19 May 2013

Wolfgang Münchau: It doesn't make much sense but I'm a eurofanatic

When you reduce EU membership to economics alone, you invariably end up where the UK is today. If you form your opinion about the EU on the basis of an input-output analysis, you may well arrive at the conclusion that the benefits are not there. That is especially so if you are from a large country with a relatively small manufacturing base, a net contributor to the EU budget and not in the eurozone. It is no accident that we are having this debate in the UK, for example, and not in Belgium.

The pro-Europeans are paying the price for failing to point out the non-rational reasons for membership. If you just base it on rationality, you may find that people consider it rational to enter into an alliance when the benefits are clear and then leave it when they are not. Without any emotional glue, the EU is very hard to defend as an institutional framework designed to last forever.

I would be careful not to jump to the wrong conclusions from last week’s poll by Pew Research, which showed the EU’s approval rating to be even lower in France than in the UK. Do not think for a second that the French are about to leave the EU as well. Euroscepticism is clearly on the rise in France too but the support for the EU and its institutions runs emotionally much deeper. France was a founding member of the EU. Through the euro and passport-free travel, the EU has become part of everyday life. There is a clear and present danger that Europeans may turn away from Europe if the serial mismanagement of the eurozone crisis continues. But sentiment in the UK and on continental Europe are worlds apart.

If one must have a rational reason in favour of EU membership, it is probably best to stick to politics, not economics. EU Member States share common values and common interests that deserve global representation and enforcement. The best rational argument is thus the idea of the EU as a superpower – as opposed to a superstate.

There are clearly pan-European interests at stake in a world with many emerging industrial powers. The EU would be a far more stable and potent partner for the US and Russia than a panoply of midsized Member States. If you want to make a rational case for the EU, it is better to make it on the basis of political power, not economic efficiency.

But even for such an argument to work, you need to have some notion of “Europeanness” as part of your citizenship. I struggle to think how those who have avoided precisely this type of argument in the past will of all sudden be able to pull together an emotionally and rationally coherent argument ahead of an increasingly certain referendum.

© Financial Times