Mission Impossible

“Impossible is a word to be found only in the dictionary of fools”. So thought Napoleon Bonaparte, to whom we might make a passing reference in this, the year of the two hundredth anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo at which the Duke of Wellington put an end to another of these periodic attempts at a united Europe. And that was but one - Louis XIV’s ambitions, the Thousand Year Reich, the inevitability of soviet socialism, to name three others - of the attempts to create a union of one sort or another, until they met their metaphorical Waterloos at the hands – to a greater or lesser extent – of Anglo Saxon led resistance. What then of the United Kingdom and the European Union?

Well, according to Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, renegotiation of the treaties is “mission impossible” according to an interview with a number of papers. Nonetheless, Tusk has promised to help Prime Minister David Cameron since he is “obviously pro-European”, it simply not been accepted by the unelected, unaccountable politburo that runs the EU that one might be very pro-European and anti-EU, as the EU currently operates.

David Cameron has called for a renegotiation of the Lisbon Treaty with results of such renegotiation being put to an in/out referendum in 2017 if, that is, David Cameron wins the general election in May. Cameron had argued that the Lisbon Treaty needed renegotiation further to integrate political structures in the light of the Eurozone crisis, a view which Tusk said was not generally held and that most other countries did not wish to discuss Treaty change, even in the context of integration.

Tusk also asked Cameron to spell out exactly what the UK would see as success in any renegotiation so that, with a concrete proposal, Tusk would be able to consult other EU member states. This will be difficult for Cameron because he does not actually wish for any change at all. His wish is rather to seek a new deal that gives him just enough to persuade enough voters in the UK to vote to remain in the EU, his objective not being change in the national interest, but rather not to change very much at all. Another example of the contempt for the wishes of the electorate which is causing increasing frustration throughout the EU.

For Tusk, a former prime minister of Poland, Cameron’s desire to reduce the flow of immigrants pouring into Britain from Eastern Europe is sensitive as the largest European immigrant community in the UK is Polish. The 2011 census recorded 521,000 Polish-born people resident in the UK, and there is a larger Polish-British population in the country, mostly descended from the 200,000 Polish refugees who arrived after World War II. In reality, the greater sensitivity in the UK is not about Polish immigration but about non-EU immigration which is within the British government’s control, if it did but exercise it. This chimes with the EU-wide concern about militant Islam, and the integration of the growing Muslim population, an issue which EU leaders fail to acknowledge other than to imply that the specious benefits of “diversity” trump all other considerations, including free speech. As the faked attendance at the Paris march demonstrated (please see The March) Je n’etais jamais Charlie, after all.

Of course, Tusk has very different view of the EU from the British. Poland, and other new EU members, have to an extent been absolved of their social responsibilities as large numbers of unemployed were exported, along with a fair share of undesirables, in return for lots of cash from the EU (i.e. tax payers of other member states). The irony is that these countries have also lost many of their talented young folk and qualified professionals, still have high unemployment rates, and really have no plan B for when the EU money runs out. They are not creating quickly enough the conditions which allow innovation and enterprise to thrive and the falling populations only make matters worse.

Be that as it may, Tusk said that he hoped a way could be found for Britain to stay within the EU. “We need, also for the United Kingdom, a good solution for Cameron and Great Britain under existing law,” he said. “We need the United Kingdom in Europe. And I feel, but it’s not my role to decide about it, but I feel that the United Kingdom needs Europe.” Well, the first sentence is true, the second more contentious. But, as to whether this really is mission impossible, as St. Francis of Assisi reminds us: “Start by doing what is necessary; then do what is possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.”