48 Europe The EconomistFebruary 15th 2020
F
or much ofthe past decade, if you asked a Eurocrat: “What’s on
your mind?”, the response was usually dramatic. At the start of
the decade the euro teetered on the edge of collapse. In the middle
of it, Greece came close to being kicked out. A crisis flared when
nearly 3m asylum-seekers arrived from Syria and other trouble-
spots. Shortly after that, Britain, then the eu’s second-largest
economy, voted to leave without a serious plan for doing so. Mean-
while, populists from across the spectrum itched to upturn the
comfy order that those in Brussels were attempting to build. In
short, life in Brussels was exciting. For years, officials had treated
the city like a visit to a proctologist: necessary but disagreeable.
Suddenly, the eu’s de facto capital became like a political roller-
coaster—terrifying, but strangely thrilling, too.
Those days are over. Brussels has become reassuringly dull
again. Ask a passing Eurocrat what’s up and the answer is prosaic:
haggling over the eu’s budget. When euleaders next visit Brussels
on February 20th, it will be to discuss the bloc’s spending. Britain’s
departure has left a hole of €60bn in the eu’s funding. Spread over
seven years and between 27 countries, the sum becomes easier to
swallow. The upshot is that, to keep spending roughly the same, eu
countries are being asked to cough up between 1% and 1.1% of gross
national income—only a whisker more than last year.
To spice things up, diplomats from both ends of the debate are
behaving as if a gap of 0.1% of their income—the equivalent of a
cold snap in winter or a few wet weeks in summer—is a fiscal Mari-
ana Trench. A hard-core gang consisting of the Netherlands, Den-
mark, Sweden and Austria have demanded that the euspend no
more than 1% of its members’ gni. Another group, led by those
countries from central and eastern Europe that gorge on handouts
from Brussels, are refusing to sign off on anything so paltry as a
budget of 1%. “They want the till to open!” despaired one diplomat
from the tightwad camp. With no agreement in sight, leaders from
27 member-states will spend at least two days arguing over a pitiful
amount of money, like monks having a punch-up over the number
of angels dancing on the head of a pin.
Charles Michel, who has the task of stewarding the meeting as
European Council president, has threatened to keep the negotia-
tions running until they are resolved. Unfortunately, no one be-lieveshim.Atonesummitduring the height of the Greek crisis,
Donald Tusk forced leaders to stay and hammer out a deal on bail-
out terms rather than risk Greece falling out the bloc. This time,
heads of government are well aware that they can simply come
back in a few months and try again. Politics often takes time. In his
former life, Mr Michel was a Belgian prime minister. Negotiations
for him to secure that job took 138 days.
Such pettiness could be seen as the euat its worst. Rather than
deal with great affairs of state, euleaders will waste time fighting
over pocket change. The fiscal fight is a near-perfect example of
Sayre’s law, named after Wallace Stanley Sayre, an American politi-
cal scientist: “In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely
proportional to the value of the issues at stake.” If the net contrib-
utors are routed and surrender at every turn, the budget will be
about 1% of gross national income. If the Frugal Four emerge tri-
umphant, the budget will be about 1% of gross national income.
But there is a more positive way of looking at it. An outbreak of
internal stability means the euhas space to sweat the small stuff.
The haphazard, shantytown of economic policy erected during the
financial crisis has proven relatively sturdy. Gatherings of the Eu-
rogroup, the club of finance ministers that once dictated the fate of
nations, are now as dramatic as a meeting featuring the finance
ministers of Finland and Luxembourg ought to be. Steps taken
during the migration crisis to stem the number of people entering
Europe, such as bunging Turkey cash and turning Greek islands
into de facto prison camps for migrants, were horrifying but effec-
tive. euofficials now, perhaps overconfidently, pooh-pooh any
prospect of a repeat of the migration crisis of 2015-16. Brexit, once
seen as a schism in the Western alliance and the first raindrops of a
populist storm, is now a dry debate about the mundanities of data
transfers, equivalence of financial rules and fish. Boredom surely
beats crisis.Dull is dandy
There are no legislative big bangs expected from the European
Commission. The euno longer rips up its treaties, the fundamen-
tal rules of the bloc, every five years or so as it did from the early
1990s, leaving voters discombobulated or angry. Such grand pro-
jects are now the preserve of a few federalists in the European Par-
liament, and no longer the near-universal mission of the conti-
nent’s elite. Rather than a bold new frontier, projects such as the
commission’s “green deal”—a glut of green legislation due in early
March—are simply the eufunctioning as it should, coming up
with collective policies to deal with a collective problem.
An emphasis on the more humdrum aspects of the bloc’s exis-
tence comes as the eu’s problems have inverted. For years, the eu’s
most pressing problems were internal, from its collapsing curren-
cy to its half-baked migration strategy. The cry of alarm was com-
ing from inside the house. Now, the threats are external. A ring of
instability surrounds the eu, from Russia to Africa via Turkey. It
now even includes Britain, given its geopolitical mid-life crisis.
While national capitals jealously guard their foreign policies,
those in Brussels are left to feast only on political scraps, rather
than the main course. Schemes to “Make Europe Great Again” are
thin on the ground. Instead, Eurocrats are happy to have made Eu-
rope boring again. Better a brawl over the budget than over some-
thing more consequential. As the past decade more than demon-
strated, excitement is overrated. And it may yet come roaring back.
The problems of the 2010s may have simmered down, but they
have not been solved. Enjoy the boredom while it lasts. 7Charlemagne Making Europe boring again
After a decade of turmoil, the EU celebrates an outbreak of dull stability by having petty rows