Economist: The burden of history in the new EU
Javier Solana, the European Union's top foreign-policy honcho, recently offered a neat turn of phrase to explain the importance that Europeans attach to the past. Ponder the phrase “that's history”, and what it implies on either side of the Atlantic, he suggested. When Americans say something is “history”, they mean it is no longer relevant. When Europeans say the same thing, “they usually mean the opposite”.
Is this mere wordplay? If only. History lies at the heart of many disputes that are causing such angst in today's EU. Thorny topics include Russia's bullying of small Baltic states, fierce rows in such countries as Poland and Romania over how far to probe communist-era collaboration, not to mention the stand-off between Greeks and Turks in Cyprus. Some of these historical quarrels are unfamiliar to western Europeans, and they are often highly inconvenient to boot. Small wonder that a few longer-established union members are handling the arrival of their newer colleagues rather badly.
The EU used to know where it stood on history—it was best kept simple, and in the past. In the early decades, history was about one big thing: the second world war, and the grand project of Franco-German reconciliation. From the outset, the EU was partly meant to make war unthinkable inside Europe. But over the years that miracle of continental forgiveness has ossified into something more inflexible, even smug. Just as pioneering Eurocrats toiled to create single European markets in widgets or wheat, their political masters crafted something approaching an approved single European history (challenged only in awkward-squad Britain, where the war was a matter of national pride). This history portrayed a smooth moral progression from nationalism and conflict (bad) to the sunny uplands of compromise, dialogue and border-free brotherhood (good).
Enlargement is now challenging all this—especially the recent expansion to 27 countries, including ten former communist ones. The clumsy reactions of old EU members are partly to do with ignorance. Enlargement has introduced lots of alien grievances, sending old Brussels hands scurrying to their encyclopedias to mug up on the 1920 Treaty of Trianon (hated in Hungary) and Carinthian plebiscite (it makes Slovenes fume). But less forgivably, some of the insensitivity of older club members carries a whiff of moral superiority, a sense that it is un-European (not to mention uncouth) to bear historical grudges....
Read entire article at Economist
Is this mere wordplay? If only. History lies at the heart of many disputes that are causing such angst in today's EU. Thorny topics include Russia's bullying of small Baltic states, fierce rows in such countries as Poland and Romania over how far to probe communist-era collaboration, not to mention the stand-off between Greeks and Turks in Cyprus. Some of these historical quarrels are unfamiliar to western Europeans, and they are often highly inconvenient to boot. Small wonder that a few longer-established union members are handling the arrival of their newer colleagues rather badly.
The EU used to know where it stood on history—it was best kept simple, and in the past. In the early decades, history was about one big thing: the second world war, and the grand project of Franco-German reconciliation. From the outset, the EU was partly meant to make war unthinkable inside Europe. But over the years that miracle of continental forgiveness has ossified into something more inflexible, even smug. Just as pioneering Eurocrats toiled to create single European markets in widgets or wheat, their political masters crafted something approaching an approved single European history (challenged only in awkward-squad Britain, where the war was a matter of national pride). This history portrayed a smooth moral progression from nationalism and conflict (bad) to the sunny uplands of compromise, dialogue and border-free brotherhood (good).
Enlargement is now challenging all this—especially the recent expansion to 27 countries, including ten former communist ones. The clumsy reactions of old EU members are partly to do with ignorance. Enlargement has introduced lots of alien grievances, sending old Brussels hands scurrying to their encyclopedias to mug up on the 1920 Treaty of Trianon (hated in Hungary) and Carinthian plebiscite (it makes Slovenes fume). But less forgivably, some of the insensitivity of older club members carries a whiff of moral superiority, a sense that it is un-European (not to mention uncouth) to bear historical grudges....