Europe: the continent for every type of unhappy | Timothy Garton Ash

European union is meant to provide better lives a means, not an end. It is now clear the old politics is no longer the answer

On the day the Bastille was stormed in 1789, King Louis XVI wrote in his diary, "rien". Few European leaders will have typed "nothing" into their iPads today, but there is a real danger that, in response to the revolutionary cry across the continent, they will in effect do nothing. Today's rien has a face and a name. The name's Juncker. Jean-Claude Juncker.

A disastrous "the same only more so" response from Europe's leaders would be signalled by taking Juncker Spitzenkandidat of the largest party grouping in the new European parliament, the centre-right European People's party and making him president of the European commission. The canny Luxembourgeois was the longest-serving head of an EU national government, and the chair of the Eurogroup through the worst of the eurozone crisis. Although he has considerable skills as a politician and deal-maker, he personifies everything protest voters from left to right distrust about remote European elites. He is, so to speak, the Louis XVI of the EU.

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