More independent candidates than previously are contesting the European Parliament elections on June 8. Our society is becoming more heterogeneous. The two main parties are becoming less of a broad church able to contain and articulate this fragmented diversity.
An increasing number of people, both candidates and voters, don’t identify with the two main parties anymore. But there is no sign that our political landscape is about to change dramatically. Political paralysis will linger. There are no forces able to bring about the required structural changes.
While the governing party is losing its attraction, the opposition party is not gaining the required support. It remains to be seen to what extent the Vitals inquiry report will influence voting behaviour. There is a general sense of disenchantment with EU politics too.
Moreover, we have become more parochial since we joined the EU. We have retreated into parish-pump politics, which is more concerned with addressing the immediate needs of the local electorate than with strategy that might affect our long-term well-being.
We have largely resigned ourselves to having EU institutions decide for us. Instead, we focus on local politics as we did when we were a colony and could not involve ourselves with those major affairs of state which were considered ‘reserved matters’ decided in London.
Smaller EU, bigger world
In the coming years, the EU has to learn to live among others, not to dominate others. Last year, former French diplomat Gérard Araud wrote in The Daily Telegraph (August 23, 2023): “We Europeans are still convinced of the centrality of our small continent not only to the history of mankind but to shaping the world today. We lecture everyone else based on values that we firmly believe are universal. We think of ourselves as noble, powerful and well-intentioned.”
He noticed that when he served as France’s ambassador to Washington, even the US “viewed us instead with a mixture of indifference, fatigue and neglect. We were the old aunt whose rambling utterances were more or less gently ignored”.
The EU’s irreversible demographic decline will accelerate. Labour shortages – six million at the moment – and skill mismatches are jeopardising our prosperity, job creation and sustainable public and social services.
In the ‘no migration’ scenario, the Europe of 27 would lose 60 million workers over the next 30 years, 33 million of whom would be between the ages of 20 and 45, which is the most productive and creative period of life. Europe’s population would only increase beyond the age of 65, where it would increase by 37 million.
EU citizens agree that the current demographic trends in the EU put the EU’s long-term economic prosperity and competitiveness at risk (69 per cent) and contribute to labour shortages in the EU (67 per cent). Eighty-five per cent of respondents agree that managing demographic change and migration requires close cooperation between all relevant levels of government (EU, national, regional and local authorities). Yet, we persist in treating irregular migration only as a security issue and not in the wider context of addressing our labour shortages.
Future decided elsewhere
Araud thinks that the EU will fail to deal successfully with this challenge: “The demographic crisis will, in turn, tear apart our societies between the working-aged and the retired in a context in which the latter enjoy a standard of living (that) the former often can’t ever hope to reach.
“More acutely, Europeans will fight over the question of immigration.
While the EU turns away immigrants, it is losing its young people, who look for a better life elsewhere- Evarist Bartolo
The experts are very clear in their assessment. Given the weak effectiveness of ‘natalist’ policies designed to increase birth rates, there is no alternative to overcoming demographic decline in Europe other than immigration.”
While the EU turns away immigrants, it is losing its young people, who look for a better life elsewhere. Araud says: “In this context, emigration from Europe is especially unwelcome. We are losing young, highly educated individuals who go mainly to the US, where they will have better opportunities, be it in the research, academic or the private sectors.
“When travelling in America, everywhere I went I met European researchers, surgeons, teachers and entrepreneurs. It was difficult not to feel sadness that these young people, who our countries had educated at a high cost, were instead enriching the US.”
He concludes: “Every signal is pointing towards an inward-looking Europe. ‘Un continent de vieux.’ (A continent of old people.) The future of humankind will definitely be decided elsewhere.”
The hammer only
There is no sign that the EU will overcome its narcissism and take a strong dose of reality and humility, learning to live with others. It tries to extend the inevitable expiry date of Western hegemony together with the US, by turning the world into a global war zone.
Apart from military proxy warfare, it weaponises everything: sanctions, trade tariffs, knowledge transfer, seizure of national assets to punish its enemies (those who do not bow to Western diktats) even as it harms itself deeply in the process.
Diplomacy has been totally abandoned. Sixty-three years ago, the British military historian and strategist Basil Liddell Hart said in his Advice to Statesmen: “Keep strong, if possible. In any case, keep cool. Have unlimited patience. Never corner an opponent, and always assist him to save face. Put yourself in his shoes – so as to see things through his eyes. Avoid self-righteousness like the devil – nothing is so self-blinding.”
It used to be said that war is the failure of diplomacy. Now, the EU, as the vassal of the US, does not even try to exercise any diplomacy and empathy to at least try to understand those it declares as its enemies.
In dealing with others, they only have the hammer of economic, military and cultural warfare in their toolbox and they see everything as a nail.
At this rate, using a hammer as the only tool in a nuclear age and letting conflicts spiral out of control, there will be no one to pick up the pieces. Let alone to put them together again.
Evarist Bartolo is a former Labour foreign and education minister.