02 June 2016
Europe – A Synergy-Free Zone
No cheer for Europe in the 21st Century.
by Neil Tidmarsh
The continent of Europe is not a very happy place at the moment.
In Brussels last week, there were violent demonstrations against austerity measures and labour reforms. Eight protesters and two policemen were injured (one of them was the city’s chief of police, who was taken to hospital with head injuries from a thrown rock). This week a general strike by public sector workers threatens to bring Belgium to a halt.
In France, the country is already grinding to a halt. For the last few weeks, police have fought running battles with violent demonstrators through the streets of Paris. Striking lorry drivers and railway workers have been joined by workers at oil refineries and nuclear power stations, air-traffic controllers, refuse collectors, ambulance crews, cash transporters, train drivers, metro drivers, bus drivers and dockers. Strikers are blockading petrol depots, ports, bridges and motorways. Unions organising the strikes and demonstrations are threatening to paralyse the Euro 2016 soccer championship tournament this month.
And of course demonstrations continue in Greece – from the mass of respectable citizens protesting outside the government buildings in Syntagma Square to the gangs of masked anarchists engaged in running battles with the police through the streets of Athens.
There is political turmoil on the streets – and there is political turmoil in the ballot box as well. The stench of burning tyres and tear gas is nothing to the stench coming from some voting booths recently. Local elections in France earlier this year showed Marine le Pen’s National Front to be more or less neck and neck with the two mainstream parties. In Austria, the two mainstream parties were knocked out in the first round of presidential elections; the second and final round was almost won by Norbert Hofer of the far-right Freedom party – he lost to Alexander van der Bullen (a Green party member standing as an independent candidate) by only 49.7% to 50.3% of the vote. In Poland’s general elections last October, the centrist government was defeated by Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his right wing nationalist Law and Justice Party (the new government promptly attempted to take control of the courts and the state media, and the EU mobilised its previously-unused “rule of law mechanism” to monitor Poland’s constitution and threaten sanctions.) In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) made dramatic gains in regional elections in March.
Spain’s two mainstream parties also did badly in the general elections last December; neither of them has been able to form any kind of coalition, so the country has been without a government for six months. There will be fresh elections this month, but there is every chance that the deadlock will be repeated. General elections in Portugal last year were nearly as inconclusive – a conservative minority government emerged, but lasted only eleven days before being replaced by a Socialist-led leftist coalition. And in the Netherlands, two months ago, voters in a referendum rejected the EU’s trade and security treaty with Ukraine, a nominal issue – it was really a vote against the EU.
There is economic turmoil, too. Unemployment is high – painfully so in Italy (11.4%), Portugal (12.2%), Poland (10%) and France (10.3%), agonisingly so in Spain (21.4%) and Greece (24.4%). There has been no economic growth in Europe for ten years. Many countries have seen their economies shrink. To be fair, figures this week suggested that France is at last coming out of its long period of stagnation – its GDP grew by 0.6% (not much, but it’s something) in the first quarter of this year. Ironically, this is almost certain to be wiped out by the recent protests and demonstrations, which may well return the country to zero growth (or even recession) by the time they’re done. Even Germany is plagued by deflation, in spite of all the economic stimulus from the European Central Bank. And Europe’s share of the world’s business has fallen from 34% in 1980 to 24% last year; in other words it has lost almost a third of its trade with the rest of the world.
What is happening? What has gone wrong? Europe should be leading the world economically, politically and culturally. It should be a global powerhouse, intellectually and materially rich, an innovative, enterprising, dynamic community of like-minded, culturally-related nations, miles ahead of the competition in the twenty-first century. Each and every one of the European nations has left its mark on world history, for good or ill, determining the shape of today’s globe. Bringing them all together should have resulted in an explosive and amazing surge of synergy – the whole being greater than the sum of its parts – to rival or even outdo that caused by the different nations of the British Isles coming together as Great Britain in the dawn of the modern age, or the independent American colonies coming together as the United States.
But that hasn’t happened. Instead we have economic stagnation, sovereign debt, unemployment, austerity; violent demonstrations on the streets; protest votes for extremist political parties which threaten the very existence of democracy, or protest votes for anti-mainstream parties which unintentionally render democracy impotent. And declining political influence on the world stage.
Why? What has happened to Europe? Who or what is responsible for its paralysis?
These are questions I will leave you to ponder as we all decide how we are going to vote in three week’s time.
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