The Fracturing of the E.U.

By Bruce S. Thornton

The long-simmering crises challenging the European Union have worsened with the 2008 financial crisis, the influx of Middle East refugees in 2015, several bloody terrorist attacks, and England’s departure from the E.U. in 2016. Yet these are all the wages of persistent flaws in the idea of the Union itself. Excessive regulations, welfare, and taxes impede economic growth. Centralization of power in Brussels has created a “democracy deficit” and lessened autonomy and freedom. Populations are shrinking, and unvetted and unassimilated migrants have increased crime and terrorist attacks. All these problems reflect the lack of any unifying set of beliefs and principles that could unite 27 diverse cultures and peoples. Europe is fractured and adrift, its peoples unsure for what they should fight or die for.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Release date: Dec 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781641770002

Book preview

ENCOUNTER BROADSIDES

Inaugurated in the fall of 2009, Encounter Broadsides are a series of timely pamphlets and e-books from Encounter Books. Uniting an 18th century sense of public urgency and rhetorical wit (think The Federalist Papers, Common Sense) with 21st century technology and channels of distribution, Encounter Broadsides offer indispensable ammunition for intelligent debate on the critical issues of our time. Written with passion by some of our most authoritative authors, Encounter Broadsides make the case for ordered liberty and the institutions of democratic capitalism at a time when they are under siege from the resurgence of collectivist sentiment. Read them in a sitting and come away knowing the best we can hope for and the worst we must fear.

Table of Contents

Cover

The E.U. Economy

Demography

The Democracy Deficit

Muslim Immigration

The E.U.’s Fatal Flaw

A Warning for America?

Copyright

BATTERED BY LAST YEAR’S Brexit vote, the spread of Euroscepticism across the continent, and a string of bloody terrorist attacks, the champions of the European Union breathed a sigh of relief when, on October 24, Germany’s Angela Merkel won a fourth term as Chancellor. Following the earlier defeats of nationalist parties in France, Austria, and the Netherlands, the challenges to the sixty-year-old union of European countries seemed to have been turned back, and Merkel’s victory to have justified the optimism of the March 25 celebrations of the sixtieth anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which began the process of what it called an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe. Sixty years later, the E.U. representatives talked of a strong community of peace, freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and reaffirmed their commitment to an undivided and indivisible Union.

But the cheers for Merkel and bravado of the Eurocrats could not quiet the discontent and malaise that have long troubled this bold, far-sighted project.

Indeed, ominous signs attended Merkel’s reelection. Votes for her coalition comprising the Christian Democratic Union and the Christian Social Union fell by eight percentage points, the worst showing since 1949. Even more shocking, the nationalist and anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) was the Banquo’s ghost at the celebration, winning nearly 13% for a third-place finish, and bringing a nationalist party into Parliament for the first time in more than 50 years. Protests against AfD broke out