Europe’s politics remains steeped in history, even for states like Germany and France, whose intellectuals often claim to have moved well into a postmodern era. This makes it inherently difficult to approach calmly phenomena that borrow categories from the past, for terms such as “nation” and “nationalism” almost reflexively call to mind earlier invocations of an exclusionary “Volk” community, with all the implications such groupings carried for Europe. Hence, much of the debate over resurgent nationalism in Europe has been swept under the much safer—if confusing, and ultimately analytically questionable—category of “populism.” But the term “populism” denotes a way of making political claims on behalf of the people in opposition to an allegedly corrupt elite. As such it is only marginally useful when analyzing the sea change in European politics today. Populism is not so much an ideology as a manner of political discourse that can be superimposed on a range of ideologies, but can never substitute for them. Nationalism, on the other hand, offers a consistent set of ideological assumptions about those who belong to the larger national community and those who do not. And it is but a step away from the idea of sovereignty that grows from the sense of belonging to a nation.
Today nationalism is a powerful undercurrent in European politics, one that will define the future of the European Union and its largest state, Germany. It reflects changing public attitudes toward the European Union and the return of the idea of national sovereignty, even though, overall, the common European project enjoys strong public support. The surge of nationalism across Europe is about more than the usual skepticism about various supra-national claims by the leaders of the European Union. There is a core transformation underway in the European body politic shifting the tide toward greater national assertiveness in intra-EU politics. This change is not the product of some residual chauvinism of the sort that brought Europe its horrendous bloodletting in the 20th century, but rather a response to the two urgent and interrelated questions facing it today: immigration and Germany’s leadership on the continent.
No other factor has driven the re-nationalization of European politics more than the responses to the surge in migration from the Middle East and North Africa that began in 2015. In hindsight, historians are likely to view the decision by Germany to open its borders to migrants as the turning point for the European Union, for it has triggered across Europe strong demands by nations to retain full sovereignty when it comes to deciding whom to let into their countries. While most of the media reporting on resistance to migration has focused on Central Europe—with particular attention paid to Hungary and Poland, both vocal opponents of quota resettlement—in fact, across the continent 74 percent now insist that immigration decisions should be made by national governments, and not the EU. Among those nations that oppose EU intrusion into immigration decisions, Hungary is in the lead at 82 percent, with Poland in second place at 77 percent, but—tellingly—followed immediately by France and Germany, both at 75 percent. While Europeans remain generally accepting of foreigners, the unchecked flow of migrants into Europe—which, following the opening of the Libyan route, is predicted to surge now that an estimated 6.6 million migrants can cross into Europe—has hardened public opinion against immigration, with intra-EU tensions rising between governments over migrant resettlement, making this ultimately an argument about the sovereign right of states to self-govern. To Berlin and Brussels, the pushback against the EU’s various migrant resettlements schemes looks like little more than a lack of EU solidarity. But a growing number of states in Europe see it as standing up to Germany.
Increased wariness of Germany’s influence in the European Union is thus a major factor kindling the fires of nationalism across Europe. Almost half of Europeans (49 percent) express concern that Germany has too much influence over decision-making in the EU. German influence in Europe is overwhelmingly the organic result of its dominant economic position, and that position is poised to improve significantly in relative terms in the coming years, with the looming exit of the United Kingdom, the second largest economy in the EU. Germany’s €3.134 trillion GDP in 2017 is approaching those of France and Italy combined. It is more than seven times greater than that of Poland, Belgium or Sweden. The German economy is 27 times the size of Hungary’s, 78 times the size of Slovenia’s, and 125 times the size of Latvia’s. Given such great disparities in the overall power distribution across Europe, one would expect smaller states to favor federalization as means of ensuring that Germany remains enmeshed in the Union’s larger supranational structures. In fact, this argument worked relatively well until about a decade ago, for successive German governments went to great pains to convey to their partners that, for Germany “to be German, it had to be European first.” The 2008 economic crisis, and the Greek economic meltdown that unfolded in its wake, changed this perception. By laying down the law on fiscal policy and forcing Athens to take bitter medicine, Berlin sent a powerful if unintended message that, on core economic issues, other countries were to “be German, if they were to remain European.” The crisis also exposed the growing divide between Germany and the rest of the continent, especially the southern tier of the EU, over how to approach fiscal and monetary policy.
For a growing number of EU member-states, the vision of a “federalized” Europe is fast becoming one of a German Europe, and of a Germany that—in the view of their publics—increasingly demands adherence to its priorities on migration, fiscal policy, and Eurozone priorities. Germany’s recent clash with Poland over its decision to build Nord Stream 2 and its brewing confrontation with Italy over fiscal targets and banking are cases in point. In a sign of changing attitudes among Europe’s publics, there is growing resistance to allowing Brussels to negotiate trade agreements—an authority which has been the hallmark of the European project since 1957. Today, majorities in Greece (63 percent), Sweden and France (both 56 percent), Hungary (55 percent) and Poland (51 percent) with the Spaniards and Italians growing increasingly national on economic policy, at 50 percent and 48 percent respectively—want their national governments to make decisions on trade. The balance of public opinion in the EU is now 51 percent in favor of re-nationalizing trade deals, though Germany remains an outlier at 35 percent.
The return of nationalism to Europe need not be bemoaned. Rather, it should be understood as a baseline for how the continent is likely to adapt to the consequences of mass migration and shifts in the relative economic weight between states. The shift in public attitudes on national sovereignty is increasingly about the changing internal power dynamics in Europe and, by extension, about how Germany’s leadership in the European Union will evolve. The challenge facing Berlin today is to rethink how it exercises its leadership in a way that addresses the national concerns of a growing number of EU member-states. As it approaches a seminal general election, Germany has a decision to make over what role it will play in Europe going forward and how to foster a new consensus across Europe. Intra-EU debates about the “core” and “periphery” that seem to dominate the current thinking on how the EU wants to move miss the point. The preservation of the common European project is an interest shared across the continent, but the current approach of “deepening” by de facto federalizing Europe’s community has already run its course. The future of the European Union rests not only on whether those countries that are positioning themselves in relative opposition to Germany eventually reach a compromise on policy, but also on whether Berlin comes to appreciate how increasingly troubled inter-state relationships across the continent have become. This crisis is not simply about obstinate Hungarians and Poles, increasingly stubborn Italians, or the perennially difficult Greeks. The future of the EU hinges first and foremost on Germany’s capacity to exercise its leadership in a way that responds to those national concerns and defuses the growing intra EU tension, rather than surging ahead with a “two-tiered” solution that, by definition, would divide the Union.
It is up to Germany to figure out what it needs to do next to preserve the idea of a common Europe as a shared project.