A Bad Day for Europe and Britain
Posted in News under European | on Nov 20 2009
Don’t misunderstand. Alarm at the choice of two low key operators for the new posts of President and Foreign Representative is no comment on their abilities. Or their suitability, for they seem ideal for the posts they will now occupy. Trouble is, these posts as now defined are no longer those envisaged by the Lisbon Treaty nor do they satisfy Europe’s urgent need for unified leadership and powerful representation on the world stage.
The irony is that this is a triumph for the Association of Nation States that the sceptic federal-phobes have long sought. Hopefully, a Pyrrhic victory. This is the irreducible minimum of the Treaty it took so much grief to gestate and deliver. Meanwhile and for years to come, the big nations of Europe will posture and preen, there will be no common purpose and no will to achieve it. The hope is that old chestnut, the ‘two-speed’ Europe, but this time where it will be the smaller members who combine and cooperate to frustrate and shackle the bigger, eventually constructing the core concept of equality, and building a Europe of Citizens, not Nations. The European Union’s greatest success till now has been to lock out the horrors of of inter-nation violence on our continent. The next task is bring Nationalism to the same status as Religion - a vital part of personal identity but that should remain private to the citizen. For the moment ‘national self-interest’ takes precedence over the wider interest of Europe’s peoples..