The European Union is at a crossroads. EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, in his annual State of the Union message of 2016, spoke of an “existential crisis” of the EU (Rankin 2016, 5); former European Parliament President Martin Schulz called the “collapse of the EU a realistic scenario” (Schulz 2013, 7). The reason for these rather pessimistic views from two usually optimistic people has to be seen in the ongoing financial and migration crises that have led to a split between North and South on one hand (the financial crisis), and between East and West on the other (the migration crisis, where Germany has become more or less isolated).
As a matter of fact, these two crises have only exacerbated a long-term trend. The deeper reason for the crisis of the EU has to be found in the irresponsible policy of enlargement without deepening, i. e., without creating adequate structures and instruments for the functioning of the union. What has been working for six, nine, or even twelve member states cannot work for a union of 27 or 28 countries. The EU today finds itself indeed in an “existential crisis” with different faces:
A moral crisis, reflected in loosening European values and exacerbated by the challenge of political Islam;
A crisis of democracy, where “Brussels” is identified with an anonymous, non-representative bureaucracy trying to impose its solutions on the peoples of Europe;
A crisis of identity, with more and more people calling into question the empty political correctness discourse of the political, economic, and media elites, and instead turning towards “populist” alternatives;
An economic and social crisis, with a widening gap between poor and rich within and between countries, aggravated by the neoliberal predicaments created by Brussels;
A security crisis, where Europe finds itself unable to defend its external borders or its internal security.
These different aspects of an existential crisis reflect European weakness when the “old Continent” is faced with manifold external challenges. But, as we know from the ancient Greeks, crisis not only means danger, but it is also a chance for a new beginning. In this sense, Brexit and the election of Donald Trump might give a push to rethink and change the fateful course of European politics in recent decades. Given the numerous threats and challenges to Europe in an increasingly unsafe world, we need a stronger—albeit smaller—European structure. What we need is a Core Europe that should and would become a serious actor in the global system and that would be able to stabilise its dangerous surroundings, where the most important challenges to European security come from.
The first and most serious challenge to Europe in the coming decades will be radical Islam in combination with unprecedented demographic growth in the primarily Muslim-populated regions of the Middle East, as well as North and West Africa. Migratory pressure, which first peaked in 2015, will increase as the living conditions in these regions deteriorate due to population pressure, bad governance, ethnic and religious conflicts, climate change, and unfair trade relations. The African population will double by 2050—from today’s total of 1.2 billion to 2.5 billion people. Already, between half and two-thirds of the people in the Middle East and Africa are less than 20 years old, often with rudimentary education and almost no job prospects. The high number of “angry young men” is often a particular source of unrest, but there is also potential for all sorts of crime and political extremism leading to political instability in most of these countries, exacerbated by the widespread corruption and incompetence of the ruling elites. The other way out of this misery is migration to Europe, with Libya as a gateway for crossing the Mediterranean as a result of Western intervention in 2011 toppling the long-term ruler Ghaddafi, who until then had served as a kind of gatekeeper in the interests of Europe. If this situation further deteriorates, we have to expect “a massive influx of desperate people whom no sea and no wall, no ‘limes’ will be able to stop.”3 At the same time, “unlimited and uncontrolled migration accompanied by failed integration are serious security risks for Europe” (A New Peace Structure for Europe 2016).
Europe is ill-prepared for such a dramatic development. The almost uncontrolled influx of roughly one million refugees and migrants in 2015 was only the tip of the iceberg and a clear sign of European weakness. Germany took in most of this migration and was left alone when it asked for solidarity, i. e., the redistribution of migrants to different EU member states. But as Chancellor Merkel made the decision to open the borders without asking or even informing the other countries, this decision backfired, resulting in a return to border controls and further weakening European unity. The Central European member states bluntly refused to take in migrants, especially from Muslim areas, but formerly open countries, such as Sweden and Austria, also introduced restrictions on migration. Another result of the 2015 migration wave has been the strengthening of right-wing populist parties and movements in many European countries, movements that are not only anti-migration, but are especially critical of Muslim immigration.
