Europe springs ahead

It's an exciting time in the EU. But challenges remain that leave little time for outside engagement.

from the April 19, 2007 edition

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Lille, France - With the United States becoming bogged down in Iraq, how ready might the European Union (EU) be to pick up the slack in global affairs left by the diminishment of American power?

I've been in Europe for nearly six weeks – in Britain, Belgium, and here in northern France. My clear impression is that the EU is too divided and too concerned with pressing internal issues to provide any real alternative to the role the US plays in world affairs. Expect China and India to fill that vacuum instead.

Back in 1989, the dramatic fall of the Berlin Wall led many Europeans to dream of a Europe – united, whole, and free – that might act as a single, strong, democratic force in world affairs.

Since then, the EU has expanded. Now it has 27 member nations and a combined population of 495 million. And that expansion has benefited nearly all Europeans.

Europeans' lives are changing fast, and often for the better. The rise of low-fare air travel coupled with the ease of travel among EU countries has led to unprecedented mobility across the Continent.

Cultural integration

A few years ago, many Western Europeans worried about an influx of cheap labor from Eastern Europe, symbolized by the "Polish plumber."

But most Britons warmly welcomed the many well-trained Polish workers who arrived. And today, immigrants from Poland and other Eastern European nations seem well integrated in workplaces throughout Western Europe.

The Continent has also become a strong magnet for economic migrants from Africa both north and south of the Sahara. Some of those migrants have fled deep impoverishment or civil wars at home. Others are simply entrepreneurial individuals eager to take any job they can in European countries whose birthrates can't replace an aging workforce.

But these migrants also pose challenges for countries that have not, historically, been used to high immigration rates or the challenges of the many-faceted multiculturalism that has resulted.

Whole areas of London are now a Babel of different tongues, spoken by young people from across the Continent who come there to learn what has become the EU's lingua franca. Here in Lille, I have been teaching a short course on international affairs – in English – at the city's Institut d'Études Politiques.

Like many of France's other state-run universities, this institute now requires that students gain some proficiency in English – quite a change in the country's educational policy!

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