Proponents of the European project like to talk about a core set of “European values” for which it stands.
At a time when the European Union is threatened from within and without, the idea is particularly tempting. It lifts the EU from an entity that simply pursues its own interests — like any other state or group of states — and makes it a “normative power” that can credibly be said to be making the world a better place.
It does not seem to even occur to people who talk about “European values” that the idea is somewhat Huntingtonian. It suggests that international politics is a “clash of civilizations” in which the fault lines are cultural.
But do “European values” even exist in any meaningful sense? They would have to be values that on the one hand unite Europeans and at the same time are distinct from the values held by people from other parts of the world.
There are some rather abstract universal values that are broadly shared around the world. There may even be such a thing as “Western values” (though of course that is also a civilizational idea). But as soon as you try to be more precise and identify distinctively “European” values, differences within Europe — that is, between Europeans — become as apparent as the differences between Europe and the rest of the world.
Beyond its usual rhetoric, the EU is doing very little to try to uphold the international rule of law outside its borders.
When people talk about “European values,” they usually conflate two things — first, a set of values that Europeans are claimed collectively to believe in, and second, a set of values that are embodied by the institutional structures and policies of the EU — the values of the EU. It is far from obvious that the two go together.
Europeans may collectively believe in democracy, for example. But aside from the obvious point that they are not the only ones, it is difficult to claim that democracy is a specifically “European” value given that one of the main criticisms of the EU is that it is undemocratic.
In order for the idea of “European values” to be meaningful, Europeans must surely also in some way be collectively committed to them in a way that goes beyond mere rhetoric. In other words, Europeans must live by these values rather than simply proclaim them.
The EU’s founding treaty claims it “is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights.” But the bloc is pretty inconsistent in the way it promotes these values beyond its external borders.
The EU’s human rights credentials have not been bolstered by its actions toward migrants in the Mediterranean Sea | Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA
To be sure, the EU promoted democracy, human rights and the rule of the law in its neighborhood as it enlarged. But is the EU promoting democracy and upholding human dignity when it strikes deals with authoritarian regimes and sends refugees back to unsafe countries or allows them to die in the Mediterranean Sea?
The value that can most plausibly be claimed to be “European” is the rule of law. After all, the EU is nothing but a set of rules — and creating rules is what the EU does. And yet this, too, is problematic.
Beyond its usual rhetoric, the EU is doing very little to try to uphold the international rule of law outside its borders. In one of the main threats to the international rule of law — China’s acquisition and consolidation of islands in the East and South China Seas — the EU talks about “principled neutrality” but is largely absent in practice. France has long urged the EU to carry out freedom of navigation operations — to walk the walk, in other words — but has received almost no support. Meanwhile the United Kingdom, which is in the process of leaving the EU, and the United States are actually taking action to uphold the rule of law in Asia.
Brussels has invoked the idea of “European values” to justify taking tough action against Poland and Hungary for violations of the domestic rule of law. The problem is that the EU previously used the same rhetoric to enforce the eurozone’s fiscal rules and mandatory quotas for refugees and thus discredited it.
It turns out that the EU’s insistence on rules is not a European idea, but really a German one. And that is actually a big part of the EU’s internal problems.
In practice, even the rule of law turns out to divide Europeans as much as it unites them.
Many of the conflicts within the EU are about resistance to rules seen as being imposed by Berlin and as undermining a member country’s sovereignty. This became obvious during the euro crisis, which can plausibly be seen as a battle between a German approach based on rules and a French and broadly Southern European approach based on discretion.
In practice, even the rule of law turns out to divide Europeans as much as it unites them. It may be a value in which a lot of “pro-Europeans” believe, but that doesn’t quite make it a distinctive “European value” — and like other “European values,” it doesn’t necessarily mean all Europeans support it.
Hans Kundnani is a senior research fellow at Chatham House.