David Cameron’s bid for EU concessions could weaken the European project – a clear example of how dangerous the game of symbols has become The European project is today in a more fragile state than it has been for many years. Battered by successive crises, it is also trying to cope with a sea change in European public opinion. In country after country, the attractions of a simplistic nationalism the continent thought it had left behind are growing and the habit of blaming any bad news on Brussels is becoming more entrenched, while the relations between European partners are increasingly quarrelsome. Elections keep punching home this dismal message, most recently in Poland with the victory of the Law and Justice party in October, and in the French elections earlier this month, when the Front National, although its attempt to take control of some of the country’s regions failed, demonstrated its increased political weight. Law and Justice’s decision to remove the European flag from behind the rostrum from which its prime minister conducts her weekly press conference can be seen as symbolic of this shift. There are counter currents – Law and Justice is now slipping badly in the polls, for example – but the overall direction is clear. After Ukraine, Greece, the refugee influx and the terrorist attacks in Paris, Europe cannot afford another crisis. Yet one threatens, in the shape of David Cameron’s risky bid for concessions on British demands for changes in its relationship with the European Union. That bid both increases European fragility, because a British departure from the union could lead to a more general unravelling, and gives the British prime minister leverage he did not have in the past. Britain’s needs have moved along the spectrum from being a nuisance toward being an existential threat to the European Union. Unimportant in themselves, because they are largely imaginary and symbolic, they now have to be dealt with more seriously because of the larger implications for Europe as a whole. Continue reading...
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