In fact, the demographic challenge in Europe’s southern neighbourhood is closely linked to the challenge of radical Islam, as most of these migrants hail from Islamic countries. The question, of course, is not whether all Muslim migrants are potential terrorists, but whether Islam will adapt to European secular and democratic standards and values. A minority has clearly chosen not to adapt to those values, and they are behind the chain of bloody terrorist attacks in European cities such as Madrid, London, Paris, and Berlin. The handling of Islamist terrorism requires further security cooperation amongst EU members, which is hampered by growing differences between member states in other areas. More important, however, is the question of whether Muslim migrants can be integrated into European societies, as Islam is not just a religion, but “a moral, a ‘weltanschauung,’ a daily praxis,” where “no criticism, no doubt, no conflicting view is allowed,” according to Moroccan (and Muslim) writer Tahar Ben Jelloun (2015, 32).
This question is not only theoretical or philosophical; it is a very practical question of utmost relevance for the future of Europe. Why? Because the consequences of non-integration are tremendous, as we can see in France, where most of the Islamist terrorists are second- or third-generation descendants of Muslim migrants. When in 2005 the mostly Muslim (Arab and African) populated suburbs “exploded,” it became clear that there are numerous areas in French cities where French law is meaningless. After the Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan attacks in 2015, then-Prime Minister Manuel Valls, a Socialist, acknowledged the existence of “ghettos, where the state is no longer present,” and he spoke of a “war of civilisations” (“‘Apartheid’ en France?”, 2015, 11; Valls 2016, 53). This was an obvious reference to Samuel Huntington’s famous book, published in 1996, in which the clash between Western and Islamic civilisations was predicted as one of the major conflicts of the future. Part of the responsibility for the spreading of radical Islam in recent decades lies with those European countries that participated in the Iraq war, as well as with France and the UK in attacking Libya, both of which lead to radicalisation and increased migration.
So far the EU has no common position and no clear strategy concerning the challenge of radical Islam and migration. But the pressure will increase, and we can expect further terror attacks and migratory influx from our southern neighbourhoods. The EU 27/28 is clearly not in a position to develop such a strategy, so the question remains of how a powerful and efficient structure could be created in order to cope with these challenges.
Like radical Islam, the power of geopolitics has long been underestimated, if not neglected by Europe, where most people dreamed of a postmodern paradise after the collapse of the communist system in 1991. But the wars in former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, where the EU dismally failed, should have already served as a warning signal that the world was not turning for the better, but for the worse. The dangerous but basically stable bipolar confrontation has been replaced by a no less dangerous—and unstable—multipolar world. With China emerging as the main competitor against US hegemony, and Russia under Vladimir Putin back on the world stage, the old game of power and influence is again taking place. Other actors, such as India, Brazil, Iran, and Turkey, try to establish themselves as regional leaders, challenging the existing and (in their eyes) still Western-dominated international system.
In this new/old world of “Westphalian shape,” the European Union’s “soft power” approach is doomed to fail. For too long, people dreamed of a peace dividend, which should have included increased defence efforts. Instead, financial cuts in defence spending have led to a loss of over 20 percent of already reduced military capabilities between 2008 and 2014. “The price to pay could be a power vacuum in the European neighborhood in the near future, which could be filled by third parties and lead to political fragmentation within the EU and NATO.”4 Such a development is already visible in the Near East and the Balkans, where Russia, Turkey, and Iran have more or less sidelined the European Union as a relevant actor. The situation is further aggravated by the fact that the EU still has 28 national armies without serious defence cooperation, which leads to “huge inefficiencies, due to duplication of capacities, platforms and systems, with low levels of interoperability. As a result, governments have become less capable of deploying military force in conflict theatres” (Blockmans and Faleg 2015, 2). In fact, only the French army is still able to intervene in (albeit limited) conflict theatres, such as Mali or the Central African Republic. The British army, as the other remaining relevant military force in Europe, has never seriously participated in common defence efforts, so Brexit does not really hamper European defence.
