The hard truth for Europe's big states

Speaking alongside Donald Tusk, ahead of further fruitless talks with the UK Prime Minister and lost in the storm of ‘Hellgate’, Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar made some pertinent points about the EU’s tenacity in the Brexit negotiations. He spoke of Ireland’s gratitude for the support the rest of the EU had shown, saying that ‘EU solidarity for a small country resonates not just in Ireland but in other small countries’.

There was a specific weight to these comments for Ireland, a country that had an extensive and troubled history with its larger neighbour. Through the EU Ireland has been given a new strength in international politics that would have been unthinkable in times past. It’s hard to imagine that Varadkar was not thinking of this context when he spoke those words. And it is true, the EU has staked a great deal of its reputation on defending Ireland’s interests, not just as a good in itself and a means to protect the peace settlement in Northern Ireland, but also as a signal to the other Member States who might worry about larger neighbours (the Baltics and Russia being an obvious example).

And yet these points have all been made before. We know the EU is a very effective way for small states to defend their interests and their integrity. But there is something more in this, wholly accurate, analysis. Who do we mean when we talk about ‘small states’? As a Brit, when I heard Varadkar’s views on the importance of EU solidarity for small countries, my mind was brought back to the comments of Denmark’s Minister of Finance Kristian Jensen in 2017, when he stated: ‘there are two kinds of European nations. There are small nations and there are countries that have not yet realised they are small nations.’

While the smaller countries of Europe have quite readily accepted the EU’s importance in shoring up their power, influence and security, it is an analysis of the world in 2019 that the larger states still struggle with. Brexit naturally brings up the case of the UK in this regard, but France and Germany too struggle to reckon with the fact that in the world today there are no big European states.

When measuring countries by population size, there is not a single European country in the top 10. Our most populous country, Germany, only makes it in at number 16, with a population a quarter that of the United States and one seventeenth that of China. The UK and France are unable to even break into the top 20. By contrast, the EU taken as a single entity is the third most populous area in the world – ahead of the United States.

GDP provides much the same picture. Last year’s IMF estimates (taking nominal GDP) put China in second place with a value of $13.5 trillion, behind the United States at $20.5 trillion. An enormous drop off follows when you get to Germany in 4^th place, whose GDP was valued at around $4 trillion. Look further down the list again and France and the UK manage less than three quarters of even Germany’s total (with approximate GDP figures of $2.8 trillion in both cases). In any one-to-one comparison, the United States and China massively outclass the individual European states. Not so for the combined economic strength of the European Union, comfortably ranking among the world’s top economic powers and rivalling the United States for the number one spot with a total GDP of $18.8 trillion.

Alternatively we could take a classic look at state power and focus on military expenditure. Here again, we see a massive gap between those states at the very top and the apparently ‘big’ states of Europe. Where the United States spends $610 billion and China spends $228 billion, France (Europe’s biggest spender) manages only $57.8 billion and the UK $47.2 billion. Add to this the fact that while China’s military is being developed and grown, most of Europe’s armed forces are shrinking and have suffered from a decade of cuts and austerity - the overall picture is stark.

Across three significant measures of state power and influence in the world – sheer size, economic strength and military investment – even the bigger European states are small by comparison to the world’s leaders. Certainly there are plenty of countries that are smaller, but is this really the attitude that European states should be taking? Should France, Britain and Germany comfort themselves in the idea they are ‘big’ states simply because they outperform (to pick names purely at random) Malawi or Guatemala? To accept that reasoning would be to indulge in the undeserving pride of being a big fish in a small pond.

If we are serious about being competitive with China and the United States and ensuring that the European social market model can survive and expand in the 21^st century, then we need a much starker and more realistic assessment of our place in the world as individual countries. Once we have done that, we can start being more honest about the kinds of measures that will be necessary in order to achieve those goals and maintain global influence and power. It will mean working together and it will mean greater European integration across a range of areas – with notably foreign and security policy needing both a lot of work before it can become effective and much greater political will to make it work.

Varadkar’s comments were more than an obvious adage for Ireland or Latvia – words spoken almost as a matter of routine, the argument has become so familiar to us. They held a lesson for all of Europe. The simple message is this: yes, the EU is very good at defending small countries and empowering them on the world stage. And, here in Europe, we are all small countries.