Europe Adrift: Is The EU The Best Lifeboat for Every Country?

ABOARD THE MSC SPLENDIDA-- Experts claim a large, modern cruise ship is itself the preferred "lifeboat" in an emergency, rather than tiny, crowded, bobbing, individual lifeboats. Of course, this does not apply if the disaster is of Titanic proportions.

Does this nautical truism also apply to passengers aboard Europe's greatest landlocked vehicle, the European Union? Or would some member states find safe harbor more quickly by paddling away on their own?

A week on MSC's Splendida provokes the question. Unlike most cruise lines, MSC embarks and disembarks passengers at every port of call, in this case Rome, Genoa, Marseilles, Barcelona, Tunis, and Palermo. Passing on the gangways are citizens of many European Union states and more distant lands.

The vast differences among these peoples are not well captured in exaggerated, prejudiced, or politically incorrect stereotypes of "national character." But material differences are visible, even magnified, in details of shipboard life.

UNOBTRUSIVE MEASURES

• Observe the social protocol of people of varying heritage and educational tradition trying to enter a shipboard elevator. Some, magnanimous, yield to those exiting, or to women and to children. Others, rude, barbaric charge as though the free buffet ends in two minutes.
• During the mandatory lifeboat drill, many cannot hear the crew's instructions in their own language. After announcements are made to people with the most prevalent languages, many of those passengers begin chattering, which prevents others from hearing. Pity those who do not speak Italian or French and so never learn what to do in an emergency on-board the ship or on-board the European Union.

Confined afloat together, we confront contradictions of protocol and perceived self interest that bring home the challenges to resolution of the EU's economic and political turmoil.

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