The most forceful message to have emerged in recent years about Europe’s unity and values has just come from an outsider, the US president. In his speech in Hanover this week he told Europeans not to retreat from the extraordinary achievements of the postwar years but to consolidate them and to repudiate those who want to turn back to the narrow nationalism of the past. Sometimes it takes a friend to point out your virtues or stiffen your resolve, and the American president has been such a friend on his visit to Europe. In London, he tried to improve the odds on Britain staying in the European Union with forthright warnings about our plight should the UK choose to leave. In Hanover he addressed to all Europeans what amounted to a pep talk. It was a flattering discourse, and much of it was cliche, but if there is anyone who can lift cliche to a higher level it is Obama. Almost 60 years after its founding, the European project needs a resounding narrative for itself, something to restore the confidence of citizens courted by populists of all stripes. Obama has tried to provide it. He sees a “defining moment” because “what happens on this continent… Read full this story
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