The EU's Two-Dimensional Thinking about Integration is Myopic: Interview with Hans Kundnani

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n Eurowhiteness, Hans Kundnani, Associate Fellow in the Europe Programme at Chatham House, challenges a sanitized and linear history of the EU, prompting the reader to rethink Europe’s peaceful image against its imperial past. He goes on to tackle myopic assumptions about the European project throughout the book.

Kundnani argues that pro-Europeans, who cradled cosmopolitanism and renounced nationalism, have failed to perceive the reality of European regionalism. This provocative critique dissects both the civic and ethnic elements that shape European identity by highlighting Europe’s interaction with the “Other” and linking “Europeanness” and “whiteness.” 

Eurowhiteness may come off as unpalatable to many pro-Europeans, but it raises valuable questions against a backdrop of a rising far-right in Europe. Especially in the wake of the 2015 refugee crisis, the complex relationship between European identity and race demands urgent reflection.

Q. What are some of the myths that cause blind spots in understanding the European identity?

I would mention two in particular. The first is the idea that the EU is a cosmopolitan project. Cosmopolitanism usually has something to do with the whole world, and Europe is not the whole world. There’s a tendency by pro-Europeans and the EU to mistake Europe for the world. For example, when they talk about European integration, they sometimes seem to think that they’re talking about global integration, but they’re not.

Similarly, when they say “I’m a European or I’m a European citizen,” they seem to think they’re saying I’m a citizen of the world, but they’re not; They’re saying I’m a citizen of this particular region that has a very particular history and relationship with the rest of the world.

This is what I call in Eurowhiteness “the of myth of cosmopolitanism in Europe”, and related to that is the idea to think European integration is good for the whole of the world, but that may not necessarily be the case; It may be good for Europeans or may not be good for Europeans, arguably. But even if it is good for Europeans, it’s not clear if it’s good for the whole world.

The second myth would be that the EU is a peace project, and that is not entirely wrong. However, the way that pro-Europeans talk about it is sometimes simplistic; that after 1945 Europeans rejected war, and since then Europeans stand for peace. In reality, Europeans did not reject war in general in 1945. They only rejected war with each other.

In 1950 as the Schuman Declaration, which can be seen as the beginning of the idea of the EU as a peace project, is made by France’s then-foreign minister Robert Schumann, France is simultaneously fighting a brutal colonial war in Indochina.

Similarly, seven years later, when the Treaty of Rome is signed, France fought a brutal colonial war in Algeria. This demonstrates that Europeans are continuing to fight colonial wars until they’re defeated or exhausted.

Europeans like to think of themselves as being uniquely peaceful. The real story is more complicated, and in particular, as I say, to the extent that Europeans have rejected military force, it is military force within what has become the European Union, not even within Europe at large, that is being rejected.

Q. Has the EU’s focus shifted from peace to power?

I wouldn’t say it has shifted from being about peace to being about power. I think it was always about power as well as peace. In particular, it gets to what I was just saying about the idea of the EU as a peace project.

If you go back to the interwar period pan-European movement, which is the inspiration for the post-War European integration project, it is very clear that at that time already that the European integration project is about power and the perception of European decline accelerated by fighting one other.

The idea is: If we want to maintain our position in the world – and at that time this is a position of colonial domination- we have to stop fighting with each other. Not so that we can end European colonialism, but so that we can continue it. So in other words, European integration would take the competitive element out of European colonialism, allowing its practice collectively.

Part of the point of European integration in 1950s was for France and Belgium to consolidate their colonies in Central and West Africa at a time when they were no longer able to on their own. In particular, they needed an injection of West German capital.

The idea of geopolitical Europe goes back to the 1920s. It only seems new because pro-Europeans like to tell a story of Europe through the aforementioned myths. It only seems like a shift because we’ve forgotten the real history of how European integration began.

Q. Does the EU still export the European social model and the general welfare state?

Social market economy and the welfare state are no longer what the EU can to claim export anymore. It may have done once, but even in Central and Eastern Europe after the end of the Cold War we observe that this is not the case. In fact, the former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe had much more generous welfare states when they were communist countries.

What happened as they joined the EU during the enlargement process is that those welfare states were dismantled as part of their transition to democracy. There are obviously lots of things that you can criticize about the communist systems in those countries, such as the lack of political freedom and so on, but they did have welfare states.

What has happened now is a further stage in which the EU is putting pressure on member states to dismantle the welfare state. For example, during the euro crisis, the austerity Germany imposed on Greece dismantled what was left of the Greek welfare state.

Q. Your book suggests that civic ideas of Europe are being replaced by ethnic-cultural ones. What is the connection of the neoliberalization of Europe to identity politics?

What I try to show in the book is that there have always been both of the elements of civic and ethnic-cultural idea in the history of what I call European regionalism- which is similar to nationalism on a larger continental scale. I’m suggesting that we can think of the history of ideas of Europe in the way we think about the history of nations. Therefore, regionalism is like nationalism.