The almost non-existent deterrence capabilities of the European Union have two serious consequences: First, the EU is unable to stabilise its increasingly dangerous neighbourhoods in the southeast (the Balkans, the Near East) and the south (North and West Africa). The results are illegal migration, organised crime, drugs and arms smuggling, human trafficking, and the spread of terrorist networks, which directly threaten Europe. Even in areas where the EU has direct responsibility—as in Kosovo and Bosnia—it is not in a position to bring gangster-like governments and organised crime under control, to say nothing of a solution for the still-unsolved Albanian and Serbian national questions. The wishful thinking of then-EU Commission President Romano Prodi in 2002, who wanted to create a “ring of friends” surrounding Europe, has turned into the nightmare of a “ring of fire” ranging from northwest Africa to Afghanistan.
The second consequence lies in a growing dependence on the United States in any serious external conflict, as demonstrated by the Ukraine crisis. Here the danger is not only of becoming dependent on military protection, but also of being driven into confrontations that are not in the European interest, as again demonstrated by the Ukraine issue. Already former US administrations have asked for more European defence spending under NATO (i. e., US) control, and this pressure might increase with a more inward-oriented Trump administration. At the same time, Trump might loosen the pressure on Europe and leave the little “Asian peninsula,” as the French poet Paul Valery put it, in the desert. This could and should be another incentive to construct a different and more united Europe, also given the fact that Europe’s portion of the world population will shrink to seven percent in 2050 (compared to twelve percent in 2000 and 20 percent in 1950). Even the EU’s economic strength, the basis of its “soft power,” will decrease to ten percent of the world economy in 2050 (compared to 20 percent in 2010 and 30 percent in 1950). For several years we have witnessed a Chinese shopping spree in Europe, especially in Germany, challenging the neoliberal mantra of “no borders” and “no state,” as strategically important companies form an increasing share of the Chinese shopping list.
The challenges described above—and one could easily add a few more—should be more than enough to convince us of the need to build a stronger Europe. Otherwise we might end up with a not very pleasant alternative, which Jacques Attali, a leading French intellectual and former adviser to socialist President Mitterrand, many years ago sarcastically described as the “choice between a Chinese protectorate and an Islamic caliphate.” Establishing a Core Europe might be the solution to avoiding this choice. But what would that entail?
If there is any need for further proof of why Core Europe is needed, we just have to look back at what happened in 2016 on the European agenda. One year after the migration crisis and in the face of the American presidential elections, the EU high representative for foreign affairs, Federica Mogherini, issued a “Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy” (EUGS) (Council of the European Union 2016). In this 56-page document, meant to open a new chapter in European Foreign Policy, she manages not to mention the words “Islam,” “Islamists,” or “Islamist fundamentalism” a single time.5 Given the challenges posed by radical Islam (as described above), this will not serve the EU in preparing for the challenges of the future. This is also true for the whole document, which again presents a catalogue of wishful thinking and is far from delivering “a realistic assessment of the current strategic environment,” as promised on page eight. Only towards the end we learn that “in this fragile world, soft power is not enough: we must enhance our credibility in security and defence” (Ibid, 44). How should this be done? By translating “the voluntary approach to defence cooperation…into real commitment” and by “systematically encouraging defence cooperation between Member States” (Ibid, 46). The document is full of phrases such as “may be invited,” “we must,” “this might lead to,” and so on. This helpless language is of course not solely Mogherini’s fault; it rather reflects the member states’ unwillingness to give up sovereignty in the core area of security and defence when it is most needed.
But even these modest proposals and “encouragements” received a rather cool reception in subsequent EU summit meetings. The Bratislava Declaration of 16 September gave its objective, without blushing with shame, as follows: “In a challenging geopolitical environment, strengthen EU cooperation on external security and defence.” This is the same old song we have heard in all European treaties and declarations since the early 1990s! Furthermore, with regard to EUGS, the next (December) summit called “for their comprehensive follow-up by the High Representative and Member States” (Dragomirescu-Gaina et al. 2016), probably so they can consider it again at the next summit meeting.
But there is some light at the end of the tunnel. The EUGS, for example, is calling for enhanced cooperation in security and defence matters: “If successful and repeated over time, this might lead to a more structured form of cooperation, making full use of the Lisbon Treaty’s potential” (Council of the European Union 2016, 48). Indeed, treaty provisions (as yet unused) such as Article 42(6) and 46 of the Lisbon Treaty, in force since 2009, would allow some member states to build up a Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) in security and defence matters. This would allow a core group of countries voluntarily to take steps towards greater integration of their military capabilities.
