European Union – Part Three – The Expanse

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Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lugeric's disease, Myasthenia Gravis, or Lambert Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botch-alignum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? If you're a doctor, visit BotoxCronicMigraine.com or call 1-800-44 Botox to learn more. This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. For 125 years, Nordstrom has been part of your story. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview, the first pair of walking shoots for your one-year-old, the tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom, bigger or small, we're here for all of it. Starting 125 years, with new moments still ahead, discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at Nordstrom.com. Hello, welcome to Origin Story, the show where we take a word idea, person, event or, in this case, institution from history, explain its origins and discuss how it influences how we talk about politics today. I'm Dorian Linske. And I'm Ian Dunn. If you like the show, you can tell your friends about us. Word of mouth is always good, or consider supporting us on Patreon, they'll have details at the end of the show. This week we conclude the story of European Union, with how it became the European Union, and then how it came close to falling apart. Last week, we left it in the mid '80s with the abolition of the veto and all the stuff around the single European Act, and that's where we're going to jump back in with Fatcher and Jack DeLaw and all that good stuff. Up yours DeLaw's? Well, we see it should be up your DeLaw. And that's where the sun got it wrong. But those were the days of really good reactionary headlines. Because once they did it once, I was like, well, that's completely incapable of looking at this name in any other way. Whereas now, the headlines you see on the sun, they're just not very good, they're not doing reactionary guttopolitics, as well as I expect from them. Up your DeLaw. I'm pleased I beg you to start saying that. So Ian, before we get to DeLaw. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're kicking off from here is really that it's starting to turn into the institution as we know it today, with the names that we have today and the institutions that we know today and the arrangements that we know today. So the veto and that whole sort of debate that was rumbling through the second part of the 20th century has now been solved. 1974, we get the establishment of the European Council. So up until this point, you just have these kind of ad hoc meetings of national leaders get together, have a chat. Let's now formalise into three meetings a year into an institution that sits on top of the Council of Ministers. That's where the ministers from each nation state get together. So then you have a really quite formalised structure, right? Because once you have the European Council, which is what it is called and what we still have today, I mean, technically, it doesn't have all of this executive authority. But the thing is, once you start working national leaders with a democratic mandate, with the name recognition, with all of these things that all the other people in Europe just frankly don't have, it's obviously going to amass that kind of political authority that means that what it says goes, what it says, still has to be passed down for signing off by the Council of Ministers, part of the formal structure. But in terms of the reality of political power, it becomes extremely dominant. And it starts to answer that question of, you know, okay, so who speaks for Europe? You know, people start looking to the Council, basically. Then in 1979, the European Parliament, the first elections are held for the European Parliament, trying to give this sense of democratic legitimacy to the project. And within months, it starts behaving in a much more confident way. So it rejects the community budget for 1980. I mean, basically almost as soon as it has that kind of sense of democratic legitimacy, it behaves with a new form of confidence, but the electorate, not really there. So vote to turn out, 63% in 1979, really big, down to 43% by 2009. And even then, people are voting really as a way of commenting on their national politics. You know, I mean, they're not really voting on any kind of European level. That's what Euro elections in Britain have been like, as far as I can remember, it's basically it's almost like local elections. It's like a referendum on, you know, how the government's doing. But you see, I think this is, that's such an interesting point, right? Because people do exactly the same in local elections, as we record this. That's basically what they're doing at the moment. It's a comment on the national picture. But no one really questions whether the, you know, a local demos exists, you know, whether there's legitimacy in that democratic structure. Right. It's just that voters really struggle to think meaningfully. And I'm not encouraged to think meaningfully by the press about anything that's just, you know, either below or above the national level. So although the institutions are there, and there's a much greater sense of democratic legitimacy and coherent political power to them, there is this anxiety around the democratic deficit that is underlying the project. Right. So, I think the sun was unfair to Jacques DeLau. So I can tell you a bit about him. One in Paris in 1925, almost exactly the same age as Thatcher. And he's another of Monet's spiritual children, like a true believer. He wrote back in 1959, "The problems of humanity require solutions at the planetary level." Oh, right. He really is. Wow. Yeah. Very, very kind of popular. There's a load of sort of idea lists at that point that sort of want this sort of one world government, not in a scary conspiracy theorist way, or obviously that's where it leads to people to think. He once said, "Europe is not just material results, it is about spirit, Europe is a state of mind." Obviously, Thatcher's antithesis. He's Metron's former finance minister. He becomes president of the commission, so I'm in January 1985, announces this project of negotiations to transform the EEC, European Economic Community into the European Union. I mean, the names just, they're very clearly like the difference between these projects. With a single market, single currency and common defense policy, not just a customs union. That's the idea. And there you have it, right? By the time that those are the ideas in the mix, and it's coming in institutional framework of the council commission, the parliament, that is basically the modern EU. So this is the point now where the EU as we know it has sort of been conceived. And also around this time, it's sort of the last gasp of, do you remember Altiero Spinelli from 1943, he was one of the Salini's prisoners, and he ends up, you know, the time seems like a kind of dream, this manifesto he writes, and he ends up becoming a really important part of the process. And he drives this draft treaty on the European Union, aka the Spinelli Treaty in 1984. So he's another one of these kind of idealists. We're still talking here about people who remember the forties, who are very much, you know, born pre-war, shaped by that post-war, never again, kind of approach to, you know, specifically war between France and Germany. And this sets the table for the Single European Act. In 1986, the 12 members of the EEC signed the Single European Act, committing to an internal market with the free movement of goods, persons, services, and capital. And actually, the idealists are quite disappointed, like this, to that, you know, this is quite a lot. And the Spinelli calls it a dead mouse, and then dies himself, not on Pond reading the act very soon after. And De Law calls it a great disappointment, which sounds much better in France. He wanted to look around disillusion, or something like that. Because I just thought, I mean, the reason that he came up with this idea of the internal market as the way forward was because it was the only one, you know, he had like a bunch of ambitious ideas, Euro-defense, Euro-currency, and he'd take it around sort of world capitals, and the only one that had universal support from that, from coal, from Mitterrand, was the internal market ideas. He was like, okay, well, let's just do the internal market. But he wanted, what he did, he doesn't lock in the economic and monetary union. You know, that is, you know, obviously that's what you get with mastery. He wanted more sort of guarantees. What this does do though, is it extends the social aspect of Europe. So to health and safety, a more dialogue between workers and management introduces environmental policy. It's becoming more ambitious slowly, and this is of course not what the UK wants. As we covered in our FATCH rep, this is the point where Britain delores talks to trade unionists, and there's a real sea change in the whole sort of dynamics of how Europe is looked at. It goes from being predominantly a project that is supported by right, sort of a pre-market type to being one that is also supported by the left. But on the free market, the reason that FATCHer likes it is because what's being discussed is incredibly ambitious. So, you know, before there's a customs union, right, so you put up tariff, you basically say we're all going to have the same tariffs, the same taxes on goods coming in. This is something else completely because what they're finding is that there's a real problem of competing regulation within Europe. So like one country, fine, you can all say we're in one economy together, but ultimately, if one of you passes a law on health and safety or on the environment or on animal rights, that's going to hold up goods coming in. If you say we're not going to have animal testing on cosmetics, okay, and you'll be intelligent or something, then suddenly if France has done that testing, you're going to have to stop those goods coming in. So you get just these constant sort of cues of Laurie drivers waiting for days at the border, mountains of paperwork, lawn mowers that can't be solved. And this is fundamentally not about taxation, it's not about tariffs, it's