Fractured Continent: Europe's Crises and the Fate of the West

"It’s true. Bill Drozdiak, formerly of the Washington Post , is a journalist I’ve known and been friendly with for…longer than I care to say. But like most journalists, he has an eye for the crisis. He manages to find a crisis in each of the twelve chapters the book is made up of. And indeed, there are crises. He starts with Berlin. Well, we now have an even bigger crisis in Berlin than when Bill wrote his book. London, we need not even discuss. Paris, we’re a bit out of the woods with Mr. Macron. Catalonia we’re still in the middle of a crisis with. Rome is just around the corner. Warsaw, we’ve got a real problem with the Poles, thanks to Mr. Kaczyński. And so it goes on … But I think it’s a very good survey of what the European experiment is for and why we need to have an integrated Europe, both economically and politically. At the same time, it’s sharp reporting on where we actually are now. My feeling about Fractured Continent is that it’s very much a newsman’s book, and that’s its strength and also its weakness. “I often think that European politics is like three-dimensional chess. There are so many different levels.” We’re in the most volatile period of European politics since I started writing about Europe at the beginning of the 1970s, when I was sent to Paris by the Financial Times. I don’t think I’ve ever seen things moving so fast and so uncertainly as now. Now, I’ve always said to Bill, ‘I think you’re going to have to update that book, and call it Fractured Continent 2 or something.’ I should ask him what’s next. It’s Broken Bones, I suppose. Yes, I found a whole lot of detail at the national level that I found myself making notes about to use in my own work. He has first-class analysis and also puts in the historical context. He’s really writing for an American readership and, in a way, that makes it a better book than a European might write because we tend to assume knowledge about European affairs, certainly in my business. It’s always a mistake to assume knowledge. You need to tell the reader what the context is, what the history was. Where he might fall a bit short is on policy proposals, policy solutions. But he’s more of a journalist than an analyst. I’m sure he would turn around and say to me, ‘That’s not a reporter’s job.’ Very much so. Bill Drozdiak starts off by telling us that Europe’s unity is an essential part of the way international relationships are going to develop in the 21st century. What he’s getting at is that there are no problems that can be fixed by a single European country on its own. The shrinkage of Europe in relation to other emerging powers—notably the Chinese, but the Indians too, Asia as a bloc—means that no country in Europe has enough clout on the global stage any longer. With America currently turning on its heel under the Trump administration—and saying, ‘America first. We withdraw from international responsibilities’—it drives home the point Drozdiak makes even more. There are some rather frightening figures. The population at the moment is just a shade over 500 million, so there are a half-billion Europeans. But it’s plateauing and will start to shrink. By mid-century, we’ll more likely be around 470, possibly even the 450-million mark. But that’s less important than the ageing. The figure I have constantly in the back of my mind is that right now, we have an active labour force in Europe of 240 million people. If we keep immigration at our current level—and there are a lot of people trying to reduce it—by 2050 there will only be 207 million people in the labour force. Now, if you take 33 million people out of the economy, you’re taking away a huge amount of tax revenue for governments and a huge amount of consumption. “What is required is a total rethink, a hugely ambitious and radical change. Now I personally have solutions, but nobody is listening” We’ve already got a labour shortage in Europe. Although everybody talks about unemployment, the reality is that there aren’t enough people to do the work. There are four workers per pensioner at the moment. It comes down to two workers per pensioner by mid-century. Now, if we can’t afford the pensions now, what on earth are we going to do by mid-century? We need more people. We need to bring in immigrants, but we need to train them and we need to get them into work. At the moment, it’s a terrible muddle. In some countries, immigrants are allowed to work straight away. In other countries, refugees are told they can’t work, not until they’ve been processed. We Europeans need to get our act together on this. But first of all, we have to recognise the reality that we are ageing and shrinking at a very, very fast rate."