Hajnalka Vincze: The Risks of Europelessness

It is a truism to say that the Western-type liberal order is not in a particularly great shape today, some (defenders and opponents alike) would even go as far as to refer to as being “in decay”. There is no doubt about Western liberalism as we know it undergoing a two-front attack: challenged from the outside, through the rise of authoritarian regimes, as well as from the inside due to the spread of so-called populism. It would certainly be comfortable to think of these as objective developments, mostly out of our control – evil forces at play. The only thing we can and need to do, in this vision, is to come together, join our forces and reassert our values, as a response. Nothing could be farther from the true. No adequate response is possible, or even imaginable, without first acknowledging our own responsibility in the current state of affairs. Especially in Europe, where we consistently have made ourselves weak and thereby put our Union, our countries and our citizens at the mercy of these “evil forces”.