Some people in the UK look back at the precedent of , when Labour prime minister Harold Wilson re-negotiated the EU membership terms accepted a few years earlier by his conservative predecessor Edward Heath. On that basis, continued UK membership of the EU was approved in a referendum. Today they argue that as this tactic worked once it will work again. But this time it will be much more difficult; in the UK had to negotiate with just eight other fairly similar member states.
This time, once Croatia joins in mid, it will face 27 others, with the possibility of some sort of serious political accident much greater. The impression being given is that many in the UK are not thinking very deeply about these things, and that the EU is still regarded by many in the UK as a homogeneous foreign country, not a highly diverse Union.
With genuinely urgent things to do like safeguarding the very existence of the EU, other member states may prove disinclined to devote time to a case-by-case analysis of requests for repatriation of powers or of new UK opt outs. And the European Court of Justice would certainly have difficulty reconciling a special EU menu for one country with the basic freedoms for all on which the EU is based.
If, as seems likely the UK is still dissatisfied with the results of its renegotiation, the Westminster government will have little option but to recommend to the people in a referendum that the UK withdraws from the EU.
How, then, could the UK protect these interests if it is outside the EU? But the price for that would be having to implement all EU legislation that was relevant to the single market, and contribute to the EU budget, but without having any say in EU decisions.
The other possibility is to follow Switzerland and negotiate a series of bi-lateral trade deals with the EU. Switzerland has negotiated full access to the EU market for goods, but not for services.
If Britain were to negotiate a Customs Union with the EU, like Turkey, it would find its trade policies with the rest of the world still determined in Brussels, but with less input from London. Again, under a Customs Union it would only have a guarantee of access to the EU market for goods but not for services. Britain might, of course, simply leave the EU without negotiating any special deal. That would leave it paying tariffs on its exports to all EU member states.
In the case of Ireland, it would mean the re-introduction of customs posts along the border and would undermine years of peacemaking by successive Irish and UK Governments. There has never been passport control within the island of Ireland, but if as a non-EU country the UK wanted immigration controls against immigrants from any EU states it would have to introduce passport checks all along the Irish border, reminiscent of conditions during the worst of the Troubles.
The pressures causing fractures within the EU derive from a lack of understanding among the general public of the extent to which their livelihoods depend on economic developments in other countries. Political leaders make little effort to explain this because to do so would undermine the nationalist myths which brought most states into being in the first place.
And because it is often convenient to blame the EU for necessary but unpalatable decisions. No venue has been created in which an EU-wide public opinion might be formed, even though the EU needs more democratic cement to hold itself together. European Parliament elections are not truly European because they are 27 different elections with different electoral systems after campaigns in which national issues predominate.
The European Parliament has itself refused to contemplate the election of some members from EU-wide party lists, which might have begun a process of creating an EU-wide debate because it would have meant pan-European political campaigns. Under present procedures, both the President of the European Commission and the President of the European Council are selected in private meetings of heads of government. This lack of democratic legitimacy is increasingly problematic because the policy response to the euro crisis requires decisions on redistributing resources to be taken at EU level.
It is vital that the EU is made visibly more democratic and that Europeans come to feel they can have the same direct say in who governs the EU that they have in their own country. Some 10 years ago, as a member of the Convention that drafted what eventually became the Lisbon treaty, I suggested that the President of the European Commission should be chosen directly by the people of the EU in a multi-candidate election in which every EU citizen would vote, rather than be selected by 27 heads of government, meeting in private.
This proposal received almost no support although it has recently been adopted as policy by the ruling German centre-right CDU party and by the European People Party, the largest in the European Parliament.
If my proposal had been accepted when originally proposed, the EU would now be in a much stronger democratic position to devise a more coherent response to the euro crisis. A European Commission headed by a President with a full EU-wide democratic mandate would have more authority to propose solutions. And although the Council of 27 heads of government would still play a vital role, the EU would be less constrained by the electoral timetables of individual countries.
Another useful proposal is that European political parties should say in advance who their candidate would be for Commission president before the European elections.
