Europe and the End of the Age of Innocence

ΓÇ£BongiovanniΓÇÖs message should be heeded, especially in Brussels, Berlin and ParisΓÇ¥ ΓÇô John Peet, Political Editor, The Economist

Francesco Bongiovanni returns with a sequel to The Decline and the Fall of Europe, a book Guardian journalist Nils Pratley labelled ''a wake-up call for the twenty-first century''. Since 2012 Europe has been confronted with new, unexpected game-changing challenges such as the refugee crisis and its human tsunami, the surprise of Brexit and the explosion of ''alternative'' politics. Europeans have finally come to realize that the open-societies that they have been comfortably living in are under threat and fragmenting, leaving their survival uncertain. Minorities are falling prey to an Islamist ideology that conveys values and customs diametrically opposed to European ones. Terrorist acts have become the ''new normal'', part of daily life. The North-South cleavage brought about by the eurozone crisis is now completed by a deep East-West cleavage born from the refugee crisis. Against this backdrop, a Germany that is not all that it seems has become EuropeΓÇÖs de-facto ruler, but is unfit to lead, while TrumpΓÇÖs America cannot be counted on as it once used to be, forcing Europe to fend for itself. A beacon of stability and prosperity in the past, a naive and unprepared Europe, facing new and terrifying challenges is today more than ever torn apart, increasingly unstable and adrift.