about regulation. The whole of Europe functions as if it was just one market with goods being sent all over the place as if no board is existed. But at the same time, there are other things happening that are not sort of directly related to that. One is in 1985, the Schengen Agreements, which is signed in Luxembourg. It's a tiny commune where the borders of Germany, France and Luxembourg meet. So again, they've always got an eye for symbolism, and it starts with just free movement between France, Germany and Benelux, you know, it's not even the original six, it's five. The Schengen area is not created for another 10 years, 1995 as a free movement of people, everyone except UK, Ireland and Cyprus. What also happens is the EEC adopts the same flag and anthem as the Council of Europe, which was that separate older organization, you know, partly set up by Winston Churchill. This is the one that our guy Callaghi suggested 60 years earlier. He finally gets it. Oh, too joy. Oh, too joy. You know, the British ambassador was really worried once I sort of took him out of European flag. The factory was going to lose her mind. He says, you can imagine Margaret's reaction when this document thuds on the doormat of 10 Downing Street. And so the community's way of just getting past it is just going, it's not a flag, it's a house style. It's this is basically just designed to appeal to the factory. It's just branding. It's corporate identity. It's not nationwide. But in the end, it's a logo. And so incredibly, they're brought off, but what they recognize is, by the time you put a logo up a flag pole, everyone's going to think that's a flag, it's a logo on a flag. You've also got 1987, the Erasmus scheme, which is dear to many people's hearts. Yeah. I mean, you know, my mates in uni, that was like, you know, you have these seminal moments of your youth. That was probably the closest that Europe touched you really, like in terms of your life, they'd bring friends back. They'd become your friends. You know, people married. I mean, it was for the people that were part of it, it's absolutely massive. Well, a lot of the fiercest remainers, you know, were people who had experienced, you know, European cooperation through the Erasmus scheme when they were at uni. Yeah. The other thing here is we've got expansion. I talked there about 12 members signing this into European act. And I think maybe last time we spoke, we were talking about the nine, right? So you've got, if you want to join, just remind people, you sign a Treaty of Association, which is the first step to membership. The first people to sign that would Greece in 1962, finally joining in 1981. So there's a long old process. So then that becomes the town. 1986, Spain and Portugal joined. That brings the totals to 12. Now all three of those countries, poorer countries at that point, relatively, of the South, emerging from a period of authoritarian stagnation. People underestimate just how poor they were about them, by the way. Like Spain was, when he told people who were sort of visiting in the late 70s, even the early 80s, it's not the Spain that you think of now when you picture in your head. And they come out from that Franco, Salazar, the generals in Greece. They all saw their future in Europe sort of anticipating what happens with the countries of Eastern Europe. What this requires, though, is a vastly expanded system of regional subsidies, grants, agencies to administer them, you know, some that you don't have these kind of neglected poorer regions. And this does breed an increasingly cumbersome bureaucracy and in many kind of locality's corruption. So this is the first example of how expansion, while part of the whole project, brings with it these problems. And now, of course, it seems weird to think of Spain and Portugal particularly as being these sort of problematic poorer, recently authoritarian countries because they seem fundamental to Europe, but that that is a kind of a bit of sort of foreshadowing what happens at the end of the Cold War. Or a tremendous success those two countries have been really as examples of like how cleanly and effectively, and you can come out of authoritarian government. So just to set up this clash here, you've got this delord blueprint is very much rooted in the social democratic politics of post-war continental Europe. Such obviously has a more neoliberal vision, so it's her infamous bridge speech in 1988, which is not like anti-Europe, but it's anti what it, what delord wants it to be. We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, if they're proud of that. I only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels. And cut from the first draft was the line, forget a United States of Europe. But she's not fully Euro sceptics. She says Britain does not dream of some cozy isolated existence on the fringes of the European community, our destiny is in Europe as part of the community, really important distinction which gets eroded over the years, including in her own brain. Yeah. But this inspires the Bruce Group, which attracts more than 100 Tory backbenches. Yeah. So this is the sort of start of proper Tory Euro scepticism, and then like you said, there's only the Labour Party and the unions, who until I can't remember what year Neil Keneck managed to get Labour to drop their opposition to, yes, to membership, but it's around this time. It's the late 80s in the party positions they haven't flipped yet, but they are beginning to reverse. Yeah. So interestingly, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, who obviously we covered quite extensively in the last season, is the first Russian leader since the 19th century to see Russia as part of Europe. He likes to say Europe is our common home, and in 1989, before the Berlin war falls, he tells the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, there should be a restructuring of the international order existing in Europe that would put the European common values in the forefront. He's beaking sort of fluent European at this point. He actually meets, with Metauron to discuss, sorry, that was excessively French pronunciation, to discuss a greater Europe stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals, and his idea is eventually this will do a way with both NATO and the Warsaw Pact. Incredible. Many reasons why this does not come to pass. One of them is because as Gorbachev famously fails to recognise, the European countries would desperate to get away from Russia. Very happy to move towards Brussels and do Washington, but really don't want Russia to be part of the picture anymore. But it's fascinating. It's like one of those ideas, like we're talking about the Federal Union of Britain and France in 1940, which doesn't happen, and therefore sort of gets forgotten. But it's like it's a big, big, ambitious idea. There's just this psychological process that big countries have to go through, of do you want to be involved? Yeah. And this story, you know, we've seen France struggle with it. We've seen Britain struggle with it and ultimately tear itself apart over and over again over it. It's just too big to just be like, no, you know what? We can't accept that kind of more limited, but rational status within the club. You still want to act like we can control the world. And of course, Russia, what you're seeing there is that brief flicker of a moment where Russia could even think in those terms before it obviously could not. And now it obviously cannot, but for a few years, you know, more optimistic dreams were possible in a greater sense of modesty. Like where there's a real sense of confidence now is in Europe. I mean, you look at that single European act. That is the first major revision of the 1957 Treaty of Rome. How do any organization, including countries, stay alive as they, by revising their foundation treaty? You know what I mean? You can have it through common law or you can have it through, you know, the way that the Americans treat their own constitution. And that's what's suddenly happening here. It's unleashing this sort of tidal wave of, of, of renewal. So you get revisions coming in Maastricht 1992, Amsterdam 1997, needs 2001. For this period, this is confident, this is moving forward. It's dynamic Europe, it's ambitious Europe. And then, as if sort of all of history were bending itself to this process, the Berlin War falls down. And once it falls, you just, the first thing you have to think is you're just like, well, Europe for the first time really means Europe, like what was previously institutional Europe is now geographic Europe. And there is really almost nowhere up to the boundary of Russia, and given what you just said, perhaps even, perhaps including even Russia, that couldn't potentially be part of the project. Not only that, but Brussels now kind of is facing a scenario where it might have responsibility for a whole fucking continent, which had said it wanted for the reality of that responsibility as something else. Well, it's deeply problematic, Tony Jut, who I keep coming back to, you know, he sort of argues that the Cold War was very good for the European project. It was the reason it was born, it was the reason it was able to grow as it did. He calls it a happy cocoon for Europe. What you've got here, suddenly, I mean, it's very problematic in lots of ways, even though it seems, you know, how wonderful. One is that actually Western Europe and Eastern Europe, going back centuries, did have quite different identities. