Brexit Blowback: Why I Still Believe in the EU

Maybe I’m naive. Maybe I’m idealistic. But I’m a huge fan of the European Union.

Granted, I’ve never lived in Europe. But over the last 15 years, I’ve spent about a quarter of my life there. That’s long enough to talk to lots of Europeans, and to form an opinion of my own.

And over that time, believe me, I’ve heard all of the fretful anti-EU criticisms: Heavy-handed bureaucracy. Worries about being lashed to a euro currency that allows a weak partner (ahem, Greece, ahem) to drag everyone else down. And, of course, the fear that seizes many people anytime you open borders and lower barriers to immigration.

The thing is, I think the vast majority of Europeans get far more from the EU than the EU takes from them. They just don’t always see it.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

I was traveling in Eastern Europe in the spring of 2004. Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, and five other countries were about to join the EU on May 1. I was there in April. EU membership was a done deal, but hadn’t happened yet. So it was the perfect window for irrational fear — which, it turns out, is the EU’s most dangerous enemy.

The Poles, Hungarians, and Czechs I spoke to that spring were terrified. They saw the EU as an unstoppable monster, gobbling up countries as it stomped its way eastward through Europe. “Now I have to get a passport for each of my cows,” one farmer groused. “They won’t let groceries sell bananas with too much curve,” another told me. (That one’s been repeatedly debunked… yet somehow, it survives.)

And in Poland, I was told that there’d been a run on sugar. Apparently a (false) rumor had spread through the country that new EU tariffs would drastically increase raw sugar prices. Poles panicked, rushed to the grocery stores, and bought up bags of sugar…causing a spike in sugar prices.

And what became of all that catastrophizing, after May 1? To find out, I returned to those same countries that fall. And by then, a few months in, my Eastern European friends conceded that the EU hadn’t impacted them negatively one iota — and, they sheepishly admitted, they already saw improvements.

cameron-hungary-eu

In the years since, I’ve observed those improvements all over Europe, from Portugal to Bulgaria. Brand-new expressways and pedestrian zones in cobbled old towns come with a tasteful little EU flag, explaining where the money came from. And I watched my friends from all over Europe move to other parts of Europe, where they could find meaningful employment, make friends, fall in love, get married, and start adorable pan-European families.

Sure, some of the bureaucracy can get troublesome. But when you can see the big picture, the paranoia of the Euroskeptics has always been rooted more in fear than in facts. It’s clear to me that — aside from a devastating global economic crisis, born on Wall Street, that crippled European economies — the heyday of the European Union has been a golden age for Europeans of all walks of life.

cameron-britain-london-skyline

And in my mind, no city better embodies the EU’s bold and optimistic worldview than London. I adore London. It’s one of my favorite places in Europe. I love it for its English-ness. But I also love it for its diversity. London is the world’s melting pot city. It’s the capital of a great civilization, yes. But it’s also a celebration of the sum total of world culture.

But this morning, dawn broke on a different Britain. It’s a Britain where Poles and Romanians and Belgians who fell in love with an Englishwoman or a Scotsman now feel unwelcome in their adopted homeland. It’s a Britain where teenagers who once dreamed of studying in Paris or Rome have to reconsider their plans. And, I fear, it’s a Britain doomed to a dark age of political turmoil, economic struggles, and cultural soul-searching.

The voters have spoken. But I suspect many Brits woke up this morning with voters’ remorse — which will only intensify in the coming months, as the cold, hard reality of the Brexit is negotiated. And some small part of me believes that somehow, the Brexit will never actually come to pass. (Here in Seattle, I voted in favor of a monorail…twice. And guess what? There’s no monorail. Our City Council figured they knew better than the “will of the people.” And they were right.)

cameron-britain-london-crowds

On my first visit to Britain, I kept putting my foot in my mouth by saying I was on a trip to Europe. Finally, an old family friend gently corrected me: “You’re not in Europe. You’re in England.” Ever since that early attitude adjustment, I’ve understood that Britain fancies itself something different from Europe. So maybe the Brexit results aren’t so surprising…in hindsight. While I don’t agree with the Brexit, I’m willing to entertain the possibility that the best role for the UK is as a close partner to, but not officially part of, the EU — like Norway or Switzerland.

But I worry about the rest of the EU. I worry that the Brexit vote will embolden xenophobes in other countries. I was just in Austria, where the Green candidate very, very narrowly defeated an anti-immigrant isolationist in the presidential election. Even if Britain does bail out, the EU can survive without it. But if France ever left, or Austria…then Europe would be in real trouble.

