Ever More Divided Union

AS THE DREAM OF A UNITED EUROPE TURNS 60, CAN THE E.U. ESCAPE THE GRAVE?

- Charlotte McDonald-Gibson

IT’S RUSH HOUR IN MAASTRICHT, AND A STREAM of bikes flows past a modest granite slab marking the signing of a treaty that changed Europe. It was here, a quarter-century ago, that representatives of 12 countries signed the Maastricht Treaty, creating a political and economic community with open borders and one currency. On this spot, the modern European Union was born. Not every passerby is brimming with pride.

“It was a very big mistake,” says 36-year-old Var Cihan, an out-of-work forklift driver on his way home from the unemployment center. He glances dismissively at the monument and reels off a list of complaints: inflation after the introduction of the euro in 2002; state housing going to refugees before citizens; Dutch taxes bailing out Greece. “The first thing you need to do is be good to your own people,” he concludes.

This year sees not just the 25th birthday of the Maastricht Treaty but also the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which established the first common European market and turned the idea of a united Europe into reality. It should be a moment of celebration for a supranational bloc that has since expanded to 28 nations and won the Nobel Peace Prize for decades of doing what it was formed to do: prevent war. But there is little jubilation among many of the people the E.U. was ostensibly set up to help. Instead, the bloc’s very foundations are being eroded by a rising tide of antifederalist populism.