A proposal going in this direction was brought forward in September 2016 by the German and French defence ministers, Ursula von der Leyen and Jean-Yves Le Drian, pleading at the same time for “the establishment of a permanent military headquarters to plan and run EU military and civilian missions, such as Operation Sophia, launched last year against migrant-traffickers in the Mediterranean, and Operation Atalanta, an anti-piracy campaign off the coast of Somalia that began in 2008. Up till now, such missions have been run from HQs in nominated member states” (“The fog of politics”, 2016, 25).
PESCO could be used as a starting point for enhanced cooperation in other fields as well. Already in February 2016, the newly nominated French foreign minister (and former prime minister) Jean-Marc Ayrault said in an interview that “everybody has to accept a differentiated Europe where those who want more Europe can advance, and those who don’t want to go further will not hinder them to do so” (“La France et l’Allemagne”, 2016, 3). And in early March 2017 at a meeting in Versailles, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, and Spain endorsed the concept of a multispeed Europe proposed in the EU Commission’s “White paper on the future of Europe” (EU Commission 2017; de la Baume and Herszenhorn 2017). With these proposals they took up an older debate on “differentiated” or “two-speed Europe,” which basically started in 1994 with a famous paper written by two conservative German parliamentarians, Wolfgang Schäuble (the present minister of finance) and Karl Lamers (at that time the foreign policy spokesman of the Christian Democratic Union). In their paper, they spoke of the necessity of establishing “a core of integration oriented and cooperation willing countries” in Europe. For them, Core Europe was essential, as “the new external challenges could not be met even by the bigger member states.” Another key argument was to have Core Europe “as an instrument in order to combine two basically contradictory objectives, namely deepening and enlargement” (Überlegungen zur europäischen Politik. CDU/CSU Parliamentary Group, 1994; Schäuble & Lamers 2001, 79ff).
In September 2014, Schäuble and Lamers met with fellow politicians, amongst them former French finance minister Pierre Moscovici, as well as German and French experts to discuss the situation 20 years later. Most speakers “pointed to the striking parallels between the discussion 20 years ago and today’s challenges.” They also agreed that in the light of escalating conflicts in the European neighbourhood, “the question of how to implement further deepening in the integration process, possibly at different speeds, was of equal or even higher importance than in 1994.” There are, of course, also differences when compared to the situation 20 years ago, most important the successive enlargements of the EU, more than doubling the number of member states, which “had made Europe bigger but not necessarily stronger” (Moscovici, quoted in Koenig et al. 2014).
This is no doubt a key sentence in the present debate about the future of Europe. The irresponsible enlargement policy, which accepted even those countries that had not fulfilled the membership criteria—such as Romania and Bulgaria, or Greece in the Eurozone—is to a large extent the reason for the existential crisis the EU finds itself in today. The participants in the meeting generally agreed with the old idea that the answer to the “multiple challenges [lay] in deeper integration, led by a ‘Core Group’ of EU member states. Schäuble underlined that a ‘Core Group’ did not imply the creation of an exclusive club. It rather suggested that some ‘pioneers’ go ahead while allowing interested member states to join at a later stage.” (Koenig et al. 2014).
This is, in fact, the essence of the Core Europe idea. But the problem is not only that this debate has been going on for more than twenty years without visible results; the problem is also that some of the proponents of this idea are not doing enough to support its implementation, or are even contradicting it through their practical policies. Schäuble himself is the best—or perhaps we should say worst—example of such a schizophrenic attitude. By imposing austerity on the southern European member states, and by following a purely intergovernmental approach, he has “publicly renounced his own idea of Core Europe,” as the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas puts it (Assheuer 2016). Habermas himself is one of the leading intellectual champions of the Core Europe idea in Germany; in 2003, together with his French fellow philosopher Jacques Derrida, he published a call for implementing Core Europe. Three years earlier, then-German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer of the Green Party had done the same in a famous speech at the Humboldt University in Berlin, only to reverse his position (in favour of Core Europe) four years later in the name of the “strategic size” supposedly needed to balance the demographic superiority of China, India, the US, and others. Only when developments in Turkey made it clear that the potential membership of this country was becoming obsolete, and in the light of the ongoing European crisis, did Fischer, now an elder statesman, come back to the old Core Europe idea.6
Developments in France, however, were more important. Already in the Schäuble-Lamers paper, France and Germany were considered the “core of the core,” with all other ensuing concepts and proposals going in this direction. First, there was a rather cool reception of the Core Europe idea in France. But the looming eastern enlargement, which was not at all in the interests of France, and changes in the global power structure following the collapse of the Communist bloc changed this attitude. French political and intellectual elites feared the dominance of a reunited Germany, and they felt that a European Union with 25 or more members would not be able to speak with one voice in the world arena. The solution could be a Core Europe, where France would play an important role.