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't just, you know, the Iron Curtain Falls, and suddenly they're separated. No, there's always been quite a different sense of whether you live in Serbia or Brussels. Yeah, I was just like, like, North London and South of the river. Like, never can you bring these kind of cultures together. I would say there is a federal union between those two, to be fair. We cannot. And no war is so far. So it's really spreex, a lot of Western European leaders now, you know, immediately meet wrong hopes that the Gorbachev will block the reunification of Germany. Yeah. Yeah. Thatcher, on the day the Berlin War says, first he says, this is wonderful. And then she goes, my goodness, this is dangerous. We better be sure this doesn't get out of hand. Yeah. So they don't really know the France nor Britain really want Germany reunification. And as indeed, as they fear, particularly, meet wrong fears, Germany does reunite. And you know, at high speed, and it eclipses France at last in terms of power, in terms of GDP, France no longer leads Europe. Right. This is the sort of the end of French dominance. In fact, slowly English begins replacing French as the common language in Brussels. There's also this anxiety about eventually having to absorb these Eastern European states, which they've got a weak democratic tradition. I think Czechoslovakia is the only one that had a strong democracy between the two world wars. Of course, they've got very needy economies, but they think, well, the EU represents the future and NATO membership. There's a lot of this interrelation between NATO and EU politically. You know, less as a defence alliance, well, Mrs. has a political stepping stone. So, one of these countries, they're allowed to join NATO because they're not yet ready to join the EU, but it's almost like used as like, you know, it's almost like a waiting area, which of course is not actually what NATO is, but that was the purpose it served politically. There's also this question, you know, of what it does for your internal dynamics in terms of the relative size of countries in the EU. So, I mean, you know, when it starts, you've got a ratio of one to one in the early years of large to small countries, you've got Germany, France, and Italy, and on the other hand, you've got Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg, okay? Then, at this point, we're talking seven smaller countries and three big ones, and they start looking out to Eastern Europe. I mean, by 2020, it'll be five large countries to 21 smaller ones, and suddenly that internal process of how you negotiate around those things, and what that means politically for everyone's relative status, which we're all highly concerned about, comes complicated. Honestly, this would have been even more difficult if it wasn't for Helmut Kohl, and the way that his sort of national priorities for Eastern West Germany were combined with that broader European questions. I mean, he does a speech in the Strasbourg Parliament, where he says, "Europe is not only London, Rome, the Hague, Dublin, and Paris. It is also Warsaw and Budapest, Prague, and so fear." And I think you needed someone to just sort of be like, "No, this is part of what we said from the very beginning, from the birth pangs of this thing, that this is supposed to be an immense new project in political society, and you can't just sit there blinking and panicking about what it will entail." Well, not to doubt his sincerity, but kind of if you're arguing for German reunification, therefore you're bringing East Germany, politically you can't really go, "Well, this former Soviet satellite is fine, but not Bulgaria or Romania or Czechoslovakia." His national and his international incentives both pointed in the same direction, unlike everybody else. So there's another fact to coming up to the negotiations of the Maastricht Treaty in 1991, is the violent breakup of Yugoslavia, which highlights the dangers of nationalism. Obviously, this runs really throughout the '90s in different places. First, it's more Croatia than Bosnia eventually would, near Kosovo. Now, the president of the council, Jacques Pooz, I don't know, but it's quite funny just watching you say the word "poo" in a variety. There's no way to pronounce it. No, I think probably yes is silence, it probably is Jacques Pooz. One more time, just a good luck. Jacques Pooz from Luxembourg, and he thinks this is a real moment of reckoning, he goes, this is the hour of Europe, this is not the hour of the Americans, but of course Europe utterly fails to keep the peace there. And the resolution does come down to America and NATO, after all. And it's kind of a humiliation for Europe as a military and peacekeeping force. Yeah. So there's so much going on in the background of Maastricht and anxiety about what is going on in this other half of Europe, there's suddenly become liberated and now wants a place at the table, which was not what anybody knew at the time they signed the Seng of European Act. Yeah, exactly. I mean, Karl Amitron's not talking by a February 1990 about a political union in response to what's happening. They send the letters to fellow governments, a couple of months later, in the light of the far-reaching events in Europe and in view of the completion of the single market, we consider it necessary to accelerate the political construction of the Europe of the 12. We believe it is time to transform relations as a whole among the member states into a European Union. No one really has any idea what the phrase European Union means. Right. So it really just sounds important. I mean, it just sounds like it lives up to the moment. And they eventually decided it means increases in democratic legitimacy and economic and monetary coordination and a common foreign policy. But all of these things are going to happen, and they have noticed. But that's the last unit. And that just drives thatcher fucking mad. And in the end, it actually it ends her, to be honest, because, you know, she goes back one time, she says to the commons, "The president of the commission, Mr. Laws, said at a press conference the other day that he wanted the European Parliament to be the democratic body of the community, he wanted the commission to be the executive, and he wanted the council of ministers to be the Senate, no, no, no, as we covered in our thatcher episode, that moment is the beginning of the end of her time as Prime Minister. There is a very, you know, polite murder by Jeffrey Howe, Deputy Prime Minister." And you know, lots of, you know, Westminster II's and Rhodes, but really, she is destroyed by the inevitable movement of European history at that stage. And she cannot stand up to it. The end result does not reflect what the law has once. There is no, you know, you're not going to have a nation to say it's not going to give up their control over the issues of war and peace, you know, and foreign policy. They're just not. But at the same time, she could not hold back the momentum of that moment, and it did destroy her. Well, the reason I said that the parties hadn't flipped yet is because, yeah, thatcher is moving towards where he recognizes a classic Tory Eurosceptic position, but, you know, the reason she falls out, you said, she falls out with a Chancellor Nigel Lawson in the Foreign Secretary at that point, Jeffrey Howe, over joining the exchange rate mechanism. And then she's also posed by their replacements, John Major and Douglas Hurd, like all these kind of senior figures, and just like, even if they're not like, you know, passionate sons of Monet, they are like, we really need to join this. I mean, the way that we join it is not very successful. It doesn't go very well. Which he becomes quite an isolated figure, you know, the back benches in the Bruce Group agree with her. But most of the cabinet do not is pretty earful, including, you know, Bruce Lee, John Major. Listening to this podcast instead of doom scrolling, smart move, another smart move, getting help from one of State Farm's 19,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling. Covered options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. Chronic Migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox, on a butchalignum toxin A, prevents headaches and adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month, it's the number one prescribed branded Chronic Migraine preventive treatment. A lurcher doctor right away is difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Side effects may include allergic reaction. neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, Myastthenia Gravis, or Lambert Eaton Syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. - Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxCronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44 Botox to learn more. - This episode is brought to you by Nordstrom. The stylist who found the perfect outfit for your big interview. The first pair of walking shoes for your one-year-old. The tomato soup you shared with your sister at the cafe. These are the moments that make Nordstrom, Nordstrom. Bigger a small, we're here for all of it. Celebrating 125 years with new moments still add. Discover it all in NordstromStores and at Nordstrom.com. (upbeat music) - Okay, so she's gone. That's just gone, what? Late 1990. Not there, for 31 hours of negotiations at Maastricht on the 9th and 10th of December, 1991. You've got Mitterrand, you've got Kohl. And as you suggested, Kohl really wants political union, Britain and France don't. So the cornerstone becomes monetary union. Now this is really significant because it is run on German principles, fiscal prudence, Germany, of course, absolutely scarred by still, by like the hyperinflation that is sort of partly blamed for the rise of Hitler. It's like you've got to get your finances tight. And therefore, the whole, you know, the model, the financial model of the European Union is very German-brained. - Yes. - Which becomes a big problem later. - UK for the first time sort of breaks from Europe since 1971 by opting out, of course, of the single currency. - Yeah. - And the social chapter regulating labor. It's signed on the 7th of February 1992. I remember this at the time being such a big deal. - Oh, really? Like it really was like the year of Europe, 1992. Citizens and member states all became citizens of the European Union voting rights, free movement. So it establishes the central bank and the idea that, no, not yet, the relative of the euro, which I love the fact that, remember, it was preceded by the ECU. - Oh, yeah, yeah. You loved the ECU, didn't you? - The ECU, but the Germans thought the ECU, even though it stands for European currency unit, they thought it sounded too French. (laughing) As the year is kind of modeled on the Deutsch Mark. Again, it's very driven by Germany. Implementation is slowed down because there's three referendums, bloody referendums. Denmark votes no until it's given an opt out from the currency, votes again, yes. France passes it only