ALSO BY T O N Y I U D T The Politics of Retribution in Europe (with Jan Gross and Istvin Deik) The Burden of Responsibility: Blum,

Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century Language, Nation and State: Identity Politics in a Multilingual Age (edited with Denis Lacome) With Us or Against Us: Studies in Global Anti-Americanism (edited with Denis Lacorne) A Grand Illusion? An Essay on Europe Past Imperfect: French Intellectuals, 1944-1956 Marxism and the French Left: Studies on Labour and Politics in France (183G1982) Resistance and Revolution in Mediterranean Europe 1939-1948 (edited by Tony Judt) Socialism in Provence 1871-1914: A Study in the Origins of the Modem French Left La reconstruction du Parti Sociahste 1921-1926

POSTWAR
A History of Europe Since 1945

TONY JUDT

PIMLICO

Lo?-

POSTWAR:

HlSToRY

OP EUROPE SINCE

1945

~ ~~ ~ l the tl l ,hero ~ of unification, ~ t whose reputation was cagt'1~~~~ii.t 1 doud when he refused to divulge the names of secret donors to his party'$ hlllds, ~~d he not been protected by his office, French President Jacques Chirac-lll~!t!1 of paris during a time when the city was awash in party-political graft and f ~ i \ ~ ~ u ; . peddling-would surely have joined their ranks. what is perhaps most striking about these developments discredit they seem to have brought upon the political system as a whole. '1.1 dine in turnout at elections certainly bespeak a general loss of inteiest in ill affairs;but this could already he detected decades earlier in risingabstenliall and the diminished intensity of political argument. The real surpriseis no ofa new cohort of right-wing populist parties but their consistent failure t better than they have, to capitalize on the disruption and dis There was a reason for this. Europeans may have lost faith in hut at the core of theEuropeansystem of government there the most radical anti-system parties have not dared to ana continues to attract near-universal allegiance. That someth ~ u r ~ ~union, e a n for all its manifold merits. It is not democr nebulous and perhaps too often invoked to stand in isolation as an object miration. Nor is it freedom or the rule of law-not seriously threatened West for many decades and already taken for granted by a younger gencv.iti Europeans in all the member states of the EU. What binds ~uropeans togetli when they are deeply critical of some aspect or other of its practical war what it has hecome conventional to call-in disjunctivebut revealing contr,i. : 'the American way of life'-the 'European model of society'.

XXIII
:,

The Varieties of Europe

'We'werewise indeed, could we discern truly the signs of our own time; ;','ldby knowledge of its wants and advantages, wisely adjust our own t us, instead of gazing wildly into the obscure distance, und US, for a little, on the perplexed scene where we stan& Thomas Carlyle e Creator of Europe made her small and even split her up into little t i n size hut in plurality',

In Europe we were Asiatics, whereas in Asia we, too, are E Fyodor Dostowsky

Communism fell and the Soviet Union imploded, they took ~ i t them h not ideological system but the political and geographical coordinates of an ontinent. For fortyfive years-beyond the living memory of most ?sans-the uneasy outcome of World War ?k.o had been frozen in place. The ion of Europe, with all that it entailed, hadcome to seeminevitable. no* it had been utterly swept away. In retrospect the post-war decades took dically altered significance. Once understood as the onset of a new era of nent ideological polarization they now appeared for what they were: an exgun in 1914,a forty-year inthe final resolution of the ~u:ilt~ished business left behind by his war. W ' ith the disappearance of the world of 1945-1989, its illusions came into betlir!ocus.The much-heralded'economic mirade'of post-war Western Europe had :i::iroedtheregion to the standing in world trade and output that it had lost in I:; ;o11rse of the years 1914-45, with rates of economic growth subsequently setthe late nineteenth centuv. 1:s :rasnosmaU achievement, but it was not quite the breakthrough into infinitely ::itmental prosperity that contemporaries had once fondly supposed. hii~reover, the recovery had been achieved not in spite of the Cold War but be:,~icotit. Like the Ottoman threat in an earlier time, the shadow of the Soviet em!~~csl~rank Europe but imposed upon the surviving rump the benefits of unity.In
I

748

749
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HISTORY O F BUROPE SINCE

1945

, '

THE VARIETIES

OP E U R O P ~

gation of their own identity. w h o are Europeans? What does it meant what is Europeand what kind of a place do Europeans wanti

There is little to he gained by seeking to distill the essence of 'Europe: Europe,-iuelf a much debated topic-has a long history, some'of But although a certain 'idea' of ~urop-reiterated in assorted and treaties-informs the unionto which most Europeans now be1 only a very partial insight into the life they lead there. In an age of transition and resettlement, today$ Europeans are more numerous neous than ever before. hy account of their common condition at ti cwenty.first century must begin by acknowledging that variety, averlapping contours and fault-lines of European identity and ',,lapping' is used advisedly. Europe, after all, is a h . ,e tien have always heen more than a little fluid. The andent bo and Byzantium, of the ~~l~ Roman Empire and Christian closely enough with later political divisions to suggest some uneasy encounter-points of Germanic and SlavEurope we century writer like ).dam of Brcmen 3s they are to us: ~ d Christianity, ~ from d Poland ~to Se ~ catholic them today; and the cone'ept of a Europe divided betwe would have been familiar to the nioth.centory admini
& , p i 1 e , had they thought in such terms. B~~whether those long-established boundary lines abouts of Europe always depended upon where You h case: by the eighteenth century most Hu bee,, catholic for centuries and many of them were lightened . ~ . ~ ~ t ~ i ~ nevertlieless ~ ~ , ' ~ sbegan i ~ ' at the ing east o,lt o f ~ i e n n awhen , ~ o z a rheaded t west in 1787, he described himself as crossing an orien E ~were always ~ walls ~ in ~ the mind ~ at least , a B~~~~~~much of Europe until recent times stead accommodated within empires, it helps the continent not a frontiers but as indeterm limes,,,,ilitargren~ krajina: zones of imperial topographica~y precise but delimiting an i regions From the Balticto the Balkans, understood themselves as tile outer guard sitive point where the familiar world ends ~~t these borderlands are fluid and h stance: their geographical implications c ukainians have all presented themselve

theedges of'Europel (or christianity)>B~~ as a briefglanceat a map sngirdaims are mutually exclusive: they can,t all be right. The same is true ting Hungarian and Romanian narratives, or the insistence ofbotll Croats that it is their southern border (with serbs and ~~~k~respectively) tllat S thevital outer defensive line of civilized E ~ ~ ~ ~ lis confusion shows is that the outer boundaries of Europe have for tensufficientlysignificant for interested parties to press with urgency eting claims to membership, ~~i~~'in' E~~~~~ offered a degree of seurance--or at least a promis-f refuge and indusion. Over the tene increasingly to serve as a source of collective identity, Being a an exemplar and guardian of the core Mluesof European civilization, fvulnerability but also pride: is why the sense of having been forgotten by 'Europe2 made soviet domination so particularly huany central and eastern E~~~~~~~ intellectuals, , is not so much about geography-where a country or are-as relativegeography: where they sit in relation to athen, twentieth century, writers and politicians in places like Moldova, enia asserted their ' E ~ not on ~ historical ~ or ~ gee- ~ (which might or might not be plausible) but precisely as a dery and geography alike. ~ ~released from ~ Muscovite ~ imperial orphan states looked now to another 'imperial' cap': ':vlla~these~eri~heral nations hoped to gain Gom the distant prospect of in-

~
~

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urope wasless impoItant than what they stood to lose by being plications of exclusion were already dear to even the ly years of the newcenturl.~hateverwas oncecosmopolitan ies like C e r n o v i ~ in ukraine or chisinau in Moldova had out of them by ~~~i and soviet ,.,,lei and surrounding ow 'a pre-modern world of dirt roads and horse-drarm and felt boots, of vast silences and velvet-black nights:l pe'was not about a common past, now and truly derting a claim, however flimsy and forlorn, upon a comut of Europe was not confined to the ctiveof Romanian.speaking~oldwans, outer their

K ~ ~ ~ ~ byNATo&o Serbianopprcssion,they aqirc ~ nationalirlicambilion than as a against therisk of ieR

roug

hirmvofLikrainE~looo, P. 20. Hence the placeof 'EU. c~krabian revolution ofDeccmbcr200q,

e o s r w ~ a : A HlsToav

OP EUROPE SINCE

1945

T H B VARIETIES OP EUROPB

to the West in ~~~~~i~ proper were blessed by history. Unlike ~ o l d o ~ wea ~ l ~lal![l,Nomay ~ ~ and Sweden; the three Baltic countries of the former ussR: Estonia, h:i;l,Lithuania; Germany, Poland, Russia (and from 1995, doing ,,iolence to geas legitimate if under-performing contenders for EU memllrrri' seen by Wk'll~ but at Scandinavian insistence, Iceland), b hi^ symbolic reassertion of ano f a properly European future. B U seen ~ from Buchalcil! and were thus changes: it is ~~~~~i~ itself that is at risk of being left out. In IgR9, ii.t: ;icl~l trading affinities was much appreciated by one.time H~~~~~~~~ cities like Nicolae ceauSescu*, colleagues finally began to turn on him, t h e ~ w r o t e a ' ~ ~ ~ ~ 2f,111!1itrgOr Labeck-and even more welcome to the city managers of Tallinn cusing the ~ ~of trying to ~ tear theirdnation away ~ from its European ~ rl' ~ t ~ to position ~ themselves at the centre of a re.invented $08 i;ciansk, eager (and cRomaniaisand remains a European cou~try.. . .You have begun to change'llr ";~'1~'~1!-accented) Baltic community and take their distance from their continenl~i~il~terland and recent past. ography ofthe rural areas,but you cannot move Romania intoAfIica.'In'tllri year the elderly ~~~~~i~~ playwright Eugene Ionesco described thecountr!c' iilll in other regions of some of the participating countries, notably Germany birth assabout to leave Europe for good, which means leavinghisto$Norx;!r in:! I'oInnd, the Baltic means little. onthe contrary: in recent years the prospect a new concern: in 1972 E. M. Cioran, looking back at his wuntv's e n 1 hls ?i!ari.ign,earnings from tourism induced c r a u w , for example, to emphasize its echoed a widespread Romanian insecurity:'What depressed me most wasa !o!l:'lern orientation and market its erstwhile incamation as the capitalof heottoman ~ ~ Looking ~ at it, I iunderstood ~ our ~past and . ewrythingcii :'!r!:'Galicia! Munich and Vienna, though competing for cmss.border industrial l;lv:stl!!cnt$ have rediscovered nonetheless a ~ ~ ~ Bulgarians, ~ ~ Serbs i ~ and others ~ with ~ good l reason i to k beiie ~ c ~ l ~ heritage i ~ ~ facilitated ' 'core' E~~~~~ sees them as outsiders (when it sees them at all)-alternateh h i lilt virtual disappearance of the boundary separating southern Bavaria from asserting their ur-~uropean characteristics (in literature, arch1 topography, etc) or else acknowledging the hopelessness of their cause an Re~iofial cultural distinctions, then, clearly nlatter-though disparWest, I,, the aftermath o f ~ m m u n i s mboth , responses were in evidence: i!isniatter8kven more. Austria and ~~~~~i~ share more than just south-German former ~~~~~i~~ prime ~ i n i s f e rAdrien , Nastase, was describing for re @thoIic/sm and Alpine scenery: in the course of recent decades both have been Monde in ~~l~ zool the'added value' that Romania brings to Europe,hiS Irallsformed into high-wage service economies dependent on technology over half the total number of aliens apprehended lahout, Outstripping in productivity and prosperity the older industrial regions manians gally crossing the polish-~erman border. 1n a poll taken early in then lrther north. Like Catalonia, ltaly's ~ ~ and ~ ~ ~ i b l i France,s ~ ~ . ~ Idnc-Alpes region and the I l e d e ~ southern ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ G~~~~~~ , and Austriaof~ulgarians (and an ovemrhelming majority of those u 52 emigrate from Bulgaria-preferab :efbrr with Switzerland, Luxembourg and parts that, given the chance, they ~~l~~~~ F~anders-constitute rlllllnn mne of European economic privilege, This sense of being on the periphery of someone else's centre, Of second.dass E ~is today largely ~ confined ~ to ~ former Commu ~ ~ ~ .'ltllnughabsolutelwe~s , of poverty and economic disadvantage were still higllof them in the zone of small nations that TomaS Masat 111 rile former Eastern bloc, the sharpest contrasts were now nearly countries ':r Illan between them. Sicily and the ~ ~ like southern~Spain,were as ~ ing into being, from iqorth Cape to Cape Matapan in the Pelopo not always so. within recent memory the continent's other mar r!!llld t h e b o ~ r n i n ~ n o r as t hthey had bee,, for manydecades: by the late 1990s as perip~,eral-economica~y, linguistically, culturall~. The poet 11'Iu.rment in southern Italy was running at three times thelevel of Floscribed his childhood move from the Orkneys to Glasgow in 190 'while the gap in per capita GDP between north and south was actually i than.it had been in the 1950s, in a two days' journey2;it is a sentiment th and fiftyyears been out ofplace h d f a century later. Well into the 1980s 1 'I!? m,too, the gap between the wealthy regions ofthe south-east and the at E~~~~~~~ edges--~icily, Ireland, northern Scotland, Laplan industrial districts farther north had grown in recent years. London, to be with one another, alld their own past, than with the boomed. Despite keeping its distance from the euro zone, the British r'?i!,'iwasnow the unchallenged financial center ofthe continent and had taken tan regions of the centre. E~~~ now-indeed above all now-fault lines and liny, high-tech energy that made other E~~~~~~~ cities seem dowdy and upon to follow national frontiers. The Council of ,~ged. Crowded with young professionals and much more open to the ebb in point. pstablisl,ed in 1992, it comprises Scandinavianpar w 0f~cosmopolitancultures and languages than other E~~~~~~ capitals, a t 'he end of the twentieth century appeared to have recovered its Swing~ s S h e e n ~ ~ ~ ~ r t u n embodied i s t i c a ~in y the ~ l ~ re.branding " i ~ ~of ~ their

