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Europe ended the year better than it started

IT WAS A year of fragmentation and fightback, of progress and decline, of fear and resolution. Europe, in short had a mixed 2019. But it ended the year, on the whole, in a better state than it started it; and most Europeans should allow themselves a little quiet satisfaction as they reflect not just on the past 12 months, but also on the past 30 years since that dramatic day, in November 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and the great task of rebuilding a divided continent began.

First, some of the setbacks. 2019 was a year in which too much of the European Union slid back into near-stagnation, with growth flat or negative in some of its largest economies, especially Germany and Italy. The slowing of the German motor has set off an acrimonious debate within Germanys ruling grand coalition, an uneasy alliance between the Christian Democrats, who want to stick to their traditional fiscal orthodoxy (encapsulated in the black zero policy of no deficits), and the Social Democrats, who are now pushing for more spending under their more left-wing, newly elected leaders. If this row cannot be solved, the coalition could even collapse early next year. Germanys new economic weakness also poses a threat to the countries of central Europe, especially Poland and the Czech Republic, whose long boom has been intimately linked to supplying the behemoth.

Politically, too, it was a year of difficult fragmentation for some of the EUs biggest and most powerful players. Britain spent the whole year still wracked by the problems of engineering its exit from the EU, and the election with a solid majority for Boris Johnson has done nothing to solve that underlying problem. France spent much of the year casting about for ways to counter the threat of violent protest by the gilets jaunes (yellow jackets), and ended the year with a huge wave of strikes against President Emmanuel Macrons limited yet still deeply unpopular pension reforms. In Spain, political deadlock, over economic policy and how to manage the separatists of Catalonia, resulted in not one but two elections, yet neither managed to produce a viable government. In Italy, the strange alliance between the hard-right Northern League and the maverick Five Star Alliance also collapsed, and the new coalition that replaced it seems destined to fall apart in the fairly near future. Matteo Salvinis League would then be poised to win absolute power, and renew his assault on the euro.

Beyond the EU, the economic and political situation is hardly sunny. The two mighty autocracies on the EU's flanks, Russia and Turkey, have both been hammered by economic weakness and the growing unpopularity of their leaders, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Neither of the two men need face the voters in the near future, and popular uprising is doomed to failure. But both of them have increased the level of repression they employ to protect themselves.

Still, there are reasons to be cheerful as well. Perhaps the biggest came at the hands of voters in the European Parliament elections in May. Many had feared the rise of Europes populists; Italys Mr Salvini had tried, after all, to construct a pan-European alliance of nationalists, bringing in the likes of Hungarys Viktor Orban, Marine Le Pens National Rally in France and the Alternative for Germany. Voters took a good look, and rejected that plan. Although the political centre is now more fragmented than it was before, with the creation of a big new liberal block as well as the traditional centre-right and centre-left, the populists made no significant gains at all.

The news on Europe and NATO is also mildly encouraging. Europeans are gradually coming to accept that they need to shoulder more of the burden of their own defence, stung of course by the threats of Donald Trump, but also by the hard words of Mr Macron, who in an interview with The Economist described the alliance as experiencing brain-death.

And the EU also ended the year well with a bold plan to combat climate change; having met its 2020 target for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases a couple of years ahead of schedule, and being (more or less) on track to meet its 2030 goal as well, it is proposing that the whole 27-member club achieve zero net emissions by 2050. Leaders gave the plan their initial thumbs up at their December summit (though coal-rich Poland is resisting). Europes example may yet shame others into action.

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2019 in review: Europes fragmentation and fightback - The Economist