Charlemagne. The European dreamers

A new outbreak of optimism about the European Union - from across the Atlantic, no less

EUROPEAN officials visiting America sometimes get the uneasy feeling that they are seen as the emissaries of a dying culture. From the other side of the Atlantic, Europe can seem a grim old place. Writing in the Weekly Standard, the house journal of American neo-conservatism, Gerard Baker (a Briton) opined recently that Europe is “sliding steadily into an ugly maelstrom of intolerance, fear and hatred.” At a recent Brookings Institution seminar, Walter Russell Mead (an American) even asked “does Europe have the biological and the cultural will to live?”

But what is this? A new spate of books is coming forth in America that swings to the opposite extreme. Europe is not washed up after all; on the contrary, it is an emerging colossus. “The United States of Europe” (Penguin) by T.R. Reid, a Washington Post journalist, is subtitled “The new superpower and the end of American supremacy”. According to Mr Reid, “the European Union has more people, more wealth and more trade than the United States - and more influence in almost every international body.” Meanwhile in “The European Dream” (Polity), Jeremy Rifkin, a Washington seer, proclaims that the EU also has the edge on ideas. “While the American spirit is tiring and languishing in the past, a new European Dream is being born. It is a dream far better suited to the next stage of the human journey.”

One explanation for this new strand of opinion doubtless lies in the grim realities of modern publishing. A willingness grossly to overstate your case can help to secure that all-important cover story or book deal. But there is also a clear ideological split. American conservatives tend to be receptive to the idea that Europeans are a bunch of duplicitous, atheistic wimps, whose moral laxity is leading them to an inevitable and richly deserved doom (Mr Baker's line). American liberals, on the other hand, are inclined to see the old continent as a delightful land of leisure (Mr Rifkin), or an advertisement for the virtues of socialised medicine (Mr Reid, a former London correspondent).

Mr Reid's moment of revelation appears to have come when EU regulators blocked a merger between two big American companies, General Electric and Honeywell. That Jack Welch, America's most celebrated businessman, could be bested by Mario Monti, a bespectacled Italian professor, set the author off in search of other signs of emerging European power. He soon made the amazing discovery that, because Americans need access to the EU market, they sometimes have to follow EU rules. It is for this reason that “the quintessential American whiskey, Kentucky bourbon, is sold today in 75cl bottles.”

Mr Reid returns to this fact almost obsessively, although he cites more far-reaching examples too. The United States had to change its corporate-tax code after the EU brought a successful case before the World Trade Organisation. This provoked a memorable comment from Dennis Hastert, the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives: “We fought a revolution 230 years ago to stop Europeans from telling us how we have to tax in this country, and it puts the hair up on the back of my neck that we have to do this at all. But we have to do it.”

Whether all this is evidence of the emergence of a European superpower, or just part of the broader process of globalisation, is questionable. Mr Reid dwells at length on the number of famous American brands that are now owned by European firms. But it is just as easy to name European companies that are owned by Americans, or to cite examples of Europe having to adapt to American regulation.

Mr Reid at least has the virtue of being concise, folksy and anecdotal. Mr Rifkin, by contrast, is theoretical, pretentious and long-winded. A self-confessed former hippy, he argues that “it is in Europe where the feelings of the sixties generation have given rise to a bold new experiment in living”. On several occasions, he asserts that Europeans spend a lot of time involved in something called “deep play”, which appears to be an alternative to hard work. Visiting Europe, he is delighted by a continent in which everybody is nicely dressed, while on returning to the United States, he notes that “it seems everyone is grossly overweight”. The moral of the Rifkin story is that America is hooked on overwork and excessive consumption, while the Europeans have their lives in balance - and are nicer to animals to boot.

Back at the Brussels grindstone

Eurocrats are understandably flattered by this unusual American praise for the grand European project; Mr Rifkin's book has gone down well in Brussels. But the mood of real “builders of Europe” is often decidedly more pessimistic. This week European leaders are likely to take a big step towards admitting Turkey to the EU, a decision about which many of them have deep misgivings. Mr Reid's argument that there is an inexorable historical logic driving forward European unity is often made by Brussels federalists too. But these same people are also well aware of the fragility of a process of political integration that has very shallow popular support.

Then there is the economy. Europe's economic growth continues to lag that of the United States, let alone China and India. And Europe's population is ageing and shrinking. Two-thirds of the way into his book, Mr Rifkin interrupts his dream to note that “the sad truth is that without a massive increase in non-EU immigration in the next several decades, Europe is likely to wither and die.” This looks like a fairly big qualification to the book's general mood of sunny optimism. But no matter: within a few pages we are back to the “politics of empathy”.

Awareness of the depth of the political and economic challenges that lie ahead accounts for the fact that many European officials are more inclined to troubled pessimism than to Rifkinesque optimism. This European willingness to be self-critical is, as it happens, a genuine strength. Unfortunately, there is a lot to be self-critical about.

Commentary feature which looks at two books from across the Atlantic which are optimistic about the European Union.

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