A few years ago, I heard an after dinner speech from a European statesman, a man  who has played a major role not only in the political life of his own country but in the councils of the European Union. The speaker that evening, lauded European values and the quality of its institutions, to general agreement. He went on to stress the need for the EU to propagate these values and institutions more widely.  

The discomfiture I felt  was shared by some of those who sat with me at  table  My problem was that I could have put similar words into the mouths of some of the most unpleasant figures in world history. The European Union the speaker described was in a very real sense an imperialist project.  Those who proclaimed the British empire used to sing ‘wider still and wider, may thy bounds be set.  God who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet’. Britons may still sing Rule Britannia, but no longer take the words seriously. Yet the expansion of the EU embraced a similar vision.

For the builders of modern Europe, wider union has been as important as closer union.  Greece was hastily admitted to the EU in the hope of sustaining its fragile democracy after the end of military rule, and Spain and Portugal followed soon after.  Every post-Communist state with passably honest and democratic institutions, and some without, has secured admission.  The ambitious project of creating monetary union between France and Germany was extended to include most EU members, by lowering admission standards. The principal qualification for membership of a European club has been  the desire to join.

Of course, there are major differences between the Europe of the twenty-first century and the empires of the nineteenth and twentieth:  Traditional imperialists did not seek the consent of those they colonised, and suppressed most forms of democratic expression. Yet Greeks today might not perceive these differences as being very large.

So the question is whether, like so many imperialist projects in history, the European project has stretched its territorial boundaries beyond the limits it can plausibly sustain.  That question is highlighted by the two existential problems the EU faces today:  the geopolitical confrontation with Russia, and the troubled relationship between peripheral economies  and the eurozone.

The boundaries of Western Europe have been pushed as far east as at any time in history, save for the best forgotten precedent of the Nazi occupation of most of the continent in 1941-2.   The Ukraine crisis tests how far implied promises of political, economic and ultimately military support in that extension will be maintained when called on.  The Baltic states have reasonable cause to feel nervous about the solidity of the commitment of their new allies.

Few people can now doubt that it was a mistake to let Greece join the Euro in the first place.  And this is not just a matter of economics – the fudged data, profligate spending and unpayable debts.  The central Greek problem is that the country’s political institutions are not sufficiently mature to effect competent administration or economic management, or to engage in a responsible manner with the institutions of Western Europe.  And Greece is not the only member state of the European Union to which that critique could be applied.

The empires of history generally collapsed from overstretch which led to restive populations on the peripheries, and then to doubts about the wisdom of the project in the home country itself.  These symptoms are recognisable in Europe today.  The European Union has achieved its successes by always pushing integration a little further and faster than its institutions would easily support or its populations readily accept.  Perhaps that ambitious strategy has now been taken a step too far.