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GENERATION EUROPE About Policy Network Policy Network is an international thinktank and research institute. Its network spans national borders across Europe and the wider world with the aim of promot- ing the best progressive thinking on the major social and economic challenges of the 21st century. Our work is driven by a network of politicians, policymakers, business leaders, public service professionals, and academic researchers who work on long-term is- sues relating to public policy, political economy, social attitudes, governance and international affairs. This is complemented by the expertise and research excellence of Policy Network’s international team. A platform for research and ideas • Promoting expert ideas and political analysis on the key economic, social and political challenges of our age. • Disseminating research excellence and relevant knowledge to a wider public audience through interactive policy networks, including interdisciplinary and scholarly collaboration. • Engaging and informing the public debate about the future of European and global progressive politics. A network of leaders, policymakers and thinkers • Building international policy communities comprising individuals and affiliate institutions. • Providing meeting platforms where the politically active, and potential leaders of the future, can engage with each other across national borders and with the best thinkers who are sympathetic to their broad aims. • Engaging in external collaboration with partners including higher education institutions, the private sector, thinktanks, charities, community organisations, and trade unions. • Delivering an innovative events programme combining in-house seminars with large-scale public conferences designed to influence and contribute to key public debates. www.policy-network.net GENERATION EUROPE How Young Europeans Need to Step Up and Save Their Continent Sandro Gozi London • New York Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB www.rowmaninternational.com Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd. is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and Plymouth (UK) www.rowman.com Copyright © 2018 Sandro Gozi All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: PB 978-1-78660-792-8 ISBN: eBook 978-1-78660-793-5 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Control Number: 2018930808 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Suddenly Brexit 1 49 Boulevard Voltaire 11 Moving away from crisis management 25 The challenge of migration 55 The mother of all questions 75 Let us continue to be ourselves 93 The digital opportunity 119 Towards tomorrow’s Europe 133 About the Author 171 v to Jo Cox ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I want to thank Francesco Gualdi, with whom I share politics, music and many hours of work each day, for his valuable contribution. And thanks to François Lafond, who worked on the French edition of the book. With him, I have long shared European commitments and many initiatives here and beyond the Alps. I also want to thank all the Policy Network team: they believed in the idea of this book and did a remarkable job in supporting it. Together, we played as a team, as we should always do in Europe and for the Europe that we want. ix SUDDENLY BREXIT The first SMS woke me up at five in the morning. It was Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister at the time, asking me if I had “more data”. I immediately understood that all the calculations, the exit polls, the forecasts and the data of the previous night meant nothing. Brexit had just happened. It was at that time on 24 June 2016 that I realised, for the first time, a member state had decided to leave the European Union. I immediately spoke with my friend Ed Llewellyn, then David Cameron’s chief of staff at No 10. He confirmed that what seemed impossible just the night before had indeed happened, represented by the smirk of Nigel Farage and the rejoicing of Michal Gove and Boris Johnson. That day I was in Luxembourg for the general affairs council. Brexit was on the agenda: based on the forecasts, we were supposed to be evaluating how to ‘reset’ the EU in the event of a remain win. But our forecasts were wrong; foreign affairs ministers began to arrive at the informal breakfast before the council, now a pointless occasion. I remember doing an interview with BBC radio. They asked me what was going to happen after Brexit. I got by with a standard 1 2 SUDDENLY BREXIT answer, but the reality was different: we knew we were entering uncertain and unknown territory. London did not seem prepared to handle the situation, and neither was Brussels. Obviously, ‘Euro- destroyers’ from all over Europe were rejoicing and hoping to use the exploit the apparent momentum caused by the Brexit vote. I had never imagined a member state leaving the EU. My first doubts arose in Stockholm, a month before the referendum when, during a Policy Network conference, my friend Roger Liddle con- fessed to me that he was concerned about the result. I trust Roger’s expertise on British politics and society, and his pessimism con- cerned me. On various occasions, I have had the chance to live in the UK. The last time was in 1994. Those were the years of Cool Britannia, dur- ing the explosion of Britpop, of Tony Blair and New Labour: an era brilliantly built up by one of the brightest minds in British politics, Peter Mandelson. After the dark days of the 1970s and the conflicts of the Thatcher years, Britain seemed to be undergoing something of a rebirth, its ‘soft power’ growing. London during the 1990s was innovative and ‘happening’, acting as a magnet to attract young people from all over Europe. I was among those young people. I lived in Rosebery Avenue in Islington (20 years later 75 per cent of voters in Islington voted to remain; a small comfort). I studied at the London School of Eco- nomics and played squash with Indian and Pakistani friends. At the LSE, my macroeconomics professor was Willem Buiter, who later joined the Bank of England monetary policy committee. I remem- ber he often wore a white T-shirt with the drawing of a European tie, blue with 12 stars, under a black suit jacket. Back then, more than two decades ago, his lessons explained the need to introduce the single currency; but, at the same time, it was already clear that the eurozone was incomplete. All these issues quickly moved from economics to politics. I witnessed a London that was undergoing a renaissance. Now London is completely transformed: I recently went back to LSE for a conference. The squash courts are now the, construction site of a SUDDENLY BREXIT 3 new student office. I am sure it will be beautiful but at least for me, squash courts were much more romantic. I have one simple question: what happened to the Great Britain I remember clearly? What has changed in the intervening years to cause a majority of Britons to vote to leave the EU? NO EUROPE FOR OLD MEN Right after the referendum, one figure stood out to me. Those who voted in favour of Brexit were older British citizens. 73 per cent of people aged 18-24 voted remain, as well as 62 per cent of those aged 25–34. People over the age of 45 voted leave, with the figure reach- ing its peak at 60 per cent among those older than 65. But Brexit won because British grandparents turned out in larger numbers than their grandchildren. That’s democracy: if youngsters had really cared about the referendum, they could have gone to the polls in larger numbers. We feel lost in the face of such a decision. The results are not only different between young and old, but also between the cit- ies and the provinces, without forgetting the divisions between the nations of the United Kingdom, with Scotland and Northern Ireland voting to remain and England and Wales to leave. However, this is a somewhat superficial representation of the split between one generation that voted for its past and another that decided not to participate, to let someone else decide the future. This is not the case: the young have demonstrated that they believe in the EU because they were born and raised as European citizens. Because most of them have travelled through Europe, many have studied in universities in the continent and have friends located all over the EU. This is the Europe generation, the Erasmus generation, the gen- eration that discovered the continent thanks to low-cost flights: the easyJet generation. The same easyJet that decided to leave London and move to make the EU, in this case Vienna, its base. I focus on the generational issue because it is clear-cut. The results of the referendum tell us that among those people younger 4 SUDDENLY BREXIT than 45, remain won. This means that those who were born after Britain joined the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973 support the EU. It was the baby boomers who decided to leave the EU. Maybe because they recall a past that cannot be recaptured, they prefer to wallow in the dream of a ‘Global Britain’ (to use the words of Theresa May).