narrowly, which I think is really interesting. France is always ambivalent. More ambivalent than we think. - It's a damn certain more euro skeptic than people would typically realize. - Island passes it by 70%, they love Europe. Comes into force on the 1st and November 93. Now, one thing I didn't know or had forgotten, you know your major famous speech about British identity. - Oh, yeah. - You quote all why? - There were all why stuff here. - 50 years of now, Britain will still be the country of long shadows on county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, et cetera, et cetera. This was actually him defending Maastricht to Turries. - Holy shit, I have no idea. - Going, yeah, we can join, but Britain will still be Britain. So it wasn't this jingoistic rejection of Europe, it's going, this is the essential qualities of Britain that will not be eroded by membership of Europe. And of course, all the way through, you know, to this day he is a sort of an ardent remainder. - Oh, he's just completely brilliant on this issue. - But that completely, I always thought that was this sort of laughably jingoistic speech, but the context was, was it? - Well, there was always that thing, it didn't take out all the bits where all well refers to the cities and the factories, not necessarily. - He only quotes one line from all well, which is the old maids by his claim to holy communion through the morning mist. - So to be fair, he's not saying all well, I would agree with me, he's taking like one line. - Ah, very good. Okay, you know what, I always just presume that was the way it was presented of this quoted and sort of small little Englander. And it's very reassuring given that I like him a lot. So I actually not have to put that in the negative ledger. - Yeah, yeah, that's a just in context. - And there's a fantastic sort of innovation in 1993, which really, which actually isn't talked about, but become, I think is sort of, powerfully important for Europe's mission, which is called the Copenhagen Criteria, which should also be a very fine name for a spy novel. And it's when they come up with a sort of formal criteria for new members, stable democratic institutions, functioning market economy, and the absorption of 80,000 pages of European legislation. - For like, what that does? - That's even more than what you're meant to read before going to the latest Apple update, isn't it? - And you're gonna say for an episode of Origins, right? But I love how this just becomes this sort of litmus test for progress. You know, it's sort of like you put down this set of mechanisms, like, well, here we are. So, you know, and it's civil liberties and democracy and liberal liberal democracy. It's a mechanism for freedom in each country. The wants the economic advantages of Europe passes through that mechanism and shows that it satisfies those tests. Now, we're gonna see later, particularly with Hungary, that the trouble with it is that once they're in the club, you can start backsliding, and it's quite hard to come up with consequences for countries doing that. But there's a mechanism to get a lot, you know, hundreds of millions of people who have been living in an off in very corrupt authoritarian regimes and transfer those regimes into Western democracies. It is hugely, hugely effective and doesn't get as much praise as it should. - It's interesting that the first ones that join, take you up to 15 are like Austria, Finland, and Sweden. So it's very much like you're playing on Easy Mode. - Playing on Easy Mode there. It's like, that's gonna argue with Finland. - So I think one thing that comes up sometimes in political history is that the moment of a parent triumph is also when the backlash begins and problems begin. So Francis Fukuyama, coming back to him again with the end of history, he said that the European Union represented the end of history even better than the US. - Oh. - You know, he thought, "Okay, that's the real." I mean, he's a bit snotty about it. He goes, "Oh, it's gonna be very boring." But that's what he seems like a few times fair. - It's not fair at all. - But I found this quote from Tony Judd in 1996, where he thought that Europe had already peaked, and he warned of these problems ahead, German dominance, not in a scary way, but in a kind of cultural financial way. Problem of expansion to the east, slower growth, a growing welfare bill, and nationalist immigrant politics. Says Europe is too large and too nebulous a concept around which to forge any convincing human community. - Well, which I mean, I might disagree with that, but he certainly flagged up some of the problems. - I don't think he'd be feeling terrible about how those forecast worked out. - This is the first evidence of really of this far right backlash to EU. So you've got the Austrian Freedom Party in Austria. York Haider says, "We Austrian should answer not to the EU, not to Maastricht, not to some international idea or other, but to this our homeland, EU is representing globalism." You know, the other, the rootless cosmopolitan's. A politics professor called Alan Sked found the anti-federalist league in 1991 specifically to oppose Maastricht. One of his first members is a 27-year-old Nigel Farage. This turns into UKIP in 1993. You've also got James Goldsmith's referendum party, which initially is more successful than UKIP. You've got Boris Johnson writing his bollocks in Brussels and he's making up stories about crazy bureaucrats and their bananas and condoms, condoms and bananas. So the sort of the story of Brexit begins around this time, it begins in opposition to Maastricht. - Yeah, this is absolutely, this is the origin. - Going all the way through the '90s and the Tories, just getting increasingly far away from major. Of course, John Major, we're not going to go into all of this, but the Bastards, his famous thing called in the skeptics, the Bastards. But they're the future of the party, unfortunately. - This is the peak, I think, this period, this peak of European confidence of European ambition and it is about to come crashing down and at the beginning of that, it's really in 2004 with an attempt to write a constitutional treaty. Oh yeah. It starts 2001, leaders asking, well, maybe instead of all these revisions of the initial text, we could just write a constitution. And there's always been this kind of dream of, we never had the moment, you know what I mean? - Right. - If we haven't had the tennis club oath, we haven't had the moment of writing the US constitution, we haven't just had this founding moment that we can look back to. It's all very ad hoc. And it feels a bit tenuous a lot of the time. So they set up a convention to contemplate a new European treaty, new kind of founding document. It writes it, the member states, tear it to fucking pieces and they have exactly the kind of fights you would over the next few years you would expect. But then, perilously, it goes out because certain countries are gonna have referendums on it. - Right. - Among the countries are gonna have referendums are France and the Netherlands. And in 2005, both countries vote against the constitution. Now the French thing is as well, what's most disturbing about it, I think, is that for, you know, the commission and the council, is that they're not even voting against it for the same reason. Like the French votes actually very left-wing. I was actually in France during that period. And I remember it was like another Europe is possible, you know, saying it was basically it's an Anglo-Saxon economic model. It was essentially the sort of British left argument before the law. - It was like a lexity. - It was lexity. - Exactly, lexity. - Lexity, yes, exactly. The Netherlands one was that it was a sort of challenge against national identity. So it was another Europe isn't possible and this one isn't either. (laughs) - You can run off now. - So because they were okay, it felt like quite a comprehensive full spectrum rejection and there was like a real, this is the moment. In fact, that moment, those two votes, progress just stops and it doesn't really ever come back. So there's a moment of shock. The ratification process has put on hold. - Yeah. - All talk of constitution is abandoned and the confidence of the last two decades has gone. And then it sort of retreats to which usual disingenuous background steps. Which is, you know, it's not a constitution. We're just gonna write this treaty revision over here called Lisbon. - Yes. - Don't worry, don't worry about that. There's nothing to see here. And basically, Lisbon is all the bits of the constitution without the constitution bit. It's sort of stuffed into this thing and off you go. And it's that there's a return. It was almost like there was this flicker because of the end of the Cold War because of the expansion of Europe, because of the creation of the single market, the parliament, the council, that it was just like, no, you know what, we can do this. We can be a state that talks about itself and is honest about what it is trying to do. And instead then it's like, oh, no, we're gonna go back to that thing where what we're planning is actually tremendously ambitious, but we will never admit just how ambitious it is 'cause it's gonna scare people and we'll just sort of sneak it under the door instead. Well, you know, in part one, we were talking about ideas of Europe and what Europe was and how the enlightenment, it became synonymous with not an empire anymore or a religion, but sort of civilisation and progress. So the draft treaty on the constitution was watered down long before these referendums never agreed and there's some fascinating texts that was put in there, very Monet style. Europe is a continent that had brought forth civilisation, its inhabitants arriving in successive ways from earliest times have gradually developed the values underlying humanism, equality of persons, freedom, respect for reason. It says a reunited Europe intends to continue along the path of civilisation, progress and prosperity for the good of all its inhabitants. This is a real sort of soaring idealistic language and obviously ruthlessly cuts out. (laughing) Before anyone could read that kind of hippie bullshit. - It's harder than even what you do to my copy on Google Docs, wherever I'm right to get put together. - And the trouble is, I just think that sense of confidence goes from it at almost exactly the wrong moment. You know, this is 2007 that Lisbon is signed. What's about to happen? The financial crisis is coming. The eurozone crisis is coming. Populism is coming. It's just like, it's weak and it loses its confidence and what's about to come is just a rolling series of crises that are just gonna pummel it into the fucking floor. - And of course, what Lisbon does is it has article 50, which is the first time I make provisions for a state to leave the EU, just as it has been in some ambitious. 