The centuries-old factors that make Germany German and Italy Italian haven’t gone away. If anything they’ve strengthened. He notes Poland, Hungary, and Italy as finding the EU “yoke” particularly uncomfortable today.
They begin to go their own way, with EU officials hurling threats and condemnation over frustration that the EU bureaucracy is not only no longer authoritative but also no longer frightening. The British economy grew in January, an indication that the catastrophe Brussels had wished for the U.K. may not visit London, or Italy, if it should decide to go its own way with its currency. And certainly, neither Poland nor Hungary, having survived Stalin and Hitler, is likely to be cowed into submission by increasingly small EU subsidies. The weakening of the EU has undercut its ability to pay for conformity.All of which begs the question underlying the EU’s foundation. If a European identity cannot be forged via the EU, will Europeans once again war on each other as they did twice in the 20th century? It has been 170 years since the nations of North America warred on each other.
Europe once had a magnificent idea, a free trade zone called the European Economic Community whose main focus was trade, not inventing identities. It was replaced by the European Union, but the EU can now look to another example, the North American trade zone, which has a slightly larger gross domestic product than the EU. The two are fundamentally different; the North American bloc does not claim to represent a North American identity, its members sometimes dislike each other intensely, and it does not have a secretariat to dictate how they should live.
