The crisis of the euro is a crisis of Europe. The continent is slipping into a new nationalism. This is not a rerun of the expansive chauvinism of old – the marching of armies across frontiers that left such grievous scars during the first half of the 20th century. What we are seeing now is the pinched nationalism of a Europe that has lost confidence in its future.
As the European Union has turned in on itself in response to the shift of global power eastwards, so too have its member states. Leaders in Paris, Berlin and Rome who once foresaw Europe as an actor on the world stage have made way for smaller politicians scrambling to define narrow national interests.
National sovereignty was previously a standard held aloft mainly by British eurosceptics. Now it is being invoked across the continent. Solidarity, set by the Union’s founding fathers as the cornerstone of Europe’s future, is an idea fallen into disrepair.