Europe has lost the ability to shape its neighbours

In America, they have Super Tuesday. Europe is about to have a Super Sunday, with elections for the European Parliament taking place across the 28-member EU, ending on May 25. That same Sunday, Ukraine will be holding a presidential election. The next day, Egypt will hold its own presidential vote. And then, towards the end of that week, on May 29, President Vladimir Putin’s pet project – the formation of a Eurasian Union – will receive the formal go-ahead with a signing ceremony between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Is there any connection between this frenzy of democratic and diplomatic action? Yes – because, by the end of May, we should know a lot more about the EU’s ability to act as a beacon of prosperity and stability to the unstable and poorer regions that surround it.


The EU aspires to play a crucial role in spreading peace, prosperity and good government to its wider neighbourhood. Its biggest success in performing that role came with the “big-bang” enlargement of 2004, when the union went from 15 to 25 members – and swallowed most of the countries of the former Soviet bloc. These nations had accepted a rigorous programme of economic and political reforms to ready themselves for entry through the pearly gates of Brussels. It was a triumphant demonstration of the power of the European ideal.

At the time, it seemed entirely possible that enlargement could continue to be a powerful force for the future, as the EU spread to the Balkans, to Turkey, to Ukraine – and perhaps eventually even to north Africa and Russia. Even if actual membership of the EU remained a distant prospect for some of these places, the Europeans hoped to shape their neighbourhood by granting market access, aid and technical assistance in return for political and economic reforms. It sounded like a plausible trade.

Unfortunately, Europe’s Super Sunday is likely to demonstrate how very far it is now falling short of this idealistic vision.

In the European elections, parties of the far right and the far left are likely to win up to 30 per cent of the seats. They will not be able to control the EU’s political agenda. But their gains will panic national governments and send a very negative message to the outside world.

Many of the extremist parties in Europe – most notably Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France and Die Linke, Germany’s far left – openly admire Mr Putin. The far right likes the Russian president because he is a nationalist and a social conservative who despises the EU – as it does. Europe’s far left likes Mr Putin because he sticks it to the Americans. A strong presence of the political extremes in the European parliament will be very welcome to the Kremlin – and confusing to liberal political forces on the fringes of the EU, which look to Brussels and Strasbourg for support.

The political extremes in Europe have gained strength partly by capitalising on popular hostility to the enlargement of the EU. Abstract arguments about the need to stabilise the wider neighbourhood do not seem to impress voters in the west of the continent, who have been hit hard by recession and the euro crisis. Instead they fear mass migration by cheap workers from the new member states. If politicians, seeking to help out the EU’s neighbours, send large-sounding aid packages to north Africa, or ease visa regimes for countries such as Ukraine, they risk further enraging voters already flocking to the political fringes in Europe.


It is no coincidence that Ukraine has chosen to hold its own presidential election on the same day as elections to the EU parliament. What better way of demonstrating that the country looks to Brussels not Moscow? But the symbolism is looking rather forlorn. For one of the ironies of the whole Ukrainian situation is that, while Russia has moved ruthlessly to block Ukraine’s road to the EU, the EU itself was hardly laying out the welcome mat.

Aware of the hostility of western European voters to further enlargement to the east, the EU had deliberately made the path to Brussels a long and intimidating obstacle course. Ukraine’s desperate plight and its struggle with Russia might suggest that it is time to clear some of those obstacles away. But the European parliamentary elections are likely to send a very different message. Meanwhile, Mr Putin will attempt to keep his Eurasian idea alive, with his signing ceremony in distant and dismal Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan.

The Egyptian presidential vote, the day after the European elections, will add to the gloomy atmosphere. The victory of General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, following a coup and the crushing of the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood, will be greeted with embarrassed near-silence in Brussels. The heady days of 2011, when European idealists greeted the revolutions in the Arab world as signs that north Africa might soon join Europe as part of the community of democracies and market economies, are long gone. These days Europe will offer a shamefaced welcome to an Arab strongman such as General Sisi, who promises to keep his country at peace, to clamp down on terrorism and prevent mass migration. If he can somehow be packaged as a “reformer”, so much the better.

It is a gloomy and grubby vision. But the era when the EU could confidently proclaim itself as a model for its neighbourhood – and indeed, the world – is receding. These days the EU has too many problems of its own.




Gideon Rachman




Fonte: FT