BREXIT will be a LESSON

The His­tory of re­la­tions lec­turer at the Uni­ver­sity of Siena, Mas­si­m­il­iano Gud­erzo, vis­ited Barcelona to par­tic­i­pate in a se­ries of con­fer­ences or­gan­ised by La Caixa’s Palau Macaya. He has also been a lec­turer at Urbino and Flo­rence, where he di­rected the Jean Mon­net Chair in the His­tory of Eu­ro­pean Uni­fi­ca­tion. Gud­erzo has writ­ten books on Span­ish neu­tral­ity dur­ing the Sec­ond World War (Madrid e l’arte della diplo­mazia, 1995), the at­ti­tude of the United States to­wards Eu­ro­pean con­struc­tion in the 1960’s (In­ter­esse nazionale e re­spon­s­abilità glob­ale, 2000) and re­la­tions be­tween the United States and Latin Amer­ica dur­ing the pres­i­dency of Jimmy Carter (Or­dine mon­di­ale e buon vi­c­i­nato, 2012). In this in­ter­view, the his­to­rian re­flects on the cur­rent in­ter­na­tional geopo­lit­i­cal times and the role of the Eu­ro­pean Union.

Who’s run­ning the world?

At the mo­ment, we have three major pow­ers: the US, Rus­sia and China. Should the EU be in­cluded? There are doubts over that. What is cer­tain is that we can­not be in­cluded until we’re a po­lit­i­cal union. It’s a Eu­ro­pean Union that is far from the idea of its found­ing fa­thers. The fed­er­a­tion of the Eu­ro­pean Union is not a utopia. It’s a very real goal if we want to be con­sid­ered a world power. Ger­many, France, the United King­dom... are all strong pow­ers but they aren’t at the same level, nor will they ever be, of the three I’ve al­ready men­tioned. Nor can we say that these three dom­i­nate the world, be­cause what we have now is a kind of mul­ti­po­lar power, a kind of game in which the ac­tors work to­gether to gain in­flu­ence in the name of na­tional in­ter­est.

And that’s what’s hap­pen­ing in Eu­rope?

We must try to go be­yond na­tional in­ter­ests and achieve a pan-Eu­ro­pean in­ter­est.

Is Brexit weak­en­ing Eu­rope?

Yes, it is weaker, but it’s also worth not­ing that some in­sti­tu­tions that were cre­ated sev­enty years ago will not evap­o­rate from one day to the next. They’re very strong. And Brexit has be­come a prob­lem due to bad po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sions by the Con­ser­v­a­tive Party and es­pe­cially David Cameron. The ref­er­en­dum was or­gan­ised and there was no plan to leave the EU. And May took this man­date al­most as if it were a Churchillian mis­sion: “I will do what I have to do. What­ever the cost.” But it’s a dis­as­ter. I don’t know how they will get out of it.

And what do you think might hap­pen?

In my view, they’ll have to leave. They have a de­par­ture date. They’re ask­ing for an ex­ten­sion be­yond the Eu­ro­pean elec­tions... The sit­u­a­tion is a lit­tle crazy be­cause they will have to hold the elec­tion cam­paign and elec­tions... and then leave! Or or­gan­ise a new ref­er­en­dum. This is all new. It’s the first time any­one is try­ing to use Ar­ti­cle 50 of the Lis­bon Treaty, which sets out what needs to be done when a coun­try wants to leave. I’m very sorry about what’s hap­pen­ing, but it will be a his­tor­i­cal les­son for the fu­ture. Be­cause coun­tries that want to leave the EU in the fu­ture will see that it isn’t easy, and has very high costs. The Eu­ro­pean found­ing fa­thers didn’t build it with this idea. Gasperi, Ade­nauer, Mon­net, Schu­mann... they didn’t think they would build it and then go home and that’s it. I think An­gela Merkel could have done much more for the con­struc­tion of the EU. Em­manuel Macron has some ideas but at the same time has a strong idea of France and its na­tional in­ter­ests. Or even Spain with the ex­cel­lent speech by Pedro Sánchez on Jan­u­ary 16, ar­gu­ing for a Eu­ro­pean army. Al­though often these speeches are just talk.

Cat­alo­nia has tra­di­tion­ally been pro-Eu­ro­pean. How­ever, the lat­est ac­tions by the EU have dis­ap­pointed many peo­ple. Eu­rope doesn’t have the feel­ing of be­long­ing that the United States or Rus­sia may have, for ex­am­ple, and this can lead to dis­af­fec­tion such as Brexit and Cat­alo­nia.

