32 Europe The EconomistAugust 31st 2019
E
ven in europe,a continent of welfare states famed for their
gloriously long holidays, the summer must eventually end.
This week, as they trickle back from Mediterranean beaches and
Alpine campgrounds, Europeans are preparing for a fateful au-
tumn. The risk of a recession looms. Eurosceptic populists are
likely to win elections in Poland, and perhaps in Italy. Britain is
heading for a hard or no-deal Brexit. From trade wars to migrant
crises, the outside world looks threatening. Still, gazing out of
their aeroplane windows, returning holidaymakers may notice
some of the things that hold their curious little continent together.
For one thing, they are physically connected. In Africa or South-
East Asia, infrastructure often peters out at borders. Yet in Europe
motorways, railway lines and waterways criss-cross the conti-
nent. Peering down into deep Balkan valleys, one can see how ab-
surd local ethnic rivalries and hatreds are; they carve up a continu-
ous landscape of rocky coastlines and dusty roads that can
obviously succeed only as an integrated region.
Europe is an old continent. Forts and castles dot the landscape;
cities are built around pedestrian cores rather than grids from the
motor age. (Where highways are linear, it may be not because they
are modern but because they follow the dead-straight lines of Ro-
man roads, as with parts of the a2 in Britain and the a1 in Italy.)
Many cityscapes in central Europe follow the medieval German
layout of a castle on a hill, with a lower town around a market
square spreading outwards to a ring-road on the line of an old wall.
That pattern can be seen flying over Leipzig or Nuremberg, and
also over Wroclaw in Poland, Riga in Latvia or Prague in the Czech
Republic—a reminder of the blurred lines between German, Slav
and Baltic spheres in this part of Europe. Sometimes one can wake
up from a mid-flight snooze and not know which country is below,
just that one is unmistakably over Europe.
Yet differences are also visible from above. The rationalist post-
war reconstruction of the West German state, essential to under-
standing Germany today, is seen in the orderly lines of fields and
woods produced by the Flurbereinigung(land-reform consolida-
tions) in the 1950s. By contrast, Britain’s chaotic but organic state is
reflected in its rambling, patchwork countryside. Madrid, sprawl-
ing but stranded in the middle of the dry Spanish meseta, makessense only as the capital of a mighty empire that valued central
control—in a way that marks Spain’s politics today. Road and rail-
way patterns reveal much, too. France’s long tradition of dirigiste
centralisation is evident in the hub-and-spoke radiation of its ar-
teries from Paris, whereas in Germany and the Netherlands they
are polycentric. Austria-Hungary, long dead on political maps,
lives on in the way that railways in much of south-eastern Europe
converge on Vienna.
Flat regions, like the Fens in Britain and Scania in Sweden, have
huge farms. Sometimes an indicator of historical economic in-
equality, these can also signal a starker left-right political divide.
Hilly or mountainous regions with small livestock holdings, like
Ireland and the Basque country, often tend towards more commu-
nitarian political traditions. For a symbol of the enduring differ-
ences between the former eastern and western parts of Germany,
look no further than Berlin at night: sodium-powered street lamps
bathe the former east in an orange glow, where fluorescent lamps
in the west burn almost white. In Belgium, by contrast, night-time
projects unity. Differences between Flanders and Wallonia disap-
pear as an unusually powerfully illuminated highway network, a
federal responsibility, makes the outline of this fractured state vis-
ible even from space.
To fly over Europe is to witness many of the policy challenges
awaiting leaders on their return from holidays. At night, darkness
envelops the emptying countrysides of rural Spain, southern Italy,
Greece and Bulgaria. Meanwhile, even in times of trade wars and
tariffs, the prosperous Rhine and Rotterdam glow with the lights
of barges and ships carrying German exports into the world. Forest
fires, floods and scorched fields speak of Europe’s vulnerability to
global warming. Then there are security threats. Historical Baltic
and Polish fears of Russian expansionism make sense from above.
The countries have no natural barriers to their east, just tank-
friendly plains. The Mediterranean, too, seems less of an impedi-
ment from above, with container ships and refugee dinghies
crossing what is increasingly a common Euro-African space. On
the island of Ireland, in contrast, the problem comes from what
cannot be seen: the invisible Northern Irish border, which would
soon become visible—and perhaps a focus for violence—in the
event of a no-deal Brexit.The view from 12,000 metres
From above, you can also see what Europe, acting together, can
achieve. The return of forests across swathes of the continent
thanks to enlightened environmental policies; wind turbines and
solar-power installations cutting carbon emissions; former com-
munist countries woven back into the rest of the continent; new
transport links and economic development in places that long lan-
guished in poverty.
For politicians, journalists or ordinary travellers who want to
really understand a place and its people, there is no substitute for
shoe leather. You do not know anywhere until you have walked it.
But for those who do fly—and millions do, with some European
airports reporting record passenger levels—you can learn a lot at
high altitude, too. The continent is a patchwork of different histor-
ies, cultures and political traditions, but one where borders are ut-
terly inadequate as tools of organisation. Common responsibil-
ities and problems, histories and futures spill across those borders
and demand common action. This autumn the challenge of seeing
Europe as a single space, the way it looks from a plane, seems great-
er than ever. But it is also more essential. 7Charlemagne Air Europe
A complicated continent, viewed from above