Euroscepticism

Are we united? Will we be called (hopefully sooner than later) United States of Europe one day? Can we be compared to USA? Although I’m not convinced at all it would be a fair comparison. After all even America wasn’t unified until the end of the Civil War. To be completely honest I perfectly recall the controversy about the Confederation flag of just a few months ago, but if Americans say they’re now truly united, so be it. I strongly want to believe them.

We’re just newly born: at least give us the benefit of doubt. Europe wasn’t born in 1959, that (called EEC) was merely the idea of the future Europe to be. That date can’t be taken as a reference. According to me the first date coincided with the creation of a common European currency, the Euro (€), back to 1999. A big psychological change, paving the way for all the rest. Gradually we’re getting to “all the rest”: political and fiscal.

Ask to millennials and they’ll tell there’s no going back! Ask to elderly and they’ll tell there will never be a united Europe (or even it wasn’t due to be created at all). To foster a change of attitude takes a lot of time.

For the time being it’s an imperfect union: the financial crisis (started in USA, by the way, not here), the refugee crisis, even the terrorists “crisis”/attacks are a clear proof of it. But our direction is crystal clear, as a matter of fact we’re still accepting refugees, aren’t we? Look instead at what’s happening in America: they’re closing the door to them (so...are THEY really united? Ok…again, IF they say so).

We’re making so many mistakes, I give you that. We’re trying to maintain open internal borders while leaving the management of external borders to national governments: an enormous contradiction, especially in Greece so impoverished by austerity! (see my post “Austerity”).

Same mistake on the anti-terrorism front left up to national governments.

EU countries vary widely in front of major problems, and signs of strain are showing. The ideals are very strong, but it needs to reform itself to become less bureaucratic, to complete the single market in services and capital, to politically integrate. These are the main issues, not the three above which will be solved by solving the root problems.

This promise has been made over and over. “We’ll bring Europe closer to the people”. It’s far from getting closer, but THAT is the key for anything else and now they’re appearing to finally get it. Because in spite of what’s happening Schengen is holding, the willingness is holding. Someone is complainig it’s never been so bad: compared to what / when? World War II when we were killing each others’?

Nobody can argue, Europe is at a pivotal moment in its history: the biggest mistake would be not fighting populism. As a matter of fact I don’t see any Donald Trump’s populism around here. There is an increasing populism, but not at that level. I'm surely not going to argue about a possible Brexit: there's definitely too much political interference "over" there.

What’s my personal view of integration? When future generations will be asked who they are: Italians, Scandinavians, French, Polish? And they’ll answer: Europeans.

Yes, I’m optimistic. Nevertheless, it takes time.

….Always humble,

Angiolino