07 April 2016
A Cultural Family?
by Richard Pooley
“So, why should we vote to stay?” has been a pretty common question from my friends in the UK ever since Cameron promised a referendum on EU membership. Many assume that because I now live in France – “over there”,“on the continent” or, most tellingly, “in Europe” – I have gone native. I must surely be a supporter of the European Union. Their assumptions are flawed. You can love Europe and its cultures without having any love for the EU and its institutions. More importantly, because so many Brits view the EU as a French creation dominated by faceless bureaucrats (a French-Greek portmanteau word, biensûr), they do not realise that the EU is as unloved and as distrusted in France as it is in the UK. Probably more so.
However, the British are right to think of the EU as a French construct. The founding fathers of its predecessor, the European Coal and Steel Community, were both French. Jean Monnet – financier, international civil servant, political economist, advisor to Franklin Roosevelt – was born in Cognac in 1888. Robert Schuman – French finance minister, foreign minister, and twice prime minister of France – was born in Luxembourg in 1886. Schuman’s father was born a Frenchman in Lorraine but became German when it was annexed in 1871. Schuman himself became French when Alsace-Lorraine returned to France in 1919. The ECSC, the European Economic Community and, finally, the European Union were brought into being by two men who had lived through two world wars triggered by Europe-spawned nationalism. Here is how Schuman justified the creation of these inter-country institutions in a speech in Strasbourg (where else?) in 1949:
“The European spirit signifies being conscious of belonging to a cultural family and to have a willingness to serve that community in the spirit of total mutuality, without any hidden motives of hegemony or the selfish exploitation of others… Our century, that has witnessed the catastrophes resulting in the unending clash of nationalities and nationalisms, must attempt and succeed in reconciling nations in a supranational association. This would safeguard the diversities and aspirations of each nation while coordinating them in the same manner as the regions are coordinated within the unity of the nation.”
Why have I put “a cultural family” and “a supranational association” in bold? Because they are incompatible. One of the most well-known quotes attributed to Jean Monnet was “If I had to do it again, I’d start with culture.” In fact, he never said it. But maybe he thought it. He died in 1979, sixteen years after Schuman and six years after the EEC’s members had expanded from the original six to nine (including the UK). He had perhaps begun to see that Europe was not one cultural family and that its many cultures – with different values, different attitudes, and different systems – were already causing the foundations of his western European supranational edifice to crack and sink.
I have spent all of my working life – first as a volunteer teacher in Africa, then as a civil servant in the UK’s ministry for overseas development, and finally and for much longer as a salesman, businessman and training consultant – trying to help people to bridge cultural differences. When one company takes over or merges with another one, there are usually major problems in getting the two organisational cultures to work effectively together. When the companies are based in different countries, the difficulties multiply. In my experience, there are only two options which can work. Either the more powerful of the two companies imposes its culture on the other – what I call the Procter & Gamble approach – or the two cultures remain almost unchanged and the two entities understand and accept that their colleagues work and think differently. This second option is not common and I only have first-hand experience of one case where it has worked successfully long-term. I call it the Renault-Nissan Alliance approach.
None of my corporate clients and only a few of the Executive MBA students I teach have asked me whether I am a supporter of the European Union and the UK’s continued membership. Those students who do ask – mostly from the Baltic countries and Russia –assume that I am against it and will vote for the UK to leave. Their assumptions are wrong but understandable. I have shown them how hard it is for just two companies to create an effective single supranational entity without one of the companies having to take complete control. So, how can 28 countries possibly work effectively together within a single supranational organisation? How can the 19 members of the eurozone take the tough decisions that are required for it to function, if all are so different, culturally, economically and politically? A federal Europe, a political and economic union, is what Monnet and Schuman wanted. In the immediate years after 1945 it might just have been possible to create “a cultural family” out of a Europe of smashed or obliterated cultures. If so, a true political union could have been created, probably with France as its leader and model. But not now and not for the past 60 years.
If the British were being asked whether we wished to stay in a European Union which was going to become a truly political union (with Germany, not France, adopting the Procter & Gamble approach?), I would be among the vast majority of people in the UK who would vote to leave. But we are not being asked that and there is no way that the people and countries of the EU will accept closer political union anyway, whatever some of the elite political class in many of these countries say.
What the British are being asked is whether we wish to continue to belong to and benefit from a common market where we can buy and sell goods with little hindrance and where we face tough but generally fair competition. We are not members of the eurozone, thank God and Gordon Brown. Nor are we part of the Schengen area. We have opted out of number of other matters too, including, of course, “ever closer union”. So, we are detached from most of those things which don’t work well and we are attached to the part which does work well – the common market. It was the common market that we joined in 1973 and it is the much expanded common market which has helped make us more prosperous.
If we leave the EU, we will still need to trade with the EU. It will remain our most important trading partner. Geography alone will see to that. We might cast off from the continent but we will not be able to sail away into the mid-Atlantic. Four out of the top five export destinations for British agricultural produce are EU member countries. And if we want to trade with the EU, we will have to obey their rules, apply their standards and follow their regulations. But now we won’t be able to stop or amend them. They will be imposed on us. So much for reclaiming sovereignty. We could be like Switzerland or Norway, say the Brexiteers. Yes, we could. Both countries currently have proportionally more EU immigrants than we have. Why? Because in order to trade with the EU they have to accept the free movement of EU citizens in and out of their countries. So much for controlling our borders and reducing immigration.
And what do the French think of the UK’s EU Referendum? If my unscientific straw poll of villagers and Parisians is any guide, they envy us the opportunity to vote but think we would be mad to vote Leave given the deal we currently enjoy. More in a future article.
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