Only seven weeks after British voters elected to leave the European Union, the bloc has begun to fracture along regional lines. Broadly speaking, states in Southern Europe share similar views of what the European Union's path should look like. All are supportive of Continental integration, if taken to mean that the bloc finances agriculture and development subsidies, shares banking and public debt risk, and supports the European Central Bank's expansionary monetary policy to increase the Continent's competitiveness. Most southern states, having been at the center of Europe's financial crisis and having introduced unpopular austerity measures, also want Brussels to give individual governments more leeway to spend and borrow as they see fit.
The problem for Southern Europe, though, is that sharing similar positions on EU issues will not be enough to challenge the status quo. Many of the region's states are coping with issues at home that have weakened their positions in the bloc. Popular support for France's Socialist government has hit an all-time low, boding ill for the administration's chances of securing a victory in the country's approaching presidential election. To the east, the Italian government has linked its political future to a constitutional referendum in November that it has a moderate chance of losing. Meanwhile, Spain's political parties are still struggling to form a government after two elections yielded inconclusive results, and a third vote cannot be ruled out. The Greek and Portuguese administrations are not faring much better, and their economies are too small to guarantee Athens or Lisbon much clout in Brussels. Cyprus' and Malta's contributions to EU decision-making are even more negligible.
In fact, far-reaching reform can take place in the European Union only after France and Germany have held elections in 2017. But even then, Southern Europe will have a hard time imposing its point of view on the bloc. France's biggest geopolitical imperative is to keep Germany in check. After World War II, this meant maintaining close political and economic ties with Berlin through the formation of the European Economic Community, the European Union's predecessor. In the wake of Germany's reunification in 1990, the introduction of a common currency served as a way to bind France and Germany even more tightly together, forcing them to coordinate policies and find compromises with each other. This is not to say that Paris is satisfied with the present state of Europe. The introduction of the euro has robbed France of its ability to use monetary policy to address crises, while the country's sluggish economic growth, insufficient structural reforms and political limitations have affirmed Germany's role as the bloc's most powerful actor. But Paris is not yet willing to side with the camp of politicians and economists who have floated the possibility of splitting the eurozone in two — a northern half led by Germany and a southern half led by France — since Europe's financial crisis began nearly a decade ago.
