By studying the history of the European Union, the book argues
that the current crises are not as unique as we might think. Even Brexit is not
as singular and unique as often thought. In fact, Algeria left the EC in 1962,
Greenland in 1985. Long before the 2016 referendum in the United Kingdom and
Brexit that followed in 2020, European integration turned out to be a
potentially reversible process, despite the talk about an ‘ever closer union.’
Admittedly, Greenland and Algeria had not joined the EC as
sovereign states, but within the context of European colonialism. Their
conditions differed significantly from Brexit or the occasionally discussed
Grexit. Still, the processes in which they left the EC holds important lessons
for today.
Both cases reveal that leaving the EC or the EU was never
easy and that the search for national sovereignty often turned out to be disappointing.
Algeria moved from a super-soft to a super-hard and from there to a softer
constellation again. For several years in the 1960s, it retained a precarious
special status, almost as if it was still part of the EC. Then, its privileged
position crumbled, and European protectionism created insurmountable trade
barriers with massive negative consequences for Algeria’s economy. From a low
point in the 1970s, EU-Algeria relations slowly improved again. In contrast,
Greenland’s exit was consistently soft and since then, relations have
intensified further. The experience of Algeria and Greenland demonstrates that
a new settlement will only be the basis for the next phase, and not the
once-and-for-all, clear-cut solution that the exit camp likes to imagine.
Secondly, examining instances of withdrawal from the EU
conveys an important message concerning the history of the European Union. Disintegration
has always been part of the EU’s political normality; Brexit is not a
fundamentally new challenge though many have thought and said that over the
past years. Brexit only challenges the standard story about European
integration with its logic of ‘ever closer union’, which is a powerful
narrative the EU itself has forged and helped to disseminate.
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
A close-up
By studying the history of the European Union, the book argues that the current crises are not as unique as we might think. Even Brexit is not as singular and unique as often thought. In fact, Algeria left the EC in 1962, Greenland in 1985. Long before the 2016 referendum in the United Kingdom and Brexit that followed in 2020, European integration turned out to be a potentially reversible process, despite the talk about an ‘ever closer union.’
Admittedly, Greenland and Algeria had not joined the EC as sovereign states, but within the context of European colonialism. Their conditions differed significantly from Brexit or the occasionally discussed Grexit. Still, the processes in which they left the EC holds important lessons for today.
Both cases reveal that leaving the EC or the EU was never easy and that the search for national sovereignty often turned out to be disappointing. Algeria moved from a super-soft to a super-hard and from there to a softer constellation again. For several years in the 1960s, it retained a precarious special status, almost as if it was still part of the EC. Then, its privileged position crumbled, and European protectionism created insurmountable trade barriers with massive negative consequences for Algeria’s economy. From a low point in the 1970s, EU-Algeria relations slowly improved again. In contrast, Greenland’s exit was consistently soft and since then, relations have intensified further. The experience of Algeria and Greenland demonstrates that a new settlement will only be the basis for the next phase, and not the once-and-for-all, clear-cut solution that the exit camp likes to imagine.
Secondly, examining instances of withdrawal from the EU conveys an important message concerning the history of the European Union. Disintegration has always been part of the EU’s political normality; Brexit is not a fundamentally new challenge though many have thought and said that over the past years. Brexit only challenges the standard story about European integration with its logic of ‘ever closer union’, which is a powerful narrative the EU itself has forged and helped to disseminate.