'

d ~

~ ~

p o s T w A ~A :

HISTORY OF EUROPE SINCE

I945

THE VARIETIES O F BUROPE

thin. ~n the inflated housing market of But the gloss was overcrowded metropolis, the bus drivers, nurses, cleaners, schoolteachen:po' men and waiters who serviced the cosmopolitan new Britons could no 10?6e ford to live near them and were constrained to find housing farther and f a to work as best they could along the most crowded roads away, expensive and dilapidated rail network Beyb rope, or else on the extending its tentacular reach outer limits of G~~~~~~ ~ ~ ~ d ~ ~ deep ,i rural south-east, there was emerging a regional contrast unprecedentedi English history. At the end of the twentieth century, of England's ten administrative only three ( b n d o n , the south East, and East Anglia) reached or exceede tional average wealth per capita. All the rest of the countri was Poorer, very much poorer indeed. The North East of England, once the heart1 shipping industries, had a gross domestic produ country.s mining just 60 percent that of ~ ~After Greece, ~ Portugal, d ~ rural Spain, ~ so . aid the former communist Lander of Germany, the UK in 2000 w beneficiary of E~~~~~~~union structural funds-which is a way parts o f ~ r i t a i n were among the most deprived regions of the EU. employment figures, a much-advertised source by the disproportio Thatcherites and ~ l ~ i ~ iwere t ~skewed ~ thriving capital city: unemployment in the North of England remai to the levelsin continental Europe regional disparities of wealth and poverty in Bri acerbated by ill.conceived public policies; but they were also a quence of the end Of the industrial era. In that sense they were, s In however, disparities were a direct if quence o f a political decision. The absorption of the eastern Germany had cost the ~ ~Republic d more ~ than ~one tho ~ l transfers and subsidiesbetween1991 and 2004. But far from the eastern region of ~~~~~~y by the late Nineties had ac ther behind. Private G~~~~~ firms had 00 incentive to locate in ~ ~ ~ they could ~ find ~ better workers ~ for b 1 ~ ~ superior transportation infrastructure and local services Ageing populations, poor education, low purchasing p workers and an entrenched hostility t ture of those left behind meant that eastern Germany was di side beston who nowhad many other options. In 20 m e r ~ e s G~~~~~~ t was 8.5 percent; in the east it exce year the neo.~aziNational Democratic Party returned twelve deputies to the parliament of Saxony.

me

The gulf of mutual resentment separating Wessies from ~~~i~~ in G~~~~~~ was just about jobs and joblessness or wealth and poverty, though fIom the east. Perspective this was its most obvious and painful symptom. G ~like ~ "cryone else in the new Europe, were increasingly divided by a novel set of dis. llllctions that cut athwart conventional geographical or economic divides. To one Stood a sophisticated elite of Europeans: men and young, 1 5 ' i d e l traveled ~ and well-educated, who might have studied two or even three iliiicrcnt universities across the continent. ~ hqualifications ~ i ~and professionsalthem to find work anywhere across the ~ u r union: o ~ from ~copenhagen ~ ~ in 'lab1in, from Barcelona to Frankfurt. High incomes, low airfares, open frontiers rll(lrnintegrated rail network (see below) favoured easyand frequent mobiliry.For " ' " ~ ' ~of ~ consumption, ~~es leisure and entertainment as as employment this llrw of Europeans traveled with contident ease across their mllllllunicating, like medieval clenr wandering bemeen ~ ~ salamanca l and ~ oxtilid, in a cosmopolitan ~inguafinca: then ti^, now ~ ~ ~ l i ~ h , Ot,, the other side of the divide were to be found those--stiu the o v e ~ e l m i n g "'ajtliit~-~ho could not be part of this brave new continent or else did not (yet?) to join: millions of Europeans whose lack of skills, education, training, op:01tllni9'or means kept them firmly rooted where they were, mese men and uonlen,the villeinsin EuropeS new medieval landscape, not so readilyhen?'I from the E v s single market in goods, services and labour, Instead they re?a'ned~bound to their country or their local constrained .a:lid'"i'iarity . with distant possibilities and foreign tongues often far more i~~t to! 'Europe' l~ than their cosmopolitan feuow citizens. ihercwere two notable exceptions to this new international class distincrion that "iistarting to blur the old national contrasts. par jobbing artisans and laborers bani Eastem Europe, the new work opportunities in L~~~~~ or or B;rrriona blended seamlessly with older-established traditions ofmigrant 'inr'seasonal overseas employment. There had always been men (and it was mostly wh'otraveled to distant countries to find work: ignorant offoreign languages, n!;'rliedwith hostile suspicion by their hosts and in any case intent upon returnin~llcllnewith their carefully saved earnings. ~h~~~was nothing uniquely EuroPacabout ~ ~ ~ car-workers k i ~ h or ~ - that, and ~ Slovak h house-painters-like ~ ~ Scnrl!alesepeddlersbefore them-were not likely to be found dining out in Brus'lb,vacationing in Italy or shopping in London. ~ 1the 1 same, theirs, too, was now "ii~~illct European l~ way oflife.
rather, the notoriously Euroskeptic oftheir native skies I!'(lst-Thatchergeneration of budget offering to ferry them :""'iiltntalEurope, sometimes for less than the cost ofa pub lunch, a new gen'r:t'~'ll lif Brits no better educated than their parents nevertheless entered the
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cccondexception was the British-r,

illji\il. Proeelled abroad by the meteorological shortconlings

posrwAn:

A H I S T O R Y O P E U R O P E S I N C E 1945

THE

VARlerlns

OP ETJROP~

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I

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century as some of the most widely traveled, if not o he irony of this juxtaposition of popular itan, Europeans ofthem dain and mistrust for the institutions and ambitions of'Europe'with a w1 national desire to spend h e i r spare time and money there was not lost nental ohservers, for whom it remained a perplexing oddity. But then the ~ ~ i t i ~ h - l i kthe e 1rish-did not have to learn fo They dready spoke ~ ~ g l iElsewhere ~h. in Europe linguistic noted above) was fast hecoming the continent's primary disjunctive iden measure of personal social standing and collective cultural Power. In tries like ~~~~~~k or the Netherlands, it had long been accePte gualism in a tongue spoke^^ by almost no-one else was a handicap no longer afford.students at the university of Amsterdam now st while the most junior bank clerk in a provincial Danish town was exPe to handle with confidence a transaction conducted in English.1t in Denmark and the Netherlands, as in many small European countries;stu long since have become at least pas and bankderks alike watching un.dnbbed ~nglish-language programmes on television. In switzerland, where anyone who completed a secondaryeducation rered three or even fdur local languages, it was nonetheless tho as more tactful, to resort to English (no-one's first language) when from another part of the country. In Belgi ing with we have seen-it was far less common for Walloons or Flemin the other's language, both sides would resort readily conversant a common communications medium. regional languagesCatalan, for exam I,, countries taught, it was not uncommon for Young people now it was for E ~ ~ popularly ~ known) ~ dutifully ~ to learn - the local ~ la ~ to spend their spare time-as a gesture of adolescent revolt, social sno enlightened self.interest-speaking English. The loser was not the mifi gnage or dialect-which anyway had scant local past and no internationa but henational tongue of the surrounding state. With medium of choice, major languages were now being forced into the distinctively ~~~~p~~~ language Spanish, like Portngues its homeland; it was preserved as a widely taught , ; , , hovnnd +he pvrenees only thanks to its status as an o ..-- ,ropean Union.' German, too, was fast losing its place in the European language ing knowledge of cerman had once been mandatory for anyone art^^^^^^^!' ^ , ,,

rGene

ernational scientificor scholarly community. ~ o g e t h ~ ~ ~ ~cerman ~ ~ ~ so been a universal language of cultivated E u ~ o p e a n until ~~~ fie d war it of the two, a language in active daily use horn stras. struction of the Jews, the expulsion of the G~~~~~~ of the Soviets, central and eastern Europe was turned abrupflyaway German language. An older generation in the cities continued to read hequentl~-s~eak Geman; and in the isolated German communities of aniaand elsewhere it limped on as a marginal language oflimited practi. ut everyone else learned-or at any rate was taught-~ussian, Ihe associationof the Russian language with soviet occupation considerablyre. dits appeal, even in countries like Czechoslovakia or poland where linguis. tiguiVmadeit accessible.Although citizens ofthe states were obliged ssian, 'nost people made little effort to master the knguage, much less it'exce~t when forced to do so.9 Within a few years of the fall of cornmu. as already clear that one paradoxical effect ofoccupation by G~~~~~~ and on had been to eradicate any sustained familiariti their lan. nthelands that had for so long been trapped between ~~~~i~ and cermany snow Only one foreign language that mattered. TO be ' E in east. ~ ~ 11989, especially for the young, was to speak ~ ~ ~ l k h , atbe German speakers in Austria, Switzerland or Germany itself, the steady alizin'3 of their languag+to the point where even those whose own s e l from ~ German, like the Dutch, no longer widely or nn. t-was an accomplislled fact and there was no point theloss, he Nineties, major German firms like siemens made a ,,he of blished English as their corporate working language, cerman siness executives became notable for the ease with which they nother matter. As a language cornmollplace daily had not played a significant role in Europe since the decline ofthe im. cracies of the old regimes. Outside of France, a few million ~ ~ 1 . emburgers and Swiss, together with pocket communities in the ltalian the b=eoees, used French as their native t ~ many of ~ it in dialect forms disparaged by the official guardians of the ~ ~ ~ , rms, when compared to G~~~~~~~ R ~ ~ e ' ~ " had 10% been on the European l i n ~ i s t ~ i ~ ~ ~ i ~ h ~ ~ . . < , Hutever since the decline of Latin, French had been thelanguage of cultivated roqmo~olitan elites-and thus the European languagepar euel~ence, when, in the
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,kr the common language of many tens of

of Romania, where the situation war

case is Bulgaria, where

and French had by far the

found a more rympa-

the standing of tuG,cre, st least in its qlli!e distinctive

and its language had

early years of the twentieth century, it was first proposed to introduce instead for a siege mentality: if prench were no longer spoken beyond the borders. then at least it must have an exclusive nlonopoly within them. as part of the modern languages syllabus at Oxford Un ing of than one don opposed the idea on the plausible grounds that anyone Signed in July ,992 byz50 prominent personalitieeincluding the writmission to the university would already he fluent in French. Well in Debray, Nain Finkielkraut, lean~ ~ Max Gallo ~ ~ PhilipPC~ not century, comparal,Ie assumptions were still widely ers4emanded Ihat the government require by law the exdusive use of French years so boldly artim]ulated-j,, academies and embassies everpvhere.The Presentaut nfmnces and meetings held on French soil, films made with prench funding, can vouch for both the necessity and the sufficiencyof French as a mediumofcil"' 'herwise, Ihey warned,'les angloglottes' will have us speaking English from Barcelona to Istan munication among withi,, thirty years all that had changed. BYthe Year 2ooo, Fren en6 of every political pernuasion were too happy to oblige, medium of international communication even am e. 'A battle for prench is indispensable: eclared the Socialist to be a . and ~~~~~i~ was it the recommended choice sca.'ln international in the UK, ln the sciences, and even ren embarking on a first foreign languag-veryone else learnt ies: Two years later a consenative minister,Iacques parts of former ~ ~ b Europe, ~ bFrench ~ was ~ no g longer even heme, rendering explicit what Tasca had unstated: that language oflered in schools, having been displaced by German. s not just the decline ofprench but also and above all the worldwide community of French speaken, most of them in would be better if the F~~~~~ learned something elsea linguistic player on the world stage; but the dedi ed Touhon, \houjd our children learn an impoverished E~~~~~~~home was beyond dispute and probably beyond retrieval as hen theysl,ould be acE~~~ at the~uropeanomm mission in ~mssels,where Fred Italian, Parinant officiallanguage in the ~ ~ ~ early years ~ and ~ ~ t ~ ' s speakrs in the bureaucracy thus exercised a significant psyc cal advantage, things had changed. It was not so much the a self that brought about the shih-the seconded civil seNa ngout of reacheven as he took aim. ,nteUectuals all fluent j , ,~ ~ the arrival ~ of ~ Scandinavians, ~ who h ~ ~ of Paris the Octhe expansion (th* to German unification and the acce rman had today in English, but a younger ~ ~ ~ ~ now ~ shedding ~ its post. ~ ~ ~ ~ k i sion ~ vidw ~ games, internet sites and interprospea ofnew members from the East. Despite the use ng a mobile French slang of borrowed and language combinations 0 tors (to cover the 420 of the Union's three core 1angna communication in the prench to speak French to another was anyone wishing to exercise real influence on policy and in the breach. B~~ the attempt to require foreign rren& was now in the minority. ers, lawyers, architects and everyone to exunlike the G ~however, ~ the French ~ authorities ~ ~ ~ , ,,derstand it spoken by others-anytime ing to ~ ~ ~ in l i to ~ ensure h their commercial an ,,ly have one outcomer take their more and more Young French people studied lse. B~ the turn of thenewcentury the truth in order to use it, the o~icial position became decidedl means a") French public figures and because ofthe uncomfortable coincidence of the decl e harsh realitiff of Euthe diminution of the country's international r because Americans too spoke English. been to intimations of linguistic diminutiorl \;rr !:b, The initial French sist that others continue to speak their language: as had put it early in the ~ ~ ~ o s , ' S h o u French l d ever ce at the of the second language of then Europe itself would neve ternal divisions and it soon became clear that this was a lost cause an undly schismatic mod3

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P O S T W A ~ :A H I S T O R Y OF E U R O P E S I N C E

