This year’s elections to the European Parliament suggest that the societies of Europe have started emerging from the ailment, which observers call “nationalist-populism”, “the alt-right” and the like. Far from taking over the European Parliament, as they had rather loudly hoped, the populists visibly ran out of steam. Moreover, just prior to the elections they failed to present Europeans with a united front, the Poles having quarreled with the French and the Italians, the Austrians having gone down in disarray after the Strache scandal, and Marine Le Pen having incensed Central and East European nationalists by pushing extreme protectionism against their truck drivers.
The background
A fundamental defect has been evident in the EU, since the near-collapse of Greece and the crisis of the euro in the early 2010s. That defect, however, was the outcome of a previous underlying malaise, evident on the level of ideas for at least a decade.
In terms of fundamental ideas, there is an easy way to narrate the history of the EU. In the beginning there was the Coal and Steel Community. The idea was that no country could prepare for war clandestinely, because the future victims of its aggression would immediately sense that something was amiss the moment that country sharply increased its coal and steel production. The basic original idea was to keep the peace. Then came the Common Market. The idea here was to use the newly-established peace to spur on the development of trade and thereby spread affluence around the member countries. The European Economic Community which followed was the furthering of that idea by releasing from restrictions the movement of goods, services, capital and workers.
