Lost in a bubble, both of them

I don’t know what the situation is like today, but back in the 1980s history was not given very much prominence on the national curriculum. At my school only one student in the whole senior school opted to take history at O-Level. He ended up doing it privately, as the school – understandably enough, I suppose – felt it could not invest in the necessary resources just for one student.

The national curriculum has changed a lot since then, and so has history. People born before the 1980s have seen the entire European map change beyond recognition in their own lifetimes. Germany was still two countries when I was in my 20s. Czechoslovakia was only one. Latvia, Estonia, Moldova, Ukraine, etc., were all part of the Soviet Union, and as such tucked away from view in a perceived blanket of darkness called the ‘Iron Curtain’.

The European Union existed, certainly; but it was not yet the global political player it is today. Europe before enlargement was still the domain of individual sovereign states; as indeed it still is when it comes to individual issues such as immigration. But the idea of a single political entity called Europe, deciding – among other things – to enforce sanctions against neighbouring countries, was almost unheard of until fairly recently.

Looking at the map today, a completely different picture emerges… and the change will be infinitely more dramatic the older you happen to be. Those who lived through World War Two, if still alive, can remember a time when the Austria-Hungarian Empire still existed, and saw the Third Reich grow to engulf most of Europe, only to retreat beyond its original borders and eventually disappear. These people have no reason to suppose that the institutions today will be any more successful or enduring as all the collapsed political structures of yesteryear.

The Nationalists still use the EU as a stick to beat their opponents with; and Labour still allows itself to be conditioned by this, and to simplify its stand as a vaguely ‘pro-EU’ policy.

The result – if you’ll allow a little generalisation on my part – is a curious reversal of the usual motif whereby older generations are more staid and set in their ways than younger ones. On the level of global geopolitics, the opposite is true: older generations tend to view the dominant political structures of their day as transient. They have seen empires fall and gargantuan conglomerates such as the USSR disintegrate into a thousand breakaway republics. Even on a local level, they have seen even our own little Malta transit from a British protectorate to an independent republic; and its pre-independence tableau of dozens of little political parties has been whittled down to only two in parliament, and three in total.

Conversely, it is the younger ones who grow up to believe that theirs is a stable reality – i.e., that the world they are used to is the only one possible or even desirable – and who regard everything that came before as nebulous and vaguely unreal. This is as true of myself as everyone else. I have no memory at all of British Malta. I was a child of independence, and to date I cannot really picture any other scenario.

Broadly speaking, then, it will be the younger generations, not the older, who cling to existing political realities as if they were inevitable… and who therefore react with surprise or disbelief when this cosy little bubble of theirs is unceremoniously burst. And as anyone who has ever studied history will confirm, such bubbles tend to burst all the time. That is, in fact, what the cauldron of history is all about: an endless succession of bursting bubbles.

It is the younger ones who grow up to believe that theirs is a stable reality and who regard everything that came before as nebulous and vaguely unreal.

Well, something tells me that, just as the late 1980s saw great upheavals that redefined the European map, the next few decades will likewise usher in new and as-yet unknown geo-political realities. None of this will come as a surprise to us old fogeys who’ve seen this happen before. But there is mounting evidence that a (mostly) younger generation either cannot or will not see this coming. And you need look no further than the ongoing Ukraine crisis to get an idea of how far removed from reality our home-grown perception of European political reality has become. 

The crisis in itself seems to have in it all the seeds of an imminent global shift of political power. Russia has effectively absorbed the Crimea, and there is a very real possibility that Ukraine will follow Czechoslovakia’s example, and fragment as a result. Faced with all this, the EU has so far proved powerless. While the Russian military infiltrated the Ukraine, European countries seemed incapable of agreeing among themselves even on what sort of ‘sanctions’ to impose. The resulting sanctions were consequently a joke: so evidently devised to protect the interests of individual EU member states – not least Germany, which is heavily reliant on Russian energy – that the overwhelming message taken on board by the Russians was… right, folks, we’ve just been given carte-blanche to do precisely as we like. There is no unified political entity on the other side of the Ukrainian border to stop us, or even force us to question our own actions.

So unless monumental structural changes allow the EU to present a common foreign policy and (if necessary) back it up with military capability – two things it is manifestly incapable of doing at the moment – it will simply have to abandon any aspirations to be a determining voice in international affairs.

This reality has been known to Eurocrats for years; it forms the crux of the endless disagreement between federalists – who want a more powerful central European government at the expense of the national sovereignty of its member states – and anti-federalists who will resist any further erosion of national sovereignty.

And with this latest crisis, it is now inevitable that the EU will change one way or another. The illusion of its power as a broker on the world stage has been dispelled. To regain that influence, it must either federalise, and speak with one voice – the United Voice of Europe – or further devolve into the sum total of several individual countries which speak only for their own interests. Either way, it will no longer be the same European Union we joined in 2004.

Yet look at how this same European Union is talked of in a local context. As both sides unfold their lists of candidates ahead of the next EP election, we are constantly reminded which party had advocated EU membership before 2004 – for all the world as if the EU hasn’t changed since then, and will not change any further in future – and which campaigned against. We are still being invited to look upon Malta’s accession to the EU as a static and unchanging historical event, which one side endorses and the other doesn’t. The Nationalists still use the EU as a stick to beat their opponents with; and Labour still allows itself to be conditioned by this, and to simplify its stand as a vaguely ‘pro-EU’ policy.

Is the PL anti-federalist, as some of its exponents seem to indicate? If so, what is it doing in a largely federalist Party of European Socialists?

Completely absent from all this debate is the concept of the EU as an evolving entity which is almost certainly about to undergo dramatic upheavals. And we still don’t know exactly where either party stands on these all-important imminent changes, either.

In fact, when you consider that we have been ‘debating the EU’ – if such it can be called – for the past 20 years at least, it becomes astounding that we have never actually asked ourselves the question of what sort of ‘EU’ we actually want. What is the PN’s view on federalisation, for instance? Does the party which talks of the EU as it were among the ‘Founding Fathers’ have any opinion at all on whether power should be further centralised in Brussels? If so, how does it propose to make tiny Malta’s voice heard above the hubbub of much larger and more influential countries?

In Labour’s case the question is even more pertinent. Alfred Sant, has in the past argued that the EU cannot adopt a ‘one-size-fits-all’ mentality. Yet the party itself does not have any discernible policy regarding what political direction the EU should take. Is the PL anti-federalist, as some of its exponents seem to indicate? If so, what is it doing in a largely federalist Party of European Socialists?

I only ask because it is the single most pressing debate in Europe at the moment, you know. It’s the question all political groupings in the European Parliament are asking themselves right now… yet none of our million or so candidates for the EP election seems to have any opinion in the matter, or even be aware of the debate. Instead they seem to simply take the EU for granted in its present, clearly temporary form… just like I take Malta’s independence for granted, because I never knew any other reality. And just like so many Libyans used to take the Gaddafi era for granted, until it came crashing down about their ears two years ago.

At the same time all candidates, on both sides, claim to be able to ‘represent Maltese interests’ in a forum which may no longer even abide by the same rules when next European election rolls along in 2019. Will the two parties still be clinging desperately to the realities of 2004 then, too? Will they even still exist? And will, for that matter, the EU?

Tune in next week for another exciting episode of… The Confused and Exasperated Voter.