1945

THE VARIETIES OP E U R O P E

ern history and the incontrovertible variety of its overlapping communitic$. iticn. tities and histories. B~~Europeans'sense of who they were and how they livcd17ii shaped just as much by what bound them asby what divided them: and tllc;ac!e now bound together more closely than ever hefore. bun The best illustration of the 'ever-doser union' into which Europeans more accurately,been bundled by their enlightened ll~l'i!ica' died leaders--was to be found in the ever-denser network of comm~nications $ 0 (dlich it gax rise, ~h~ infrastrucrureof i n t r a - ~ w p e a n transportation-bridgri. tll>fie roads, trains and ferries--had expanded quite beyond recognition in the course the last decades ofthe century. Europeans now had the fastest and'(witl1 thee ception oftile justly maligned ~ r i t i s h rail network) the safest systemof rall*.a.s

the world. relatively short distances favored gmilnd t l a In a crowded continent portation over air travel, railways were an uncontroversial ohjectofsustaiiled~ investment. ~l~~ same countries that had come together in Schengen cooperated-with significant EU backing-to lay an extended nehvork of tracks reaching from Madrid and Rome toAmsterdanl proved Hamburg, with plans for its further extension north iuto Scandinaviaand caw through central E ~ Even in ~ those ~ regions ~ and countries ~ . that mightnei favored with TGV, ICE or ES trains", Europeans could now travel thro%ilou! continent-not necessarily much faster than a century before but wit11 farles pediment. in the nineteenth century, railway innovation in Europe came at the ex ofthose towns and districts not served by it, which risked losingnlai-kelsxn ,,lation and falling behind their more fortunate competitors. Butnowthrre roads as well-and outside of the for~ncr network of Union, the southern ~ ~ ~and t the a poorest ~ s provinces of Poland:and no most E ~had access to a~ car.Together with ~ hydrofoil ferries ~ all11 ,,lated airlines, these changes made it possible for people to live in'one tit in another and shop or play somewhere e l s e n o t always cheaply, bur ~t became quite common for young European precedented living in ~ ~ (Sweden) 1 and ~ working 6 in Copenhagen ( from Freiburg (Germany) to Strasbourg for example; or even across hesea from London to Rotterdam; or from Bratislavai(Slo Habsburg-era 1ink.A enna ( ~ ~ ~ ~ ~a once-commonplace i ~ ) , , , tegrated Europe was emerging. lncreasjngly mobile, Europeans now knew one another hettertha ~,,d hey could travel and communicate on equal terms. But Some fiblroPcamr.;
,

il!aineddeddedl~ more equal than others. Two and a half centuries after vo]tajre a Europe that 'knows' and a E~~~~~that to be kooi-n:that distinaion retained much of its force. power, and instituiianqwere'all clustered into the continent's far western corner. i-he moral geogra. Europe in Europeans' head-consisted of a core of 'truly3 e of them, like Sweden, geographically quite periplleral) hoieconsfimtional, legal and cultural values were held up as the model for lesser, pirant Europeans: seeking, as it were, to become truly themselves." EusternEuro~eans. then,were expected to know about the West. When howlEe in the opposite direction, however, it was not always ill flattering ys. It is not just that impoverished eastern and southern E~~~~~~~~ travelled :'!I and,w=t to sell their labour or their bodies. BY the end of the century cer. !:actern Eumpean cities, having exhausted their appeal as rediscovered outposts Europe, had begun to reposition themselves in a profitable niche as cheap and tawd~vacation spots for down-market mass tourism from it. Tallinn and Prague in particular established an unenviable reputation as I u e for British 'stag flights'-low-cost package weekends for ~ ~ ~ l abundant alcohol and cheap sex. lrarei agents and tour organizes whose clientele would once have settled for 01 or (more recently) Benidorm now reported rapturous enthusiasm for treats on offer in the European east. But then the ~ ~ ~ too, l i were ~ h pe, intheir way-which is why Europe remained for so many ofthem an exIn 1991 the Sofia weekly Kultura asked Bulgarians to which foreign eY felt c1osest: 16 percent answered 'French; 11 percent ' G ~ (and ~ I5~ ' erican'). But only 1.3 percent acknowledged feeling any closeness to
dlew the:contrast between

'

d centreof Europe, for all its post-unification woes, was still G ~ ~ ~ on and output ~ by far the largest . ~ EU, it was the ~ very ~ state in the pe: as every Chancellor from Adenauer to &hrader had always Germany was also the only country that straddled the former nification, immigration and the arrival of the ~ ~govern. d ~ ~ was now six times the area of Pari+a symbol ofthe relative n's two leading members. Germany dominated the E~~~~~~~ largest trading partner of most member-states of the EU. ion's net income came from the Federal ~ ~ ~ alon ~e , ~ bn d l i ~ ary paymasters--or maybe for that reason-xermans re. 's most committed citizens. German statesmen would pe.

,
,mRcrpPc,+.+

;,

.*is
,

'b (llr / y n lile'prew"t author received the fallowing greeting from

,he ~

~ andh Italian , flagship ~ ~-press=. ~ ~

n
i

a in foreign "fiiriln /.'i:leb::Th~ng here good. Croatia go1 EU membership invitation.~hir W~J change many o ~ a tl~;,~,~: l , ,

I.

P ~ ~ ~ W A * H . IS ~ T :O R Y O F B U R O P E S I N C E

1945

T H E YARIETIBs O P E U R O P E

riodically propose the creation of a'fast-track'of states committedto atit at th grated federal E ~ only to ~ ~ in undisguised ~ ~ frustration , ners' procrastination. ~f ~ ~ pursue the ~ Voltairian ~ image a little ~ further-was ~ th ~ thataknew-~urope best, itwasappropriate that at the beginning ofthe century two other former imperial states should have been most insi ing to be 'known' by it. .ike Germany, Russia and Turkey had once F perial rolein European affairs. And many Russians and Turks ha uncomfortable fate of Europe's ethnic German communities: displac autocratic power now reduced to resented and vulnerable minoritie else,s nation state, the tidal refuse of imperial retreat. In the late 199 mated fiatmore than one hundred million Russians lived outside 0 independent countries of eastern Europe." B~~ there the resemblance ended. Post-Soviet Russia was a Eu rather tl,an a E~~~~~~~ state. preoccupied with violent rebellions in it was maintained at a distance from the rest of Europe by the new Belarus, u h a i n e and Moldova as we11 as by its own increasinglyin pofitics, ~h~~~was no question of Russia joining the EU: new entr seen, were required to conform to 'European values'-with respe law,civic rights and freedoms and institutional transparency-that M~~~~~was very far from acknowledging,much less i ~~~~i~~ authorities were more interested in building pipelines and EU than in joining it. any Russians, including residents of thew not instinctively think of themselves as Europeans: when they t spoke (like the English) of'goingto Europe: ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ had s t been i ha a'hands-on' ~ l ~ European ~ ~ power , fie legacy remained. Latvian banks were the target 0 years sian businessmen. A Lithuanian president, Rolandas Paksas, fice in 2oog under suspicion of close links with the Russian m its ~ ~ enclave l t i ~ around Kaliningrad and continued to dem sit (through l,ithuania) for Russian freight and military tra travel for ~ ~citizens ~ visiting ~ the iEU. Laundered ~ n cash

of Russian oligarchs was funnelled through theproperq.markt in bn.

I" lhe short run, Russia was thus a decidedly uncomfortable presence on E ~ . t ~ not a threat. The ~~~~i~~ military was otherwise enated condition. ~h~ healtll of !he ~~~~i~~ population m-life expectancy for men was falling preagencies had for sorne tirne heen warning that the of tuberculosis and was on the verge of an AIDS rily a source of concern for ~~~i~~~ themselves. For s decidedly preoccupied its own affairs, fact of ~ ~ proximity, ~ its sheer ~ size i and ~ un- ' st inevitably cast a shadow on the future of an Already in zoo,+,half ofpolan#s natural gas and

ere seeking from E~~~~~ was d in i n t r a . decision ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ wl,ether ~ Ban settlements, or in trade agreements (both e Organization): not because decisions taken be prejudicial to its interests but as a point r,'m~ean history, it seemed to many observers, had come full circle.

in the
~ i ~ ~

an wildemess: par ~ ~ the European ~ turies, a contradictory object of amaction ers and people alike reinion while evincing deep suspicion of all and geography had bequeathed to Euronrkey. par nearly seven hundred years er', tl,e~rabswho had ocennium. F~~ many centuries y cioran was so depressed to be rean rule); and it was commonplace om the jaws of m r E s h y slipped into decline, the

intwe,,ry.fir3t.ccnmry~omania. s l o d i a andSerbia were dominant, now vulncrablc.In th~vqvodina region of no pcridicallyarraulrcd and their prop lived ti,cre for ofrhcauthoritjLr in nclgrade,~honppcared to have i a r ingfi.om rhe catastmpheof rhe Nintties,war depreuinglyprcdictablc: many care,'they'rtarlcd it. , f mcarurcs in the rpringmdn u n , " w"itc ,heopporite, and the already rerfricte anailed both Rursiass briefwindo* o(heedom-aaually disarrayand the absenc mnrtitutionauy liberryDiwarfist 1 " Zoo& Rusr one in four &civilian administrativeports in the country. lraincd o(flcialr

ish rulewas

the most

nizing state, had taken ned from &,kara,

PosTwAn: A

H I S T O R Y OF E U R O P E S I N C B

1945

THE V A R I B T I I S OP BUROPE

their own; and although their removal from "l'strianFranz Fischler openly voiced doubts about the countrfs long.term dem. Turks had troubles enough ri'aticcredentials. And then there were practical difficulties: as a member.state Balkans and [be ~ ~ middle ~ lpast , had bequeathed a tangled web of conni long-term consequences for Europe and the ''keywould bethe second largest in the Union after Germany, as we^ as one of choices with gborest-the gulf bemeen its prosperous western edge Turks themselves were no longer part of the problem. Had it not been forTur the vast, impover. strategic location athwart the soviet union's sea route to the Mediterranea e opportunity, millions of &ks might head country might Well have disappeared altogether fromwestern consciousness. ving wage. The implications for national immiRration Policies, as well as for the E U budget, ~ became for the duration of the Cold War an accommoda hardly be ignored. Instead, alliance, contributing to NATO a rathersigniticantL1'l1~ liutthe real impediments lay elsewhere.'' If 7hrkey entered the EU, the union participant in ofsoldiers. ~~~~~i~~lnissiles and bases were established in Turkey as Par 'Illd have an external frontier abutting Georgia, ~ ~ lran, ~ ~ ~ i and Syria, I' of the cordon sanira;re ringing the Soviet frontiers from Baltic to Paci Or not it made geographical sense to take 'Europe' to one hundred ern governments not only furnished Turkey with copious sums in a M"sul was a legitimate question; in the circumstances of [he time it was benevolently and uncriticallyupon its unstable dictatorial regimesnabk a security risk. And the further E~~~~~ stretched its frontiers, the i t was come of military coupeand their unrestrained abuse of minority rights(n by many-including the drafters of the constitutional document those of [he ~~~d~ in he country's far east, one fifth of the total "0n4-that the Union should explicitly state what it was that defined [heir ~ ~ ~ workers', ~ like ~ the rest hof theMediterraneanba ~ ~ ~ ~ "'on t home.This,in turn, induced a number of politicians in poland, ~ i ~ h slo. ~ ~ ~ i ~ , plus rural population, migrated in large numbers to Germany and elsewhere--not to mention the polish pope in Rom6to try "nsi'icessfu~~ to insert into the preamble to a new E~~~~~~ European lands in search of jobs. text a But [he ottoman legacy would return to haunt the new Europe at Europe was once Christian E ~~~d n ~o t ~ a ~d a Hv ~ ~speaking ~ ~. ~ , of [he cold war, nrkeySsdistinctive location took on a different si in 1994, reminded his audience that the ' E union is ~ based on ~ ~ ~ and barrier state in a a'laiscsetof values, with roots in antiquity and christianity>? country wa no longer a frontier geopolitical confrontation. Instead it was now a conduit, caught e they were, Turks were'assuredly not christian. ~h~ irony was mat and ~ ~ withi ties~ and ,affinitiesin both directions. Although Tu reason-because they Couldnot definethemselves as Christian (or a -tar republic, most of its seventy million citizens were Mu ')-would-be European ~~~k~were even more likely than other orthodox, but with the rise of radica ~~~k~ were not ar, tolerant and liberal dimensions of Buro. fears that even Ataturk's ruthlessly imposed secular stat ey were also, and with increasing urgenci, to invoke Eunerahle to a nau generation rebelling against their secularized norms as a lwer against reactionary innuences i n nrEsh public ing for roots in an older heritage of Ottoman Islam. e member-states of Europe itself had long encouraged, B,,~mrkey,s educated professional and business elites were 2003 the-rkish parliament finally at E~~~~~~~ bidlocated in [he guropean city of Istanbul and identified enthusi nding restrictions on ~ ~ ~cultural d i life ~ and h political expres-. ern dress, cultUreand practices. Like other ambitious eastern esitation-waltz performed by governments and officials at E ~ va]ues,European ~ institutions,European ~ m ~ ~ E a price. Turkish ~ critics of EU membership ~ ~ in~ o exact pointed possible future for them and their ambivalently Sit liation of a once-imperial nation, now reduced to the status as [he goal was clear: to escape out of history and into 'Europe'. M European door, importuning support for its application ions. Moreover, the objective[hey shared with the traditionally influential officer growth ofreligious sentiment in wholeheartedly ~ i t Ataturk's h dream of a secular state and ced an electoralvictoryfor the conntry2smoderate tion at creeping Islamisation in Thrkish public life. he national parliament to debate a motion to adulrrnwPVPr F , at least Brussels--was ~ ~more than ~ a ~ ~ .*" >. . -application to join the European Union lay unaddressed for many Years. T ! : ' ; were good reasons for ~aution: 'hrkey's prisons, its treatment of domestic critic$ _i____ 'i""dingthedomerfic political calculations o i ~ ~ ~ = k hobr and its inadequate civil and economic codes were just Some Of many issllcs :':,I many years their !,'?"E1sto hinderand On 'firkey's candidacy. would need to be addressed hefore it could hope to get beyond a strittl~, tradi-y .ii"imLheywcrc wont lo as'European'an i d e a l a frce.markel, graff :id rcoll~ismof nrkv's own relationship with its ropean an partners. Senior European commissioner^ Iikch
766 767

