I’m captivated by the drama and sporting excellence of the Paris Olympics.
Besides the action itself, the Games always reflect how countries feel about themselves: the number of gold medals represent national pride and prestige.
What I find curious is to compare results for the three major global economic powers – the United States, China and the European Union. If we look at the EU as one entity, instead of 27 different nations, it is hugely more successful than either of its rivals as an Olympic medal-winner.
At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the United States (population 342 million) earned 113 medals, of which 39 were gold. China (population 1.4 billion) won 89, including 38 gold.
Adding all the results of EU nations together, the bloc (population 449 million) won 232 medals of which 66 were gold.
Not only was that more than twice the medal haul of the United States, it’s also a greater number of medals per person: 51 per 100 million EU citizens, versus 33 per 100 million Americans and 6.3 per 100 million Chinese.
The same pattern is repeating at the Paris Olympics this year. Already, EU nations have at least 73 medals, compared with 38 for the United States and 25 for China.
As a former Member of the European Parliament, I’m sensitive to these comparisons. The EU is made up of this great range of cultures, languages, traditions and diverse economies, but sometimes it should speak with one voice and celebrate its achievements.
You can’t force people to cheer for something, but you might hope that – with its wealth of resources and creative talents – the EU could devise a strategy to excite and engage people, so that they identified as Europeans as well as French, German, Spanish etc.
One great example is Airbus. After decades of careful growth and pan-European investment, the company is now head and shoulders above Boeing. In its desperation to keep up with Airbus’s exceptional innovation and (especially) its environmental rigour, Boeing started to cut corners and ignore basic principles. It is now a shadow of its former self.
A second example of EU strength is its gold reserves. While the United States has the largest reserves of a single nation, at around 8,000 tons, if you combine the reserves of Germany (3,300 tons), France and Italy (2,400 tons each), Netherlands (600 tons) and the European Central Bank (500 tons), you end up with the world’s richest gold stocks, at 9,200 tons. Just 4 nations out of 27!
I wonder if the knife-edge 2016 Brexit vote might have gone the other way if the EU’s economic and corporate power and sporting brilliance were more obvious to everyone?
