by Giles Merritt
‘Euro-gloom’ is pervasive. It’s encouraging that business and political decision-makers are squarely confronting Europe’s common problems, but the unintended consequence is that they’re also talking the EU down.
Mood and morale can play as great a part in shaping politics as hard facts, so Brussels’ drive to genuinely complete the single market and catch up with the digital revolution needs to be matched by an upbeat approach.
Europe has been going through tough times, but that doesn’t mean Europeans must resign themselves to a diminished global role. On the contrary, Donald Trump’s destruction of the US’s reputation and status is creating the conditions for a bold new EU strategy.
The European Union now has an opportunity to build on its credibility as a longstanding setter of international rules and standards and take the lead in shaping the ‘new world order’ that many countries are crying out for.
China has for some time called for an overhaul of the institutions and agreements that stem from the Bretton Woods conference at the end of world war 2. Beijing and a host of developing countries – many of them tomorrow’s population giants – complain that the IMF, World Bank, WTO, along with the UN and its agencies, serve the interests of the West.
These doubts are compounded by Trump’s betrayal of longstanding US commitments. Trust is evaporating not just in America’s security guarantees but in the dollar as the linchpin of international finance.
Nobody can say when these fears and resentments might harden into a framework for negotiating global change. Today’s maelstrom of conflicts and economic frictions, largely triggered by Trump, must be calmed before cooler heads prevail. That is the moment the EU must prepare for.
Before laying out suggestions and its own thinking on a more equitable international framework, Europe should present a stronger image of its achievements and resilience.
If it is to push an array of very different rich and poor nations towards a global new deal, the EU must burnish its reputation and regain the lustre it enjoyed in the last quarter of the 20th century. Its feat of knitting former enemies into a progressive force was once widely admired.
Brussels has never mastered its image challenges. The Commission has always had a ‘good news’ approach to media relations, putting a positive gloss on detailed dossiers. Yet it is the wider sweep of the EU’s problems that would demonstrate its raison d’être and rebut the ‘unelected bureaucracy’ slur.
To present an overall picture of its accomplishments the EU needs an information strategy that reassures Europeans that their stubbornly structural problems are being addressed. Equally important, world opinion must be convinced that the EU is still a force to be reckoned with.
More capable communicators than the eurocrats could make much of the list of Europe’s plus points. Inward investment is surging; stock markets and equities are outperforming others elsewhere; breakthroughs in pure science promise to upend technology shortcomings; the euro’s safe haven status is growing; and Europe’s humanitarian and development aid pre-eminence is unchallenged.
So what’s to be done? The European Commission is grappling with a host of pressing issues, and cannot easily divert manpower and resources. It could, however, create two task forces – one focussed on more imaginative messaging, the other to launch a discreet worldwide consultation on ideas for reforming the chief international institutions.
No one should look for immediate results: there isn’t a magic wand for such long-term aims. But Brussels clearly needs to widen its focus in these two areas. On the image question, the Commission has never understood that domestic media commentators shape opinion, not the EU-accredited press corps. Or that regional and local news organisations have unrivalled credibility, yet Brussels shamefully ignores them.
As to shaping new global frameworks, the EU’s approach should be to listen rather than lecture. Demographic upheavals are re-landscaping geopolitics, and Europe’s role could be to assemble a mosaic of the needs and ambitions of nations around the world. Its most persuasive asset in this diplomatic initiative is international trust in Europe’s rule of law.
*Published first on Friends of Europe
By: N. Peter Kramer