One of the first to take up this idea was Jacques Delors, former president of the European Commission, who in an article published in June 2000 argued that in a Europe of 25 or more, one would be content with less ambition and basically end up with nothing more than a huge free trade zone. What was needed was an avant-garde of some countries, in the form of a “European Federation” within the framework of the European Union. In the following years, leading French intellectuals such as Alain Minc and Alexandre Adler, as well as political figures such as former finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn (a Socialist) and former prime minister Edouard Balladur (a Conservative), came up with similar ideas, the latter two focusing on the concept of “concentric circles.” Finally, in 2006, then-Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt, a Liberal, pleaded for a political core, the “United States of Europe,” with the EU as an outer layer called the “Organization of European States.” Most of these concepts and proposals differ in instruments and methods, but the final objective for all of them is an integrated, stronger Europe.
It is certainly difficult to find the ideal shape of the Core Europe idea. I argue here for a “Europe of Concentric Circles” that could take the following shape: A group of around a dozen countries that will be fully integrated in the three core areas of sovereignty, i. e., foreign and security policy, monetary policy and finance, and internal security. All other areas will remain the responsibility of member states (as federal states), following the principle of subsidiarity. In particular, national norms, social models, and cultural identities will stay the same. Nobody in a Core Europe wants people to change their identities; they will remain French, Germans, Italians, and so on. It is precisely the over-bureaucratic, over-regulatory eagerness of “soft monster Brussels,” as the German writer Hans-Magnus Enzensberger put it, that led to the growing frustration and Euroscepticism of ordinary citizens. Former French foreign minister Hubert Védrine therefore suggests a “refounding conference, where the willing governments decide on a massive subsidiarity operation, stopping the Commission from regulating everything and reorienting it towards the key elements, starting with rebuilding Schengen and effective control of external borders” (“La tragédie d’Alep”, 2017, 15).
Another reason for Euroscepticism is the undemocratic structure of the European Union in its present form. The Lisbon Treaty fell short of the democratic provisions intended in the Constitutional Treaty, which ironically was rejected by the French and the Dutch in 2005. The fact that two founding members of the EU—which no doubt would have to be part of Core Europe—voted against a treaty that would have been the most democratic in European history is yet another sign of people’s distrust of European elites. Unfortunately, even the modest democratic provisions in the Lisbon Treaty were undermined by Chancellor Merkel’s policy (which, until 2012, was also President Sarkozy’s policy) “to consolidate the intergovernmental rule of the European Council as a post-democratic bureaucratic structure” (Habermas 2011, 81). Therefore, Core Europe has to be democratic, or it will never come to pass. This means a European Parliament with full powers, a democratically elected government responsible to parliament (and not to national governments, as is the European Commission), and Europe-wide political parties that offer European in addition to national solutions.
The fate of the Constitutional Treaty shows how important it is to involve the people in the Core Europe project right from the beginning. There might (and must) be governments taking the initiative, but it must be supported by the citizens. To get there, a broad alliance of political parties, nongovernmental organisations, trade unions, churches, media, intellectuals, artists, and others has to prepare the ground for such initiatives. The message must be simple; unlike the campaign on the Constitutional Treaty in France in 2005, it should not focus on the complicated provisions of such a treaty while its opponents come up with very simple yet powerful slogans, such as the “Polish plumber” taking away jobs.
