My dear nephew and nieces,
There you are in Ireland, a living example of the so-called Anglo-Saxon model, in the fastest growing economy of the European Union and here I am with my Swedish family seeing before my eyes, both here and across the bridge in Denmark, the strength of a more socialist model of development that combines rather good economic growth with all the benefits of a super-welfare state, including public hospitals that look to my British eyes like first class hotels.
Why the citizens of France, Holland and Germany are flagellating themselves to political death is beyond me. With just a bit more rigor and discipline they could continue with their rather successful social models. The French health service is even better than the Scandinavian and Germany out-exports with high technology every other European country. If they had not made the mistake – and is it really a mistake to prefer more leisure to more income? – of deciding to work so few hours each month and introducing their ridiculously early retirement ages and rigid labor practices, they would have no trouble in being successful Scandinavians. There is nothing wrong in France with its productivity per hour and globalization doesn’t seem to bother Renault and Peugeot, Carrefour in retailing, not to speak of Airbus. Same goes for Germany and Holland.
What you have to learn from this is how the media and the political class can run with their momentary moods with barely a nod at the facts. Of course, living in Ireland and one of you married to an Ulsterman, you have witnessed close up the destructive narcissism of small differences.
In the EU the loss of confidence at the center has been aggravated by the constant sniping of the British and the Americans and, in Holland, an unfortunate run of political murders. But here in Sweden where Anna Lind, the marvelous foreign minister was murdered whilst shopping last year and 19 years ago the prime minister, Olof Palme, was murdered whilst walking home, people do not get as emotionally wrought as the Dutch have done. Do we have to lose our reason just because, as in the Dutch case, Muslim immigration is a factor?
Let us Europeans not go bananas about ‘Islam on the warpath’. There is no crusade to be fought. We just have to knuckle down to getting unemployment down and easing off on too rapid immigration whilst we repair some of the damage caused by an earlier too laissez faire approach.
But the main point I want to make is never forget for a moment how Europe was before the European Union came into being.
In the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the first period of rapid globalization, many thought the industrialized world had finally found a way to peace and prosperity. The statesman of Europe solved disputes with rounds of conferencing. They even got a world agreement on banning poison gas and limiting the size of battleships.
The First World War shattered it. It happened because too many statesman had a too naïve faith in the verities of the balance of power.
This first international war of the industrial age wrecked economic havoc across the world. The war tore up channels of trade and communication. After an initial bounce at war’s end the European and American economies hit bad times. Then came the Great Depression and the easy rise of Hitler in a country that was continuingly been bled by the sanctions so counterproductively imposed by the allies.
Thus, even though most of Europe hated the idea of war almost as much as they do today, war, even worse than before, was the outcome.
Briefly put, it was the evolving European Union with the aid of the Marshall plan that repaired that damage. Without this pulling together Europe would probably have tripped over another big stone in the road.
Peace and prosperity can’t be taken for granted as those in 1913 tended to think. It can slip through our fingers again ever so fast. We have to keep the Union growing strong. Already it is the major non-violent force for peace and reasonableness in the world, as can be seen with the way that the Balkan states, the Ukraine and Turkey are all improving their act in order to qualify for help, and later membership.
By the way, that constitution should never have been called a constitution – a too grand title for a readable rules’ manual. What we simply need is a positive, active and pragmatic attitude to making the EU work. Tell your friends in Germany, Holland and France to seize the big picture, and keep on setting that good Irish example yourselves.
