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EU Observer (18 December 2019)

Jan Techau, Berlin

What can the member states do to address the rampant lack of trust that reigns supreme between them? 

I have argued in these pages that Europe is a structurally unstable continent in which nations have very little trust in each other. 

America's presence in Europe alleviated this for more than two generations which is why, since the late 1940s, the ever-present mistrust wasn't as blatantly on the surface of European affairs as it had been the norm during 2,000 years of history before that. 

Also, since the 1950s, Europeans used the EU framework to integrate those policy fields that required hard compromise but never touched upon the core of the member states' sovereignty: defence, immigration, and money. 

Today, the EU's success is measured against whether it can find solutions in exactly these fields. These solutions would require a level of cooperation and, yes, integration, hitherto unheard of. 

The hard truth is: the EU needs to succeed in precisely those fields in which its classic integration approach is least likely to work. 

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