There is a clear, simple message to be transferred: Either we will have a united Core Europe able to defend its citizens against external threats, including radical Islam and the negative effects of globalisation, or Europe will end up “in marginalization with serious consequences for enlightenment, human rights, rule of law, and democracy,” as former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt put it in a speech at the Congress of the Social Democratic Party in 2011 (SPD 2011). But there is more at stake than marginalisation: it is the survival of European civilisation as we (still) know it, and it is the danger of falling back into the beggar-thy-neighbour policy of the 1930s, with all its well-known disastrous consequences, such as mass unemployment, poverty, authoritarian rule, and war. Such a message should be convincing enough to get a majority to support Core Europe, as external threats will probably increase, and a further American withdrawal would openly reveal the defencelessness of Europe in an unsafe world. It is a good sign that, according to the Eurobarometer in 2016, around 66 percent of European citizens were in favour of a bigger role for the EU in the field of security and defence.
One of the biggest deficits of the present EU construction is not to have answered the question of where the borders of Europe are. The Copenhagen criteria give only part of the answer—namely, the obvious preconditions, such as democracy, rule of law, market economy, and so on. Those criteria are easily fulfilled by countries such as New Zealand or South Korea (in contrast to Bulgaria and Romania), but it certainly wouldn’t make sense to establish a second OECD. There has to be a geographical—and more importantly a historical-cultural—basis for European integration, which, according to Strauss-Kahn, can be found in phases of imperial (Roman, Carolingian, and Napoleonic) and cultural (Christian, Enlightenment) unity (Strauss-Kahn 2004; see also Veit 2016, 184). And this is especially true for the concept of Core Europe, which demands far-reaching concessions concerning national sovereignty and therefore requires more than purely economic or security interests.
Although Europe is “of one spirit,” as German philosopher Hermann Keyserling once said, there are considerable differences between the different European regions. The United Kingdom has always played a special role in European history, trying to impose a balance of power on the continent and maintaining a special relationship with the United States. Brexit has only confirmed this position, opening the way for deepening European integration, which has been hampered so far by London’s obstructionist policy, which considered the EU purely as a big free trade zone. The Scandinavian countries are close to the UK’s position and are also eager to keep their special welfare-state model, which they fear might be threatened by the Brussels bureaucracy’s mania for unification. At the other end of Europe, in the Balkans, the EU stretches to the Orthodox and Islamic cultural spheres, which have never been part of the democratic, secular, and socio-economic European traditions. If anything, the premature membership of Romania and Bulgaria (and to a certain extent of Greece) is proof of considerable disparities with Central Europe, not to speak of the Western Balkan countries and Turkey, which have received the promise of future membership. In addition, the Balkan region is characterised by a new Great Game, where Russia and Turkey are trying to get back their old spheres of influence and thereby counterbalancing the already weak EU position there. Finally, at the southwestern end of Europe, Spain and Portugal are definitely pro-European, but geography, history, and economy still separate them in a certain way from the heart of Europe.
Based on all of this, we can imagine a Core Europe comprising two historical-geopolitical zones with the highest degree of commonalities concerning economic and welfare systems (the Rhinean or Continental model), cultural and religious traditions, as well as democratic and secular values. The one zone comprises approximately the territory of the ancient Carolingian Empire, reflected in the six founding members of the European Economic Community in 1957 (opponents of Core Europe like to ridicule it as an ultraconservative “Carolingian remake,” but this post-modern attitude is itself ridiculous and elitist, as it doesn’t take into account the failure of post-modern Europe and the changing mood of its peoples). The other zone consists more or less of the former areas of the Habsburg Empire, the old Mitteleuropa, with all Central European countries once belonging to this empire (from Poland to Croatia today) being members of the EU.
