Europe

Citation

Body, R. (1999), "Europe", European Business Review, Vol. 99 No. 3, pp. 189-190. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.1999.99.3.189.1

Historians in the main are sceptical about the European Union. With some authority they can recite the catalogue of attempts to bring under a single umbrella a host of tribe‐nations that have nothing in common, least of all a shared language, which is usually the cement that holds together other unions.

Hugh Thomas, one of our most distinguished historians, is an exception; he has been known to be more optimistic than his fellow historians, and in this little pocketbook the future of the Continent, or at least its western half. His conclusions come close to the editorial opinion of the New European. He speaks of the union gradually growing to include more of Europe. But how can that happen so long as we are blighted by a Common Agricultural Policy in its present form, and the Germans yet again (in March 1999) rejecting the reforms proposed by the Commission?

He predicts a common currency under EMU. Now this is strange. EMU stipulates a single currency. Surely Hugh Thomas is not so economically illiterate as not to know the difference between the two? To abolish the Euro as the single currency would shatter the principal plank of the Maastricht Treaty. Yet he does not canvass such a possibility. A common currency ‐ the hard ECU revived ‐ is something that even a hardened Europhobe would accept. It is a pity, therefore, he says so little about this crucial subject.

He questions whether a federal union will emerge, for it will pose too great a threat to liberty. But the foremost leaders of all the larger member‐states ‐ Blair being the exception ‐ tell us repeatedly that monetary union will lead to political union, and that is the objective.

Political union may not be the same as a federal union, for the latter is the former, but not vice versa. So what kind of political union is it to be? A unitary state? That would indeed be a denial of liberty and any sense of democracy would be washed overboard.

Instead of giving us a futuristic answer, Hugh Thomas comes forward with an interesting proposal. He recalls how Lord Durham went to Canada and how his famous report led to Canada’s constitution. So he suggests we find another Lord Durham and we give him the task of defining the shape and structure of the union. The task should go to a single man or woman, because “committees cannot write”.

Perhaps they cannot. Yet many a Royal Commission or Select Committee have given birth to very readable and influential reports. The chairman is responsible for the drafting; what is written is the distilled views of his colleagues after they have heard the evidence and debated its significance.

Whoever was chosen for the task proposed by Hugh Thomas would be sure to have preconceived views, if not confirmed prejudices, about some aspect of the European Union. Even making allowances for that, it is difficult to see any one report by any one man or woman being so widely acclaimed as to be accepted by the governments and parliaments of 15 separate peoples.

Like others who have written in recent years about the EU from a favourable stance, Hugh Thomas delves into the meaning of a nation‐state. Although it is true the term belongs to the twentieth century, there is nothing new about the concept. It is just that the critics of the EU have adopted the term as a piece of shorthand to describe a self‐governing entity or a people who make their own laws which are to be obeyed and decide how they are to be taxed in order to pay for their governments. In that sense, the nation‐state is as old as the hills.

Obviously, nation‐states must co‐operate with others. For centuries nations have done so for the purposes of trade and defence. The treaties agreed have been intergovernmental. Now we need to cooperate with other nations for more purposes than we have in the past, such as sharing technology and the cost of its research and to protect the environment as well as other matters.

The question for Europeans is whether we rely upon intergovemmental treaties and agreements to ensure co‐operation or whether we set up supragovernmental institutions to do it for us instead.

If we go along the latter road ‐ as all who believe in the European Union do ‐ how can we still claim to be a self‐governing people?

This is an excellent little book, but one wishes the author could tell why the intergovernmental route is unsuitable for the peoples of Europe.