Europe is Sleepwalking Into Oblivion
The billionaire investor and liberal political activist George Soros warned about the future of the EU in an opinion piece published by Project Syndicate this week, saying also that “the people of Europe need to wake up before it is too late.”
Soros has issued a call for Europe to “recognize the magnitude of the threat” and “please wake up” from what he said were its enemies, both internal and external.
In a somber tone the words will come as no relief to supporters of the EU who see it as key to the prosperity that has kept Europe at peace since WW2. “If they don’t watch out, the European Union will go the way of the Soviet Union in 1991,” he said, alluding to the dramatic dissolution of the USSR and the fall of Communism in 1991.
Soros thinks that normal voters cannot see this impending collapse and that neither can the EU’s elected leaders see they are experiencing a “revolutionary moment” and that the eventual outcome is “highly uncertain”.
With the next EU MEP elections coming up early this year and a predicted 20% swing to the far right from voters eager to “stop immigration” Soros could well be right to be worried. If there is a 20% swing without additional support from voters for the continuing liberal parliament then they could face a serious deadlock for any legislation to go through.
The current leadership is “continuing to issue ukazes (orders) as if they were still relevant,” similar to what happened in the USSR; when they should be looking at deeper problems coming from the anti-establishment, euroskeptic parties waiting in the wings.
The way the EU counts votes it is possible that anti-European forces will enjoy a competitive advantage in the balloting, because of the outdated party system, the lack of ability for the EU to discipline countries who break the rules, and countless other reasons.
Fatal Mistakes Are Being Made
The rise in populism and far right politics is just one of the EU’s worries to create this time of uncertainty and instability.
With Brexit in the UK, widespread violence in France caused by the yellow vests, a right-wing party in government in Italy the previous financial problems with the Euro is all shaking the bloc’s foundations. In addition, anti-migrant policies and anti-democratic actions in eastern Europe have put countries like Hungary and Poland on a path towards potential collision coarse with the rest of the EU.
Soros explored the political situation in Germany, where Chancellor Angela Merkel (who’s serving her last term in office) is seeing her own Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party pressured in office not only by its coalition partners, the Christian Social Union (CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD) but by the far-right “Alternative for Germany” (AfD) that has gained voters with its euroskeptic, anti-immigration pledges.
“As it is, the current ruling coalition cannot be as robustly pro-European as it would be without the AfD threatening its right flank,” Soros noted. On Brexit, he said the public was becoming increasingly aware of the “dire consequences” of the U.K.’s departure from the EU but noted now that “the situation is so complicated that most Britons just want to get it over with, although it will be the defining event for the country for decades to come.”
When it comes to Italy, Soros said Europe had made a “fatal mistake” in 2017, during the migration crisis, when it enforced the Dublin Agreement which meant that migrants arriving on European shores had to claim asylum in the first country of entry. Italy struggling to cope with the number of migrants arriving drove the electorate “into the arms of the anti-European League party and Five Star Movement in 2018,” Soros noted.
To counter anti-European forces, both within and without the bloc, Soros said Europe needed to recognize its enemies and then “awaken the sleeping pro-European majority and mobilize it to defend the values on which the EU was founded.”
“Otherwise, the dream of a united Europe could become the nightmare of the twenty-first century.”