Yes, that’s true. Take the metaphor of the river, when you’re try­ing to cross and you’re right in the mid­dle. Eu­rope is in the mid­dle of the river and this is the most dan­ger­ous point. We’re leav­ing be­hind the typ­i­cal things of the na­tion states on the other side and we’re in the process of giv­ing more power to Brus­sels. And that doesn’t mean an­other Eu­ro­pean cap­i­tal. Rather it means an us, and leav­ing be­hind the me, me, me. And that would be in line with a stronger Eu­rope. A proto-fed­eral Eu­rope, but we’re not there yet. Only with a real Eu­ro­pean Union, prob­a­bly a fed­er­a­tion, will we have all the ad­van­tages that would jus­tify the sac­ri­fices. And in be­tween we have processes like those that you have men­tioned: things hap­pen­ing in Cat­alo­nia, in Italy, in Scot­land... and what’s the prob­lem? The EU still doesn’t have the power to react in the way peo­ple would ex­pect. And so you have these dis­ap­point­ments... and peo­ple think it’s bet­ter to go back to the past. And we have to think about the fu­ture gen­er­a­tions. For ex­am­ple, in the case of Brexit, most young peo­ple are against it. Na­tional bor­ders don’t make sense.

There are far-right par­ties that want to get rid of the Eu­ro­pean Union...

In the next elec­tions [for the Eu­ro­pean Par­lia­ment] peo­ple from all over Eu­rope should un­der­stand that the par­ties they have to vote for are not the ones they should vote for in na­tional elec­tions. They should vote for par­ties that have an in­ter­est in Eu­rope.

The Ital­ian prime min­is­ter, Mat­teo Salvini, is a lead­ing voice on that issue.

What he’s try­ing to do is be­come the leader of these par­ties through­out Eu­rope. Try­ing to pre­sent the Eu­ro­pean elec­tions as the way to enter Par­lia­ment, as La Lliga [Salvini’s party] did in the Ital­ian Par­lia­ment. At the be­gin­ning, La Lliga was a local party from the north, and then they rad­i­cally changed be­cause when they en­tered the Par­lia­ment they be­came a na­tional force and, lit­tle by lit­tle, also changed their ide­ol­ogy. And this is the kind of Eu­rope we have to re­ject be­cause it’s a Eu­rope that looks to the past and not the fu­ture. That isn’t going in the di­rec­tion the world de­serves. These are the val­ues that we should pro­tect even out­side Eu­rope.

And will the coun­tries from the east align them­selves with these val­ues?

They are new­com­ers. Many peo­ple have crit­i­cised some­one who I think is a great politi­cian, Ro­mano Prodi. He knew there were risks when ac­cept­ing these coun­tries, but he knew that it had to be done, even if it seemed too fast a process. I thought it was the only way to re­ally end the Cold War. Hun­gary, Poland, Czech Re­pub­lic, Slo­va­kia, Latvia, Es­to­nia and Lithua­nia have suf­fered a kind of un­der­de­vel­op­ment be­cause they’re on the pe­riph­ery. They were under So­viet con­trol and so had to de­velop by them­selves. So, in 2004, when they joined the EU, they thought: “Now is the time.” Now they are in the club and they must com­ply with the rules. Al­though some­times there are some temp­ta­tions and es­pe­cially with the Hun­gar­ian leader, Vik­tor Orbán, who has the idea of “il­lib­eral democ­racy”, as he says. And that is anti-Eu­ro­pean. We have to fight against it be­cause the EU is built on the val­ues of lib­eral democ­racy, not il­lib­eral democ­racy. And if some­one sup­ports this idea, I wouldn’t say they should be ex­pelled from the EU, be­cause that would be stu­pid, but the Union should be very strict and say that these are not the val­ues we are shar­ing.

You ex­plain that the US has been in favour of hav­ing a strong Eu­ro­pean Union and that it is false news that it is against it.

For ex­am­ple, with the case of Brexit: “Don’t worry, Britons, we’re here to help you!” There’s a wide­spread image in pub­lic opin­ion that the US has al­ways been against Eu­ro­pean in­te­gra­tion. That’s not true. If you look at his­tory, in the fifties, in the six­ties... the Amer­i­can es­tab­lish­ment was in favour of Eu­ro­pean in­te­gra­tion, not only eco­nomic in­te­gra­tion, but also po­lit­i­cal, be­cause on the other side of the At­lantic it would mean a strong Eu­rope ca­pa­ble of pro­tect­ing it­self. Pres­i­dents such as Kennedy and John­son talked about real col­lab­o­ra­tion. The United States of Amer­ica on one side, they said, and the United States of Eu­rope on the other.

in­ter­view