A difficulty with this is that it would subordinate the Commission to shifting coalition politics within the European Parliament. The direct election of the Commission President by using a transferrable vote system of Proportional Representation would be a better way to involve people in the affairs of the EU. Others fear the people might choose an unsuitable or unrepresentative candidate, but that could be catered for by allowing candidate, but that could be catered for by allowing candidates to stand only if first been nominated by a minimum number of European MEPs and national MPs drawn from a sufficiently large number of EU countries.
Like markets, a Demos is a political construct that has to be created by a political act. Democracy is more than an added ingredient in the construction of European Unity. In the 21 st century it must become its motor. About us Organisation Departments Awards Sponsors.
Press releases. Facebook Twitter WhatsApp Viber. Greek government debt will have to be forgiven. The ESM has to be seen as big enough to stand on a contingency basis, behind Spain and other countries that may get into difficulty.
Press releases Deputy Prime Minister of Montenegro Dr. Researches Development of the Western World — from the 18th century till today. Your experience on this site will be improved by allowing cookies. Allow cookies. It does not point out how the whole dynamic would change if the UK succeeds in leaving the EU. It would set a terrible example to other countries, especially Eastern European members of the EU.
This would set off a snowball effect, with further countries wanting to leave the EU. This is something Tony Blair hiss! They want to set off a snowball effect, where further countries leave the EU. This is why Steve Bannon wants to set up an office in Brussels. This why the European Parliament elections next year are so scary, with right-wing parties on the move all over Europe.
Visegrad, Nordics, France-Germany-Benelux, for example. And that the external borders of these will be the lines on which the EU breaks apart into its constituent blocs.
Friederich is completely right in his comment. The sheer determination to pursue this aim is clearly evident: there is no room for compromise for the EU. Search for:. Roch Dunin-Wasowicz July 26th, What happens if the European Union falls apart 3 comments 1 shares Estimated reading time: 5 minutes. Share this: Click to share on WhatsApp Opens in new window.
About the author Roch Dunin-Wasowicz. Posted In: European politics Featured. This seems a rather optimistic take on the current state of the European Union. Related Posts European politics. There are few good solutions from a divided Cyprus for Northern Ireland November 16th, 1.
Gearty: What does Brexit mean for Citizenship Rights? December 21st, 2. Greece remains important for another reason, though. It is the main gate through which fleeing Syrians, Iraqis, and others try to enter Europe. Greece is ground zero for the two greatest challenges to afflict Europe in recent years: the debt crisis and Germany's insistence on austerity as the only cure, and the backlash against the wave of human migration from war-torn and impoverished countries.
The migrant crisis is already a humanitarian disaster, and the situation is getting worse. The European Union, however, is all but paralyzed. The Paris terrorist attacks in November resulted in the reimposition of border controls through most of the previously open "Schengen" area. The attacks also convinced many Europeans that migrating Muslims are a security threat.
An initial welcome turned into fear. One of the key leaders in Europe, Angelina Merkel of Germany, finds herself under intense political pressure because of an anti-immigrant backlash from voters. Desperate for any solution, the EU is seriously entertaining a deal to accept Turkey as a member in exchange for Turkey's holding most of the migrants within its borders.
Giving Turkey a path to EU membership is problematic to Cyprus, which is a tiny island but an equally powerful EU member state, with technically the same vote and potential veto that Germany and France have. Cyprus can veto the refugee deal that the rest of Europe so desperately needs to make with Turkey. Cyprus has an EU-backed veto on starting accession negotiations over numerous new policy areas, because Turkey doesn't recognize its passports or allow ships and airplanes from Cyprus into its ports and airports.
Cyprus has legitimate concerns here, but the EU solution is to simply ignore those concerns and plow ahead on other fronts. That approach will probably work too, but each such episode pulls a few more bricks out of the EU superstructure.
Bullying your smaller members is not consistent with the idea of an "ever-closer" union. And of course, another looming danger is that the United Kingdom will hold a referendum this summer that may well lead it out of the EU. A member leaving the EU would set a dangerous precedent. For years following, there would be major consequences for world trade and currency flows. There are two possible outcomes to a European financial crisis stemming from massive sovereign debts and unbalanced budgets.
The first is that an entirely new economic structure might evolve in the European Union. If the EU is to stay together, it will have to resolve the sovereign-debt issues.
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