It’s now a ‘two-speed Europe’, no matter what

Whatever the outcome of tomorrow’s Brexit referendum, one thing is certain. The thing we call “the European Union” will no longer be quite the same thing we voted to join in 2004. 

Already, the referendum campaign has exposed all the divisions that make Britain – for all its claims to be ‘different’ – a mere microcosm of all Europe’s latent inner tensions and frustrations. The country has emerged from the wreckage of this campaign torn almost exactly down the middle by two utterly irreconcilable forces. 

There is no possible compromise between these two directions; no ‘middle way’ that can appease both sides. One vision perforce excludes the other (or, as my late grandmother might have put it, “this can only end in tears”).

Even just stopping there, it is painfully apparent that there can be no ultimate claim to ‘decisiveness’ in the referendum outcome. If (as current polls indicate) ‘Remain’ wins, Britain will limp back into the EU in the knowledge that just under half its population is bitterly resentful, and will remain so for a long time.

Such divisions will not simply ‘go away’, either… partly because ‘divisions’ of this nature are themselves part and parcel of the reality that is Europe today. Britain is hardly the only EU member state to be eaten away by internal dissent over the issue. Just look at Italy, where the fiercely Eurosceptic ‘Cinque Stelle’ party this week took two major cities in regional elections: including the Eternal City itself, Rome… with all its ‘splendid’ and ‘glorious’ European connotations.

Indeed, almost everywhere you look in Europe – except Malta, perhaps – there are visible symptoms of the same dichotomy. And it only spells out one thing, really: that the dream of a politically united Europe can never really be attained. Many Europeans (including roughly half the UK) quite frankly believe it shouldn’t. Heck, even some within the ‘Remain’ camp itself have argued against any further strengthening of a European political identity. 

Under such circumstances, we can only ask ourselves what the ‘U’ in the acronym really stands for. In what way is this Union ‘united’, exactly? What are the nuts and bolts that keep it from falling apart?

It is roughly the same question asked this week by former Polish President Lech Walesa, when he predicted the imminent disintegration of Europe, regardless of the actual outcome of the vote. Quite rightly, the man who gave us the word ‘Solidarnosc’ pointed out that Europe in its current form is not built on any permanent foundations. There are no ‘shared values’, other than the vague promise of prosperity through a shared internal market.

But as the existence of European countries outside the EU plainly illustrates: you don’t actually need ‘political unity’ to enjoy access to the same market. Oh, sure, there are perks to be attained to trading from within… but if ‘trade’ alone is all this Union is built on, then the question of whether you’re trading as a member, or as an external trade partner, becomes largely academic. 

Certainly you don’t need ‘shared values’ to trade with Europe. Last I looked, EU member states were quite happily selling arms to countries like Saudi Arabia…

I would have liked to think there was more to the argument of ‘leaving’ or ‘staying’ than how it would affect existing trade relations. But it seems there isn’t. As any result, any talk of the EU as anything other than a glorified free trade zone now sounds rather hollow. And this means that we can call it an ‘EU’ all we like… but it’s still just a plain old ‘EEC’ by another name.

And that’s before you factor in the decision to be taken tomorrow. Perhaps the most dispiriting thing about the Brexit referendum is that it has been (misleadingly) portrayed as a straight choice of ‘in’ or ‘out’: as if Britons will vote to either leave the European Union in its current form… or stay in it in its current form. 

What both sides of the equation overlook is that the decision itself – either way – will radically change that ‘current form’ beyond recognition. If Britain votes to leave, there is simply no telling how or to what extent the rest of the EU will change as a direct consequence. I don’t even think the question has been asked enough. Leaving aside the practical niceties of how EU nationals in the UK would be affected, and vice versa… how will the EU itself respond to (yet another) stinging defeat at the hands of democracy?

I wonder. In years gone by, when EU member states delivered democratic verdicts which somehow departed from the EU-approved script… they were generally made to take the vote again, until they came back with the ‘right’ answer. Look under Ireland, the Netherlands and France for further details.

In this case, high-ranking EU officials have already predicted a possible domino effect in the event of a ‘Leave’ win. So the question is no longer, ‘how will the EU react specifically to Brexit’? It is, ‘what action will the EU take to stop itself from spontaneously combusting’?

Of course, there are several things it could do, or at least attempt. Walesa already suggested that it should reinvent itself into something that all (or at least most) Europeans really can identify with. (It didn’t help much, however, that Walesa failed to specify exactly what this ‘thing’ might be, or even if it exists. But still, it’s an idea…)

There are, however, alternatives. Like Hal 9000 in ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, the EU’s central nervous system might simply conclude that its ‘mission’ is too important to be jeopardised by such a trifling matter as ‘human intervention’. It might not – as Hal does in the film – go on to eliminate all humans who get in its way; but it might consider limiting their future options, at least when it comes to taking democratic decisions which go against European integration.

But then again, who knows? The variables with a ‘Leave’ win are simply too enormous to even contemplate. That is probably one of the reasons it is highly unlikely to actually happen: the consequences are simply too unpredictable.

Meanwhile, things are slightly clearer-cut on the other side. But only slightly. If Britain votes ‘remain’… it will not exactly ‘remain’ a member of the EU in the same way as it was before. This is in fact the crux of the matter to be decided tomorrow: the referendum itself is prefaced by the ‘special’ deal negotiated by Prime Minister David Cameron earlier this year. 

Voters are not being asked to confirm membership according to the old rules; they are instead being offered ‘a new deal’, which differs from the old one in a number of respects.

Some of these differences are in themselves problematic. Among other things, Britain has negotiated “an ‘emergency brake’ triggering temporary controls on EU migration if the flow is considered ‘destabilising’, too large and/or concentrated”. 

This is a somewhat bitter pill to swallow, when you consider that Malta had spent years practically begging for a special exemption from EU asylum laws, when confronted by a full-scale immigration crisis… only to be laughed out of every office in Brussels, every single time.

Even from a distance, then, you can see that this ‘new deal’ amounts to somewhat more than what ‘membership’ means for the rest of the 27 member states. Suddenly, we are looking at not one, but two European Unions: a union of 27 states sharing the same legal infrastructure; and a separate union between those 27 states, and the UK. 

I need hardly say that this was not the deal Malta signed up to, along with all the other enlargement states, in 2004. And the difference is one that might well have yielded the opposite result in that same referendum.

As I recall, former Labour PM Alfred Sant had based the bulk of his anti-membership arguments precisely on ‘loss of sovereignty’. Malta, he said, was too small to make its voice heard at EU level… still less to successfully defend its interests against much larger, wealthier countries. (There was, of course, a good deal more, but let’s stick to the basics).

Eddie Fenech Adami’s response at the time (and also Simon Busuttil’s, who was heading the Malta EU-Information centre) was that Malta would enjoy exactly the same status at the decision-making table as all other countries: no more, no less. And to be fair, neither of them was lying. The inherent truth of that statement was enshrined in the actual treaties. The so called ‘level playing field’ was, in fact, one of the main selling points of EU accession at the time. 

Personally, my own support for EU membership was founded on that premise. I didn’t vote to join a “two-speed Europe”: where the greater a member state’s GDP, the more it can dictate its own rules and regulations. To be perfectly frank, a country like Malta – with a total GDP only marginally larger than Cristiano Ronaldo’s bank account – would be nuts to even contemplate joining that kind of club. We would be outweighed and outmanoeuvred at every turn. 

Well, it now seems inevitable that the EU will indeed divide along two different ‘speeds’. All that remains to be seen is how other EU member states will react, when they suddenly find themselves overtaken as they languish in the slow lane.