But all of that will play out in the coming months and years. For now, most of all, I’m sad for the idealistic, internationally oriented young people of the United Kingdom. London has a special energy and optimism, and a belief in the goodness of humanity. These are values that inspire me as a traveler and as a person. But the Brexit vote just threw a bucket of ice water on that spirit. I know it will survive…but it’s going to be a rough patch.

Feeling hopeless at this morning’s announcement, I kept thinking back on a hardware store sign I saw last summer in Scotland:

Cameron-Scotland-British Signs-Screw It

4 Replies to “Brexit Blowback: Why I Still Believe in the EU”

  1. I’d LIKE to believe that Britain and the Continent can each have the best future for themselves. As a repeat visitor to both over many years (including pre-EU years)I welcomed the Euro and I welcomed the generous infrastructure improvements that came along with EU membership. However, I still had to navigate the pound sterling and Swiss currency and (to some extent) different languages.

    I remain a strong believer in National Sovereignty where cultural borders make sense. Central Europe has been back and forth so much (Nothern Italy, Alsace-Lorraine; etc.) national boundaries have less cultural relevance.

    I share the Euro-skeptics concern about cultural homogenization. I want small artisans to be able to do hams and cheeses the traditional and flavorsome way. I want local traditions and local businesses to survive and for the quirky knives and wine openers from Thiers-Issard in France, for example, to survive the press to cultural convergence. When Rick popped out of Steve Smith’s Citroen deux-cheveaux, that said FRANCE to me…French design that was different from Italian design that was different from Swedish automotive design. I hope there will ‘Always Be An England’ for us to visit and I hope that even a united continent can accommodate local cultural and economic differences. Here in America, those differences have diminished with mass economics and mass culture institutions.

    1. Hi Jim. I totally respect the concern for cultural homogenization. However, I would argue that the EU has (very smartly and constructively) been pro-active in celebrating and preserving individual cultures even as it strives for the efficiency of consolidation in more practical and humdrum matters. One almost too-on-the-nose example of this is how each euro coin has a flipside designed by the country that minted it. So even as each country “lost” their old currency, they were invited to choose their favorite iconography to allow it to live on, not only at home, but across Europe. Very cool, in my mind. And in fact Europe takes it even one step farther, because the EU promotes the cultures of “nations without states” within the EU. The Catalonians and Basques in Spain and France–or the Scots, for that matter–feel free to celebrate what makes their own little corner of Europe unique, in a way never even imaginable 20 years ago. (In fact, Basque and Scottish Gaelic–along with many other fascinating little languages and cultures–were all but extinct a couple of generations ago.) You can definitely ding the EU for being too bureaucratic, or going too far in consolidating economies and removing borders, but in my mind, those cultural concerns have been more than reassuringly addressed. And I think you could make a strong case that–thanks to EU subsidies and policies that celebrate cultural uniqueness–those knives and wine openers are more likely to survive under the EU, not less likely.

  2. I was just reading that a third of the population of London is foreign-born. (I suspect a good percentage of the Brits are 1 per-centers.) Seems to me that is a level at which one could well start worrying about loss of culture and control of one’s country.

    Multi-culturalism is all very well, but a Europe in which you could no longer tell which country you were in would seem to me to be a poorer and less interesting place.

    (Full disclosure – I grew up in England, although I have lived in the US for many years. I would have voted “remain”, but my elder sister, who still lives there, voted “leave”.)

  3. Folks, there is no doubt that the EU “helped” spread wealth to poorer nations that clearly was a good thing for them. Ideally, this “investment” would make that country a stronger economic source and hence better the EU in the long run. The problem comes when these “investments” don’t pay off. The EU oversight is similar to the US fed Govt. There are folks who feel it is too controlling and too big and others who want even more control for the fed. The Brits have just showed that that bimodal opinion exists in the EU countries. They remind me of the Texans who want to succeed because they are fed up with the fed politicians overriding their state decisions. I don’t see any of the poorer nations like Italy, Greece, or Spain leaving. The question is what France and Germany do as they are the remaining eco powers. WRT involuntary immigration, again see the TX response to Obama forced acceptance of the middle eastern migrants. Eventually, the bill payers get pushed too far. I doubt UK will go back and I don’t see a big rush to leave from any other country. As long as the two biggies hang in there, then the EU will continue.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *