The European Union: More united than ever - Opinion - by Miguel Otero Iglesias

The notion that the European Union has never been less united than now has taken hold in the public consciousness. The recurring theme is that EU countries are unable to agree on euro reforms, on migratory flow management, on how to deal with growing aggressiveness from the US, Russia and China, and that the rise of national populism will further undermine the Union to the breaking point.

Divisions exist, and they are serious, but a calm and collected analysis, with historical perspective, shows that Europe is probably more united today than ever before. And to convince ourselves of this fact, it is not necessary to recall the centuries’ worth of European conflicts ranging from the Hundred Years’ War to World War II. It is enough to review the last 60 years of European integration.

Let’s break it down into decades. In the 1960s we had the Empty Chair Crisis, triggered by a De Gaulle, who felt considerably more French than European. Then, in the 1970s, we had the collapse of the “snake in the tunnel” (an attempt at monetary cooperation) that buried the Werner Plan and triggered years of tensions between France and a dominant Germany, which imposed the tyranny of the Deutsche Mark. And in the 1980s we had the crisis of Thatcher’s “handbag” and the Fontainebleau agreement institutionalizing the rebate for the UK on its contribution to the EU budget, a historical mistake that firmly established “English exceptionalism.”

There are those who will think that the 1990s, with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, were years of greater unity. Not in the least. The United Kingdom did not join the euro, the Danish voted against it, and only 51% of French citizens supported it. It was a narrow victory, and meanwhile there were many voices opposed to extending EU membership to Eastern European countries. These tensions flared up again in the first decade of the 21st century when the French and the Dutch voted against the European Constitution.

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