2002, the euro goes into circulation, right, in 15 countries. First common European currency since the Romans. 2004, this is how many countries join? When we're talking about the nine, the 12, the 15, right? 2004, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland and Slovenia. It's now the 25 and only the UK and Ireland don't choose to impose immigration quotas on the citizens of those states, which explains a lot, obviously, about Brexit. It's expanded so fast, there's so many, there's so many people, it seems like, it seems like, oh my God, it's unstoppable. It's just sort of, it's booming. And yet, all of these problems, you can see bubbling up. Maybe, I don't know, I don't want to say, oh, it grew too fast or the foundations weren't strong enough. But certainly, like you said, it seems to have, it seems to have reached a certain limit, just as mortgage providers in Florida. (laughing) - And deciding there are no limits. - Correct, to destroy the global economy. (laughing) It should be pointed out, since 2004, there have only been three new members. Bulgarian Romania in 2007, Croatia in 2013. Turkey, still waiting. When do you think it signed its Treaty of Association? - Oh, fuck, I know, that's, it's crazy, isn't it? Is it like, fucking 1964 or something? - It's 1964? - Is it? - Yeah. - Oh, nice. - Applied to membership in 1987, recognized as a candidate in 1999, negotiations begin in 2005. - Still not a member, I mean, there are particular reasons. - Yeah, no, it's different, yeah, it's all that. And so I don't know, you know. - Of course, but I mean, basically back then, it was 'cause it was too big, it was too poor, and it was too Muslim. - And it was too Muslim. I mean, you know, it raised questions that people didn't wanna have about, okay, well, actually, so this is not, there's no religious boundary along with the geographic boundary. And suddenly once you started asking that question, people were coming back with some very grottie answers. - So this is why, there's a lot of different reasons why it's sort of losing its momentum and that whole idea that Jean-Marnei had and that, you know, Jacques De Law recognized, Roy Jenkins recognized, was that you have to keep re-injecting energy into the project. It has to keep moving forward, whether that's quite like, you know, ever closer union or by bringing in new member states, and there's this fatal lack of momentum now. - Yeah, so then things get incredibly fraught. Financial crisis hits in 2008, and then in 2010, the Eurozone crisis, this is gonna really test that notion of solidarity. It's gonna really test that sense of democratic legitimacy in the project. It's an after effect of the financial crash. Greece cannot pay back, which is now a member state, cannot pay back all of its debt. That sounds at about 115% of GDP. And there is a perfectly obvious solution that most people recognize pretty early on, which is that it requires debt forgiveness to a certain extent and it requires a European bailout fund of a certain size. However, that core relationship between France and Germany, rather than helping the situation hinders the situation because they have very different circumstances when it comes to Greece. The debt forgiveness idea is a problem because lots of the debt is held by European banks who are on the verge of collapse as a result of the financial crash. And one of those banks with the largest amounts of debt is BMP Parabas, a French bank. So when it comes to the French president Nicolas Sarkozy, he's like totally up for this European bailout fund idea. Not so up for the debt forgiveness idea 'cause you're gonna kill one of my biggest banks. When it comes to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the situation is completely reversed. She's supportive of debt forgiveness. Germany doesn't have much to lose by virtue of that. But she opposes a European bailout fund. As German voters, very opposed to this idea, well we've been very good with our taxes. Why should we pump money towards our spendy Mediterranean neighbors? - This is where that thing that I said about German fiscal rectitude being at the center of a European union is really problematic because it's like, yeah. It's like north v south rich v poor, sensible with money versus splashing it about. - Yeah, obviously these questions ultimately go down to who is the us, does the us exist? If there's us, there's social solidarity and we're prepared to spend that money on. If we're Europeans, we're Europeans, we're not Germans and Greeks. And the truth is that within countries, that solidarity often, you'll hear a lot in Italy about between north and south and how much money is in one of the, oh yeah, less so actually in the UK, it's less disgust that sort of thing of how much money London gives to the North, for instance, or whatever. And quite most of the time, this is if the other way around. London knows everyone. So nevertheless, now those strands of solidarity are really fraying at the edges. And Germany and France are just trapped in this mutual headlock. Well, they've both got one part of the puzzle, but they can't accept the other part. So instead of coming out with either of the good ideas, they say it's gonna be austerity. They go back to that easy, easy, and yes, quite German way of looking at things, which was also popular all over the place at the time. This is 2010, right? There's a conservative austerity government in the UK. I mean, austerity's being disproved as you speak every day and is the worst possible course of action at the time. And we now recognize that pretty much universally, but at the time, hugely popular idea. So the EU, the ECB, the European Central Bank, and the IMF, the International Monetary Fund, loan money to Greece, which sort of barely touches Greece as it, although it touches it enough to impose an absolutely punishing fucking interest rate, and then flies off to pay its creditors. No bailout, no debt forgiveness. And Greece is basically forced to undertake one of the most brutal austerity programs in the history of man. just hammered into the fucking ground. A general strike breaks out. public transport brought to a standstill, running street battles between protesters and riot police. Half of young Greeks by 2012 are out of work. Nearly a quarter of the general population is jobless. The Greek parliament turned into basically little more than a rubber stamping operation for decisions taken by the Troika, taken by the ECB, the IMF, and the EU. - If people wonder why is Yana's ferrificates a thing? - Yeah. - This crisis is why. - I mean, he wasn't the worst thing to come from it. - They're not the worst. - Maybe the third. - Off to the jobless. - As a time, he seemed like, you know, he was doing the good work. - And to be fair, I mean, he is a complete fucking moron. But he was genuinely outraged by the scenario, and the situation was absolutely outrageous and intolerable. The Greek Prime Minister, George Papandre, who wants to call the referendum, and then the European Commission president, Jose Manuel Barossa basically holds talks on replacing Papandre, he prefers Lucas Papademos, the former European Central Bank Vice President. And through domestic mechanisms, Papandre is removed, and Barossa's favorite is put in place. Quite a fucking moment. Suddenly, in Italy, similar things are happening. Italy is too big to fail. But you don't want to send it money because at the head of Italy is Silvio Berlusconi, who is just this catastrophic clownish populist idiot. So the Europeans are Merkel and Sarkozy approach the Americans to say, we're thinking about trying to get rid of Berlusconi. His treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner. The Europeans actually approached us softly, indirectly, saying, we basically want you to join us in forcing Berlusconi out. He takes it to Obama. They have a chat about it, quite tempting. He says, we can't have Berlusconi's blood on our hands. But then, similarly, within days, Berlusconi loses a vote of confidence in the parliament, and he resigns former European commissioner, Mario Monty, replaces him. Like, to be fair, these got Papandreos playing with fire. Berlusconi was hopelessly inept. If either of them had a lot of support at home, these things wouldn't have happened. Merkel and Sarkozy are in an absolutely impossible position that the levels of pain that everyone is going through in this scenario are quite astonishing. But the EU and leaders within it had basically started to conspire to remove the democratically elected leaders of two member states. And at that point, eventually, policy takes on a more rational form. There's a viable rescue operations put into place. The Greek debt is restructured. A bailout fund is provided. Greece is actually in a very good position right now. The bond market was supported. But there's a kind of a turning point. And there's a turning point, not just economically, but politically. Because at this point, the right from the master period onwards, and across Europe, many countries have the similar tradition, have that sense of national sovereignty is going. We're being any kind of identity is being overridden by this huge faceless bureaucratic machine. But now the left has a story against Europe, which is that it is a massive austerity program. And it will smash you into the ground and suck up any sense of moral purpose and ethical value that was supposed to be grounded into the project. Reputation for solidarity and humanism that Europe had feels like it dies in that period. Well, to law who's in his 80s at this point is complaints that the response to the crisis, the sort of general response was