Europe’s past invades the present

If the United States is powered by a positive vision of the future, in the form of the American Dream, the European Union is the product of its past. In the words of one commentator, “the European dream was conjured out of a nightmare - it was, in origin, a project to exorcise the family ghost: the vast power of one country, Germany.”

When the original six founder states of the European Coal and Steel and Community came together in 1950, they did so with the aim of forging interdependent economic ties that would make future conflict between them less likely. The European Community was also a democratic project, intended to act as a bulwark against totalitarian politics in the context of the Cold War.

In many important respects that mission has been successful.

The EU has helped bring states such as Portugal and Spain into the democratic fold, and more recently has drawn former Warsaw Pact countries into its ranks. In so doing the original economic community has developed into a political union with 28 member states and a common currency in the Euro-Zone.

But problems are emerging. National and ethnic divisions which European integration was intended to contain are re-emerging. Institutions designed to promote economic cooperation are becoming a cause of conflict, and memories of war that were supposed to encourage closer engagement are instead opening old fissures. The past continues to invade the present.

As Aleida Assmann has noted, European memory is “embedded in the history of the Second World War, which all nations of Europe experienced but which each experienced differently”. Some were perpetrators, others were victims. Some were victorious, others defeated.

This historical asymmetry was evident in the recent clash between Greece and Germany over debt repayments.

On becoming Prime Minister, Alexi Tsipras’ first act was to visit a memorial to 200 Greek communists executed by the Nazis in 1944. In response to tough German conditions for an emergency loan, the Greek Government demanded €279bn in reparations for the Nazi occupation during the Second World War.

Old wounds have yet to heal. National and ethnic identity-based politics is on the rise, unleashed by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet Communism.

That event redrew the map of Europe and paved the way for German reunification, which is arguably the key development of the past 25 years. The core purpose of the European project may have been to contain Germany but with France preoccupied with its economic troubles and the UK withdrawn into itself, we have reached a point in European affairs where, as Charles Lees says, it “sometimes appears as if German power in Europe is only constrained by Germany’s own reluctance to exercise it.”

Germany is indeed once more the dominant player in Europe. For that reason it will have a key role in determining whether or not Britain remains in the EU.

Over the next year David Cameron will embark on a diplomatic mission to win concessions from member states that he hopes will provide a platform on which to build popular support for Britain to remain part of a “reformed Europe”.

Whether or not he succeeds will depend to a very large extent on how far Angela Merkel is prepared to assist him – a significant role reversal from when the European project was first established.

About the author

Since 1997 Francis Campbell has been as a member of HM Diplomatic Service. Postings covered the European Union, the United Nations Security Council in New York, Italy and at the FCO in London. Between 1999 and 2003, he served on the staff of the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, first as a Policy Adviser in the No 10 Policy Unit and then as a Private Secretary for Foreign Affairs. He also served on secondment with Amnesty International as the Senior Director of Policy. Between 2005 and 2011 he served as Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Holy See and he served as Deputy High Commissioner in Pakistan, based in Karachi between 2011 and 2013. His most recent appointment was the Head of the Policy Unit in the FCO and Director of Innovation at UKTI. In 2014 he was appointed as the Vice-Chancellor of St Mary’s University, Twickenham, London.