Belgium has ceased to exist. The independent states of Flanders and Wallonia have been haggling fruitlessly for 20 years about how to carve up the Brussels region, which has become a no-man’s land.

Spain and Portugal are on a switchback ride towards modernisation and democracy – Latin American style – as strong-arm regimes alternate with weak elected governments made unpopular by the IMF’s periodic demands for budgetary belt-tightening. A number of serious military incidents between Greece and Turkey would have degenerated into outright war but for vigorous US intervention.

The Soviet Union fell apart only in 1999. Germany, as a quid pro quo for its reunification, has left NATO.

The Eastern European countries, although officially free of the Russian yoke, are not yet democratic. Everywhere, former Communists have managed to utilise the formal processes of democracy in order to hang on to power. Under cover of privatisation, the ruling cliques are divvying up capital assets and controlling shares in major companies. In Estonia and Latvia, trouble fomented by the Russian-speaking minorities was the justification for military intervention by Moscow, with the UN’s blessing.

The civil war in Yugoslavia has been going on for more than 15 years. Successive UN and OSCE efforts at mediation have resulted in several dozen ceasefires, all of which have broken down. For practical purposes the country is split proportionately among its ethnic communities. It took joint intervention by Washington and Moscow to stop Bulgaria, Greece, Serbia and Albania carving up the Republic of Macedonia.

In Western Europe, peace is more securely established but national leaders continue to mistrust one another and there has been no reconciliation between nations. Every France-Germany football fixture is the occasion of violent clashes between nationalist hooligans. Paris, Berlin and London still cultivate competing spheres of influence. Behind the scenes, Paris is encouraging Moscow to maintain its domination of Eastern Europe so that Germany will be ringed by countries resistant to its hegemony.

In Africa there have been a number of wars between French and English-speaking countries – professionally managed by military advisors from Paris and London.

Europe’s economic growth is repeatedly undermined by recurrent monetary crises. Indeed, there has been an all-out monetary war between Central European countries in the mark zone and Western countries in the franc zone, with Italy meanwhile plunged into recession and economic crisis because it tried to peg its currency to the dollar.

Sheltered from all national or European competition, the French state monopolies are deeply in the red and chronically under-productive. France has thrown astronomical sums of money down the drain by championing Minitel against the Internet. Boeing, the world’s only aircraft manufacturer, has pitched its prices so high that Air France – despite being bailed out for the umpteenth time by the Government – has had to settle for a second-hand fleet from a specialised leasing company.

France is suffering from major inequalities among its regions. Ile de France is Europe’s number one growth area and the farmers of Beauce are the richest in the Western world. Meanwhile, people in the North and East of the country are hoping that excess customs duties can save the textile sector, operating subsidies can keep the steel industry afloat and coal production can be rescued by employing a North African labour force – with the result that economic renewal has been postponed for a generation. In the South and West, where there are no markets for agricultural produce and no available resources for new economic activity, under-development and political cronyism are the order of the day.

The Académie Française has just welcomed to its ranks the foremost historian of modern times, who will be remembered for having demonstrated why political union among the states of Europe was scientifically impossible at the current stage of human development.

Alain Lamassoure, 25 March 2007