killing Europe. He sort of recognized what was going on. We then get, well, the table is set for Brexit, right? So 2015, there's a refugee crisis, largely caused by what's happening in Syria and there. It's not really a crisis. I mean, it's a crisis, politically a crisis. But of course, there are many more refugees coming into Europe. Also, there was a terrorism, a perception of a terrorism crisis. I mean, as so often the case, it turns out that that does not become a kind of rolling thing that's happening every year. But it seems to be the battle clan. Yes, for example, and more. So that's obviously fueling the kind of anti-immigrant right and causing countries to cry, to kind of water down free movement. Greece, there was a possibility, I can't remember exactly which point in the crisis, but Greece was thinking about possibly leaving the EU rather than putting up with this unbearable bullshit, which produces the word "Grexit". So from Grexit, we get Brexit, Owen Jones coined "legsits" to describe what you were talking about there. So the point at which the Tories have to call a referendum because they promise to in their manifesto, if they've got a majority, Europe is summed up in three words, crisis, instability, inertia. You could probably add more resentment, backlash, whatever. It's not in the best state for the remain campaign to go. Hooray! To be clear, I did vote to remain. But I mean, when we talk about it, so much is put through the British lens. We go, "Well, Cameron was on popular pitchman for it. "You know, Corbyn was too ambivalent. "You had a terribly organized campaign, blah, blah, blah, blah." But also, it was like it was quite a bad time to go to the British public on the proposition of the European Union. With that thing of it's the future, we've got to get involved. That's a harder proposition at that period. I mean, everyone was getting spanked back then. You know, the 2010s, no one was having any kind of fun. But it was the traditional argument that you would use to get national voters into it was not really there for the taking. Do we need to say anything about Brexit? I mean, also, it was coming up to the 10th anniversary. Surely people know what happened. No, I mean, if you feel that you need more information on this for reference, there's this fantastical podcast where two people with, and others, with much more youthful voices. Yeah, that point a lot more in a stamina and energy. Talk about Brexit for apparently three to four years. For years, and in fact, a young up-and-coming called Ian Dunt wrote a book called Brexit. What, that happens now? What the hell happens now? Yeah, no, true. I was much more modest in my language about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now you could just imagine what it would be called. The thing that I want to say, I'm suppose we should say for people who were not listeners or not in Britain, you know, the British public voted 52 to 48 to leave, creating what, three years of political clusterfark and many, many more years of economic damage. Yes, does that matter? Does that matter? Which is still ongoing right now. What I think is interesting is the people's vote movement, which was the attempt by many remainers to just find a way back in, to have a second referendum and to not leave the EU, basically. And what happened there was this, the spirit of Jean-Monnaie, the emotional idea of Europe, bursts out in a way that it really didn't join the campaign. You know, and all the kind of European, you know, literally the European movement and all those kind of groups were obviously campaigning to remain, but the emotional heat was quite low. All the kind of passion really was on the leaves side. And then suddenly you get people embracing the European flag and the tradition of it and waxing lyrical about the ideals of Europe, you know, not the utilitarian technocratic argument for it, which was largely what was put during the referendum campaign. But the kind of stuff that was deleted from the draft constitution, right? All the stuff that goes back, I don't know, to Colorgay in the 1920s or whatever, you know, that spirit of Europe. And I actually found that, even though time, a lot of people found that rather cringe. And they all, you know, people too into Europe, not me, obviously. But it's now the consensus, I think, is almost that the people's movement failed and it was all a bit much and people were being too Eurofile. In the context of this history we've been describing, I actually find that really moving, because it was the first time in Britain that there was a genuinely passionate pro-European movement, which was not about selling washing machines to Düsseldorf, but was about the dream. [MUSIC] >> This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Another smart move? Getting help from one of State Farm's 19,000 local agents when you choose to bundle home an auto, bundling, just another way to save with the personal price plan. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. >> Chronic Migraine, 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. >> Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. 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Discover it all in Nordstrom stores and at Nordstrom.com. Two things can be true at the same time, right? The first thing is the pro-European movement will only succeed when it comes dressed in the Union Jack. I don't think that's the case in any country. That's the language that you use in order to win political campaigns, elections, referendums. That's the language you use. But it is healthy and inspiring and good to see people have their access to that broader European identity, to have that sense of meaning about them. And for them to suddenly be able to articulate it, most of the time in that period, what I remember is people would just sort of, it's as if they hadn't used these words for so long that they barely remembered how to form them with their lips. And then they're looking at their romantic relationship, their kids. There could be half French, half British or whatever. The years that they had working in Germany in their 20s or their colleagues that they had at work, they looked at these kind of like the shared experience and shared values and were starting to politicize it in the best possible fucking way. I didn't think anything was cringe about it. And of course, that was the thing that was always, because basically the left would always say that anything that happens, you know, anywhere to the right of it, you know, is cringe. And on the street, that's what those things are going to look at. It's like the people that say cringe about, you know, the sort of feminist protestors against Trump because it seems a bit tweey. And it's just, this is just good protest. But it's not cringe to sort of get interested to go around going socialism or barbarism or no paz Iran and it's like, you know what? Political for an idealism is cringe. Get out and just fucking live with it. Cringes go cringes vastly underrated. Yeah. And so it was, I think like a really profound moment and you suddenly get that thing of no, there is a sense of meaning and identity and the loss. And that was not just in Britain, because of course, what takes place in Europe then, you know, it would not have been impossible for countries to take an individual rational course and do negotiations or allow some movement there. But instead, the European Commission takes over, they hold a united front. And because Britain makes such an unbelievable big zero of it, it really starts for the first time in a long time in Europe to confirm, no, I mean, there's something quite good about this. And maybe leaving this thing would be an absolutely terrible fucking idea. And if Britain provides any service to Europe, you know, in the 21st century, it's in that very vivid demonstration of the consequences of religion. Would you remember all that kind of Brexit to talk where they were going like just at this point really the idea, the portmante word was really breaking down because it was like Brexit, it exit, which is Italy's exit. And nobody's ever going to say the word it exit. Anyone that, you know, was too young for this period, what you have to know is it was basically like, what if hell razor, but portmanteaus, it was just this kind of a terror of portmanteaus. But nobody else wanted to leave. I think even the front national has has taken that off. Yeah. So just before we do the wrap up, I think the other important country to talk about, not a member of the EU famously, is Ukraine. And it was in fact, the refusal to sign an association agreement with the EU in 2013, which as we've seen can just take decades before you remember, led to the demonstrations in the Maydown, the new government, which did sign the agreement, that prompted Putin's first invasion of the Crimea and the Donbas, Putin returning to that much older and, you know, more consistent Russian tradition of standing apart from Europe. Yes, a lot of very weird ideas there. As the terrorizing the fuck out of people. And people talk about, you know, him being very anti-Nato, it's all about NATO coming up to the, you know, the boundaries of Russia. We've seen kind of why that happened. Yes. There was really more about politics than defence. He's as much anti-EU as anti-Nato. You're a hundred percent right. And God knows why I haven't put this together. People constantly, when they try to excuse him, bringing up that NATO thing as if, oh, it broke a deal, which never fucking existed. But actually, what sparked this? People wanting to join Europe. It's not really ultimately a NATO thing. It's a European thing, which is also partly why Europe is so deeply invested in the war. Look at how much Putin hates the EU. Look at how much Trump and JD Vant hate the EU. The EU is really demonised by the international authoritarians. So that sort of, I mean, there aren't really any exciting kind of new treaties or new members to speak about in like the last, in the last decade. But maybe what we have seen is a lot of people being reminded of the value of being part of this, not wanting to leave. Some countries desperately very much wanting to join. Well, I mean, the place that we get to when we get to right now is, you