The European Union is contributing to its own \u201cterminal decline\u201d due to naivety and fragmentation, according to Nick Clegg. Failing \u201ca once-in-a-generation reinvention of the EU itself\u201d, the former UK deputy prime minister claimed the union would become as hollowed out and impotent as the United Nations \u2014 \u201clofty bodies with almost no political sovereignty\u201d.<\/p>\n
Writing in the Observer today, Clegg argued<\/a> that a \u201cfailure of collective leadership\u201d combined with the threats from \u201can increasingly predatory constellation of the US, China and Russia\u201d could spell the end of the EU. \u201cThe dream of a Europe free, strong and whole,\u201d he wrote, \u201cwill have sputtered to an end at the hands of the nationalism, protectionism and big power conflict which it was founded to overcome.\u201d<\/p>\n Clegg\u2019s intervention comes as Donald Trump\u2019s presidency creates fresh challenges for Europe. The continent has struggled to grapple with US-imposed tariffs, while Trump has said that Europe must pay its way on defence, rather than relying on an American security umbrella. In his Observer article, Clegg described these shifts as a \u201cshock \u2014 greater geopolitically than 1989 or even 2008\u201d.<\/p>\n The former head of global affairs at Meta also took aim at Brussels\u2019s slow decision-making, internal one-upmanship and lack of innovation. Rather than wasting time on trivial issues and \u201cmicromanaging\u201d, he argued, the EU should instead \u201cfocus only on the existential priorities: defence, energy, and innovation\u201d.<\/p>\n On tech, Clegg said the EU\u2019s \u201csingle digital market still does not exist in practice\u201d, while development \u201cremains balkanised by countless national and regional regulations, and data protection and licensing requirements\u201d. To achieve \u201cthe much-needed transition to cleaner energy,\u201d he wrote that Europe should \u201cintegrate its own electricity system \u2014 including building long-delayed connections between France and Spain and in the North Sea\u201d. Most crucially, regarding defence he claimed: \u201cthe EU needs to be rewired to wield hard, not just soft, power.\u201d<\/p>\n Clegg has long been a champion of the EU. He previously worked for the European Commission and was a member of the European Parliament from 1999-2004 in what he described<\/a> as the \u201cheyday of globalisation and European integration\u201d. The former Liberal Democrats leader was a prominent opponent of Brexit, publishing his book How To Stop Brexit (And Make Britain Great Again)<\/a> a year after the 2016 vote. In December last year \u2014 before he stood down from his role at Meta \u2014 he said that the UK must rejoin<\/a> the EU, arguing that \u201cyou can\u2019t defy geography.\u201d In today\u2019s piece, Clegg wrote that \u201cthe historical folly of Brexit has now delivered the worst of both worlds to the UK: out of the heart of Europe, while plaintively pleading for special favours in Washington.\u201d<\/p>\n