The European choice: from the fall of the Berlin Wall to Brexit

• Main Author: Alexander Shumilin
• Format: Article
• Language: Russian
• Published: Institute of Europe Russian Academy of Sciences 2019-10-01
• Series: Научно-аналитический вестник Института Европы РАН
• Subjects: european union; berlin wall; parliamentary elections; brexit; alternative for germany; russia; boris johnson; sebastian kurtz; portugal; greece; poland
• Online Access: http://vestnikieran.instituteofeurope.ru/images/Shumilin52019_.pdf
• ISSN: 2618-7914; 2618-7914

The symbolic and significant 2019 year for Europe is coming to an end: the largescale celebration of size of the 30th Anniversary of the Berlin Wall fall – the reference point of birth of renewed Europe implying fundamental changes of the socio-economic system in the East of the continent, which affected the Soviet Union during the Gorbachev perestroika. By the way, 30 years ago, the Soviet leadership quite sincerely recognized our country as part of Greater Europe – from Lisbon to Vladivostok. Today, the continent is undergoing another wave of political transformation, one of the main signs of which, apparently, is the strengthening of centrifugal trends – from the regular agreement reached in October on Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union (Brexit) on January 31, 2020 to becoming dominant in the central and eastern parts of the EU right-populist political forces. And this is against the background of growing alienation between the European Union and the USSR’s successor – Russia. In this symbolic year for the EU, it was French President Emmanuel Macron – in the spirit of de Gaulle and the post-war traditions of the Old World – who urged Europeans and Russians to return to the political thinking of those times – not to repel, but to involve Russia in the process of creating a renewed Europe.