We have had a surfeit of international scare stories this week, each with its internal dynamics. While being very serious threats, they must not distract us from focusing on what is really happening in Europe.
Let us begin from the most recent.
The attempted coup in Turkey
Isn’t it ironic that President Erdogan, who has so often condemned the social media, survived and overthrew the coup by means of that same hated social media — a video phone call on a smart phone held up by a CNN reporter?
Many, many years ago, President Makarios of Cyprus used a very weak radio signal to tell his supporters he was still alive and that the attempted Turkish military coup had not succeeded.
It would seem the coup attempt failed because an insufficient number had joined in and also because it was poorly planned.
Will this coup attempt kick-start a new wave of migrants out of Turkey and into Europe when Turkey is proving not to be such a safe haven after all?
The Nice massacre
The world is still shocked by the horrible massacre of innocent people watching the 14 July fireworks.
Today, anybody with a mobile phone becomes an instant journalist and in fact we have seen scene after scene as the articulated truck mows down people fleeing from it down the Promenade des Anglais.
I know that in these last hours Isis has jumped on the bandwagon and claimed that the man driving the truck was an affiliate. I still do not believe this.
The police who are investigating his private life see no trace of radicalisation, no frequenting of mosques.
To my mind, unless something else crops up, I see the man as a deranged loner with a grudge against life, determined to go and take as many people with him. More in the mode of the Germanwings pilot who drove his plane into the Alps.
The massacre was non-discriminatory, killing children and adults indiscriminately, Christians and Muslims alike. Norwegian madman Anders Behring Breivik on the contrary picked out his victims from among a camping site of Left supporters.
Even though we are in the middle of summer, I still found it hard to see there was no sympathy assembly next to the Love monument and the only Maltese minister who did it had to go to a French embassy abroad to sign the book of condolences.
The consequences of Brexit
Before these stories from hell, we watched the unfolding of the consequences of the Brexit referendum — the collapse of the Brexiteers’ campaigning to succeed David Cameron and the emergence — through default, we may say — of Theresa May, the eclipse of Boris Johnson knifed in the back by Michael Gove (who was later stabbed in turn) and the shenanigans within the Labour Party.
With May now firmly in the saddle and with a completely new Cabinet, she intends to ensure that Brexit is a success. Brexit is Brexit, she told one and all, without specifying whether Brexit means free trade or blocking immigrants.
It will only be when she presses the Article 50 button that the negotiations can begin. Meanwhile, she will be focusing on British internal affairs and trying to get the country’s machine to work better. However, until the UK is out of the EU, it will still be bound by EU rules and will have to pay its contribution to the EU coffers.
The real challenges for the EU
On the same day this October, the citizens of two neighbouring EU countries, Hungary and Austria, will go to the polls on two important issues.
In Austria, there will be the re-run of the presidential election, ordered by the constitutional court after it had ascertained irregularities in the 22 May poll. In that poll, the far-right candidate was narrowly beaten.
In Hungary the people are being asked to vote on Brussels’ plan to share refugees across the EU.
The two votes will overshadow a 22 September meeting of EU leaders to be held in Bratislava.
The two votes will show peoples’ feelings on the migrants issue, an issue that was at the centre of the Brexit vote.
Meanwhile, Spain and Portugal are being sanctioned for breaking the EU’s fiscal rules, a move that will inflame tensions over how unfeeling and dogmatic Brussels polices the national budgets.
But meanwhile, the real EU fault line passes through Italy. Italy has become the feeblest country in the Eurozone and the one which can cause huge potential damage.
Italy is the focus of attention not only because of its undercapitalised banks, colossal public debt and miserable economic growth.
Rather, the real trouble lies ahead. Italy’s uncertain political outlook feeds into these problems making them harder to tackle. The main concern is the referendum on far-reaching constitutional reforms that Matteo Renzi plans to hold in October. If voters reject these reforms, Renzi has already said he will resign. Defeat will damage Renzi and risks driving Italy into prolonged political and economic instability.
A referendum defeat for Renzi may place the fate of Italy — a nation crucial to the survival of the currency union — in the hands of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, an idiosyncratic party that merrily talks of pulling the country out of the Eurozone.
Several banana skins lie in the path of the EU over the next 12 months (ironically six of which will be under Malta’s presidency), from a potential victory for the far-right in Austria’s restaged presidential election in October to next year’s Dutch legislative and French presidential elections.
But Italy’s referendum may be the most slippery banana skin of them all.
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