The EU Needs a New Vision

Iceland voted against European Union membership, 52.8 percent to 47.2 percent this weekend, and it’s causing a bit of an identity crisis for Brussels.

• Had Iceland voted “yes,” the country would have negotiated an EU entry deal, with the final package put to another referendum.

Iceland has long rejected EU membership, largely due to fish. EU membership could mean having to share fishing rights. In a nation where fish feature on every single one of its coins, that’s a big deal.

This failure was not an act of cod. Instead, Iceland’s young people turned dramatically against the EU.

• In June, a Gallup poll found that 63 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds supported EU membership, and 37 percent opposed.
• By the last poll before the referendum, the figures had almost reversed, with 60 percent of young people opposing EU membership.

The EU sees itself as the future. It could have handled a defeat at the hands of supposedly backward-looking older voters, clinging to the past. But to be spurned by the young raises awkward questions. Maybe pan-Europeanism isn’t the future after all.

Why the reversal?

• The pro-EU campaign focused on logic and numbers. Joining the EU, they claimed, would lower inflation and raise incomes.
• The euroskeptics challenged those claims but focused on a more emotional message: Rejecting the EU is about freedom, Icelander identity and controlling your own destiny.

The EU’s big weakness right now is that it lacks an emotional appeal. It had it in the years after World War ii: The European Economic Community was not just about trade but about a brotherhood of nations. It was sold as a way to heal a continent constantly split by war. But that doesn’t resonate for a generation whose parents and even grandparents did not experience World War ii.

An alternative identity for Europe going forward involves reviving its Catholic heritage.

• Some new political parties are emphasizing that heritage, especially how it differentiates native Europeans from the Muslim migrants pouring across their borders. It’s a heritage that Europe’s countries share and its enemies, generally, do not.

Vladimir Putin, the mullahs in Iran and even, to a lesser extent, Donald Trump all use religion to strengthen political power. How long before the EU reaches for the same tool?

• When they do, many will rejoice. It will look like God and the Bible have a muscular new champion.

But the Bible prophesies exactly this turn—and where it will lead. Europe will be controlled by a force that “looks like a lamb” but “speaks like a dragon.” When Europe revives this old identity, it will revive the Dark Ages.