IF later this month the British vote to leave the European Union, the ramifications will be felt far beyond Europe itself. The EU has played a quiet but important part in arranging the Syrian ceasefire and still has a major responsibility toward the Palestinian people as part of the Middle East quartet, along with the US, Russia and the United Nations.
Many would argue that the EU has proven itself incapable of speaking with a single political voice and the idea that it could have a united military across 28 member countries is so fanciful as to be absurd. But Brussels has both financial and moral strengths which should not be discounted. For all its internal problems, it has the ability to be a force for good.
If the British choose to leave on June 23, both the EU and Britain will be very different. International organizations such as the IMF have lined up to predict dire consequences for the British economy. UK premier David Cameron and his finance minister George Osborne, who are leading the “Remain” camp have been hardly less gloomy. EU countries, including Spain, where more than 300,000 Britons live in the sunshine they so rarely get back home, have threatened serious repercussions. But these threats appear to be counterproductive. UK voters are spooked by the migrant issue and fed up with an increasing body of EU legislation imposed by eurocrats in Brussels. The European parliament remains a largely powerless talking shop.
In 1973 when the British finally joined Europe, they signed up for the European Economic Community. They bought the deal because the creation of the world largest single market, free of trade barriers, seemed to make eminent good sense. Then in 1992, the Maastricht treaty set out plans for a political union. The French, the Dutch and the Irish held referendums on the deal. Only 51 percent of French voters approved Maastricht. The Dutch and the Irish rejected it. They were made to vote again after some cosmetic changes had been made in their favor. This time they endorsed it. The British never had a vote. They might very well have said no because political union was not what they agreed on in 1973. Their laws and democratic systems have not developed in the same way as on continental Europe. Their island mentality makes the British prickly about their sovereignty.
If, nevertheless, they vote this month to stay, the EU will still have been damaged and there is no guarantee that the Brussels-led union will be back on track. Xenophobic racist parties throughout the EU are using the migrant issue to prime their own attacks on the institution. Europe has never looked in more trouble. Thanks to the fraudulent financial shenanigans in Greece, the single currency has come perilously close to disaster and is still far from secure. Ordinary European voters feel increasingly disempowered. There is a general approval of the European idea but a growing pushback at the way it has been implemented.
European Union president Donald Tusk has just said that his organization must abandon its “Utopian” dreams and instead concentrate on practical measures, such as controlling its borders and bringing about banking union. It seems a bit late in the day to be waking up to the extent to which the Maastricht treaty actually undermined the vision it was designed to project.