'

posTwAn:

w~sroav OP

BUROP~ SINCB

I945

T H E VhRIETies O F

EUROPE

from Brussels that this could definitivelr In response to explicit npp~ication to join the EU, the motion was abandoned and In ardize cember zoo4 the E~~~~~~~ Union at last agreed to open accessio Ankara, B~~ the damage was done. Opponents of Turkish membershi were in ~ ~ and France ~ as well ~ as closer ~ to home ~ in Gree ~ Bulgaria--could point once again to its unsuitability. In zoo4 the retiilngDur EU Commissioner prits Bolkestein warned of the coming'Islamisation'of The likelihood of negotiations proceeding smoothly diminished still,fu~thcrGiinter verheugen, the EU Commissioner for enlargement, acknowledged tlla' did not expect n r k e y to become a member of the Union'before 2015: hleanw rejeaion or hrther d e l a y c t o Turkish pride and thep the cost bility of~urope's vulnerable edge--ratcheted up another notch. The East tion was back.

many,

That history should have weighed SO heavily upon European affairs at the stari century was ironic, considering how lightly it lay upon.the the ders of contemporary Europeans. The problem was not so much e history in schools, though in some parts of teaching or ,,,is-teaching eastern E~~~~~ this too was a source of wnccm-as the public usest0 whit past was now put. ln authoritarian societies, of course, this was a E ~by its self-definition, ~ ~ ~was post-authoritarian. ~ , Governments no1 ercised a monopoly over knowledge and history could not readily be a!tme litical convenience. part. The threat to history in Europe La iqor was it, for the deliberate ,j&tortion of the past for mendacious ends,but from have seemed a natural adjunct to historical knowledge: nostalgi of the century had seen an escalating public fascination with th artifact,encapsulating not recent memories but loit memories: as a source ofenlightenment about the present but rather as a very different things had once been. History on televisionperformed; history in theme parks; history in museums: a l l bound people to the past but everything that separated the was depided not as heir to history hut as its orphan: Cut were and the world we have lost. I,, eastern E ~nostalgia ~ drew ~ diredly ~ upon~ regret , ~ ~ now purged of ~ its darker side. ~ In 2003 th~ i in prague mounted an exhibition of 'pre-revolutionav clothing': boo dewear, dresses and the like from a world that had only ended fourteen Y e a 1

'''rebut was already an object of detached fascination. ~h~ ehibjtion anracted illanyo l d e r ~ e o ~for l e whom the grey sameness of the ~ h o d d i b - itens ~ ~ d on ~ dis. t have been a recent memory. And yet the response of visitors suggested Ieeof affection and even regret that caught the curators quite by surprise, 3 6 it was known in Germany, drew on a similar vein of forgetful =. fie, as ering. Considering that the GDR-to adapt Mirabeau's description o f ~ o n2011ernPrussia-was little more than a security service with a state, it n"nstrated in the glow of retrospect a remarkable capacity to evoke affection and longing.While Czechs were admiring their old clothes, G~~~~~~were flock. odb~e b n i n : a film whose ostensible mocking of the dogmas ral absurdity of life under Erich Honecker was knowingly offset by a cer. athY for its subject and more than a little amhivalence at its sudden loss. iiut(kmansand Czechs, like other central Europeans, have had too much c.~le=ience of sudden, traumatic national re-startr. ~ h selective ~ inostalgia ~ for "r'ldtwer might be retrieved from the detritus of lost pasts made a lot of sense-lil''n~.nOt chance that Edgar Reitz's Heimot: Eine ~ ~ chronjk ~ * ~
8 4 The obsession with nostalgia that swept across the rest of western i ' l r ' r in ~a the last Years of the old century, giving rise to heritage industries, me. ~li:'iiils,reconstructions, reenactments and renovations, is not so readily ac.

Wlat the historian Eric Hobsbawm described in lggS as great age m~thOlog was ~ ' not of course u n p r e ~ e d e n t ~ d - ~ ~ himself b~b~ had ~~ '".ilenbrsliantl~ about the'invention of tradition'in nineteenth.centllry E ~ g of the national age: the sort of ersatz clllture dismissed by of Burns and Scott in S c o r I a r r d ~ asLsham ~ ~ ~ ) hards for a sham naalive re-imaginingof thenational past in prance and the UK at the eth century was of another order altogether. hance that history-as-nostalgia was so verypronounce~ in these gs in particular. Havingentered the twentieth century as proud th countries had been stripped ofterritoryand by . The confidence and security of global empire had heen reemories and uncertain future prospects. wlat it meant to be ad once been very clear, but no longer, T J , ~ alternative, to bey'Eurnpean: was far easier in small countries 1 . h Belgium or -like Italy or Spain-where therecent nationalpast was best ~ ~ for nations , reared within living on grandeur and a ' m~e'would always be an uncomfortable transition: a compromise, not
lo'ira!

,,,

ts[hcChrhrh,, Democratic ,,,,ion

incemny war officiallyo~~oscd lo mrkcy ioinicthetl~

)'al@iraucS~aindidindrrd devrlop an ofFdal'hcritagc'indunry,

u:"iafler

b s t c m l by its pa,,jmonio rather ,ha,, its

twkcare to emphasize the country,s distant G

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histary

POSTWA A~ H:I S T O R Y

OF EUROPB SINCE

1945

THE

VARlETlEs

OF BUROPE

ciance:summer visitors to the West Riding ofyorkshire are i the Tank Engine up the ~eighle~-Haworth line lo visit the Bronte Pamna ln contemporary England, then, history and fiction blend seamlessl~.In povertl, and class conflict have been officiallyforgotten an cial contrasts are denied or homogenized. And even the most recent and only in nostalgic plastic reproduction. This count1 past is lerization ofmemory was the signal achievement of the nation's newP ~ i don i ~ ~ Thatcher's coattails, New Lahour successfullydis~enced past; and ~ ~thriving~ Heritagelindustry ~has duly~replacedait with' ~ The ~ ~ ~ capacity l i to ~ plant h and tend a Garden of Forgetting, fondly hepast while strenuously denying it, is unique. France's otherwise comPa session wid, the nation's hheritage-lepanimain+took ad the fascination with identifying and preserving worthy objects and the national pastwent hack many decades,beginning between thewar ian exhibitions already nostalgic for the lost world of pre-1914 and acce regime's efforts to replace the inconvenient urban present witha the

ptomatic of the unavoidably bogus nature of any o official taxidermy, tive contribution to the nationalpawimoinewas not so it as to manufacture it in real time. N~ ~~~~~h ruler his reign with such a profusion ,,fbuildings and cer. of Mitterrand's presidencywere marked not only by cumulation of museums, memorials, solemn inaugurations, burials and s; also by herculean efforts to secure the own Place in the heritage:from the appalling Grande Arche at La Defense in western paris, gracehi Pyramid at the Louvre and the aggressively modernist opera the Bastille, to the controversial new National ~ i the south b bank ~ same time as Mitterrand was engaged in lapidary monumentalism, in. himself quite literally in the physical memory the nation, a gnawing was losing touch with its roots moved a prominent parisian Nora, to edit Les L i e u de mimaire, a t h ~ e e - ~ seven-volume, ~~t, Mished over the course of the years 1984-199z that he sites and realms of ~ ronce.shared ~ mem. ~ places and people, the projects and symbols that athedrals to gastronomy, from the soil to the lan. planning to the map of France in the minds of ~ ~ parable publication has ever been conceived for any other nation, and imagine how it could be. For Nora's L i e u de ~ & captures ~ both i shing confidence of French collective identiry-the uncontested as. t hundred years of national history have bequeathed prance a mmon heritage that lend themselves to mnemonic represen. this manner-and the anxious sense, as the editor makes explicit in his ese commonplace collective symbols of a past were

ized rural past. *fter the war, under the Fourth and Fifth Republics, the state P sums money into national and regional preservation. act culfurelplanned as a sort of tangible pedagogy: a frozen co of a painful and turbulent century) of the coun reminder (in the past, B~~ by the last decades of the century France-the France terrand and chirac-was changing beyond recognition. Now it wa tinuities with past glory--or past tragedy-that attracted comment, discontinuities. ~h~ past-the revolutionary past, the peasant past, hut above all the recent past, from Vichy to Algiereo for the future. Overtaken by demographic transformation and two gen socio.geographic mobility, France's once-seamlesshistory seemed set to from national memory altogether. ~h~ anview of loss bad cwo effects.o n e was an increase in the ran ficialpanimojne, the Publicly espoused body of monuments and artif 'heritage' by the authority of the state. In 1988, at the behest ture ~ i ~ jacki Lang, ~ the t list ~ of ~ officially protected items in the Patr turel of prance-previously restricted to UNESCO-style pant du ~~~d near Nimes, or Philip theBold's ramparts at dramatically enlarged. ~t is revealing of the approach taken by Lang and his s F ~new 'heritage ~ ~ sites' was ~ the crumbling , ~ fa+ of pa$s ~~~i de Jemappes: an avowedly nostalgic homage to Marce1 classic ofthat name. ~ uCta r d shot that movie entirely in of a building (or the fapde of a building) which never even aP film could be seen-according to taste-either as a subtle French exe

~ ~ ~

as Angst the fear that one day-quite soon-the earth.colored red along France's magnificent~y engineered, impeccably sca~ed autoroutes will cease to hold any meaning for the ~~~~~~h themselves, i Point would there be in alludinefirst in symbols, then a ktrle further along to the cathedral at Reims; the amphitheatre at wlmes; the vines o f ~ l o s ictoire or the battlefield ofVerdun if the allusion meant ance if the casual traveller encountering sucl, names ries they are meant to evoke and the feelingsthey are ritage in England suggests an obsession with the way things he cultivation,as it were, of genuine nostalgia for a fake past. contrast, spiritual patrimoine has a certain authen. has always represented itself in allegorical ways: ,,,itness the various

pos~w+.n:

A HISTORY

OP EUROPE SINCE

I945

THE VARIETIES O P RUROPR

depictions and incarnations of'~arianne', the Republic. It was thus altogether;'Ir propriate that regret for the keys to a lost Frenchness was focused upon a for$1n hody ofsymhols, whetller physical or intellectual. These'are' France.If theyare'n1is placed or no longer shared, France cannot be itself-in the sense Charles de '.' meant when he declared that 'France cannot be France without glory: ~h~~ assunlptions were shared by politicians, intellectuals andpwpleofaii 1"' litical persuasions-which is why Les Lieux de mhoire was so SUuffsful, enc,il' sulating for tens of thousands of readers an evanescent Frenchnessalready them in daily prench life. And it is therefore very revealing that'where Christianity-~hristian ideas, Christian buildings, practices and s ~ b o l s ^ c c ~ a prominent place in Nora's tomes, there is hut one brief chapteron'lewr' mostly as objects of assimilation, exclusion or persecution-and no entry at ... , ,, on 'Muslims: piel hi^ was not an oversight. There was no assigned corner for Islam have run counter to the purpose of the underta memory palace and it to create one after the fact. B U ~ the omission nevertheless illustrated thetrohble France, like its neighbours, was going to have in accommodating the millin1 new E~~~~~~~ in its ,,idst. o f the 105 members of the European COnventiu the task ofwriting Europe's constitution, none had a non-European' ground. ,jkefie rest ofthe continent's political elite, from Portugal to Poland,llle? ,, above all white, Christian Europe. formerly Christian Europe. Although the varietik of or,more

