In an interview published by this newspaper, Claudi Pérez asked Jean-Claude Juncker’s key: “Why does the European Union only seem to move forward with crisis? Why that famous phrase of Monnet, ‘Europe will be forged in crises’, it seems like a curse?” Monnet is of course Jean Monnet, one of the founders of the current EU germ; As for Juncker, it is the president of the European Commission between 2014 and 2019: old policy fox, Juncker does not answer the question, or not openly. But I, I’m not a politician, risk an answer.
From the outset, let’s recognize that Monnet’s prediction was exact: again and again it has been fulfilled since the end of World War II; Also, as Pérez recalls, in recent years. The 2008 crisis, which was about to take the euro ahead, ended up causing the opposite: the consolidation of common currency through bailouts to countries with problems and the European stability mechanism, essential to guarantee the financial balance of the euro zone. For its part, the crisis of Coronavirus originated the federalization of European debt: what the economist Antón Costas called “the Hamiltonian moment”, by Alexander Hamilton, the politician who in 1790 advocated that the brand new US government assumed the debts contracted by the federal states to finance their rebellion against the British. These two advances towards European unit were for many, before they occurred, unacceptable, almost unthinkable; They only accepted them because there was no choice. Will the same time occur with the European defense, when the large -scale invasion of Ukraine and the threat of abandoning us soft by Donald Trump have revealed our own helplessness? I do not know, of course, but the numbers sing: the 30 European countries in NATO investigate 420,000 million euros in defense right now, while Russia invests 129,000. How is it possible that, spending almost four times more than Russia in defense, we are not able to deter it from attacking us and Russia’s neighboring Europeans are trembling at the possibility that the United States stops protecting us? The answer is obvious: because 30 small isolated armies, each with their own controls, objectives and organizations, are a thousand times less dissuasive than a large army composed of those 30 children, with a single command, the same organization and a common objective. That said, it is obvious that what Europe really needs is not to increase its defense expenditure – not even increase it “under the reserve that it takes a step forward in European integration,” as Jürgen Habermas has written; What he needs is an authentic defensive integration, that is, the creation of a common army, as they have been proposing European first row politicians, from Emmanuel Macron to Juncker himself. For the rest, it is also evident that what is worth the War of Putin tanks is valid for the Trump Tariff War: both leaders trusted us to divide us to overcome; But everything indicates that, as long as we do not divide, they will not beat … so, why does Europe suffer from Monnet’s curse? In addition to being the most revolutionary, urgent and ambitious political project of the 21st century, United Europe is an unusual project, among other reasons because it implies the union of states that have been making war a thousand years and that, consequently, and for the sake of the common good, they must give sovereignty; But, just as money always wants more money, power always wants more power: it is not in its nature to give sovereignty and only give it to when reality forces you to do it. Hence Monnet’s curse, so Europe progresses only crisis: because only crises convince the power not to give up sovereignty is suicide.
Does this mean that the unity of Europe is inevitable or that history, which consists of a succession of crisis, will make it inevitable? Not at all: after all, the self -destructive vocation of Europe is more than accredited.
