Gareth Harding, a former European Voice journalist, evangelises>49> this view in an article for the latest issue of Foreign Policy. His charge sheet itemises four important failures of European integration: regional and national differences have not dissolved; Europeans are divided on everything from the role of the state to the obligation to pay taxes; there is no real consensus on what are European values; and the nation state remains the primary focus of loyalty and identity.
Is a sense of European identity really absent beyond the 10% who regularly claim to feel its weight rather than their national origins? Could it be that Harding and many others are looking for a political mirage and, therefore, highlighting misleading evidence? What should we make of Eurobarometer polls consistently reporting that freedom to travel, study and work is the attribute most strongly and positively associated with EU membership? This may not imply a widespread sense of a common homeland, but it does suggest that many people identify with the European space enough as to feel at ease about moving around in it.
This comfort zone provides some insulation against the unwelcome realisation that the Union has lost reputation and prestige at home and abroad through its handling of the eurozone debt crisis. It should surprise no one that there has been a loss of trust and confidence in EU leadership and institutions when ‘Europeans' as diverse as George Osborne, the UK finance minister, and Mario Monti, a former European commissioner and now Italy's prime minister, complain about the quality of crisis management.
Resistance and protest against austerity and structural reforms in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain is entirely predictable. Much less predictable is the headway that at least three of these governments are making in winning popular acceptance of draconian measures vital not only for national economic survival, but also for sustaining the European project. The eurozone crisis and the affliction and infliction of fiscal austerity across many of the 27 may be creating a panEuropean identity out of shared negative experience.
Millions of Europeans cannot avoid the continent-wide truth that ‘we are all in the same boat'. Political arguments in most member countries are burning around similar priorities and values: for cutting public spending, for reforming welfare systems and alleviating and reducing unemployment. At the European level, the differences that Harding and others highlight are not proving any kind of obstacle to collective action to steer national economic and fiscal policies.
