The European Union and Generational Transition
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On a visit to the offices of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany’s leading broadsheet, in Frankfurt on 11 April 2016, Martin Schulz, while still President of the European Parliament and shortly before his return to main-stream politics in his native Germany, warned that, unless immediate remedial action was taken, the European Union would “implode”. The bankruptcy
of the European project was the subject of a lengthy essay by Arnaud Leparmentier in the Idées
supplement of Le Monde on the weekend before Mr. Schulz’ visit to the FAZ and it was but one of many elegiac pieces published in quality broadsheets and journals of repute across Europe in the six months which followed. Gloom and pessimism marked the political discourse concerning
Europe across the cusp of the new year, which was to mark the EU’s diamond jubilee.