know, Europe basically is fighting for its survival against a Russian invasion on one flank against the most powerful country on earth, the United States, which explicitly is trying to undermine and destroy it. You know, which will say it openly, which will fund parties that want to destroy it, which will have JD Vants go to Hungary to help victor all ban during an election campaign and say how dare they interfere in your election. How did that work out? We should point out that by the time you hear this, this will be old news. But we're recording it very soon after the exciting news from Hungary. Yeah. Which I think is part of what's of this story, right? Like this is, it feels as if either even if we'd, even if we'd recorded this a year ago, you know, you'd really feel like you're leaving it in a terrible place. In each country, you like thrusting populism of people who are critical of, to some extent, the, I mean, you can have a Georgia and Maloney who sort of find an accommodation with it in Italy. But, you know, the Dow in, in Germany, Marine Le Pen, France, Wilders, Netherlands, over and over, that kind of figure, usually they learn to temper it, basically because it breaks it, you know, and go, oh, we won't do that. But they're clearly and patently anti-European, so we'll just answer it when they can. And then victor all ban's sitting in the middle of it, just acting as a sort of Putin puppet, essentially sabotaging the EU from within using that veto. And that's the thing, that story of the veto, you can carry it all the way through the 20th century to all ban, just sitting there, pressing the fucking veto button, preventing European solidarity in the face of a Russia. There's actually, you can't veto, because obviously if the, the changes were made, but crucially, I think it was to do with like foreign policy and Ukraine, right? Yeah, and loans, yeah, and loans. So the EU sort of seems doomed in that situation, but weirdly, it isn't really actually something about the furnace of the scenario, provides, do these firstly, a sense of much greater flexibility and sort of like we have to make this work, we can't be complacent. And secondly, a sense of inspiration about what the purpose of Europe is. Yeah, and this is where I'm really, I'm really sort of ambivalent about, not in terms of how I feel about Europe, but in terms of my optimism and my pessimism about it, right? Because I wanted to, to another line from, from Tony Jut, it is true that people can forget to remember, and that as we move further away from 1945, the reasons why it seems so important to build something different will be less pressing. And I think that's definitely true, that people don't really, in so many ways, I mean, the right of the return of fascism or whatever, is people just no longer thinking the Second World War was bad and we shouldn't do that again. And yet, we find ourselves because of, you know, hostility of Putin and Trump, sort of in that post-war space as well, the idea that, and even before the Second World War, people talking like this, the idea of Europe, as this third force, oppressed in different ways by Russia and America, even though, in reality, America was, you know, in the post-war, very encouraging of European and kind of doing quite a lot to push it. Now it's actually more like the caricature of America as something very hostile to Europe. And so, particularly with the removal of Orbán, who was such a big roadblock, and I remember a few years ago saying, oh my god, I wish you could just kick countries out and we should kick Hungary out. Now, of course, I feel like, oh, maybe that was just me thinking Orbán would be there forever. I was having the same feeling as a dentist, right? What would have happened to Hungary if that had happened? Would they just have eradicated any sense of democracy at all? Yeah, exactly, would Orbán still be there. So, it's sort of weird. In some ways, you think, oh my god, it sort of has lost momentum. It hasn't resolved a lot of these crises. Of course, anti-immigrant populism is such a big force in all of, you know, most of these countries. And yet, it feels, at the moment, like it is a something very strong standing up for certain values against authoritarian regimes. And so, if you look at it in a certain angle, it is fulfilling that role that people wanted it to fulfill and that European identity, which sometimes can feel very fragile, maybe feels less fragile when there's something to set it against. I see, I think this is spot-on, and this furnace, this moment in history, I think is actually where the sort of new personality of Europe is going to be forged, and actually in it, this is an interpretation because these are current events. Sure. I mean, ship for us. I don't think we've ever cited something that's just happened like a couple of days before we started recording. This is insane for our origin story. But actually, you get a sense that these events are going to be the bit that we talk about in future as this crucial moment for like the destiny of Europe. So, I have a look at some of the themes that we've had throughout this story and what's happening now. For instance, what's going on with the institution, Susan Charge, is that the council, is that the commission, is at the parliament? Well, we have answers for that now, and it is the commission. You would not have expected that. We would have expected it would be the council, that's where the heads of nation states were, we thought maybe the parliament, no, actually, almost as if we're going right back to the original sort of dream to the money, I think, it's the commission. There was this real period of sort of French and German weakness, the French complete shit show, the sense of Macron being a sort of lame duck is done, shouts for ages in Germany, sort of weak leader with an outdated mandate in a coalition that didn't really have a vision for the world. And then, during this period, these rolling series of crises, and when you have crises, you tend to think about universal responses, institutional responses, rather than nation state responses. So what's the response to Brexit, pan-European response? What's the response to COVID, the commission establishing the joint procurement of vaccines, because that's the way it can work at scale, the joint European facility for financing? What's the approach on Ukraine, during discussions on sanctions? What's the approach on defence, when you know that the US, you know, is demanding that you spend more, but also is pulling away with the need for joint procurement? That all speaks to, in that long story of the nation versus the international sort of element in Europe, that pushes you towards the international element in Europe. And that's what I've seen the commission come out triumphant. Right now, that question, that old Kissinger question, who speaks for Europe? Well, the answer is Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the commission. Yeah. There is no question. It's not Antonio Costa, the president of the European Council, right? Like, no one would claim that it was. You get this weird scenario where von der Leyen's messaging and her whole approach, particularly with Trump, which, you know, obviously for my preferences, it's far, far too weak. Party is a result of, that's the way that Germany wants to approach it, is very different to the one you get from Calas, the vice president, the European commission. So there's a disparity there, but ultimately both Calas and Costa are just trying to find a way of saying anything, because that's along the way and just dominates completely. There's a trade deal, she's an Australia, to sign it off, you know, part of the press conference afterwards. Connie, Marconi in Canada, does a speech on middle powers working together. She's right next to him, having meetings with him off she goes, she's basically taking on that role in a way that we have never seen anyone manage and there's loads of things you can criticize about the content and that I would have to criticize about the content and how she does it. But institutionally, and in terms of encapsulating authority, in terms of finally answering that question, in a way that even Donald Tostatin, when he was head of the council, finally on to that question, who speaks for Europe, I don't think anyone would quibble about what the answer to that is now. Well you mentioned Canada and, funnily enough, people were talking, I mean, I think it's going to happen, but people were talking about Canada joining the EU and I thought, no, people serious if you are talking about that. Oh my God, Eurovision is like, have you lost your idea of the words? I know, it's a television, it's a TV broadcasting deal, right, but I thought, oh my God, if you ever wanted a demonstration of Europe as an idea, as a spirit, rather than a geographical location, the idea that Canada would join, because it was kind of relatively still liberal, democratic, you know, anti-authoritarian, you know, I mean, I'd love to know what John Manay would have thought if someone had just gone, how about Canada? It's absolutely fucking enormous and really far away, but how about that in the EU? It's a cool, come on, it's a cool, I mean, just like, it's sort of mind-boggling, yeah. We've obviously seen like a complete death of any kind of revision of the treaties, you can't have any of that shit, but you can't have referendums, because everyone's fucking terrified, basically, of having referendums, because they're going to vote the wrong way. And anyway, any kind of revision of the treaty requires unanimity, which is basically impossible. So populism has that thing that it does right, where it creates stasis and dysfunction, can't have change because you're scared of it. But then it presents itself as the solution to the stasis and the dysfunction. But what have we seen instead, it's not that it's just falling apart, it's that basically these highly informal, flexible responses have taken place. So hugely organic, you've had at least one, maybe two active vetoes, Hungary and Slovakia, especially on foreign policy issues, especially on taking on Putin, they're essentially operating as Russian sabotaged units, killing Ukrainian loans. Now, all that managed to do that for quite some time, it's