30 Europe The Economist January 29th 2022
Themesswithout
P
ress a eurocrat hard enough about the eu’s many imperfec
tions, and sooner or later you hear a familiar defence. Never
mind about coddled French farmers or Polish populists tearing up
the rules: the crucial thing about the European project is that it has
delivered peace. (The emphasis on this word is emotional; a small
tear may well up at this point). Replacing centuries of warfare with
decades of latenight summits quibbling over fish quotas is the
European project’s proudest achievement. Fair enough. But peace
stops at the eu’s borders. Surrounding the club is a zone of tur
moil, which Europe seems powerless to soothe.
The prospect of war in Ukraine currently dominates the head
lines. But look in just about any direction and Europe’s neighbour
hood is a mess. Belarus, Europe’s last dictatorship, recently flew in
migrants from Iraq, dumped them at the Polish border fence, gave
them boltcutters and ordered them to try to break into the euin
the hope of causing another refugee crisis. The Belarusian despot
is now welcoming Russian soldiers, perhaps on their way to in
vade Ukraine.
In Turkey, an eccentric autocrat presides over a crashing cur
rency. In the western Balkans, poundshop demagogues rant and
loot. Across the Mediterranean, a mere peoplesmuggling dinghy
ride from the eu, North Africa now mixes a drift away from de
mocracy (Tunisia) with civil war (Libya). Only Norway, Switzer
land and occasionally Britain look like functional places. To lose
one neighbour to strife or demagoguery may be regarded as a mis
fortune. To lose nearly all of them looks like carelessness.
To be fair, much of the disarray has been deliberately fomented
by one exceptionally aggressive neighbour. Besides grabbing bits
of Ukraine and threatening much worse, Vladimir Putin has sown
discord across the whole region. He props up a despot in Belarus
and may one day swallow the country into Russia. His troops and
cash support a breakaway sliver of Moldova, making life hard for
its proeugovernment. He has stirred up disarray in the Balkans,
not least in Bosnia, where his support for separatist Serb forces
has brought the country to the brink of anarchy.
Europe once had a viable strategy to counter such meddling.
Countries that wanted to escape from Russia’s coercive “sphere of
influence” were welcomed into the eu. The prospect of attendingthose dull fishthemed European summits, not to mention trad
ing with and receiving subsidies from some of the world’s richest
economies, was more than enough to lure countries like Bulgaria
and Poland into the club. Accession talks required them to adopt
hard but mostly sensible economic and political reforms. Being in
the antechamber of the euwas itself a stabilising force.
Now the prospects for further euenlargement are essentially
zero. The last country to join was Croatia, in 2013. Britain was the
big state keenest to bring in fresh blood, notes Rosa Balfour of Car
negie Europe, a thinktank in Brussels. Today’s members are more
likely to rue having let in Hungary than to look for ways to include
Albania. To places with no hope of eumembership, promises of
Russian or Chinese investment may sound rather appealing,
though they come with strings attached.
The euhas other carrots, which it has long dangled at countries
that had no real chance of joining the bloc; Turkey has officially
been a candidate for accession since 1963, though more in theory
than in practice. The prospect of visafree travel may induce gov
ernments to clamp down on corruption, say. Europe sends money,
and recently vaccines, as part of its “neighbourhood policy”,
which extends to bits of the Middle East. But the task is low on its
list of priorities. The commissioner in charge of such policies
comes from Hungary, where the government is notoriously cor
rupt and hostile to foreigners.It could have been eu
The way Europe deals with its neighbourhood is an extension of
how it was built. The euhas no standing armies to push its agen
da. Even if it had, internal divisions would dilute Europe’s influ
ence beyond its borders. The club still comes with 27 different fla
vours of foreign policy, in addition to one nominally designed at
the European level. Some countries focus on the bloc’s southern
flank, where foreign policy is an extension of domestic impera
tives—namely the desire to stem irregular migration. Various
grubby deals have been struck with countries including Libya and
Turkey to cut down the number of boats attempting the crossing
into Europe from their shores. In Libya’s case, Italy and France
have backed rival warlords: hardly a recipe for fostering harmony.
The lack of unity is even more apparent when it comes to mat
ters of war and peace. Bits of eastern Europe see nato, and specifi
cally America, as the bedrock of their security. By contrast,
France’sPresident Emmanuel Macron relentlessly pushes the idea
that Europe must develop its own “strategic autonomy”. Russia
has long depended on a series of allweather friends within the
eu, notably Greece, Hungary and often Germany and Italy, to play
down its wrongdoing. Meanwhile swathes of the continent de
pend precariously on gas from Russia to keep warm. Domestic
politics nearly always trumps foreign relations. Even with 100,000
Russian troops menacing Ukraine, Germany’s new coalition is
still dithering over whether to toughen its stance towards Russia.
France is in preelection mode, as Italy may soon be.
Perhaps it was inevitable that the euwould be surrounded by
dysfunction. All the functional countries in the neighbourhood
were qualified to join the club and, apart from Norway and Swit
zerland, they did so. Thus the club kept expanding until it hit a
wall of prickles—the countries that were too turbulent or illrun to
be admitted. That was once a mild irritant. Now its neighbours’ in
stability looks likea risk to the solemnly invoked peace that un
derpins the wholeEuropean project. And that could prompt tears
of a different kind.nCharlemagne
Peace and order reign in the eu, but seldom near it