The earliest ideas of Europe are predominantly ethnic-cultural. For example, in the medieval period, Europeanness is synonymous with Christianity. From the modern period onwards, you begin to get civic ideas of Europe. Then, in the post war period is when the EU came closest to evolving into a purely civic regionalism. Particularly, in the period from the 60s to the 90s-2000s, there was an idea of Europe centered on the social market economy, the welfare state and depoliticized mode of governance which European integration had produced.

I think what’s happened is that the social market economy and the welfare state have been hollowed out by neoliberalism in the EU. Meanwhile, there has been a backlash against the depoliticised mode of governance where the older civic idea of Europe is no longer persuasive in the same way it was before.

The way I understand neoliberalism is not just financialization, but it’s also the depoliticization of economic policy. In other words, it’s taking economic policy out of the space of democratic contestation. Although, to some extent, this has happened in the whole world in the last 30-40 years through things like the World Trade Organisation rules, the EU has taken it further through the creation of the single market, and also the Eurozone and the fiscal rules. Therefore, it’s very difficult now to pursue a left wing economic policy in the Eurozone because the fiscal rules don’t allow you to do it.

My argument is basically that when you take economic policy out of the space of democratic contestation and no longer have big fights between left and right about economic policy, your democratic politics shifts to cultural questions.

The point of democratic politics is to reconcile different interests and to have fights about questions where people in your society have different ideas or different interests. I think a healthy democratic politics is one where you do that about economic issues because there are real differences between the interests and different ideas as well.

What has happened now is that the center left parties and the center right parties converged in the center around neoliberal economic policy, which the EU has constitutionalized. Therefore, the way parties can differentiate themselves from each other now is around cultural questions.

In terms of what Europe says to the rest of the world, there was a time it would say it stood for the social market economy and the welfare state and now it says it stands for European civilisation.

A good example of this is the phrase “the European way of life,” which used to be used by French socialists, specifically, to refer to the social market economy and the welfare state and the idea of solidarity that it was meant to embody, saying “that’s what we in Europe stand for as opposed to the United States.”

Now when you look at the way that the phrase is used, it is in more civilizational terms. In the current European Commission, the Commission of Ursula Von Der Leyen since 2019, a European Commissioner for promoting the European way of life and his job is to keep migrants out, which makes it very explicit that migrants- only migrants from the South, not migrants from the east- are a threat to the European way of life. That is a very explicit expression of civilizationalism where the European way of life is defined in terms of culture and civilisation, not in terms of the social market economy and the welfare state.

Q. In your book you imply that the center right is increasingly mimicking the far right. Is there a pro-European version of the great replacement theory, if so, what is it?

There is an idea that the EU represents a European civilisation which is being increasingly threatened. This is basically a far right idea that has now been taken on by the center right in Europe.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, Eric Zemmour was doing a rally in the South of France with the young far right leader Marion Maréchal, and the slogan on the lectern at which he was speaking was ‘Defend our civilization.’  The way the far right is thinking about Europe is there’s a European civilisation that is threatened right now. The far right tends to talk about this in the context of migration. That is, it’s the migration of non-white and non-Christian people that is threatening European civilisation.

For example, Valérie Pécresse, the Republican candidate in the French Presidential election in 2022, was talking about white replacement theory or alluding to it in terms of migration. However, in addition, what the centre right tends to do is not talk so much about migration as a racial threat, but more in foreign policy terms as a threat to European civilisation. Macron has given speeches where he’s quite explicit about this.

In other words, international politics is a clash of civilizations, like how Samuel Huntington argues, and Europe is a distinct civilization. Moreover, for someone like Macron, the West is not one civilization, which is what Huntington thought but that Europe is a distinct civilisation, separate from the United States as well.

Where I see a connection with great replacement theory is that this is almost the international political equivalent of the great replacement theory. It’s not about migration but it’s that if Europe does not unite and defend itself, it will be also replaced by other civilizations. Macron has basically said that.

Q. What are some key takeaways from history regarding Europe’s interaction with those who it sees as the “Other”?

I try to show in Eurowhiteness that there’s a long history of defining Europe against various different “Others” at various different times and it’s constantly shifting. But roughly, I would say, in the medieval period when Europe is pretty much synonymous with Christianity, Jews are defined as the primary internal other and Muslims as the primary external other, excluding the divide between Western Christendom and Eastern Christendom.

Then, in the modern period, I try to show how there is a new complex modern idea of Europe, which is partly to do with the European enlightenment and the scientific revolution. It is a rationalist, secular idea of Europe rather than a religious one. At the same time, the idea of Europe also emerges in the context of the encounter of Europeans with the populations of Africa and Asia, and especially the Americas, and that’s the context in which the idea of whiteness emerges.

So, the modern idea of Europe is not just a rationalist one as opposed to a religious one, it’s also a more racialized idea of Europe that is closely connected to the idea of whiteness. What I think happens in that context is that non-white people around the world are the “Others” against which Europeans define themselves.

In the 20th century and particularly after World War I, you have the new idea of Europe as a geopolitical bloc, which I mentioned earlier. European civilisation or the European spirit, as they talked about it at that time, is being threatened by the United States on the one hand and the Soviet Union on the other hand. In that context, Russia and also the United States are respectively an “Other.” What I think we’re seeing today is a mixture of all of those “Others.”