Cicero Policy Briefer

Issue 17, October 2007

Is this what you meant to do?

By Jacob Coy

Things are looking up in Belgium. Earlier this week, coalition partners had their most productive set of talks since their stalemate of four months and counting following their last election. It looks as though the 177-year-old union may not be as doomed as some predicted only a few weeks ago. Key compromises are still to be reached on social policy priorities, transport, and immigration; ironically, it is perhaps only through greater devolution of powers to Flanders and Wallonia that the country will be rescued from fissure. But one is not unreasonable to have doubts about the sustainability of this solution for the long-term.

Belgium is not the only country to recently confront the thorny issue of national self-determination. Significant populations in Britain, Italy, France, Romania and Spain are all demanding their own autonomy in different forms. In most cases, these are neither recently contrived nor thinly rooted. It is exceptionally rare that a Scot will self-identify as anything other than Scottish (not British or ‘from the UK’); the Basques enjoy a wholly unique language and a cultural heritage drawn from a history extending as far back as Roman times (Vasconia); a minority of Corsicans cannot imagine why anyone else should run their affairs.

Why are we seeing the movement for reclaiming and exerting national identity intensify? I would suggest that it is a curious by-product of a deeper European integration. Because of the comfort now provided by the umbrella protections of European citizenship and the EU, groups feel more freedom to assert political identities other than those conforming to the traditional nation-state that dominated the political and international order of most of the 20th century. No longer are those groups who seek to form a nation burdened with the tremendous responsibilities of 80 years ago—there is no need to raise and resource a standing army; no trade treaties to negotiate and no borders to patrol. In essence, deeper union has paved the way for greater factionalism.

To those who are so fervently pro-European, is this what you meant to do?

This trend is indeed a very big problem for Europe’s existing political class—both at a Member State-level and in Brussels. Part of this stems from the potential for dramatic hypocrisy—all too often Europe’s leaders support movements for national self-determination around the world, from the former Soviet Union to sub-Saharan Africa to Palestine. While they may choose to reject pleas of the very same nature in their own stable, they may do so at their own peril with the spectre of attention focused upon them.

There is every reason to believe that this problem will worsen instead of diminish over time. If the European project is truly successful, the concept of European citizenship will become even more deeply embedded in the identity of its citizens, effectively making national identities ever more redundant. The march towards further European integration may add more fuel to the fire. Europe’s leaders are nearly all publicly committed to the ratification of a new Reform Treaty (which most will not bring to a popular vote for fear it will fail in the more Euro-sceptical countries). In it, there are new measures proposed at addressing the ‘democratic deficit’. These may do even more to invigorate these movements by giving them formally sanctioned European avenues to pursue their ambitions. How does that square with the long-held and deeply loved notion of ‘subsidiarity?’

Furthermore, ambitions for further enlargement which brings more peoples and more groups into the fold will confront Europe with more cases of this nature. Look at the protracted negotiations towards sovereignty in the former Yugoslavia. Those people are Europeans, without a doubt. But the questions that remain there about sovereignty loom large.

The biggest success of the EU in its first half century has undoubtedly been its ability to quell conflicts, actual or potential, between nationalities and spreading peace throughout the Union. It must now adapt this core competency to settle long-running regional feuds. To this end, Europe’s political class must have the courage to begin a dialogue about how to cope with these movements now and into the future. Is there a threshold? Is there a process? Not to encourage such movements, but to deal with what is already inevitable from the success of the deeper, wider European Union.

Jacob Coy can be contacted on +44 (0)20 7665 9535 or click here to email.