In Search of Unity

Richard Jevans is unconvinced by a new study that is focused on the idea of finishing the “European project” and based on the testimonies of esteemed thinkers over the centuries

- By Richard Jevans. Photographs by Bridgeman

The states we’re in

A map of the Holy Roman Empire surrounded by portraits of its emperors, 1770. Anthony Pagden’s new book focuses on the idea of a united Europe

In his new book, The Pursuit of Europe, Anthony Pagden vigorously asserts the possibility –indeed, the necessity – of resuming and completing the “European project”. By this he means the creation not of a European superstate but “a new post-national order united in a political life based not upon the old shibboleths of nationalism and patriotism but upon a common body of values and aspirations”.

European unity is made possible, he argues, by the two enduring and fundamental factors of representative government and the networks of internal trade that created its self-sufficiency in all basic essentials of life. These, he asserts, must provide the basis for a family of nations living peacefully together in a single order of justice and united by a common body of political objectives.

The problem is, of course, that this is looking extremely unlikely at the moment. Quite apart from the current crisis of representative government and the growing recourse of politicians everywhere to “the old shibboleths of nationalism and patriotism”, Europe is far from self-sufficient in an age of continuing economic globalisation and interdependence. In the face of Covid-19, the European Union has not been able to do much more than provide financial support for member states’ efforts to combat the disease.