The future of Europe

And if it still aspires to be a major player on the international stage, it will have to strengthen the only treasure it really has at its disposal, the single internal market. It will have to integrate into it three sectors it has so far failed to deal with collectively: technology, finance and energy. 

These conclusions, among others, emerged at the thirty-sixth annual seminar on Europe held by the Association of European Journalists (APE), which brought together personalities with a long history behind them and, therefore, a broad perspective to scrutinise the future of a European Union that may be going through one of the most delicate moments of its existence. 

From Javier Solana, former EU High Representative for Common Security and Defence Policy, to Ramón de Miguel, former Secretary of State for Foreign Policy and the EU, via the Czech Dita Charanzová, former Vice-President of the European Parliament, and the Danish Marlene Wind, from the University of Copenhagen, the analysis of the different speakers distilled the many dangers that surround and threaten the very existence of the EU. 

‘We are in the era of the democracies of fear’, said Professor Fernando Vallespín, summing up in this phrase the sharp increase in the fears that have arisen in practically all European countries regarding migratory waves and many of their negative consequences, which populism is taking advantage of to accentuate the more than evident polarisation of the continent. ‘Immigrants arrive with the sole baggage of hunger and fear’, stressed Miguel Ángel Aguilar, secretary general of the APE, emphasising the chapter that has become the main concern of the citizens of not a few countries, which in the not so distant past based their prosperity on the work provided by immigration. 

The seminar reviewed virtually all of the major international conflicts currently shaking the world, especially the wars in Ukraine and those between Israel and the Iranian proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. The former has highlighted Europe's loneliness vis-à-vis the so-called Global South. As for the latter, the EU struggles to have a voice of its own, a vain attempt when its own defence remains dependent on the NATO umbrella and thus on American largesse. 

This brings us to the crucial presidential election in the United States between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, an election that many of the specialists gathered at the premises of the Fundación Diario Madrid believe will not have much impact, whatever the outcome, on Europe and the rest of the world, but will be decisive within the great North American country. 

If Brexit has weakened the UK, it has also weakened, albeit to a lesser extent, the EU, which has lost Britain's major contribution to foreign policy and its nuclear power, even though cooperation in security and defence is notable. Although many Britons would like to reverse the situation and rejoin the Union, ‘this will not be possible until those who are now in their late teens turn forty’, according to Margaritis Schinas, the commissioner for the protection of the European way of life. He confirmed that those who pushed for and consummated the exit from the EU have refused to rejoin the Erasmus programme, given their own conviction that student coexistence would turn young British university students into ‘convinced pro-Europeans’ by mixing with their continental counterparts. 

Schinas also made clear his conviction that Serbia will not be a full member of the EU until it settles its dispute with Kosovo, but he was convinced that Montenegro will surely be the first to meet the 37 requirements demanded by Brussels in order to welcome it into the EU, in an enlargement that he predicted would be orderly. 

Antonio Rodríguez de Liébana, Director General for the Coordination of the Internal Market and other Community Policies, rounded off the seminar by addressing the ‘cost of non-Europe’, in other words, of being on the fringes of the common home that is the EU. 

Each country would face different degrees of this cost, but the common denominator is that remaining outside would be a guarantee of irrelevance at the very least, including those countries that still consider themselves to be middle-ranking powers. The lesson of Brexit has been well learned by all, but this does not exempt some from taking urgent unilateral decisions without consultation, the effect of which is to jeopardise such important achievements as the Schengen area. There is the German decision to tighten border controls, a gesture towards the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) after its meteoric rise in three former eastern states. 

And, finally, a suggestion to remedy the immobility caused by the need for unanimity in decision-making even on crucial issues. It would be to do the same as with the euro: let those who want to join join voluntarily without being held back by those who want everything to remain as it is. If the dilemma is between progress or regression, this suggestion would be worth considering.