Is the EU Ready for Prime Time?

“Not ready for prime time” is an insidious phrase making the rounds on the presidential primaries. The question may be asked whether it also applies to the European Union’s decision to impose diplomatic isolation on Austria following the rise to power of the far-right Freedom Party under the leadership of the charismatic neo-fascist Joerg Haider. Following a decade of debacle over the former Yugoslavia in which the EU was forced to abandon its initial boast that this was the “hour of Europe” and to accept that, without the U.S., it could not get the job done, Americans now are anxiously wondering whether yet again, Europe will bungle its big moment in the spotlight.

The sight of bloodied demonstrators in the streets of Vienna is not an auspicious portent. The starting point for the debate is uncontroversial. Beneath a speciously innocent program of fighting corruption, limiting government and boosting small business, the Freedom Party’s ideology takes its cue from mankind’s basest instincts of hatred, discrimination and racial exclusivity. The fact that, in a congratulatory telegram, Slobodan Milosevic expressed solidarity with Haider sums things up neatly.

It is also uncontroversial that the EU is constitutionally entitled to take action against any member, Austria included, of which it collectively disapproves. Unlike NATO, the EU’s core idea involves the pooling of sovereignty. The Austrian protests against EU meddling in Austria’s internal affairs therefore are misplaced.

In addition to moral outrage, the sanctioneers have a number of practical arguments on their side. Speaking at the zenith of Nazi power in 1940, propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels commented that “in 1925 they could have rounded up a couple of us and that would have been the end.” It is also true that when Hitler was first admitted into government in 1933, the German establishment assumed that the “system” would tame someone whom it regarded as an upstart. That reasoning counts as one of the biggest miscalculations of history. No one wants to make the same mistake twice.

The disturbing aspect of this historical analogy is that the Europeans who make it betray a deep insecurity. They reveal that, for all their advances in terms of unity, institution building and prosperity, Europeans still feel slavishly vulnerable to the ghosts of the past. They remind us that Hitler was an Austrian. Their unspoken fear is that the Europe of 2000 is as ripe for takeover and implosion as the Europe of the 1930s. Implicitly, they assert that Europe’s center of political gravity is so delicate that a minority party in one of the EU’s smallest members with no military potential can upset it.

Alongside this evidence of deficient European confidence in their own democratic precepts, the headlong rush to judgment is just as troubling. Belgium, bedeviled by the Vlaams Blok, a proscribed Flemish nationalist grouping, pressured Portugal as the EU’s president to “do something.” Portugal, itself with recent experience of fascism, circulated a draft sanctions proposal and, within 24 hours, all the big countries had signed on.

Little thought was given to whether this course of action would be effective or whether it would polarize the situation. Conspicuously missing from the EU playbook was the sophisticated approach that European diplomats regularly expound in Washington about U.S. policy toward Cuba. “Love Fidel to death,” they say. By this they mean: lift the embargo, encourage tourism, telephone links. Castro, they argue, thrives on maintaining Cuba as a closed society, on portraying the Cuban people as victims, on explaining Cuba’s shortcomings in terms of Yankee oppression.

On Haider, Europe has the opportunity to practice what it preaches. His ideas emanate from damp, airless basements. They cannot survive exposure to the light of day. As with Castro, Haider gains strength through suppression. This enables him to invoke dark conspiracy theories that feed his supporters’ neuroses.

In mid-January, EU foreign affairs supremo Javier Solana visited Washington, bringing the message that, at long last, Europe was ready to take charge of its own affairs. With polls showing Haider gaining strength in the face of the EU sanctions, its current stance does not inspire confidence that this is the case. In public, the U.S. has gone along with the EU’s measures, but it is to be hoped that in private, the Clinton administration is urging the EU to allow cooler counsels to prevail.

This issue is not whether Haider’s ideas are a valid contribution to debate. They are not. What is at stake is whether Europe has the confidence in its own democracy to deal with illegitimate challenges democratically rather than with ill-judged authoritarianism.