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THE INVESTOR
Will the European Union break under the stresses it
is facing,or can it re-emerge stronger – albeit different?
By Frederick Studemann
FACING THE
EU FUTURE
s birthday parties go it was a mixed affair.
The March gathering of political leaders in
Rome to mark the 60th anniversary of the
treaty that launched the European project
went off with all the expected diplomatic
fanfare, flag-waving and team photos.And
yet there was no escaping the gloomy
backdrop about the future of the world’s
biggest trading bloc.
The list of problems is formidable: years
of poor economic growth and high
unemployment; challenges of mass
migration; rising populism; existential
fears of growing irrelevance in a fast-
changing world in which the US, under
a new president, has cooled on the idea of
the EU, and one of the bloc’s biggest
member states is heading for the exit.
It is all the more surprising, therefore,
that – despite all the undoubted headwinds
– sentiment has improved for the
mainstream parties behind the EU project.
The first quarter saw a number of political
developments that ran counter to the
doomster script.These included the Dutch
general election inMarch where Mark Rutte,
the centre-right prime minister, saw off a
challenge from the far-right populist Geert
Wilders.In the endWilders came second,with
an increased share of the vote – an outcome
that once might have sparked panic but in
the new political landscape of Europe was
celebrated as a victory for the centre-ground.
Even in France, the running in the
presidential elections has been made by
Marine Le Pen of the National Front and
Emmanuel Macron,who, although an