u s symbolssometima under family pressure, but often in rebellion against the promises of an older generation. he reaction of the public authorities, as we have seen, varied somewhat by tradition and circumstance: only the pren& ~ ~ in ~ a righleous i ~ ~ "'ofsKularre~ublicanism, opted by avote of 494-36 to ban the wearing ofaNre. s symbols in state schools. B U ~ this move, undertaken in zoo4 and at the veil-the headgear of observant ~ ~ ~ i ~ befunderstood der and more troubling context. ~ ~ prejudice ~ ini many ~ placa l was being Political advantage by the far ~ i ~ h and t ; anti.semitism was on the rise ,for the first time in over forty years, m across the Atlantic, where it became a staple in the speeches of Euoliticians and neo-conservative pundits, anti +,,itism in France or neigiu!n Germany was immediately identifid as a return to the continent2s ting in the Washington post , i M~~ 2ooz, the influential columnist nt so far as to describe the reuudescence ofanti-Jewish sentiment second-and final?-phase of thestruggle for a "final solution to ion".' The .4merican ~ ~ to fie EU, b Rochell ~ Schnabel ~ ~ hering in Brussels of the ~~~~i~~~lewishCommittee that e'is getting to a point where it is as bad as it was in the 1930s: This was rhetoric, and deeply misguided. ~ ~ t i - feelings ~ ~ ~ i ~ h largelyunknown in contemporary Europ-except among ~ ~ and es- ~ l i of Arab descent, where they were a direct outcome of the tianity E~~~~~ remained many-from Ukrainian UniatesYo iddle &st, television stations,now availablevia satellite iqethodists,frorn Trans-Carpathian Greek Catholics to Nomegian Lutheran egularly broadcast reports from G~~ and the OEupied West Infuriated what they saw and heard, and encouraged by k a b and Israeli number f , christians who actually practiced their faith continued to Shri'lL spain, which still boasted goo convents and monasteries at the end of the 1 ' ~ "loritiesalike to identify Israel with their local jewish neighbours, young men eth c e n t u r y d opercent of the world's total--active faith was on thedeclinr,rrr- nlustl~) in the suburbs of Paris pr Lyon or strasbourg on their Jewish ghbours:they scrawled graffiti on Jewish community ~ ~ i l ddesecrated relating all too closely with isolation, old age and rural backwardness. In i ~ ~ ~ , only one adult in seven acknowledged even attending church, and themon avc "rreries, bombed schools and synagogues and in a few instances attacked Jew. lrenagers or families. just once a month. ln Scandinavia and Britain the figureswere even lower (.i tianity was on the wane even in Poland, where the citizen7 was increasind!'i'cai 'I'll? attach on Jews and Jewish institutions-concentrated in the first years of to the moral exhortations of the once-powerful Catholic hierarchy. !i!cticwcentuv-aroused concern not because of their scale, or even on account the century well over half of all Poles (and a much larger majority of thosclincicr 911i~irracistcharacter, buthecauseof their implicitlyinter.communalnature, This t". '" 1"" the old European antidemitism: for those seeking scapegoats for their thirty) favoured legalized abortions. xslam, in contrast, wasexpanding its appeal-particularly among the'~ol~ll!~~fill (liicnlltents, Jews were no longer the target of &ice. 1,,deed, they ranked well r'qlva 'lie whom it served increasingly as a source of communal identity and couelti\rc lll'idc . order. A French poll in J~~~~~ zoo4 foulld that lo perin countries where citizens of Arab or Ti~rkish or African Provenance wrrcll;!l ;?liiiithosequestioned admitted to disliking jews, a far higher number-23 widely seen and treated as 'foreigners! Whereas their parents and grand' i"iAisiiked 'North Africans'. Racially motivated attacks on ~ ~ ~ b efforts to integrate and assimilate, young men and w" " iountV, On Turks, Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, senegalese and other had made A~~~~~~ or ~ ~ ~ or ~ ~eicester ~ i now U vociferously e identified both with 1 1 '!' n'inOrities-were far more numerous than assaults on J ~ ~ ~ , some cities : ;:rere endemic. oftheirbirth-~elgium or France or Britain-and with the religion and regldli:. Girls, especially, took to wearing traditional dothing a 'Ic troubling aspect of the new anti-semitism was that while, once again, their familyas

anti,

.:

were the victims, now it was Arabs (or Muslims) who were the perpetrators, lil:. only exception to this rule appeared to be in Germany,where the renaScenbex~reIl1~ ~ i ~ did h tnot trouble itself to distinguish between immigrants, Jew and c~lllcr 'non-~ermans: ~~t Gemany, for obvious reasons, was a special case. Elsewhw tile public authorities more about the growing alienation of their'kah all: other ~ ~ communities ~ than l they i did about ~ any putative revival of Fastiqm, ; i, They were probably right. to the United Stater, which continued to treat 'Islamland M~rili~ni as a distant challenge, alien and hostile, best addressed by heightenedsecurilg and 'pre.emptive war; Europe's governments had good reason to see the matt?]i.:? differently. In France especially, the crisis in the Middle East was no longer a Ill? ter of foreign policy: it had become a domestic ~roblem. The transmigration 01 ['a%sions and frustrations from persecuted Arabs in Palestine to their angry, dispidcd brr,hren in Paris should not have come as a surprise-it was, after au; sllrrlbrr legacy of emplre.
~ ~~

Europe as a Way of Life

8 '

.
,.

'A free Health Service is a triumphant example of the superiority of coliective action and public initiative applied to a segment of society where commercial principles are seen at their worst:
,

Aneurin Bwan

'We want the people at Nokia to feel we all are partners, not bosses and employees. Perhaps that is a European way of working, but for us, it works:
lorma ONila (CEO, Nokiaj'

'Europeans want to be sure that there is no adventure in the future. They ,~ have had too much of that:
Alfonr Verplaetse (Governor, Belgian National Bank) ,996

'America is the place to come when you are young and single. But if it is time to grow up, you should return to Europe:
(Hungorran btrrineirman in public opinion survey, moq)

I I
'
I

;.
, ,

'Modern society.. .is a democratic society to be observed without transports of enthusiasm or indignation:
Raymond Aron

" I

1i1:hurgeouingmultiplicityof Europe at the end of the twentiethcentury: thevariiblcgeomettyof its regions, countries and Union; the contrastirlg prospects and r,f'ids of Christianity and Islam, the continent's two major religions; the unpt,'edented speed of communications and exchange within Europe's borders and h n d them; the multiplicity of fault Lines that blorwhat had once been clear-cut nntionsl or social divisions; uncerlainlies about past and future alike; all these ;:i~i itharderto discern a shape to the collective experience. The end of the twenllclhcentury in Europe lacks the homogeneity implicit in contident descriptions .. o: 11: : prcviousjn-de-ddck All the same, there was emerging a distinctively European identity, discernible

P O S T W A R : A H I S T O R Y O F E U R O P E S I N C E 1945

E U R O P E A S A WAY O P L I F E

sn:e beidg whether imported programmes weredubbed (as in Italy), sub-titled or To their critics, however, the new art scene in London ('Brit Art'), like \'.lliiiln , . . their original language (increasingly the case in small or multi-lingual states). :C!~III Forsytheascontroversial ballets in Frankfurt or the quirky operatic'adaptatio!~?ac. lliclllesentational style--in news broadcasts, for example--was remarkably simcasionaUy mounted in Paris, confirmed their dyspeptic prediction that ntbre arould hu, burrowing in many cases from the model of American local news.' only mean worse. On the other hand, television remained a distinctly national and even insular Seen thus, European 'high' culture--which had once played to its palii~i~s'ill~ ' ~scdiurn.Tbusltalian television was unmistakably Ituliun-from its curiously herited familiarity with a common canon-was now exploiting the ~ultuial i;,.se~ d:~t-<l variety shows and stilted interviews to the celebrated good looks of its precurities of a neophyte audience who could not confidently distinguiih h?l:rrm (::Ian and the distinctive camera angles deployed when filming scantily d a d good and bad (hut who could he counted upon to respond enthusiastically lob? iulmger women. In neighbouring Austria an earnest m o d seriousness informed dinates of fashion). This was not as unprecedented a situation as culi~lr;li IT* lv,rl,. - ' :produced talkshows, contrasting with Germany's near-monopoly of therest simists were wont to assert-the exploitable anxieties of under-culti\,alt'~l !iaii. :it!cprogramming. In Switzerland (as in Belgium) each region ofthe country had veaux riches had been a theme of literary and theatrical mockery at least sihcc ?i owntelevision channels, employing different languages, reporting different Moli&re.What was new, however, was the continental scale of the cultural shifl.'fl~c and operatiog in sharply contrasting styles. , composition of audiences from Barcelona to Budapest was now.stiil;i~igl,: :lid, 7hc BBC, as its critics bitterly observed, had abandoned the aesthetics and ideals form, and so, too, was the material on offer. To critics this merely conlirt~icd llic oIiis rarlier days as the nation's moral arbiter and benevolent pedagogue in the obvious, that the arts and their clientele were caught in a reciproca1lyde~ri111c~:tiI ,, ilri!,r (11 compete with its commercial rivals. But in spite of being dumbed-down , ,,. ,, embrace: EuroCult for Eurotrash. :~r:?rliapsforthat reason) it was even more unmistakably British than ewr.AnyWhether the ever-closer Union of Europeans rendered its heneficiarici 111oIl: mi:^ doubt had only to compare a report, a debate or a performance on the BBC cosmopolitan or simplyblended their separate parochialisms was not jusl ii"q1ii.i. "111 sin~ilarpro~ramrnes on France's Antmnez, or TFi: what had changed, on both tion for the high-arts pages of the Frankfurter AlIgmeineZeifung ( F k Z ) I I ll!? ~ A:'ii:<of thewater, was far less striking than how much had remained the same. The nancial Times. The FAZ, the FT, la Mondea~ld to a lesser extent Italy!s'kliqlzii!hlinr ~!i.llt~ lual or political concerns, the contrasting attitudes to authority and power, were now genuinely European papers, universally available and read all airos?li!r ,, there ,?, , is distinctive and different as they had been half a century before. In an age continent. The mass-circulation tabloid press, however, remained firnlly iirioiil- ,r:tomostother collective activitiesand communal organizations werein decline, scribed by national languages and frontiers. But their readership ~wi's. i!okii what the mass ofthe population of every country had in common. everywhere-highest in Great Britain,lowest in Spain-so distinctive nationri t t 8 ~ ,':?rii~onwas "d icserved very effectively to reinforce national distinctions and a high level of ditions in popular journalism mattered less than they used to: except; onv apli. dufual ignorance. in England, where the popular press fanned and exploited Europhobic prsi~i~iia. Far ~xcept during major crises, television channels showed remnrkably little inIn eastern Europe andIberia, the long absence of a free press meant that inan)-pto. ;:nr:in events in neighhouring countriesrather less, if anything, than in televiple, especially outside of the large cities, had missed out altogether on ll!? neivs11"' s i.arly years, when fascination with technology and curiosiw about the paper era-transiting directly from pre-literacy to the electronic media. !:-: illroad led to numerous documentaries and 'outside broadcasu' from exotic The latter-television above all-were now the main source of inforoi;iIigl? !mns i111d seascapes. But because Europe was now taken for granted, aad-with ideas and culture (high and low) for most Eur0peans.A~ with newspapen, so~~'llli ll;r~ricption of its troubled and impoverished south-east-was decidedly untelevision: it was the British who were most attached to the medium, regolarlytop r.:!r for most viewers, travel and other programmes on European television had ping European viewing figures, followed closely by Portugal, Spain:Ital) and-'rr.;si~~ce'globalized'themselves, turning their attention to fartherhorizons while though still with some lag--eastern Europeans. The traditional stalc-oiv:~?! auislllerest of Europe to languish: presumptively familiar territorybut in practelevisionstations faced competition from both terrestrial commercial coni]'a~!i:: 'iti3rddy unknown. and satellite channels; but they had retained a surprisingly large audienrr sl18r:. illlor public spectacles-imperial-style public funerals in France; royal marThey had also for the most part followed the lead of the daily press and slnrlilgit ,:. , ' '$gr anddeaths in Britain, Belgium, Spain or Norway; reburials, commemoraduced their foreign news coverage. presidential apologies in various post-Communist l a n d s w e r e strictly As a consequence, European television at the close of the twentiethcei~t~try pri-, sented a curious paradox. The entertainment on offer varied little Fmm onc cot!!try to the next: imported films and sit-coms,'reality shows', garnebhaws aildah~: lholgit not kt constrained by the American obligation to partner r whitc male (hort) with a black staples could he seen from one end of the continent to the other, the on~vdi?c!- ii":,?rti), a whitc fcrndc (rah newsifeaturn) and a w c a r h e r - p o n (coloorigender optional).

POSTWAR: A

~lsronu OF

EUROPE SINCE

1941

E U R O P E AS A WAY O F L I P E

local affairs, copiously broadcast to a domestic audience but watched only by on^ representative minorities in other lands.' Election results elsewhere in EuroPewerc reported by national mass media only if they had shock value or trans-c implications.F~~the most part, Europeans had very Little idea what wa in neighhouringcountries. T I I ~singular ~I lack of interest in European el not derive just from suspicion or boredom in the face of the elucuhr it was a natural by-product of the largely un-Europeann l e n ~ nating from tal universe of most Europeans. There was, however, one ubiquitous exception: sport. A satelli channe~L'~llrosport'-~asdevoted to broadcasting a wide-range of in various E~~~~~~~ languages. Every national television station fro portugal devoted considerable blocks of airtime to sporting competi them inter.~uropean and frequently not even involving the local or ~h~ appetite for spectator sports had grown dramatically in thelast century even as the number of people attending themin person had mostly fall and in three Mediterranean countries there was sufficient demand t@suPPort mass-market daily paper entirely devoted to sport (L*Equ@e highly F ~u a r c a ~in Spain, ~ Gauecla ~ dello ~ Sport , in Italy). ~ l ~ many h countries ~ ~ still ~ boasted h distinctive national sports andsport events--ice hockey in the Czech Republic, basketball in (curiously) Lithu croatia, the T~~~ de France and the annual Wimbledon tennis tourna continental terms these were minority events, though capable on occasion tradng millions of spectators (the Tour was the only sporting event whos spectator turnout had actually increased over the decades). Bull-fighting held little appeal for young Spaniards, though it had been revived in the'N' as a sort of revenue.chasing 'heritage industry'. Even cricket, the iconicS!Jllllll game of the ~ ~ ~ had l i slipped ~ h , to a niche position in entertain spite of efforts to render it more colourful, more eventful-and t leisurely but commercially disastrous tive-day games. What real was football. hi^ had not always been true. The game was played in eve try, but in the initial post-war decades players stayed close t domestic league football; the relatively infrequent i were treated in some places as vicarious, emotionally charg history. N ~who attended ~ football ~ matches ~ in those yea G ~for example, ~ or Germany ~ ~and the ~ Netherlands ~ , ~ ~would~ have heen ~ under i any ~ illusion ) about the closer union: The relevant historical reference was quite
ofprinces ~ i a n may a reem an exception to this rule. Butmn 'l'0'llb Europcanr her (uneral on tek*on,they tost interest soon enough.,Tl!ehirrrzu ,,.tpouring of public grief was n strictly British asair
782
,, ,

