Three myths about Europe in one sentence: bravo, General Barak and Sir Max

When does a cliché become a myth? Answer: when it is uttered by a Very Important Person and repeated by another VIP in a newspaper of record. There’s a good example in today’s Times (behind a paywall). Sir Max Hastings, on a visit to Israel, lovingly recounts a conversation with Ehud Barak. The former Prime Minister , now championing Israeli tech startups, tells the former editor and historian that “he looks on Europe as ‘a dying paradise’…all those Germans working harder and harder to keep Italy going”.

Let’s assume that Sir Max, who was once a reporter, has reproduced General Barak’s words more or less accurately. The first stumbling block is the headline phrase “dying paradise”. No Israeli needs me to point this out, but for Jews the continent where six million were murdered within living memory has never been a paradise. Anti-semitic attacks are rising again and in some countries (notably France, Germany and, yes, Britain) have reached almost unprecedented levels. As for the Jewish state: Europe does ever more profitable business with Israel, while simultaneously treating it as a pariah. Indeed, one wonders when Barak last visited this country: there are plenty of other former Israeli officers who would be unwise to do so if they do not wish to end up in court on trumped-up human rights charges.

Whether or not it is a paradise for anyone except bureaucrats and oligarchs, Europe is certainly not “dying”. It’s true that the demographics are grim and some economies are only propped up by migration, which often involves robbing Peter to pay Paul. The Baltic states, for example, have between 15 and 20 per cent of their populations living abroad. Not only are we are having fewer children but we are ageing, too: of the 20 countries in the world expected by a study in the Lancet last year to lose at least 10 per cent of their populations by 2050, 18 are in Europe. It estimates that by 2100, the population of the EU will have fallen from 446 million to 308 million. Yet as the pandemic has demonstrated, the continent has some of the best healthcare in the world and it is rich enough to look after an elderly population. The UK population, incidentally, is not projected to fall at all from its present level of 67 million, but to peak at 75 million in 2063 and gently decline to 71 million by 2100. So: not dying out quite yet. It is common for those no longer young — both Barak and Hastings are in their seventies — to see the world in crepuscular terms. But as Adam Smith said, there is a great deal of ruin in a nation — and even more in a continent.

What, though, about Barak’s vivid image of “all those Germans working harder and harder to keep Italy going”? Surely that is true, isn’t it? Well, no, actually. First of all, Germans aren’t working harder — and nor are most Europeans. Working hours are at their lowest levels for several decades, only partly due to the pandemic. There has been an average long-term fall from around 70 hours a week to about half as many today. In Germany, the fall has been greater: annual working hours decreased between 1870 and 2017 by some 60 per cent, compared to a 40 per cent fall in the UK. Germans are highly productive, but they don’t work particularly hard.

As for Italy: the notion that it is merely “kept going” by the charity of its richer northern neighbours is the most pernicious myth of all. A recent study by the Freiburg Research Centre — a German think tank, note — found that Italians had suffered more than any other EU country as a result of the introduction of the Euro. Over nearly two decades from 1999 to 2017, the single currency cost Italy a staggering £3.6 trillion, which equates to £64,000 per capita. Germany, by contrast, gained by far the most: £1.6 trillion, equivalent to £19,000 for each German. Being denied the tool of currency devaluation for Italy has had devastating consequences for its economy.

One of the main architects of this cruel and unnatural punishment was Mario Draghi, head of the European Central Bank from 2011 to 2019. Now in his seventies, Draghi was unexpectedly drafted in last spring  at the height of the pandemic to be Prime Minister of Italy at the head of an emergency coalition. The irony of this outcome is not lost on Italians, none of whom has yet had a chance to vote for their former grand inquisitor. Italians are resigned to technocratic government: at least Draghi can keep the Germans sweet, they hope, so that a few crumbs from the EU’s recovery plan will fall from the rich man’s table. But they are under no illusions: Italians were far more prosperous before they were clamped into the iron maiden of the Euro.

Hence General Barak and Sir Max are guilty of perpetuating a series of stereotypes: of Europe as a dying paradise, of hard-working Germans and lazy Italians. To paraphrase Voltaire on the Holy Roman Empire, which was “neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire”: Europe is neither dying, nor diligent, nor a paradise. Very important people are no wiser than anyone else; they are just more forthcoming with their follies.

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