Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

The future of the EU itself is in peril

The British vote gives all those with misgivings about the power of Brussels the possibility of a way out: either to bargain for new terms or to leave altogether

IMAGE Marine Le Pen Is France next? The Front National leader Marine Le Pen hails Britain’s vote. Photograph: Jacky Naegelen/Reuters

Speaking in Kiev last September, the Swedish elder statesman Carl Bildt surprised an audience preoccupied with Russia by saying that the biggest threat to Europe came not from Russia and not from the then arch-bogeyman, Islamic State. It came, he said, from a UK vote to leave the European Union.

Asked to elaborate, he referred to the uncertainties raised by the referendum itself and to the multiple centrifugal effects of a Brexit vote: from the possible break-up of the UK to the disintegration of the EU. These wider repercussions hardly featured in the UK campaign, which was almost entirely inward-looking. With a UK departure now in sight, however, the trepidation elsewhere in the EU cannot be ignored. The future of the EU itself is in peril.

Whether or not the next UK government honours the referendum result – which is not 100% inevitable – the clear victory for leave has already given succour to Eurosceptic leaders elsewhere. Confirmation of the result was followed almost immediately by calls from Marine Le Pen and Geert Wilders for votes in France and the Netherlands.

With Le Pen riding high in the opinion polls and a presidential election due in France next year, such an eventuality cannot be excluded. Pre-election periods are generally volatile; Le Pen’s arguments will have been given a boost by the vote across the Channel, increasing the pressure she can exert against the weak presidency of François Hollande. When Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, reached the runoff against Jacques Chirac in 2002, France was shocked into propelling Chirac back into the presidency by a landslide. With a new mood in France and the legitimacy bestowed on Euroscepticism by the UK referendum, there is no guarantee that the lure of the Front National would be resisted again.

The times appear to be generally more clement for insurgencies almost everywhere in the industrialised world, with Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders demonstrating the appeal of politicians who take on the establishment across the Atlantic. In Europe, however, such insurgencies represent a potential threat not just to the national establishment, but to the EU, and this is also where some of their attraction to voters lies.

Greek newspaper with the headline ‘Brexit scares Europe’

A Greek daily newspaper splashes with the headline ‘Brexit scares Europe’. Photograph: Milos Bicanski/Getty Images

Italy has just elected insurgent mayors in Rome and Turin from the Five Star Movement. Greece has been a hotbed of resistance to the EU as a result of its economic troubles. The mix of high immigration and poor economic performance has been toxic. But even Germany, with its successful economy, has not been spared the rise of a Eurosceptic and xenophobic party in the shape of Alternative für Deutschland.

What’s more, the countries of “new” Europe, once so enthusiastic about accession to the EU – which they saw as validation of their freedom from communism – have cooled to the idea, as they struggle with slowing economies and fear compromising their newly restored national identity if required to accept non-European refugees.

It sets a precedent that will erode individual members’ commitment and so destabilise the whole enterprise

The British vote gives all those with misgivings about what they see as the overbearing power of Brussels the possibility of a way out: either to bargain for new terms or to leave altogether. It sets a precedent that will at the very least erode individual members’ commitment and so destabilise the whole enterprise. Even if actual disintegration is avoided, the consequence is bound to be a period of distraction as the terms of the UK’s departure are negotiated. One of the EU’s biggest and richest members is now preparing to depart.

It is possible to envisage an opposite effect. One response to the UK’s rejection of the EU could be for the countries of “old” Europe to renew their vows and coalesce around a closer political union – the sort of union that was anathema to many Britons. There would be a fresh coherence in a union with no à la carte options, a union where all members use the euro, sign up to the Schengen agreement on open borders, contribute to a common border force, and even form a joint military – the “European army” so pilloried in the last weeks of the UK referendum campaign.

The spread of Euroscepticism, however, even in the EU heartland, and the resistance of so many voters to a movement of people that will be hard to stem, make a more tightly bound European Union less likely than something looser and more differentiated. The paradox is that this is just the sort of union where – at another time, in another mood – the UK could have been content to remain.

Why the Dutch won’t rush to Nexit and follow Britain out of the EU ... Joris Luyendijk