Last June 2016, the United Kingdom held a referendum about leaving the European Union and surprisingly the UK electorate voted to leave the EU after being a member for 44 years. The term Brexit trended on Social Media and a lot has been said about this controversial decision from both camps. The Brexit is the latest crisis EU has faced since its inception and even before the referendum, EU has its share of critics already as far back as early years of EU’s existence. Brexit emboldened the Euroskeptics and raised awareness among those who are passive about the EU debate. Some for sure have asked: Is it really worth giving up a chunk of the country’s sovereignty for a membership at the EU?
This book was published in 2013, three years before the mentioned referendum but the arguments raised by the author, John McCormick, are still relevant today. This book is a good resource for students especially majoring in European Studies, professors, those who seek more knowledge about the European Union as an organization and those who are pro-Brexit or exit of any EU members but open minded enough to hear opinions from someone who is an advocate of the integration and has authority to speak on this subject. The way the book is written seems to cater to general readers and not just to Politics or International Studies enthusiasts.
The author gave a brief background about the history of European Union in Chapter 1 and then elaborated common myths about the project and addressed these one by one such as EU being ran by the few elites and EU causing nation-members to lose their sovereignty. According to the author, “much of the political and media analysis of the EU is confused, sometimes wrong and often misleading”. He went on to say that “all public debates fall prey to the selective presentation of facts, as well as genuine and unintentional misunderstandings, but the European Union seems to suffer worse than most” because the issue about sovereignty is often used by politicians at their home state. They create noise out of misconceptions, purely rhetoric especially during elections in the hopes to sway votes on their side and with the amplification of the media, there seems to be wrong perception that anti-EU sentiments are widespread and growing. But these perceptions are easily crushed by various polls results that say otherwise. In fact, more people trust and are satisfied with EU than their own government.
The author then continued to discuss how Europe is peaceful compared to the United States and emphasized Europe as a peacemaker instead of a peacekeeper, favoring a welfare state and not a warfare state and how empowering civilian instead of military aids in bringing a lasting peace. The integration helped achieve these and the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 is a recognition EU deserved for its role in advocating for peace after World War II. The book also highlighted the economic power of the European Union stating that “EU is the wealthiest marketplace in the world” with their single market that is “the crown jewel of European integration”. The author appealed that while Euro currency has certainly problems that need to be addressed, (an example of such is the Eurozone crisis last 2009) we should look at and appreciate the many benefits the single currency has offered to the Europeans and non-Europeans alike such as being able to travel to EU countries without the hassle of exchanging currencies, elimination of worries about fluctuations of exchange rates and many more.
The author went on to elaborate how EU works democratically, being a champion of Human Rights at home and even abroad and how its strength for closely working together catapulted them to become a Global player. Dealing with other world players as an EU brings more advantages to the EU than when its members have to deal with them separately and individually. The voices of the member-states are stronger in EU, thus, being able to exert influence on the world. The EU is also an example to the rest of the other regions who desire to mimic or at least promote some sort of regional integration. The author claimed that while existing regional integration may have not directly copied everything from the EU project, certainly EU has served as an inspiration and taught them the mistakes made by EU.
In fairness to the author, he also dedicated a single chapter of how EU could make improvements in aspects where it very much needed and on taking care of unfinished business. He came up with a shopping list for policy reforms in the following: European transport system, agricultural and fisheries policy, climate change, environmental policy, foreign policy, terrorism and others. In foreign policy, the author mentioned that EU is the “only global actor in a position to offer credible liberal alternatives to the often realist qualities if US foreign policy”, hence, Europeans need to be heard and its external relations groups should be developed.
The author ended with Twenty reasons why Europe matters and why European Union needs the support of its people instead of bashing and criticizing EU based on misguided information. One can sense how passionate the author is in defending the EU project, in crushing misrepresentation with backed up data and evidence and giving clarity to some misunderstandings, spread by anti-EU groups, with logical explanations and occasionally the usage of comparisons – an example of this is when the author highlighted about how other countries in the world have also ridiculous and petty rules and yet critics have singled out EU as if it is the only one guilty of such.
This book is indeed helpful in digging deeper how EU has helped and improved the daily lives of the Europeans “quantitatively and qualitatively”, very rich in information about the workings of EU that a beginner on this subject can easily catch up and the author indeed made a great case for the European Union. If the author may not succeed in persuading anti-EU to change tones after reading this, I certainly believe that at least the author presented facts about the European Union that one can undeniably appreciate and acknowledge that EU has done something groundbreaking for the Europeans and the world.
The First Lady 