part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7

“The European Union? A superpower? You must be joking!” Bob, a well informed American friend of mine is showing signs exasperation, this time at a speech made by the UK’s Prime Minister, Tony Blair, that Europe should become a “superpower but not a superstate”.

“Just look at the last EU summit! It was a mess.”

He has a point. The last meeting of European leaders was not a great media success. Indeed, neither have been any of their other recent meetings. Moreover, although the European Union has managed to agree to change its founding treaties – so that they more strongly resemble a constitution – the outcome is still a complex series of apparently tiny changes which most normal people can barely comprehend. But it is his follow-up that especially provokes me:

“How can you expect Europeans to have any common points of view given the vastly different histories?”

It reminds me of a recent event in Manhattan. A chap, desperate to drag a friend and I into his comic-review bar, accosted us on the street. My friend spoke first, and her slight accent led our interlocutor to ask if she was German. On hearing she was Dutch, he said:

"Oh, sorry, I know you really hate the Germans."

A done deal, with no chance of appeal. The way he said it gave no option to say, “hang on, I do not agree”. After all, if you are from Europe, of course you hate your neighbors. The French must be 'frogs' to the English, just as the British are 'roast beefs' to the French. As I discover time and again, Americans seem to assume that Europeans are stuck in history, that Europe is the past, not the future.

This can be no surprise, as nationality has been a key conditioning feature of our lives since the industrial era. In Europe, it defined what you ate, what language you should spoke and whom you should hate. So is that what defines Europe today in the year 2000? Certainly change is not easy: it was not for nothing that Europe was the cradle of the first "nation states". Indeed, if one reads only the British press, or listens to the BBC, it would appear that Europe is inevitably doomed to collapse.

But just as the knowledge economy ushers in a new means of production and exchange, so also it heralds a redefinition of identity. Both Europe and the US are engaged in the process. Although the direct causes are distinct some of the reactions are the same. In the US, the immediate impulse for change is a combination of immigration from non-WASP sources and post-civil rights affirmation. But just as some in the US view the term African-American or Chinese-American and the consequent affirmation of double identity as suspect, so some in the EU resist the idea that they can be both English and European or French and European. The fear is that in stressing more than one identity, somehow the nation suffers and becomes less cohesive. Others see this trend as a great opportunity. A chance to break out of the narrow constraints imposed upon them, to define their own personality with a multitude of reference points.

So how to define the change that is taking place in Europe? My mind strays to some of my past travels in Europe…

Vox populi?

The Hotel is one that an American would call 'cute'. It has that sense of past grandeur, complete with fading wallpaper and worn carpet. The meeting room is small, all the more so given that it is packed to the brim with serious looking individuals. The average age of the audience is advanced, the social level quite well to do.

The participants cheer as the chairman opens the meeting by declaring: "Thank you for attending in such great numbers. This shows that we are united here today to demonstrate that our land will never be enslaved by Europeans!"

If you had not guessed it by now, welcome to England. Indeed, I happen to be in Plymouth, the very place from which the Pilgrim Fathers set sail for the New World.

The meeting belies the myth that the English never get excited. The views expressed range from disgruntlement: "We are a world power, we need nobody else!" through outrage: "How dare Europe tell us what to do!" to the plain malignant: "Everything bad that has ever come to England came from Europe!" The vehemence and near violence with which some of the views are expressed scares me.

part 1 - part 2 - part 3 - part 4 - part 5 - part 6 - part 7

Adrian Taylor