q-he deathandmorbid
many

In the first post-war decades, players from different European countries were quite unfamiliar with one another and had typically never met off the field: when, 7, the Welsh forward John Charles made history by leaving ~~~d~ united to ventus of Turin for the unheard-of sum of 67,00~, it was headline news in untries. Well into the late 1960s it would have been highly unllsual for a dub find a foreigner on his team, except in ltaly where innovative managers ":crej~st starting 10 poach talented outsiders. The glorious ~~~l ).fadrid team f , 'llc'950s did indeed boast the peerless Hungarian Ferenc pus&, but puskds was resentative case. The captain of ~~~~~~~bnational team, he had fled lowing the Soviet invasion and taken spanish citizenship. until then, her Hungarian footballer, he was virtually his the point that when Puskis led H~~~~~ onto the pitch at ~ ~ ~ dium in November 1953, one the opposing ~ ~ ~was l ~ rk of him: 'Look at that little fat [hap. we'll murder this lot: (Hun. win 6-3, the first time England had ever heen beaten at home.) neration later, Juventos, Leeds, Real Madrid and just about every major 11 club had a cosmopolitan roster of playersdrawn from many dif. A talented youngster from Slovakia or N~~~~ once doomed to this career in KoSice or Ttondheim with occasional appearances on his na. could now hope to play in the big leagues: gaining ~ i ~ i b i y,ed. li~, od salary in Newcastle, Amsterdam or Rarcelona. ~h~ manager lhe England tearn in 2005 was from Sweden. Arsenal, the leading ~ ~ i tfoot. i ~ h teamat the start of the twenty-first century, was managed by a prenchman. ~h~ north London club's first-team squad comprised players frorn F ~G ~ ~ ~ ~~ E'yeden, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, spain, swjtzerland, hOrY Coast and the USA-as well as a few from ~ ~ g h~ d~ . ~ was t b a~ game l l with. layers, managers and spectators alike. ~ ~ ~ l ,clubs i ~ like ~ ~ b l ~ arlayed their competitive success into an 'image2that could he th equal success from hi^^ to ~ ~ ~ ~ i ~ ;'handful of individual football stars-not necessarily the talented, but ks, beautiful wives and an animated private life--assumed c life and popular newspapers hitherto reserved for movie When David Be&am (an ~ ~ ~ player ] iof ~ h urpassed talent for self-promotion) moved from Mandrid in 2003, it made headline television news in every pean Union. embarrassing performance at A'cli''ro~ean Football Championships in portugal the fouowing year-the En. penalties, hastening his country,s ,gnominious early 4~11arturdid little to dampen the enthusiasm of his fans. hfore revealin~l~ the England team's departure from the had no ,i'isccn'/ble upon the UK television audience for the remaining games be. , learns from small countries (Portugal, the Netherlands, G~~~~ and the cZech . , hvcc" ,
.

d ~

~ d

~~

, ~

783

'"T
, .
,

P ~ ~ ~A W HIST A ORY ~ O:P

EUROPE SINCE

1945

e U R O ~ AS ~ A WAY

Republic)in which ~ ~ ifans ~ had i ~ noh stake. Despite the heightened ternational games, with colours flying, lions rampant and singing,the common obsession with watching the gameany gam most partisan loyalties.' ~t peak, the BBCbroadcasts ofthe tugd that summer attracted twenty five million viewers in the U ficialeEuro,com. website for the competition registered forty billion page views over the course of the games. was well adapted to its new-found popularity. It egalitarian pastime. Requiring no equipment beyond a ball could be played anywhere by anyoneunlike tennis or swimming which required a certain level of income or else the sort of public fa widely availablein many European countries. There was no advantageto usually tall or burly--quite the contrary-and the game was not espe gerous, As a jot,, footbaU had long been a low-paid alternative for boys in industrial towns; now it was a path into the upper reaches Of suburb perity and more besides. Moreover, however talented and popular they might be, were of necessity part of their team. They could not readily be transubs the ever.unsuccessful French cyclist Raymond Poulidor, into Vmb Football was also far too straightforwardto requited national

had largely evaporated. On a broad range of contemporary issues, dish Democrats and French neo-Gaullists, for might well have rein common with each other than with their respective ideological forebears. le'political t"P"gra~h~ of Europe had altered dramatically over the previous two

to the metaphorical and quasi-metaphysical uses to which sometimes put. ~~d the game was open to Everyman (a in a way that was longer true of the professional tea North America, for example. Football, in short, was a VeVEu As an object o f ~ u r o p e a n public attention, football, it was sometime not just for war but also for politics. It certainly occupi now space in newspapers; and politicians everywhere were careful to sporting heroes and demonstrate due familiarity with But then politics in E~~~~~ had lost its own competitive of the old master narratives (Socialism vs Capitalism; Prolet perialists vs revolutionaries) did not mean that particular issues of p" or divided public opinion. But it did make it harder no longer politial choices and allegiance in traditional Party terms. political extremes-far Left, far Right-were n The typically in their opposition to foreigners and their shared fear of Eur . . , : , a,t;.c.nitlli9m-recast somewhat implausibly as 'LL, "". -... -ir..--.-.. though strictly domesric capitalism were somehow a different and le to nativist reactionaries and internationalist breed-was As for the political mainstream, the old differencesbemeen Parties of cent

cadff.iUthough it remained conventional to thinkin terms and ley distinguished was unclear. O1d-style political party was one victim of these changes, with declining out at the polls, as we have seen. ~~~~h~~ casualty was equallYve"erahle European institution, the public intellectual. The pre-de-si2ciehadseen the first flowering of politically intellectualsa,in Berlin, in Budapest, but above all in paris: like ~ h ~ Or Leon B1um. On the European scene a century later their would.be essors were, if not entirely absent, then increasingly marginal, here were various reasons for the demise of the continental intellectual (the Shad uncommon in Britain, its isolated occurrence the e ofArthur Koestler or Isaiah ~ ~ ~ ln l central i ~ ) and . had once mobilized the political intelligentsiaan rights or the economics ,f transition-now bored and indifferent response from youngergenerations,~geingmoralOne-time political heroes like Michnk-were irrevocably assored to revisit. what czeslaw ~ i had once l ~ as the 'irritation of East European intellectuals' at the A~~~~~~~ ohsespurely material products was now increasingly directed at their feuow
stern Europe, the exhoflatory function of the intellectual had not altoisappeared-readen of the German or French quality press were still hjected to incandescent political sermons from G~~~~~~ Grass or t i t had lost its object. There were many particular sins against which ralists might rail, but no general goal or ideal in whose name to Owers. Fascism, C~mmunisrn and war had been from the ether with censorship and the death penalty. ~ band contra~ ere universally available, homosexuality freely permined and ed.The depredations of the unrestricted capitalist market, continued to attract intellectual tire everywhere;but in the absence tident anti-ca~italist counter-project. this was a debate better suited to

ta

exmytion was a tiny but very bard core of German and (erpeciaUy) gamw m search of afighf,~~theutterm~stikcationa 784

only Iemaining arena in which European intellectuals could still nesmess with universal policy prescriptions was in foreign affairs, free of SSY Compromisesof domestic policy-making and where issues of right and life and death were still very much in play. During the yugoslav wars intd. west and east Europe strenuously took up the cudgeh. some, like elkraut in Paris, identified body and soul the croat cause. A few785

H~STORY OP EUROPE SINCE

I945

E U R O P B A S A WAY O F l l P B

notably in France and ~~~tria-ondemnedwestern interventi autonomy, based (as they asserted) on exasera led to non.existent crimes. ~ o spressed t the case for int falsified reports of extending the rights-basedar Bosnia or Kosovo on general espoused twenty years before al,d emphasizing the genocidal practi
bian forces. But evenYugoslavia, for all its urgency, could not return illtellect Bernard.~enri ~ e , . y in Paris could get invited tot tre of public life. with the president, much as Tony Blair would occasionallyI' for ,treats with favoured ~ ~ i tjournalists i ~ h and other literary cou staged exercises in political image-building had no impacton pol' int France nor ~ ~ nor any i of their ~ allies ~ was i moved~ to alter their calculations in any way. Nor could publicly engage their once.crucial role in mobilizing opinion at large, as became clear in of the Atlantic rift of 2003. fieE~~~~~~~ public (as distinct from certain European st whelmingly opposed both to the American invasion of 1raq in that year and broader lines of US foreign policy under President George W. Bush. But 'Ilc (' and anger to which this opposition gave rise, though ;I pouring of 'Ir shared and expressed by many European intellectuals,did not depend again;'or I' a ! for its articulation or organization. Some French writers-L*,

was timed to coincide with the appearallce auover western Europe by equally renowned public figures: unlberto E~~ in L~ R~P,,~. is Italian colleague the philosopher GianniVattimo in L~ stampa; the Swiss nt Of the German Academy of Arts, Adolf M U S C in ~~ the , N ~ , Ztircher ,~ the Spanish pllilosopher Fernando Savater in pa& and a lone Ameri. philosopher Richard Rorty, in the siiddeutsche z E i h m g , At almost any the previous century an intellectual initiative on this scale, in nt newspapers and by figures of comparable standing, would have been a major nt: a mallifesto and call to arms that would have rippled through the ultural commonity. the Derrida-Habermas initiative, even though it articulated sentiments by passed virtually unnoticed. ~twas not as news, quoted by sympathizers. No-one implored its authors to take up their nd lead the forward. The governments of a significant number o f ~ u . states,including France, Germany, Belgium and later spain, undoubtedly
"'I' Occur

Their ilar

d in general terms with the views expressed in these essays; but it did to any of them to invite Professon prof id^ or pro in for wholeProject sputtered out. One hundred years aher the Dreyfus mair, fifiy after the apotheosis of Jean-Paul artr re, leading i,,teuKtuals had town a petition-and no-one came.

"" Bruher-refused to condemn Washington, partly for fear of agains'"rai' "iccada after the end of the Second World War, the &lantic a i a n c e between flectively anti.i\merican and partly out of sympathy for its stance , , . , and the United States was in disarray. part this was the predictable 1 ~ 1 They ~ ~ passed : virtually unheard. Once.influential figures like Michnik and Glucksmann urged Of the end of the Cold War-while few wished to see NATO dismantled support Washington3s lraq Policy, arguing by extension from their ~ w n e a r ~ ~ ~ ~ ' ' ' abandon*, it made little sense in its existing form and its future goals were ings on Communism that a policy of 'liberal interventionism' in defenseof :cure. TlleAlliance suffered Further in the course of the yugoslav wars, when generals resented sharing decision-making rights everywhere was justified on general principles and that Amerimwas E~~~~~~~ counterparts who of the struggle against political evil and moral reluctant to take the initiative and could offer little practical support in as before, in the Having thus convinced themselves that the American Presidentwas NATO was placed under Unprecedented ducting hir foreign policl for their reasons, they were then genuinely surPricc' by hi^^^^^,^ re. find themselves isolated and ignored by their traditional audiences. tothe assaultsof September 11th2001. President ~ ~ uncompromising ~ h ' and ~ lcsqunilareralism ('with us or against us'), the But the irrelevance of Michnik or Glucksmann had nothing to do with ofhis NATO allies, titular cast of their opinions. f i e same fate awaited those intellectualsivhn and the US march to war in Iraq despite overwhelming international opthe opposite tack. onM~~31st 2003, Jilrgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida--nro and the absence of any UN mandate, ensured that ~ ~ less than ~ of E,,rope~s best-known writers/philosophenlintelle~tua~~~u~~is which it had declared indefinite war-would now be regarded as a to world peace and security, Frnnkfurfer~ l , 2 i r u~n g an ~ article ~ entitled ~ 'Unsere i ~ Emeuemg. ~ Krieg: ~ i ~ ~ ,Europas' ~ d('Our ~ R~ e n e~ d AftertheWar:The ~ b ~ ~ Rebirti t Ihe 'Old Europe-New Europe' distinction that US secretary of ~~f~~~~ Donl"'"sfeld claimed to have identified in the spring of zoo3, in rope') in which they argued that America's new and dangerous Pathwas an to drive a for E ~ an occasion ~ for ~ Europeans ~ :to rethink their cornma Washingtoni European allies, explained little about intra.European wake-up tity,draw upon their shared Enlightenment values and forge a distincti=EurorFnC !';!sionsand badly misread its object. Only in poland could herica count on solid liar and support. Elsewhere in Europe, old and new alike, American stance in world affairs.

""

-i

POSTWAR:

