute (but mutating) form, the remedies are not.
The White Paper accurately reminds its audience that by mid-century,
no existing member state would have more than 1 % of the world’s
population and on this insubstantial material basis could not really
carry much weight in the shaping of global rules; and thus if global
issues are to be addressed there is a clear need for European
coordination.},
journal = {ZSE Zeitschrift für Staats- und Europawissenschaften | Journal for Comparative Government and European Policy},
pages = {141--155},
author = {James, Harold},
volume = {15},
number = {1}
}