Or is it, as Francis implied, aging and no longer a fertile source of innovation and ideas, full of talk but incapable of action? A growing number of people, both among the public and the continent’s elites, are beginning to ponder this very question.
Vying for the Spotlight
The SOTEU, which was first delivered in 2010, is billed as the EC president’s opportunity to sum up how Europe is doing and where it must go next. A great deal of lobbying goes into preparing the text, with a host of different bodies and concerns vying for the spotlight.
Unsurprisingly, a number of hot-button issues will make the cut. There is already speculation that von der Leyen will try to underline the bloc’s tougher stance on migration.
Climate resilience and EU policy are also slated for their moment in the sun. The German politician is expected to indicate the EC’s desire to soften some of its green agenda.
The global picture – including wars in Ukraine and Iran, tensions with China and the US and the ongoing Israel-Gaza conflict – will feature prominently as well.
In all these regards, von der Leyen will likely position Brussels as working actively to resolve problems at home and taking firm stances on events abroad. She will seek to emphasize the bloc’s agility and determination to overcome any challenge.
A Bad State of Affairs
It is increasingly clear that many European citizens – and some of the continent’s politicians and experts – are skeptical of the EU’s ability to solve any of its own problems, let alone to remain a force on the global stage.
For instance, a study released by the European Council on Foreign Relations a week before the SOTEU underscored the general disillusionment. Some 68% of respondents discussed Europe in terms of deterioration and 39% thought its best days are behind it.
Just 12% believed the present moment is a time of “European awakening and renewal”.
While almost three-quarters (73%) harbor positive aspirations for European unity, peace and prosperity, the general mood is one of despondency. A majority of respondents (56%) think the bloc’s future is in danger. Few believe it can successfully revive an economy on the verge of stagnation or respond to the military threat on its borders.
This outlook is not mere sentiment. The rise of Euroskeptical parties on the right and left in France, Germany, the United Kingdom and elsewhere points to a discontent that is more than simmering – it is boiling over into political action.
While few of these parties call for the dissolution of the bloc, some, like Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), propose policies – like withdrawing from the euro – that would likely undermine the union.
Regardless, the right in particular is increasingly arguing for greater devolved powers and less European red tape to improve the continent’s ability to innovate by freeing up individual states to grow their economies.
Disillusionment Grows
No doubt von der Leyen will obliquely address these concerns, arguing that voter discontent is a breeding ground for the far right. Perhaps she will urge political leaders across the EU’s 27 nations to actively combat disinformation and misinformation, or to act quickly to prove the disillusioned wrong.
The problem is that, even among supporters of the European project, there is a belief that the status quo simply is not sufficient, that Europe is falling behind the major global powers, economically and politically.
For the pro-Europeans, the answer is further integration, perhaps true federalization, to forge a truly united political, economic and even military force.
There is some merit to this position. At present, the EU is arguably the worst of all worlds, as German economist Wolfgang Münchau argues on the podcast Econoclasts: neither a true political union nor a fully integrated market, and neither a properly devolved institution nor a decentralized one.
Instead, it is an unwieldy bureaucratic mess, continually wrangling about petty internal divisions. All it can do is debate and regulate; it cannot drive innovation or form policies to unify national priorities into a continent-wide strategy that would make it a genuine competitor to the US and China.
Consensus Collapsing
There is no shortage of policy experts and advocacy groups who believe this goal of a federalized union, or at least a fully integrated market, is still possible.
But this seems entirely fanciful, for both history and the present political trajectory are against it. Unlike other great civilizations, such as Persia or China, Europe has never had a continent-wide government that combines political, economic and cultural or religious control.
Such unity has been attempted many times, but was achieved only once during Carolingian rule in the ninth century, and then with limited success, as historian Christopher Dawson demonstrates in his book Religion and the Rise of Western Culture.
Instead, Dawson argues, the principle of unity was offered by the Catholic Church and, after the Reformation undermined its reach, a broad Christian consensus, while local government remained intact. This combination of unity in diversity, Dawson states, was one of the unique characteristics of Western civilization and drove its global success.
It was against this backdrop that the EU formed. Its founders did not formally integrate a moral or religious purpose into the project but were nevertheless inspired by it.
However, this consensus has collapsed and nothing remotely as coherent has taken its place. The great humanist hopes that inspired the likes of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights have proven to be hollow, dependent on a shared heritage that secularization has undermined.
Instead of unity, there is increasing division, largely along national lines, but even within nations the center is collapsing and citizens are increasingly turning to the political fringes – left and right – in search of identity and purpose.
Make Europe Christian Again
While many of the concerns of voters and politicians converge on material issues like the economy and migration, the deeper issue is that there is no longer a moral or religious consensus in Europe.
Restoring this consensus requires more than improving the economy or tackling immigration; it would mean reviving the spiritual force that lies at the heart of the West’s remarkable success.
In other words, it would mean converting Europe to Christianity once again – and that is decidedly not going to be an issue that will be addressed during the SOTEU.
Even this is unlikely to be enough to rescue the EU – and there is another argument that the EU’s collapse would be for the best – but it would offer a point of unity and meaning for individual countries in the event that the union does fall apart.
Otherwise, the danger is that, instead of the EU’s collapse revitalizing the continent by improving the freedom of nations to innovate, Europe will degenerate into the kind of nationalist fractures that so marred the continent in the 20th century.
Either way, von der Leyen’s speech will give the impression of business as usual when the truth is that it is anything but. Everything from the continent’s currency to the union itself is up for debate.
