What's wrong with Europe? Again...

摘要

The opinion that there is something wrong with the European Union is widely shared, even exaggeratedly so. The book by van Middelaar confirms the opinion, but it goes a long way to explain what is wrong in the EU and to suggest what should not be done and what can be done to overcome some of the major problems. The European Union has come into being—this a major point made by author—as a regulatory state. In the EU the politics of rules has been and remains paramount. This kind of politics makes it very difficult and quite complicated to deal with the challenges that the EU has had to face in the last ten years or so. Van Middelaar convincingly proves his point by analysing in detail the various crises: the euro (EU response: improvising); Ukraine (EU response: negotiating); the refugee crisis (EU response: setting boundaries); the Atlantic crisis (as he calls the combination of Brexit as well as the deteriorating relationship between the USA and the EU in the era of Trump). He calls the response 'uprising', that is, Merkel's declaration that the EU will finally take its destiny into its own hands. In a way, all these crises have been, one way or the other, if not 'solved', at least overcome. The author reproaches 'Brussels ideologues' for attempting to identify in the different crises 'however, painful or dangerous, the promise of a United Europe'. On the contrary, not much has been learned from each of the crises, not even who is mainly responsible for dealing with them: 'representatives of the central institutions or of the national capitals?'. In any case, the author believes that the EU ought to find ways to act swiftly in an emergency.