A HISTORY OP EUROPE SINCE

1945

E U R O P E A S A WAY O F L ~ P E

inore devout Muslim neighbours). The American fondness for personal side arms, policy on Iraq and much else was heartily di~liked.~ But the fact that a smior 1 1 5 not excluding fully equipped semi-automatic rifles, made life in the US appear official could seek to divide the Europeans in this way, just a few years afterthey dangerous and anarchic, while for the overwhelming majority of European obhad so painfully begun to sew themselves together, led many to conclude.that tii: , ., i:rvers, the frequent and unapologetic resort to the death penalty seemed to place US itself was now the most serious problem facing Europe. .iinerica beyond the pale of modern civilization.' NATO had come into existence to compensate forwestern Europebinabilibio To these were added Washington's growing disdain for international treaties, its defend itself without American help. The continuing failure of European govelll~ ~lr~iquepenpective on everything from global warming to international law, and ments to forge an effectivemilitary force of their own was what kept it in busiocbq. il' n veaU its partisan stance in the Israel-Palestinecrisis. In none of these instances Beginning with the Maastricht Treaty of 1993, the European Union hadat leas! a ; ~ . ! ], I American policy completely reverse direction following the election of Presiknowledged the need for a Common Foreign and Security Policy, though what lii:!! Ant George W. Bush in zooo; the Atlantic gap had begun to open up well before. was and how it would be determined and implemented remainedobscure, Rut I C E i1t1 the new Administration's harsher tone confirmed for many European comyearson the EU was close to establishing a 60,ooo-strong Rapid ResponseForcufor ;:~cntaton what they already suspected: that these were not mere disagreements on intervention and peace-keeping tasks. Urged on by France and to Washington'suiiaiiretepolicy issues. They were mounting evidence of a fundamental cultural anident annoyance, European governments were also nearing agreement on an au i~eiinism. tonomous defense establishment capable of acting out of area and indepe~iclc~l! The idea that America was culturally different-r inferior, or threatening-was of NATO. iirrdly originaL In 1983 the French Culture Minister Jack Lang warned that the But the Atlantic gap was not just a disagreement about armies. It ww,nnl c.vcli ~irlclywatched television series Dallasrepresented a serious threat to Frencll and about economic conflict, though the European Union was now large eno~q:l~ 111 ll~~rr~pean identity. Nine yean later, when JurasricPark opened in French cinemas, bring effective pressure on the US Congress and on individual Americanun;olilIC was echoed to the letter by one of his conservative successors. When EuroDisfacturers to conform to its norms and regulations or else risk being squeezeil ;,ui lcywas launched in the spring of 1992, the radical Parisian theatre director Ariane of its markets: a development that caught many US Congressmen and businoars \Inouchkine went a step further and warned that the amusement park would by surprise. Not only was Europe no longer in America's shadow, but the relatioil irnye:a cultural Chernobyl: But this was the familiar small change of intellectual was if anything reversed. European direct investment in the US in theyear zooi~ had i~obbery and cultural insecurity, mixed-in France as elsewhere--with more than reached $900 billion (against less than $650 billion of American direct inl.esti~~cilt IittIechauGinist nostalgia. On the fiftieth anniversary of D-Day, Giankanco Fini, in Europe); nearly 70 percent ofall foreign investment in the US was komEurojrc: ,ader:of the ex-Fascist National Alliance Party in Italy, told the Italian daily La and European multi-nationals now owned a large number of iconic.American tompa that 'I hope I won't be thought to be justifying Fascism if I wonder whether products, including Brooks Brothers, Random House, Kent cigarettes, Penn/.oil. i' 'itb.theAmericanlandings Europe didn't lose a part of her cultural identity', Birdb Eye and the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team. \fiat was new about the situation at the beginning of the twenty-first century E,conomic competition, however tense, was nonetheless a certain sort of C ~ ~ J S C ness. What was really driving the two continents apart was a growingdisagreel~~n~ sr that such sentiments were becoming commonplace, and had moved from the ~eilectual or political fringes deep into the center of European life. The depth and about 'values: In the words of Le Monde, 'the transatlantic communityof valui.!i eadth of anti-American feeling in contemporary Europe far exceeded anything crumbling', Seen from Europe, America-which had becomesuperficiallyfami!iat cii during theVietnam War or even at the height of the peace movements of the in the course of the Cold War-was starting to look very alien. The earnest r:!i. giosity of a growing number of Americans-reflected in their latest,'born~ap:i~r:l rlv 1980s.Although a majority in most countries still believed that the Atlantic 'ationship could be prese~ved, three out of five Europeans in zoo4 (many more president-was incomprehensible to most Christian Europeans (if not to h:;r i n that in some countries, notably Spain, Slovakia and, strikingly, Turkey) 'l~ght strong American leadership in the world to be'undesirahle: ' o me of this could be attributed to widespread dislike of the policies and per'In lanurry 2003, at #he initiative of the Spanish and British primc ministerr, eight Eumpran p:..
mcnts (Rritrin,Spain.Porrug.l,Denmark,Italy, Poland, Hungary and IhcClah Republic) signed *,,I?' declsrslion of pro-American solidari~within a few months the Hungarians and Cznhswerr prli*': ; their q c e l r and aprcrsing bitterness at having becn'bullicd' into signing by the Sp.;!,:, Prine Minincr, IosC Marla Aznar. A year later Aznar himself was thrown out of ofice by Spanci;:::. err, in large mcsrurr for having led Spain into the'coalitiod to invade Iraq-sometl>ing lowIi~~'l11r nation war ouewhdmingly opposed. hrnrrians put up huge biUboardr rcadingUloveThyNcighbor4 but t h y murder and rape their T. R Reid. The United Stater ~ / E u r n p ~ LOO^),^. 298,

i.

!nl>an at rater that would shock any European nation:

p O s T w ~A ~ . HJSTOHI

OF EUROPE SINCE

1945

FUROPE AS A W A ~

L,PE

is the place to come when you are son of preside,,t George W. ~ , , ~ h in, contrast to the affection in whi~hBilI~~~:- '~'icwer:'America and single. uut if it is "lne to grow You should return to Europe: ton, his predecessor, had been held. ~~t many Europeans had heen in the late Sities; yet their feelings about ident Lyndon mutated into dislike of Americaor South-EastAsia had not Ibeimageofberica as tlr~erennial land of youth and adventure--with general, Forty yeact later there was a widespread feeling, all across the conti'""c first-centniy (and very much including the ~ ~ i t iwho ~ h angrily , objected to their cast as an indulgent paradise for the middle-aged and risk. ter,s entl,usiastic identification with his American ally) that there was s~me"'in~ wide cllrrenq, especially in America itself. A I indeed ~ E~~~~~ was giuwingo'der. Of t h e m e n t ~ countries in the world in zoo4 with the highest share wrong with the kind of place that America was becoming-or) as many 'Ow "" ~i?eo~leoversW,aUhutone were in Eurnpe (the aception was lapan), The sisted, had alwav been. in many qualities of Europe were fast?cLn"'countries was well below replacement levels, I,, Spain, Indeed, the presumptively ing the highest common factor in European self-identification.E ~ ~ ~ P ~ ~ " ~ " ' ~ ' ~ Germallyand Sweden, fertility rates were below children per *'lman.In Par@ofEastern Europe (Bulgaria and Latvia, for example, .govenia) we, contrasted with American values. Europe was-or should 'lrive to ' 2;'i'owere to the lowest in the world. Projected foMlardthrough 2040 these ,vhing that ~~~~i~ wasn,t. ~nNovember 1998 J6rBmeClement, thePrrslde"' a pranco-~erman televisionstation d e v o t e d t o c u ~ h r e a n d t h ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ , ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 'that many European countries could qect Population to fall by one 'ia'asuggested of that ,European creativity' was the only bu)warkagainst the sirens of Ameifcallmd~ to post.~ommunist Prague as a case in point, a citY explanations for fertility decline seemed to account for terialism and ger of succumbing to sune uropie liherale martelle' ( a ' deadly liberal utd~ia"':in ient demographic crisis. Poor countries like M ~and rich J ones ~ ~ faced the same challenge. In Catholic countries like I ~or ~ , ~ thrall to deregulated markets and the lure of profit. Prague, like the rest of e~ter*'~l'rnl'c, (married ~ n unmarried d alike) often lived in their parents' homes In the immediate post.~ommunist have pleaded guilty to a longing f o r d thingsAmerican;fnnm thirties,.whereas in Lutheran Sweden they had om homer would dividual beedo,,, to material abundance. And no-one visiting eastemEulnrcao nerous levels of state-funded ~ h i ~ d and - matemitylea.,e, ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ But~ t inavians were having slightly more capitals, from Tilllinn qub]jan., could miss the aggressive new 4iteof slva?l! than M~~~~~~~~~~~ zipping busily to appointments and sho~pitl?> ifferences in fertility were leu than besimilarities And dressed young men and peditions in their expensive new cars, enjoying the deadly liberal u t o ~ ~ ' ~ " ere would have been lower stiU but for immigrants from outB,,~ evel, eastern Europeans were taking theirdistan@"f'osl Osted the overall population n ~ ~ m h e and r s had a mu&greater American model: partly in deference to their new association with the'Ri1"' 1e.h Germany in 1960 the number of children born with one Union; partly because of growing aversion to aspects of American foreign pol r the year. F O years ~ later that fig. as a n economic system and model of society theU1! but increasingly ' "'c scene in Europe was not actually wry different from [hat States no longer seemed SO self-evidently the way of the future.' anti.hericanism in eastern Europe remained a minority [ls; f the new millennium the indigenous be,iCan counuieslike ~ ~ or H~~~~~ l it was ~ now an ~ indirect,politicall~ ~ i acceptabi ~ s. The difference was that the ~ommunism-and, as so often in+he US was so much largerLand they were dis. of orpressing nostalgia for nlrrogate for antiSemitism. But even among mainstream coc'i overall fertility in the US looked set it was no longer commonplace to hold U P America,?. r the foreseeable future. ,~,,,d although the tors and of inspiration or an object to be em~1ated.F~ America and E~~~~~might have tions or practices time America had heen another time--~urope's future. Now it was just tments in the decades the welfare place, Many young people, tobe sure, still dreamed of going to America.'? more generous and thus faced the I-lungarian who had worked for some years in California explained to r"iroprans were confronted with an apparently straightforward dilemma: what '~i"l'iha~penif (when?)there weren't enough young people working to cover tile be noted, ate, dressed, phond and '~'''', burin- dasr in Easlcrn mrope, it ncccrqary to imilate,hcriranr.ouitc hccontnry:A citizens, now living much longer than pcan,To moncrn itwasno ,umcr prductr frequently didained ar'dowdf or'blaob ng seain on senrices into

'"'

'

'

p o s ~ - w a a :A ~ r s ~ o O nF r E U R O P E the bargain!9

SINCE

1945

E U R O P E A S A WAY O P L

one answer was to reduce retirement benefits. Another was to raise

French to 25 and the Swedes to 30 or more, many Americans had to settle for less
a deliberate

he

atwhich those benefits were paid-i.e. make people worklonger be^ A third alternative was to extract more taxes from the P ~ packets Y fore of those still in workA fourth option, only really considered in Britain (andth to imitate the US and encourage or even oblige ~ e o ~ l e t o h ' ~ to the private sector for social insurance. AU of these choices were potentially lititally explosive. par many free.market critics of EuropeS welfare states, the core problem' ing E~~~~~ was not demographic shortfall but economic rigidity. It wasn't that there weren2t,or wouldn't be, enough workers-it was that there were too rn laws protecting their salaries and their jobs, or else guaranteeing such elevated and pension payments that they lacked all incentive to work.ln first place. ~ f t ~ ~ ' l ~ b ~ ~ r -inflexibility' m a r k e t were addressed and costly Social F"' .,isions reduced or privatized, then more people could enter the workforce,thebll den on employen and taxpayers would be alleviated, and 'Enroslerosis' colt be overcome. both true and false. There was no question that som As a diagnosis this the rewards of thewelfare state, negotiated and locked into place at thepekoftllc, post.war boom, were now a serious burden. Any German worker who lost hi her job was entitled to 60 percent of their last wage packet for the next thirtymonths (6, percent if they had a child).Mer that the monthly Payments feu (or 57 percent) of their last wage packet-indefinitely.metherthissa from seeking paid work was unclear. But it came aDaP net discouraged ofregulations designed to protect the interests of employedwo A in most EU countria (notoriously France)'to sail( made it hard for full-time workers: their consequent reluctance to hire contributed to stubh high rates of youth unemployment. hand, the fact that they were highly regulated and in on ~~~~i~~~ standards did not mean that Europe's economies were neces ficient or unproductive. In 2003, when measured in terms of productivi of Switzerland, Denmark, Austria and Italy worked, the parable to the US. ~y the same criterion Ireland, Belgium.NomaY, t all out-produced the US. If America was neverth and F~~~~~ ductive overall-if Americans made more goods, services and mo cause a higher percentage of them were in paid jobs; they worked 10 E~~~~~~~~(three hundred more hours per year on average in 200 far fewer and shorter holidays. whereas the ~ r i t i s h were legally entitled to 23 paid vacation d .,

Ihan half as much paid vacation, dependingwhere they lived. E~~~~~~~~had made choice to work less, earn less-and live better lives. return for tlleir

rn

niqud~ high taxes (another impediment to growth and innovation, in the eyesof Anglo-Americancritics) Europeans received free or free retirement and a prodigious range of social public Through seto n d a r school ~ they were better educated than Americans. ~h~~ lived safer andrtly for that reason-longer lives, enjoyed better health (despite spending far less'" and had many fewer people in poverty. This, then, was the 'European Social Model: ~t was without question very exsive. But for most Europeans its promise of job security, progressive tax rates large social transfer payments represented an implicit contract bemeen gov'Iment andcitizens,aweu as hetween one citizen and another. ~ ~to the ~ nnual 'Eurobarolneter' polls, an overwhelming majority of E~~~~~~~~took the that Poverty was caused by social circumstances and not individual inade. 'Iuaq. also showed a willingness to pay higher taxes if these were directed to sentiments were predictably widespread in Scandinavia. R~~ they were al. Rritain, or in ltalyand spain.~here was a broad s about the dury state to shield citizens from the hazr the market: neither the firm nor the should treat eme units of production. social responsibility and economic be mutually exclusive--cgrowt~was laudable, but not at
This

model came in more than one style: thec~ordic; the ' ~ h i ~ ~ l ~ ~ ~ ; tions within each, w h a t the,, had in common was not a diseconomic practices, or a particular level of state involvesense-sometimes out in documents and laws, balance of social rights, civic solidarity and collectivereropriate and possible for the modern state, T ~aggregate , ~ y different in, say, ltaly and sweden, R~~ the social conwas regarded by many citizens as formally bindingemocratic chancellor of G~~~~~ introduced changes ents, he ran into a firestorm ofsocial protest, just as ne ten years earlier when similar

,,,,

''02001, healrhcosrr absorbed 8 percent of GDP in Sweden bur 14pcrvnr in the USA, hur.fifihJ of i,ims war borne bythcsovcrnmentin Sweden, 1 - than 4) pcrccnt by the pedera] , '8 in Rsncc in,960 thcrrwew fourworkers foreverypcwioner inzoo0 there were ~ ~ 1 1 m d ~ O " i ) " ~ ' ncmtwasadirrcr~ur~enon~mEr,nn buliner.essndthciremp s,Foq-F*m iuonhner.rnshad no health insurance. mt trends, lhncwould be just 0C.