community competence, it needs unanimity. But they did find ways of working around him, I mean, they used bilateral loans, where there wasn't any need for unanimity, they worked intergovernmental when they needed to, European Council conclusions started coming out regularly, taking place without the consent of all 27. Essentially, taking on this kind of coalition of the willing format, just working with the avenues that are available to you, given the situation, and that's all quite striking. And then you get to actually all ban being taken down on an explicitly pro-European mandate. And that provides you finally with this opportunity of maybe even, you don't need those flexible mechanisms now, we can just have a return to European unity and solidarity, particularly when it comes to Russia. And then you look at that Russian battle, right? Like, for ages, there's been this argument simmering in Europe throughout this story, throughout all three episodes, what about the European army? What about European defense? Yeah, yeah. You know, that was there right at the beginning of the idea, and it's constantly too much for people to accept. The person, the only leader who really had the confidence to speak about that was a manual Macron. And people didn't want to listen, because he's a pompous arse. And anything he says will kill any potential allies in the room around him. But he has been proven comprehensively and completely right by events. What is Greenland? What is Trump? What is Ukraine? These are all arguments for strategic autonomy, defensive strategic autonomy in Europe. So the big debate now is not, do we need to be strategically autonomous, is how aggressive does Europe have to be in the short term to get there? So that tragedy of America saying to Britain and France, why don't you pull your kind of nuclear defense? Yeah, because of mutual distrust, and then we don't want Germany involved. They would just like, no, no, no, it's fine. We'll just stay under your nuclear umbrella. That seems less wise now. The whole thing of the story of Europe for decades and decades was just like you can rely on America. Yes. And now look at what France is offering. In France is basically offering, we're going to take the whole of Europe under our nuclear umbrella. You know, that is an extraordinary offer, which has very few precedents in human history. And then you get what is the, what is the response? And of course, if you really want to talk about having a European foreign policy was still in that impossible space we're in when it was talked about in fact as era, you know, which countries don't want to give up that power. Vondalein was literally calling this week to give up the veto on foreign policy, I don't think she's going to get very far. So what has Europe done? Come back to its disingenuous approach, but highly effective approach, which is to essentially camouflage defense policy under a procurement initiative to take the single market and be like, you know what, we'll treat it as a defense industrial policy portfolio, we'll leverage the EU budget, we'll leverage a single market for arms purchases and we'll scale up purchases of drones of strategic and neighborhoods, etc. You're taking the thing that you're too scared to talk about, essentially seriously leveling up European defense and doing it through the thing that you're used to talking about, which is, oh, it's just procurement policy, it's just a single market. That's money. Yeah, 100%. This is the European, this at this point is the tradition, you know, but where does that get you? I mean, I honestly think that the leveling up of European defense, particularly in Germany but across the continent, is like going to be one of the most important developments in geopolitics for our generation because one is going to be five years, 10 years, 15 years, that there's going to come a point where Europe really will be able to behave with a level of confidence on the world stage, that it has never previously had on the basis of not having that defense capacity. When it happens, the Americans and the Chinese and the Russians are not going to like that very much and they're just going to be like, what the fuck is this? The Americans particularly being very used to leadership of the West, but that is the inevitable end result of the decisions that are currently being taken and being taken by the way, not just in terms of the end result, but in terms of the method that by European rule of not only are we going to level up, but we're not going to do it using American tech. We're going to do it using our own defense equipment. That is where that leads you when it starts to hint, you know, no guarantees on that, but it starts to hint at finally achieving that European army will more broadly the European defensive potential that was there at the very beginning of the project. The final thing I think there is to say about like the period that we're in is basically what countries like Ukraine and Georgia, or they people talk much less about the protest that go on almost every day in Georgia, have done for Europe's memory of itself. just like that flag, it's not a fucking logo when it's held up against the water cannon, you know? Like it's not a logo when it is the reason that people dig trenches and go to war to prevent Russian aggression. It becomes something else. It becomes a dream of Europe, like a dream of like the potential for cooperation between nations and rationality in the way that countries relate to one another. And the idea that you would sacrifice something of your individual self-interest for the good of the whole. And that is a powerful, beautiful dream that can kill war and to watch people get into the mud and the trenches and the streets over it against rubber bullets and water cannons and sniper rifles. It's something that finally I feel for the first time in a long time in a way that was inconceivable during the Eurozone crisis reminds Europe of what it is for and why it exists. - Yeah, and I mean, that's what I found so interesting is doing these episodes is that what we did, what we wanted to do was tell a story that was sort of more about ideas and emotions. And not like, you know, the sort of the textbook version of Europe, which is very much about it's sort of like, is it too bureaucratic? You know, is it democratic enough, et cetera, et cetera? It's very, very institutional. And I think one of the problems of Europe as a political project is that it often seems kind of boring. And a lot of what it achieves is taken for granted. The benefits are taken for granted. The cost to more obvious. It's all like, we're paying in this amount to your union. What are we getting back? And it's like loads of shit that you just take for granted. It's quite the fact that they've tried to put their kind of logos on it. You know, and now you're seeing the problem. And so I feel like whether it be Brexit, you know, whether it be Ukraine, whether it be America losing its mind, you are actually taken back to, you know, where it came from, which was the aftermath of the war. And it's just like, when you're really up against it, and you realize, oh, yeah, we really do need to celebrate these values. We really do need to bond together. So the great message that we have right now is do not take this thing for granted because whatever problems it may have, the alternative is worse. - Yeah. And maybe if you wanna see what that alternative looks like, look on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean and decide whether that looks something that you wanna participate in. - So wave that European flag, baby. We don't think you're cringe. - No, also the more that Dorian and I taught like this, the more we're gonna feel like we're 10 years younger than we are fighting to. - I know, we're back, back, back, back, baby. People's vote now. - Back and so, Radio, tiny, very hot rooms. - Really joint, really joint. Thank you for listening and supporting our work. - And I would like to say a very special thank you term, which taba ramen, he is the managering director of Europe and co-head of the London office, Eurasia Group and senior research fellow at LSE European Institute. He really taught me through like a lot of these issues and especially what's going on now and gave me a sense of like how things are in Europe. He's probably, I mean, he's the person that I turn to most when it comes to like, okay, so what, exactly the fuck is going on there? Pretty much as soon as something does go on there, he's the person I'm DMing, being like, "Mate, can we chat on the phone please?" He's very funny, he's very cogent, he has very, very good judgment. If you follow him on Blue Sky, you will have access to all of those things and I would strongly advise you to do so. All our sources are in the show notes. We're going to discuss some of them in book club for Patreon supporters. Yes, yes, Patreon supporters stay there 'cause the book club is incoming guys if you just cannot get enough of listening to our dose of tones, then you should become a Patreon as well, so that you can stick around also and listen to us talk about all the books on this subject, what you should read, what you shouldn't, and just generally how much we lost our fucking minds while doing so. Lots of benefits, you get episodes a week early, most of the time, exclusive Q&A episodes, merchandise, there's cup price priority tickets to their live shows, and you're just enabling us to do all of this work, and it really would be, it would be logistically impossible for us to do the volume of work that we do on these episodes without your support. So thank you, and if you're not one of those, please consider joining them. It's not quite, at the moment, it's more of a European coal and steel community, but we're hoping to move forward to ever closer union with the rest of our listeners. We're just like Monet, baby steps. See you next time for the strange journey of JK rolling. Bye guys. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) This episode is brought to you by TXU Energy. For the first time ever, Texans have an energy plan that combines free nights all year with daytime summer savings. It's called Free Nights in Cool Summer. 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