You're reading: ​Fiery arguments over Europe’s future during Brexit panel at Yalta European Strategy

A group of top European officials got into a near shouting match with audience members over the future of Brexit at the Viktor Pinchuk-sponsored Yalta European Strategy conference today, as panelists debated whether the European Union is coming apart in the wake of the June 2016 vote by British citizens to leave the 28-nation bloc.

The panel – titled “Refugees, Populism, Brexit – Is the EU coming
apart? – was composed of former European Commission President Jose Manuel
Barroso, French author Bernard-Henri Levy, former European Parliament President
Pat Cox, and Munich Security Conference Chairman Wolfgang Ischinger. American
foreign policy guru Richard Haass moderated the debate.

Apart from Brexit, Europe is facing serious challenges including
the issue of mass migration from the war-torn Middle East, an aggressive Russia
on its eastern flank, and fiscal issues that continue to threaten to sink
Greece.

“We are on the defensive,” said Barroso during his opening
remarks, regarding the project for a united Europe. Political parties that have
“bashed Europe for 30 years” laid the ground for events like Brexit, he said.

“If you look at Brexit the main cause was not the bureaucracy in
Brussels,” Barroso said, “It was against foreigners.”

Ischinger pointed out that while there is much alarmist rhetoric
about the EU falling apart, “we don’t seem to find it necessary to
discuss, is Poland falling apart, is Germany falling apart.”

He added that modern issues “cannot be solved on the basis of the
nation-state. I think our British friends will find that out the hard way.”

Levy was far more gloomy in his outlook. Shortly after Barroso
closed his remarks by noting that “Today in Europe to show you are intelligent,
you say the worst is going to happen,” Levy launched his own segment by saying
“there are so many signs that the worst could happen.”

Without specifying what the worst would be, Levy said that the
centripetal force of migration was part
of Europe’s identity.

You cannot imagine Europe without migration,” he said,
adding later, “it is absolutely clear that Europe today is at the edge of a
black hole.”

But while the panelists themselves were pro-European integration,
conflict came once the panel was opened up to questions from the audience.

One audience member, British politician and pro-Brexit campaigner
Michael Howard, criticized the panel for suggesting that xenophobia was the
root of both Brexit and Europe’s apparent disintegration.

“It’s about the will of the people,” Howard said.

Barroso responded with a loud retort, saying that “the darkest
forces that exist on our continent” were the driving force behind the move
towards disintegration. He added that maintaining Europe as a single union was
“the only way to defend Europe in the face of a challenge like globalization.”

Soon after, Swedish European Parliament member Anna Maria Corazza
Bildt, who was seated almost adjacent to Howard in the audience, issued him a
powerful rebuke, sarcastically thanking Howard for giving her children a future
in a disintegrated Europe.

“Why are millions of people from the south risking their lives to
come to Europe?” she asked. There
must be more than catastrophe in the European Union.”

Gesturing towards a visibly uncomfortable Levy, Bildt added that
much of the problems come about “because people like you go around saying that
Europe is falling apart.”

The panel closed with a remark from Ischinger, who called Bildt’s
remarks a “splendid intervention.”

“Europe needs to stand up and defend our values,” Ischinger said,
referring to EU reluctance to fully support Ukraine. “Not only in terms of
philosophical debate, but also in terms of hardcore military defense
capabilities,” he added.