792

793

POSTWAR: A HISTORY OP EUROPE S I N C E

1945

E U R O P E A S A WAY O P L I F E

E~~~since the 1980s there had been various attempts to resolve the C meen European social solidarity and American-style economic fie younger generation of economists and entrepreneurs, some of tirne in US business schools or firms and were frustrated at what they inflexibiiiryof the European business environment, had impresse the need to 'streamline' procedures and encourage competition. The apt1 ' ~ ~ ~ Ambricaine' c h e in France set out to release the Left from its antiwhile retaining its social conscience; in Scandinavia, of high taxation was discussed (if not always conceded) even in Socia1.De tic circles, The Right had been brought to acknowledge the case for w would now recognize the virtues of profit. The effort to combine the best of both sides overlapped, not c with the search for a project to replace the defunct debate between socialism that had formed the core of Western politics for over a cen sult, for a brief moment at the end of the ~ggos, was the so-ca tensibly blending enthusiasm for unconstrained capitalist producti consideration for social outcomes and the collective interest. This wa it added little of substance to Ludwig Erhard's 'Social Ma 1950s. But politics, especially post-ideological politics, is about form; an form of the Third Way, modeled on Bill Clinton's successful 'triangulati and Right and articulated above all by New Labour's duced observers. Blair, of course, had certain advantages unique to his time and place. Margaret Thatcher had moved the political goalposts far predecessors in the Labour leadership had done the hard Party's old Left. In a post-Thatcher environment, Blair could thus s progressive and 'European' merely by saying positive thin of well-distributed public services;meanwhile his much-advertised ad the private sector, and the business-friendly economic environment sought to favour, placed him firmly in the 'American' camp. He s bringing Britain into the European fold; but insisted nonetheless on keepill country exempt from the social protections of European legislation and the harmonization implicit in the Union's 'single market: The Third Way was marketed as both a pragmatic solution t o e dal dilemmas and a significant conceptual breakthrough after dec retical stagnation. Its continental admirers, heedless o f t their own national pastsnotably the popular Fascist 'third w were keen to sign on. Under Jacques Delors (1985-1995) the European:Con~n sion had a~peared a trifle preoccupied with devising and imposing norms a . rulessubstituting 'Europe' for the lost inheritance of Fabian-style bure*; socialism. Brussels, too, seemed in need of a Third Way: an uplifting Story of its

at Could situate the Union between institutional invisibility and look politics would not long survive the disastrous decision to emcountry and his reputation in the zoo3 invasion of Iraq-a move which eminded foreign observers that New Labour's Third Way was inseparably th the UKS reluctance to choose between Europe and the united d the evidence that Britain, like the US, was seeing a dramatic rise in the of the poor-in contrast to the rest of the EU where poverty was in. modestly, if at all-severely diminished the appeal of the British model. e Third Way was always going to have a short shelf life. lts very name imhe presence of two extremes-ultra free-market capitalism and state -both of which no longer existed (and in the case of the former had al. ent of doctrinal imaginations). The need for a dramatic theoret. rhetorical) breakthrough had passed. rivatization in the early 1980s had been controversial, provoking wide. of the reach and legitimacy of the public sector and calling into stion the attainability of social-democratic objectives and the moral legitimacy le profit motive in the delivery of public goods. By 2004, however, privatiza. pragmatic business. In eastern Europe, it was a necessary con& r membership of tbe EU, in conformity with Brussels' strictures against t-distorting public subsidies. In France or Italy, the sale of publicly owned dertaken as a short-term book-keeping device to reduce the anficit and stay within euro-zone rules. Tony Blair's own Third Way projects-for the semi-privatization of L ~ ~ . d, for exgmple, or the introduction of 'competition'into hospi. ices-were embarked upon as cost-efficiency calculations with side-benefits get. TOthe extent that they were tied to an argument of social PIG this was tacked on as an unconvincing afterthought. And Blair's appeal iminishing with time has the sharply reduced scale of his third electoral V~C. 05, was to show). Despite cutting government expenditure, opting Pean social charter, reducing company taxation and welcoming in. d investment with all manner of sweeteners, the UK remained stubbornly un. dudve. When measured by output-per-hour it consistently underperformed r0tic: regulation-bound EU partners. Labour plan to avoid the coming crisis of ~ u r o ~ ~ ' ~ n schemes-by passing the liability on to the private sectormed to failure within less than a decadeof its proud inauguration. ::UK, like the US, companies that invested their pension funds in a
'Delors'succesrorr the pendulum has shifted: the Commission is still as active as cwr, butib ef. to d.+regulatingmarkce.

POSTWAR: A HISTORY O P EUROPE SINCE

1945

E U R O P E A S A WAY O P L I F E

stock market had little hope of meeting long-term commitments to thei those employees--no less than pensioners d e ~ e n ees, lit funding-would now he living much longer than hefore. Most of th becoming clear, would never see a full company pension . . . unless th forced hack into the pensions business to make up the shortfall. The Thir beginning to look an awful lot like a game of Three-Card Monte.

states thus appeared increasingly supererogatory. ow eve^: a fortiori since zool-those states appear, once again, to matter e early modern state had two,intimately related functions: raising taxes and ng war. Euope--the European Union-is not a state. It does not raise taxes t has no capacity for making war.As we have seen, it took a verylongtime in. for it to acquire even the rudiments of a military capacity, much less a for. OSt of the first half century following the end of World War Two ot a handicap: the prospect of undertaking another E~~~~~~~ war was to almost all Europeans, and their defense against the only likely enemy tin the aftermath of September nth 2001 the limitations of a post.national tiption for a better European future became clear. The traditional E~~~~~~~ a ti after all, not only made war abroad but enforced the peace at home. hi^, as bes long ago realized, is what gives the state its distinctive and irreplaceable le. here violent political warfare against unarmed civilians n recent years (Spain, the UK, Italy and Germany) the impor. ts policemen, its army, its intelligence services and its judicial t u s w a s never forgotten. In an age of 'terrorism: the state's monopoly of power is an attractive reassurance to most of its citizens. eeping citizens safe is what states do. And there was no sign that ~~~~~~l~ (the Pean Union) would or could take on this responsibility in the foreseeable fuIn this vital respect the state remained the core legitimate representative of its s, in a way that the transnational union of Europeans, for its passports rliaments, could not hope to match. Europeans might enjoy the beedo,,, to over the heads of their own governments to European judges, and it re. d a source of wonder to many that national courts in Germany or nritain ed so readily with judgments emanating from Strasbourg or ~ ~ ame to keeping the gunman and the bomber away, responsibility and firmly in Berlin or London. What, after all, should a citizen do if her house were fire-bombed? Call a bureaucrat? acy is a function of capacity: it is in part because the disarticulated, ederal state of Belgium, e.g. has sometimes appeared unable to keep its it. macy bas been called into question. And although the ca. f the state begins with arms it does not end there, even today. solong as it ate--rather than a trans-state entity-which pays pensions, insures the uneyed and educates children, then that state's monopoly of a certain sort ofpo. al'legitimacy will continue unchallenged. Over the course of the twentieth the European nation-state took on considerable responsibilities for its it. Ifare,security and well-being. In recent years it has shed its intrusive over. f private morality and some-but not all-of its economic initiative. l-he

the beginning of the twenty-first century, the dilemma lacin not ~ ~ ~ i ~or l Capitalism, i s m Left versus Right, or the Thi ' E ~ versus ~ ~'America: ~ ~ since ' that choice had now been effec lninds in favour of Europe. It was, rather, most qnestion-which history had placed upon the agenda in 1 etly but insistently dislodged or outlived all other claims upon Europe tion. what future was there for the separate European nation-state have a future? ~h~~~could be no going hack to the world of the autonom nation-state, sharing nothing with its neighbour but a common ians, slovenes, ~~nes-ven the British-were now Euro lions of sikhs, nengalis, ~ ~ r kArabs, s , Indians, Senegalese and lives, everyone whose country was in the European their wanted to he-was now irrevocably European. The EU was the world's large ternal single market, the world's biggest trader in services, and its men1ber.s source of authority in all matters of economic regulati a world where comparative advantage in fured-factor endowme minerals, farmland, even location-counted for less than policies fac cation, research and investment, it mattered hugely that the creasing initiative in these areas. Just as states had always been ' of markets-making rules governing exchange, emplo movement-s~ it was now the EU that made those rules; th it also exercised a near monopoly on the markets in money its vital economic activity left to national rather than European initiative only hecause the UK insisted upon it. B U ~ men live not in markets but in communities. For years those communities have been grouped, voluntarily or (more in states. After the experiences of 1914-45. Europea urgent need for the state: the politics and social agendas of the 19 anxiety above anything else. W ~ t h economic prosperifi, social peace national stability, however, that need slowly evaporated. In its pla cion of intrusive public authority and a desire for individual autono removal of constraints on private initiative. Moreover, in the era of powers, the fate of Europe seemed largely to have been taken o

POSTWAR: A HISTORY

OF EUROPE SINCE

1945

E U R O P E AS A WAY O P L ~ P E

Legitimacy is also a function of territory. The European Union, asmarly 0 original animal: it is territorially definedwilllll have noted, is an being a consistent territorial entity. ~ t laws s and its regulations are territory-widc, but its citizens cannot vote in each other's national el cast their ~ o t in e local and European ballots). The geographical reach is quite belied by its relative unimportance in Europeans' daily affai pared to the country of their birth or residence. To be sure, the provider of economic and other services. But this defines its citizens as wns1rlners rather than participants-'a community of passive citizens strangers'-and thus risks provoking unflattering cornpa democratic spain or poland, or the quiescent political culture of Adenauer's h'es' G ~unpromising ~ precedents ~ for ~ such an ~ ambitious ~ und : citizenship, democracy, rights and duty are intimately state--particularly in countries with a living tradition of active citize tion i n public affairs. physical proximity matters: to participate in the sta to feel part of it. E~~~in an age of super-fast trains and real-time elect ,,,,,,,ication it is not clear how someone in Poimbra, say, or ,ive citizen of ~~~~p~For the concept to retain any meaning--and for.Euro to remain political in any useful s e n s e t h e i r reference for the foreseeable f~ remain ~ i s bor ~Warsaw: ~ , not Brussels. It is not by C ern age giant s t a t e e c h i n a , Russia, the US-have eithe thoritarian rule or else have remained resolutely Centri ' . than a little suspicious of the federal capital and all its works. A ~then, were ~ misleading. The ~ European ~ Union in 2005 ~ had lll'l ss~ perceded Conventionalterritorial units and would no able future, six decades after itl leis defeat, the rnultip and territories that together defined Europe and its history certainly ovecla~l inter.communicated more than at any time in the past rather harder for outside observers to catch, was the poss E ~or Catalan ~ and European--or ~ ~ Arab and ~ European. ~ , "' ~ i ~nations ~ and i states ~ had ~ not ~ vanished. i ~ Just ~ as the wolld w;lr 1111 on a single 'American' norm-the developed capitalist societies exhihited a wide range of social forms and very different market and the s t a t e s o Europe too contained a d i s h traditions. The illusion that we live in a post-national from paying altogether too much attention to 'globalized' economic Pmce assuming that similarly transnational dwelopment other sphere of human life. Seen uniquely through t exchange, p , ~ ~ o p had e indeed become a seamless fl waves. B~~ viewed as a site of power or political legitimacy or wlhral affin E~~~~~ remained what it had long been: a familia

tate-Parti~jes. Nationalism had largely come and ,dates remained.

but nations and

what Europeans had done to one another in the first half of the 'trcatieth century, this was rather remarkable. It certainly could not havebeen pre. the rubble of 1945.Indeed, the re-emergence o f ~ u r o p ebattered ~s peair distinctive national cultures and institutions from the wreckage of 1's thirty years'war might well be thought an even greater achiwement tl'a"'their collective success in forging a transnational union. ~ 1 latter, , ~ all, various European agendas well before the second world War and was cilitated by the devastation wrought by that conflict. But the resurlion Of Germany, or Poland, or France, not to speak of H~~~~~~or ~ i ~ eemed altogether less likely. less Predictable-indeed quite unthinkable just a few short decades urope's emergence in the dawn of the twenty-first century as a onal virtues: a community of values and a system ofintereld U P by Europeans and nonduropeans alike as an for ''Ito In Part this was the backwash of growing disillusion with the Amerbut the reputation was well earned. ~,,d it a n unprecehted oPPo*'Jnity. Whether Europe's burnished new image, scrubbed clean of cissitudes, would survive the challenges of the coming century, epend a lot on how E~~~~~~~~responded to the non-alropeans at their borders. ln the troubled early years of the twenty-ficrt :cnturl that remained an open question. ~ hundred and ~ seventy years ~ One earlier,~ at the dawn, of the era, the eine drew a revealing distinction bemeen hvo sorts ofcol. [Germans]: he wrote, atriots and we became patriots, for we do everything our O n e must not think of this patriotism, however, as bears this name here in prance. A prenchrnmzs patri. means that his heart is warmed, and with this warmth it stretches and so that his love no longer embraces merely his closest relative, but le of the civilized world, A ~~~~~~i patriotism means ts and shrinks like leather in the cold, and a German foreign, no longer wants to become a citizen of the t only a provincial G ~ ~ ~ ~

In international surveys cndoftl,e century,thcnum'very proud'of their country exceeded > , peren,, the lar patrioticverve; clsewhcre t h e n u m h r oyvcry

.',

(hrmer ,,err

France and Germany, of course, were no longer the critical re temporary European condition. If the emerging Europe were to takea'Gernlal~ic' turn, contracting 'like leather in h e cold' to a defensive provincialism-an c s v t . ~ tuality suggested by the referendums in France and the Netherl of 2005, when clear majorities rejected the proposed European'Constitution'-tl~cn the opportunity would be missed and the European Union would nevertranriril~l its functional origins. It would remain nomore than the sum and highestcor factor of its members'separate self-interests. the spirit of Heine's idealized France, 'stretching and cipanding to whole of the civilized world: then something more was now possible eth century-America's Century-had seen Europe plunge into the a

Epilogue

and in largemeasure because of them-it was Europeans who werenow uniqu:!~ placed to offer the world some modest advice on how to avoid repeating their oun mistakes. Few would have predicted it sixty years before, but the twenty-first ce:itury might yet beIong to Europe.