THE custom of the president of the European Commission delivering an annual American-style “state of the union” speech to the European Parliament dates back to 2010. It has come to serve as a barometer for the Brussels institutions, and to some degree for the continent. In 2016 Jean-Claude Juncker was gloomy, speaking in the wake of Britain’s vote to leave the EU. Last year he was cheerful, declaring that “the wind is back in Europe’s sails” following economic recovery and the election of Emmanuel Macron, a vigorous pro-European, to France’s presidency. On September 12th he gave his final State of the Union speech ahead of European Parliament elections and the appointment of a new commission next year. What did it augur?
Some of the optimism lingered. Mr Juncker noted that Greece had left its bail-out programme and that the number of migrants attempting to cross the Mediterranean had fallen. He hailed 21 quarters of economic growth, a new “zero tariffs” agreement with Donald Trump, unity on Brexit and the nearly completed EU-Japan partnership agreement. Under the mantra of “delivering on our promises” he pledged to boost the EU’s popular legitimacy by cracking down on single-use plastics and to return the power over clock-changing in summer and winter to member states. This, to co-opt last year’s nautical metaphor, was about a European hull made fast against the slapping of the waves.
Yet the president’s speech was really about the storm clouds on the horizon. Europe now needed Weltpolitikfähigkeit, “the capability to do world politics”, insisted Mr Juncker. This should take several forms: increasing defence spending, a new partnership with Africa, expanding the use of the euro as an international alternative to the dollar and a move to qualified majority voting on certain foreign-policy subjects (opposing Chinese human-rights abuses, for example). Closer to home, there should be measures to strengthen the euro’s stability, a drive to remove terrorist content from the internet faster and a big increase in the staffing and powers of the EU’s puny border- and coastguard. In other words: crisis prevention and mitigation measures for a Europe whose neighbourhood is increasingly turbulent and whose protector and bastion, America, has gone missing. It was “sunny, optimistic and peaceful” in 1913, noted the commission president in one of his better lines.
Set against such mighty waves, it is questionable whether the patches on Mr Juncker’s dinghy will hold. The notion of the EU as a “global player” looks farcical at a time when Beijing, for example, barely pays attention to Brussels (and vice versa, grumble some). The next economic downswing is only a matter of time, and Mr Macron’s push to reform the euro while the sun is shining has mostly dissolved on contact with German reluctance. Full banking union remains a distant prospect. Meanwhile the migration crisis is far from resolved: 400 asylum-seekers enter Germany every day, a higher proportion of those risking the Mediterranean crossing are dying, and successive rescue ships are being turned away from ports. The next surge in numbers is a question of when, not if.
Much of this comes down to politics. The differing outlooks and traditions of EU states still make a truly common foreign policy difficult. Angela Merkel’s domestic circumstances prevent her from backing Mr Macron’s plans to fix the euro. Migration policies that make sense and command diplomatic support in the abstract—the centralised border force, pre-screening at “disembarkation platforms” in third countries outside the EU, processing centres within Europe and national quotas for the admission of valid asylum-seekers—all run up against national reluctance. Mediterranean member states are wary of delegating border controls to Brussels, countries in north Africa lack the willingness or ability to run the platforms humanely and effectively and few EU states would accept the processing centres or quotas.
As Mr Juncker suggested in the melancholy peroration of his speech, the politics may be getting even harder: “I would like us to reject unhealthy nationalism and embrace enlightened patriotism,” he urged, in a nod to shifts in national politics that some fear will mark the next European Parliament but also—with populists in power in Rome, Warsaw, Budapest and Athens—the next commission, whose members national governments nominate. The new populist coalition in Italy, which is both the greatest risk to the euro zone and at the heart of battles over how to intercept, process and distribute Mediterranean migrants, is spoiling for battles with the EU on both fronts. It may well be over Rome that Europe’s next big storm breaks.
The next bail-out
If the commission has done too little to prepare the union for the coming tempest, that is partly Mr Juncker’s fault. (He never really understood the eastern states, complains one insider.) But the main reason is to do with the institution’s declining structural power; that is, its waning ability to drum up support for its ideas among national governments and the European Parliament. That story goes back many years. A more dynamic commission president (say, Christine Lagarde, who heads the IMF) might have achieved more in the circumstances. But she would still have faced the same obstacles.
Europe’s national leaders should nonetheless note the warnings between the lines of Mr Juncker’s speech, and resolve to give the next commission more power and flexibility to respond to them. Tolerating “multi-speed” vanguards of nation states on subjects where unanimity is lacking and selecting the next president for her or his skill and experience—rather than through the Spitzenkandidat process whereby the figurehead of the largest European Parliament group gets the job—would help. Without more backing, the commission, the EU’s executive authority, can only do so much to ready the ship for the squalls to come.