Europe's Future and the Right

Europe's Future and the Right

William Pfaff | http://www.williampfaff.com/article.php?storyid=672

Paris, April 2, 2014 -- The outcome of the French municipal elections last weekend contributed to the general European unease about the future of the European Union. In May European Parliament elections will take place in the troubled circumstances of economic crisis everywhere but Germany, with tension between the EU, the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine contributing to the uncertainties that exist about the future of the Union, with a notable rise in support for separatist parties in several important countries, one of them – of course – France.

There is also call in the mainstream for revising the fundamental treaties governing the European Union, with a British threat of withdrawal from the European Union, conceivably finding emulators elsewhere, with serious consequences for the new “Europe” which has been the proud political achievement of the West in the past half-century, replacing the European system of warring sovereign nation-states, founded at Westphalia in 1648, with the construction of a new European Union, now with 29 members.