Europe without a leader. A historical anomaly that helps us move forward
One often tends to dream of unity, of a government that will finally get it right, that everyone, or at least the vast majority, will be comfortable with, or at least won't mind. A president or prime minister who will be liked by all and who will lead us all wisely and sensitively in the right direction.
Yet Europe is often accused of weak leadership; we do not have a proper capo di tutti capi, one boss. The question attributed to Henry Kissinger is well known: Who do I call when I want to call Europe? Who do I call when I want to talk to Europe? There was no one like that then. And when, in 2009, the post of a kind of equivalent of EU foreign minister was created and some people applauded that we finally had an answer to Kissinger's question and that he should call Cathy Ashton, José Manuel Barroso, then President of the European Commission, immediately spoke up: we are not one country, we are not China, we are not Russia... And we do not want to be. Our concept of power is different.
Democracy, on the other hand, makes sure that when it has power, it does not have too much. And when they have a lot, it's only temporary. You can keep a little power as long as you like, but the more power you have, the more Damocles swords will be installed around you, and rightly so. You can keep the power to, say, drive a car (which in itself makes you a much more powerful - faster and stronger - being than you would be in your natural biological shell alone) for as long as you can see the road. But we will always lend the power to drive the state, even to the best and most qualified, only for a little while. And you will be constantly barked at and every stone carefully turned over by a well-trained pack of watchdogs - be it the rhetorically adept opposition, top journalists, both local and foreign, thoughtful academics and word experts.
My late colleague, Ministerial Adviser Ivana Krynes-Gage, a sharp lady at the Treasury, used to say: If one cares about being liked by the people, one should sell flowers and not climb into political office.
Uncontrolled entity
Anyway, back to leaderless Europe. Although the programmatic absence of a leader in Europe is felt as a handicap, it is actually an extremely interesting and positive historical anomaly. We as an EU are, strange as it may seem, able to move forward significantly without ever having had any significant leader. Sure, there were the founding fathers, there was Thatcher, Mitterrand, Kohl, Wales, Havel, Blair, Merkel, Macron and other major European politicians who have moved Europe forward significantly. But not one of them was for a moment a director of Europe who could guide the others. After all, how quickly the Franco-German bloc is losing its position can be seen in the statements of their own leaders.
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In short, Europe has no CEO, and yet it is functioning, and actually functioning quite well by those standards (compare it to your own business where you work, or perhaps the operation of a housing association, or just the operation of an extended family). Europe has become a driving force on many issues that have subsequently become planetary - for example, the increasingly topical green revolution.
Strong rulers, on the other hand, used to have totalitarian regimes. Look where Russia has gone, watch the direction China is heading under a firm hand. In short, a strong leader, even if he appears self-enlightened, or even actually is (I think this is the case with Hungary's Orban), is not good news for any entity.
Look at Russia, China, not to mention the hereditary leadership in North Korea. Better to have many people who are pulled in different directions by the spirit but are somehow able to agree on a common platform - be it opposition struggle, bureaucracy, markets or the ground of endless university or philosophical disputations.
An opposite - and positive - example is that of Finland and other countries in the North. However, when I once visited Finland with Mirek Zamecnik and Michal Mejst?ík as part of NERV, we noticed that the difference between left and right was so small that it was almost below our ability to distinguish. And this was not because someone had united them with a strong hand, but their positions had converged through time and long, sensitive and careful debate. Something similar can be said of Australia, can any of you think of the name of a strong Australian political leader? And in nearby Switzerland, even the Swiss themselves can't usually think of the name of their own president (or prime minister). Because it doesn't matter.
Not having a European leader is our great strength, not our weakness. Politically, we are becoming a kind of Switzerland writ large.