The core of the core would consist of France, Germany, and Poland, which formed the “Weimar Triangle” back in 1991 and, after some initial signs of life, have since fallen into a kind of twilight sleep. However, Brexit has worked as a wake-up call, and in August 2016 the three foreign ministers Jean-Marc Ayrault, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and Witold Waszczykowski confirmed their willingness “to intensify their cooperation in the light of unprecedented challenges for Europe.” To begin with, combining the three countries “in a way that amounts to more than just the smallest common denominator may well provide a basis for a true European strategic vision—or at least a debate on it to start with. If the Weimar Triangle succeeds in this endeavor, it may eventually be able to help bridging the leadership gap the European Union’s common foreign and security policy is suffering from” (Kunz 2014, 10). The chances that Poland would be ready to participate in the core have been increased considerably by Brexit, but even more so by the election of Donald Trump as the US president, since it might no longer be safe to solely rely on NATO’s (meaning the US’s) security guarantees. This feeling of insecurity has been increased by Mr. Trump’s pro-Russian attitude, as shown both during and after the election campaign. For Core Europe, on the other hand, Polish participation “would incidentally be a welcome guarantee that a European identity would not degenerate into anti-Americanism,” as the late Egon Bahr once remarked.7
The Weimar Triangle as the core of the core should not mean that these three countries would form a kind of “directorate” of the newly built Core Europe. That would be a stillborn project. It simply means that without these three countries, a Core Europe is unimaginable. Some of the other (roughly a dozen or so) countries might hesitate to participate in the beginning, but this would not be an insurmountable obstacle, as the door would remain open to them. Entry through this door, however, would require signing a new treaty among the existing EU treaties, thus establishing a new structure, which might be called the “United States of Europe”. Signing such a treaty, which would go hand-in-hand with a considerable loss of sovereignty, would no doubt require holding a referendum, because Core Europe, as has been said above, must be democratic (supranational) or it will not come to pass. This is the major weakness of the Core Europe idea, because in the light of growing Euroscepticism, the results of such a referendum are unpredictable. That is why some people consider the Core Europe idea as visionary, if not illusionary, but they have to be reminded that Europe always has been forged in crises, starting with the desperate situation after World War Two. On the other hand, as Habermas argues, “only a functioning Core Europe could convince the polarised peoples in all member states of the basic idea of the project” (Assheuer 2016). What is not convincing, however, is Habermas’ (and Schäuble’s) argument that the Eurozone could serve as a possible framework for Core Europe. The disparities within this zone—between, say, Greece and Germany—are too great to allow the construction of a rather homogenous structure, and they have already led to heavy disturbances in European politics as we have known it since 2009.
Outside Core Europe, the other member states of the European Union as it exists today will form the first circle surrounding the inner core. One might call it, following Verhofstadt, the “Organization of European States,” or even keep the name “European Union.” In any case, it will be no more than a free trade zone, with or without an internal market. A structure without an internal market would allow the UK to come back, and one could easily integrate the Western Balkan countries. This circle would serve as a waiting room for membership in Core Europe and thus avoid the somewhat humiliating candidate status, which in the case of Turkey has, if nothing else, brought about frustration on both sides.
The case of Turkey brings us to the question of the “third” or “outer” circle and strategic partnerships. The third circle surrounding Core Europe would mainly consist of the countries participating in the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), either in the framework of the “Union for the Mediterranean” or the “Eastern Partnership.” The main objective and preoccupation of Core Europe’s foreign and security policy in these regions (and additionally in Africa’s Sahel zone) would have to be stabilising these countries by helping them to advance economically, and in turn hopefully also to advance in democratic terms. This requires not only increased hard power and financial aid, but also a change in trade relations, which, in the case of the Economic Partnership Agreements with Africa, have had a counterproductive effect by destroying the remnants of industrial development in these countries.
Another requirement would be forging strategic partnerships with regional powers in the European neighbourhood, as even a stronger Core Europe will not be able to single-handedly manage all the challenges and threats in the “ring of fire” described above. Apart from the United States, whose engagement in Europe has to be called into question (this disengagement had already begun under President Obama), there are Russia and Turkey as potential strategic and security partners. Neither are dream partners for democrats and human rights activists, but in terms of “realpolitik”—which means “security first,” as Amitai Etzioni once put it—we might have to accept them. Both possess the military capabilities necessary to deal with the numerous challenges in the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, leaving resources for Core Europe to deal with the situation in Africa. Of course, there are also differences apart from values: both Russia and Turkey aspire to (re-)create zones of influence in regions they believe are historically linked to them. Especially in the Balkan region, there might be conflicting interests between Core Europe, Russia, and Turkey. But with a strong Core Europe as a serious partner, administering soft and hard power, there should be room for solutions. In general, the common threats and challenges should be reason enough for forging a strategic partnership in the name of common security.
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