Insight
Liberalism under attack: Is the EU a fortress or a sandcastle? by Ian Bond 27 July 2017
In his first six months in office, US President Donald Trump has given heart to the European Union’s internal and external adversaries. The international system is now threatened by an American president who thinks his country is losing out to foreigners and responds by attacking shared values and institutions. The EU has not yet adapted to this erosion of the international liberal order from which the Union has benefited. The EU prides itself on being a community of values. These values are listed in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU): “human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities”. It has tried to extend these values to other parts of the world. Despite differences of view on some issues – notably the death penalty – it has generally done so in company with the US. The reshaping of Europe after the Cold War ended relied on the partnership between the EU and (US-led) NATO: both organisations played a vital role in integrating newly democratic Central European states into the Western community. The EU is also the world’s largest single market and the world’s largest trading partner, with its trade in goods (excluding intra-EU trade) 67 per cent higher than China’s and 77 per cent higher than America’s. It has had a number of trade disputes with the US over the years: an analysis in 2002 found that although EU-US trade accounted for less than 22 per cent of EU trade, it comprised almost half the disputes involving the EU dealt with at the World Trade Organisation (WTO). But whatever their specific conflicts, the EU and US have always agreed on the overall value of the multilateral trading system as an engine of growth. Internal challenges to the EU have been growing since the start of the global economic crisis in 2008. They culminated in the UK’s June 2016 vote to leave the Union, and in the rise, especially in Central Europe, of populist parties and nationalist governments hostile to the EU’s institutions. Though opinion polls show that across the EU as a whole the Union is consistently more trusted than national
CER INSIGHT: LIBERALISM UNDER ATTACK: IS THE EU A FORTRESS OR A SANDCASTLE? 27 July 2017
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