Let us hope there is no future for the EU

„MM - In recent years also in Europe we witness efforts to establish a new constitutional order. This might accelerate as a result of the economic crisis. As a British citizen, and as a legal commentator what is your view on that?

JF - First of all, I really have no foreknowledge of the future in general or the future of Europe in particular. All I can do is guess, and hope. As I see it, the long term effort to integrate Europe in a constitutional way will probably fail. The Euro may fail relatively soon, and that failure, if it occurs, will reveal the inadequate foundations of the European integration process. That process was ill conceived from the very start, dependent on conditions which do not obtain and are unlikely to obtain for several generations, at best.

As to the Euro:  When in 1999 a leading German banker, about to take up very high office in the soon-to-be established European Central Bank, came to give a big public lecture about it in Oxford, he made it clear several times – but nobody seemed to take any notice! -- that several of the principal historical pre-conditions for a sustainable currency union were unfulfilled. He was hinting, though not bluntly saying, that it was not going to work. No workable arrangement, sustainable over decades and economic cycles, could omit to require member states to give up their powers of fiscal and budgetary control.  But these are functions essential to sovereignty – and all the more essential in mass democracies obsessed with economic performance and financial, fiscal, and welfare benefits (and indeed, objectively, facing very serious long-term economic problems for a number of reasons, not least demographic).

The European political elites have been trying – and will continue to try until they manifestly fail -- to create something for which the historical preconditions of linguistic and cultural unity do not exist.  So I believe the venture of »ever closer union« to be hubristic and unrealisable, or at least unsustainable in the foreseeable future.  Its early failure would please me if it resulted in disintegration of the EU, abrogation of its main Treaties, and a new beginning in relations between European states.  To mention only one reason among several:  The EU project of admission of Turkey and in due course other Mediterranean Islamic states would if successful be, in all likelihood, a disaster of unprecedented magnitude, from which European civilization, and our peoples, would not, I believe, recover.  I regard the pursuit of this project (which in relation to Turkey, at least, has the support of the UK and US governments too) as a very grave injustice to the peoples of Europe and a manifestation of either a deeply improper attitude to the common good of each of the nations of which the architects of this project are individually citizens, or sheer thoughtlessness about what the results of the project would probably soon be.”