52 Europe The Economist May 14th 2022
Fifthtimelucky
I
t took four horsemen to mete out God’s apocalyptic punish
ment. The biblical wrath conveyed by two of them will sound fa
miliar to Europeans worn down by disease and now war in Uk
raine. But a mere quartet of steeds would not have sufficed to de
liver the calamities the euhas had to contend with in the past de
cade or so. No fewer than five crises have befallen the continent in
that time: in addition to covid19 and fighting on its doorstep, Eu
rope has been visited by the protracted eurozone slump, soon fol
lowed by a migration emergency and then Brexit. Any normal pol
ity would be worn down by living in nearperpetual crisis mode
for so long—not least since the episodes rarely showed the euat its
best. It is only the war in Ukraine that the bloc has handled re
motely deftly. Is it possible that the euhas learned how to avoid
turning problems into existential dramas?
Crisis holds a special place in the hearts of believers in the
European project. Jean Monnet, one of the eu’s founding fathers
and the nearest thing Brussels has to a patron saint, thought the
continent’s political arrangements would be “forged in crises, and
will be the sum of the solutions adopted for those crises”. Like
most religious parables, this is not wholly true. The bloc’s most
notable shunts towards evercloser union, from the euro to the
single market by way of open borders, were agreed on without the
spectre of impending meltdown. But crises help to disrupt the sta
tus quo. The temporary chaos they bring about allows new ideas to
emerge. Apply enough pressure—and in Europe that can mean the
prospect of the entire edifice of the eucollapsing—and what was
politically unthinkable yesterday becomes inevitable tomorrow.
Thus it was that the eurozone crisis resulted in onceverboten
sovereign bailouts and a soupedup central bank. In 2015 a surge
of migrants crossing the Mediterranean prompted the euto re
cruit its own guntoting officers to patrol its external borders. The
economic rout brought by covid19 saw the creation of a jointly
guaranteed recovery fund of the sort even the protracted euro
zone mess had not made possible. In each instance the lurch to
“more Europe” came after new circumstances made businessas
usual unpalatable. In the corridors of Brussels Eurocrats be
moaned the crisis of the day, all the while knowing it represented
an opportunity to deepen integration. In what other circumstancesthananallnightsummit could leaders breach their own red
lines and agree some federalising leap in the hope of being re
leased to their hotel rooms?
If a trend can be spotted, it is of Europe dealing with crises rath
er better over time. Nobody these days boasts about how the euro
was saved, ruing instead the many missed opportunities to avert a
meltdown in the first place. The migrant surge in 2015 was no bet
ter: squabbles over how to treat refugees from wartorn countries
showed Europe at its most divided and unkind. Brexit was, rela
tively speaking, a triumph of eucoordination. No doubt preserv
ing a unified Britbashing front reduced the risk of other countries
leaving—but at the expense of a still noxious relationship with an
important neighbour. Europe’s covid19 response is touted as a
success in Brussels, yet many citizens will not forget the delays in
the arrival of vaccines the euwas asked to buy for them.
For the current batch of euleaders and bureaucrats who are
handling Ukraine, in other words, the bar is low. On the whole they
have done a creditable job. Wave upon wave of sanctions have hurt
Russia enough for it to squeal. Weapons, some of them paid for
with eumoney, have found their way east, along with cash to keep
the government in Kyiv going. Refugees were welcomed with open
arms. Ukraine’s electricity grid was hurriedly plugged in to Eu
rope’s to free it from Russia’s—a fiddly operation that would nor
mally have taken a year but was pulled off in a fortnight. America
has pitched in lots, too, as has Britain. But Europe has little to
blush about thus far.
Why the improvement? The nature of the situation is part of it.
War is the very thing the European project was designed to make
impossible. Its resurgence nearby has helped to forge unity. Nor
does armed conflict lend itself to kicking the can down the road, a
habitual European sin. By all accounts the eu’s institutions have
done a good job of paving the road for national capitals to approve
sanctions. That every package has been a slog—a sixth one, fo
cused on Russian oil, was being hammered out as The Economist
went to press—shows that Brussels is pushing as hard as the eu’s
various memberstates are willing to go. Could Europe have done
more? Certainly, but it could also have done less.Apocalypse later
A striking feature of this crisis is the lack of a grand federalising
scheme of the sort predicted by Monnet, which helped stem previ
ous calamities. A plan to repeat the joint borrowing of the postco
vid stimulus was floated by France’s President Emmanuel Macron
in March, but has gone nowhere. His call on May 9th to revise the
eu’s founding treaties, for example to get rid of national vetoes
that have slowed down sanctions, has been greeted coolly. Mr
Macron thinks the eushould strive for “strategic autonomy”, but if
any institution gets a refresh as a result of this crisis it is likelier to
be nato, which Sweden and Finland are now set to join.
All that may change as the war unfolds. Grand, crisisdefying
schemes are usually concocted by the eu’s dominant duo, Germa
ny and France. Both have been on the back foot over Ukraine. Nei
ther is trusted in eastern European capitals when it comes to deal
ing with Russia. Both Olaf Scholz in Berlin and Mr Macron in Paris
have had plenty on their plates domestically. Maybe as they regain
their European footing a bold new apocalypsedefying plan of the
sort Monnet would have cheered will be on the cards. Some would
see that as a sign of further progress in the craftingof the union.
The real breakthrough, in fact, would be if theeucould handle cri
ses without needing to rewire itself every time.nCharlemagne
Europe’s handling of war on its doorstep breaks a decade-long streak of fumbled crises