Kevin Myers
The first page of Draghi report on the wretched future of Europe provides an unintentional insight into why the SS EUtanic is heading for the iceberg. It contains a photograph of two engineers. They are, quite naturally, both young women, one of possibly immigrant origin, and we know why: because any realistic portrayal of European engineers as what they mostly are, indigenous males, would be, well, both racist and sexist. Yet all attempts everywhere to make engineering (and those other STEM subjects – science, technology and mathematics) 50 per cent female have foundered, except for medicine. The why of this is complex, and need not detain us here, but the other why, namely that a report about Europe’s future should begin with a lie, should interest us. So too should Draghi’s few mentions of Europe’s catastrophic birth-rate: three mentions, I think, in all, at one stage colourfully called a “demographic headwind.”
“Headwind” is a natural force outside the control of the object facing it, whereas demographics are, to a degree, controllable. Financially rewarding motherhood is one incentive, but where the local culture ruthlessly denigrates and even mocks motherhood – as it does across most of the EU – the only takers of the financial incentives will of course be immigrants. Again, this is a complex problem, but probably the most daunting complexity results from a healthy fear of racism, and a perfectly understandable one as the 80th anniversaries of the liberation of Belsen, Dachau and Auschwitz draw near.
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