A man sits on the train and looks out the window. He is becoming more and more worried. He has the impression that people tell each other something terrible at stations and in villages through which the train rushes. He sees how their eyes widen. How they shout things to each other, get moving, run out of their houses. He doesn’t know what’s going on. Maybe there is no problem at all and he is just imagining it. His fellow passengers don’t seem to notice anything. Or do they not want to notice it and put it away?
Just like the train passenger in the title story of Catastrophe and Other Stories by the Italian writer Dino Buzzati (1906-1972), many Europeans are currently anxious and insecure. The new year is just starting, the days are already getting longer, but citizens seem to have little confidence in what is to come. They are on that train, and anticipating what they will find upon arrival – Trump being president, trade wars, Russia threatening Europe, a big fight over the European budget – almost makes them more anxious than what is actually happening. So everyone remains silent and the traveler waits nervously until the train reaches its final destination.
How do you break that? Firstly, by realizing that things do not always have to go wrong. President Assad has been deposed, high inflation has disappeared, Europe now produces more electricity from wind energy than from gas, southern euro countries are growing faster than countries in the north. Secondly, and more importantly, you can break through that paralyzing fear by having confidence – confidence that Europe can meet future challenges if we all work hard enough. Lack of confidence in one’s own abilities is particularly strongly developed in Europe. Too strong.
That is easy to explain. The Member States have the power in Europe. And they only want to do things European when there really is no other option – in other words, at the height of a crisis. But there will always be new crises, because the world is constantly changing and Europe must change with it. As a result, Europe is by definition unprepared for any new crisis and everyone is afraid that this is the crisis that will crush Europe. In 2008 it was the banking crisis, in 2012 the euro crisis. Then came the refugee crisis, Brexit, Covid and the war in Ukraine, which in turn unleashed more crises – security, defence, energy and so on. Each time many thought: now Europe is falling off a cliff. But that didn’t happen. European countries have different interests, different cultures, economies, taboos, geography.
So initially they all react differently to each challenge. It is therefore normal that they always argue first. But what is also normal in the meantime: that government leaders then meet and forge compromises that everyone can live with. That is what the EU was invented for: as a mechanism to resolve disputes peacefully.
Why does that still work? Because it has brought us prosperity and peace since the 1950s, and government leaders don’t want this to fall off a cliff. The price is simply too high. Even for someone like Viktor Orbán, who always makes huge numbers of that terrible Brussels but behind the scenes agrees with his colleagues in 95 percent of the cases.
Unfortunately, many citizens do not know this. At school you learn all kinds of things about transatlantic relations or Nazism, but almost nothing about post-war Europe and how it always develops in fits and starts. And why it keeps taking new forms because it always has to respond to completely different challenges and crises. We are in the middle of another huge transformation. The Europe that revolved around money is turning into a Europe that revolves around security.
Prediction: Europe will also try to avoid the catastrophe in 2025. Slow as always, and with trial and error. We should gradually be able to rely on that a little.