Brexit and Europe: a Political and Spiritual Challenge1 Sébastien Maillard Usually when people speak or write about Europe, they focus on its technical, legal or economic challenges. I would like to show how European integration is more political and spiritual than it looks. Until the British referendum of June 2016, we perhaps didn’t pay much attention to the EU or to the fact of belonging to it. When was the last time any of us attended a conference on Europe? For decades, Europe has been something we live with, without really noticing. Except, probably, during the euro crisis that affected Ireland so deeply. Three features of European integration Apart from such a moment, the integration process has been carried on with three features. It seemed self-driven, irreversible, going on forever. Despite many crises, it would always land on its feet. Treaties were ratified with no duration, no end-date. Exchange rates establishing the single currency were irrevocable. It was comfortable to rely on this fiction that the EU would never end and keep going on its way, as with the force of inertia. When the Irish said ‘no’ to a treaty change in a referendum, they did so knowing that the country wouldn’t for that reason be kicked out of the community and that the whole system wouldn’t grind to a halt. Until Brexit, Europe was some vague, abstract idea, setting a political, yet blurred, horizon – a dream of unity not taken too seriously, because it was not really thought of. When paying for an item in euros, you hardly told yourself: ‘Wow, now I’m using the same currency as, say, the Lithuanians, or the Spanish or the Slovenians’. You just paid. Europe would not inspire the kind of emotional feeling you might get when a favourite local or national team wins a match, or when the national anthem is played, or the national feast-day is celebrated. The thought of Europe doesn’t give that kind of chill down the spine. As Jacques Delors said bluntly on one Studies • volume 107 • number 426 157 occasion: ‘One does not fall in love with the Single Market’. And whenever Europe got more concrete, it was in terms of individual benefit for myself as a consumer, for instance through free roaming, or as a farmer because of direct payments, or as a student owing to the Erasmus programme, or as a private investor, or as a producer . . . Europe was good or not too bad for me, not for us. Brexit has suddenly brought us back down to earth. The day following the British referendum, we finally realised that the EU could dissolve, that a country could leave, that the objectives were not that obvious and, to quote the French intellectual Paul Valéry about European civilisation after the First World War, we discovered after Brexit that the EU too was mortal. It can break into pieces. The long, harsh, complex negotiations for the UK to exit the EU also make the reality of European integration less abstract. All those laws, regulations and agreements that the country has to withdraw from all of a sudden look real. Their benefits become evident just when you’re about to abandon them. It’s a bit like when a tree is cut and you notice only the next day that it had been there and now it’s missing. The Brexit paradox is that, as its consequences unfold, it makes us experience Europe more. We measure its legacy. We also witness the expression of emotions: Brexit has become a passionate debate, dividing British households. Remainers wave the EU flag. Brexit forces each one of us to rethink our relationship with Europe more collectively. Ireland is justifiably worried about the border issue and is glad that all the other twenty-six member states of the EU stand behind the Irish on this. It is not just Brexit that urges Europe to act more as a team. Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping, Erdoğan . . . all challenge the EU, which can either consider itself as a unit and respond collectively or divide itself and act separately. The migration crisis does this too. As does...
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Oct 2, 2018
Hideto Tsuboi + 1
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