19 may 2013, the mend of the project

When the french president even dares to talk about possibility of the end of the european project, you know it's in a hole. About time, most people would say, with half the population of what is often called the european demos confidently predicting the end of the eu for many years now. A far cry from five years ago, when I left the project in its strongest state ever, with consensus building around the appointment of a proper european president and the euro lining up the dollar in its sights. Looking forward to the last european elections (the quiet road to 2009) I broadly saw a lull after the last wave of constitutional change and stability underpinning faster progress in rather mundane areas like the energy market and the eu making mobile phone companies slash the costs of cross-border calls. This meat-and-potatoes stuff did actually happen, but in the economic tumult since 2008, no-one noticed. Instead the crash was accompanied by a wave of hostility to the eu being crystallised and driven forward, by scapegoating, by poor and disparate leadership and by a counter-productive retreat to national markets and politics that has both fed and fed by the bolstering of a series of anti-eu parties (26 march 2011), most recently joined by ukip in britain. This has merely made bolder the real choice europe has always faced, between retreating towards a trade-based association of countries (the model the uk has always favoured) and the ever closer union that, rather remarkably, is what hollande's speech was actually about. However you translate the "eurozone government" he called for as a solution to the recession and crisis of european identity, it is pretty clear which way he's pointing. The french eventually browbeating germany into greater european unity is exactly how we got to maastricht, and as its probably going to get worse (or at least the same) before it gets better, the urgency of "something must be done" does have some form for taking wings.