A few weeks ago, a significant anniversary in Maastricht slipped by almost unnoticed: 25 years ago, the historic treaty that ushered in the euro was drafted.

But there was no fanfare, no commemoration in the European parliament, no mention at all by the commission. There was just a rather lacklustre speech by the EU president, Jean-Claude Juncker, in which he lamented that people were not sufficiently proud of what had been achieved on 9 December 1991.

This air of resignation perfectly epitomises an EU in retreat. Battered, bothered and bewildered on all sides by a succession of crises – Brexit, the euro, refugees – the union is short of ideas, perhaps shorter than it has ever been.

In his state of the union speech last autumn, the very best that Juncker could come up with was free Wi-Fi for every EU town and village by 2020, though even this sounded more like an aspiration than a concrete policy.

The so-called Bratislava roadmap, announced in September, suggested a way forward for the EU, but was full of dull phrases such as: “The EU is not perfect but it is the best instrument we have for addressing the new challenges we are facing”, and “broaden EU consensus on long-term migration policy and apply the principles of responsibility and solidarity”.

Few eye-catching initiatives have been scheduled for 2017, as leaders both national and supranational concentrate instead on keeping the project together and stopping the rot.

Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch finance minister, captured the feeling when he said one of the reasons behind Europe’s vulnerability was a failure to complete ambitious changes. “We start projects but never really seem to finish them,” he told the Guardian and a group of European newspapers last summer.

Women dressed as euro coins in central Dublin on 31 December 2001, the day before the euro became legal tender. Photograph: Richard Lewis/AP

One clear lesson of 2016 was that rightwing populism seemed to appeal to voters because it, at least, had ideas, and that the left and centre ground had come up with few counter-proposals to match.

On the other hand, the message from nation states, so brutally articulated in Britain’s Brexit vote, is overwhelmingly one of “less Europe”.

And so Europe is paralysed, caught in a catch-22; torn between putting forward great ideas that can hit back against demagogues and restraining its own meddling tendencies. And this paralysis will have significant implications for the major projects the EU has started but not yet finished.

The environment

Once upon a time the environment was the EU’s next big idea. Europe as a peace project was no longer a selling point for younger generations who had grown up with wars confined to history books and films.

A decade ago, David Miliband, a Labour politician once touted as a future British prime minister, argued that the environment was the issue that could best reconnect European leaders with disaffected citizens, and rebuild trust in EU institutions. “The needs of the environment are coming together with the needs of the EU,” he wrote in 2006. “One is a cause looking for a champion, the other a champion in search of a cause.”

The EU was an obvious green champion. The goal that global warming should be limited to 2C was first endorsed by the EU environment council in 1996, at the urging of a then little-known German minister, Angela Merkel. The EU had also passed numerous laws to clean up beaches, restrict factory pollution and protect more than 1,500 types of birds, animals and plants.

But dreams of an “Environmental Union” were fast eclipsed by the economic crisis and the desperate scramble to save jobs. Europe’s credibility was also dented by the failure to meet sky-high expectations at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.

The European project – founded on coal and steel industries – always struggled to close the gap between pledges and action. According to Climate Action Tracker, EU efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions will fall short of the 40% reduction pledged for 2030, let alone a more stretching target demanded by the landmark Paris climate agreement in 2016.

Janez Potočnik, who served as environment commissioner from 2010-2014, believes that too often vested interests trump ambitions for an environmentally friendly economy. “We are defending the indefensible,” he said. Instead of putting all of Europe’s resources “into the supporting future”, Europe was “defending the past and vested interests”.

A haze of pollution in Paris. Photograph: Stephane de Sakutin/AFP/Getty Images

Perhaps there was no better example than the VW scandal, where one of Europe’s most successful companies was found to have cheated on emissions tests. Potočnik had been warning about problems with industry tests since 2011, although he says no one was aware of the extent of the manipulation. He recently told MEPs he was surprised VW could be “so irresponsible and fundamentally stupid”.

While the EU may appear to be taking one step forward and two steps back, Potočnik disputes the claim that it has run out of ideas. He argues that the pressures of scarce land, water and other natural resources, combined with the interdependent nature of modern life, means that Europe’s model of shared sovereignty has to succeed. “The European Union is destined to be important [but] it depends how we will be capable of managing the issues in our own territory so we can be a strong partner.”

The euro

That heady New Year’s Day in 2002 when Europeans across the continent started pulling €10, €20 and €50 notes out of ATMs seems like a long time ago. It seemed like a good idea at the time. But now, after seven years of on-off crisis, there is no clear idea on what to do about the single currency.

No major initiatives are in the pipeline to resolve once and for all the incompatibility at the heart of the euro project. Governments are terrified of scaring financial markets – and voters. Finance minister meetings are an unedifying succession of stalemates. Southern powers want more pooled sovereignty, economic and fiscal strength in numbers, to insulate their vulnerable economies. Northerners demur, until their balance sheet risk is reduced.

As long as these two schools of thought exist, the cycle of debt overhang and liability risk will continue.

The European Central Bank president, Mario Draghi, has drafted a roadmap to deepen economic and monetary union. But there are no unified ideas on how to take the 19-nation euro bloc towards fiscal and financial union, and all too quickly it has started to look like the kind of integration that demagogues mock and the people have rejected.



The economy

Juncker took charge of the European commission in 2014 with a promise to boost jobs and growth, after a recession and period of austerity that had battered many European economies.

Free movement of labour: Romanians harvest the grape crop in an English vineyard. Photograph: Alamy

But the EU’s inconclusive results cannot be blamed on a lack of big ideas, argues Guntram Wolff, director of the Bruegel thinktank. Whether it is stagnant productivity, the migration crisis or corporate tax avoidance, “there is no one switch you can flick”, but instead, numerous micro policies are needed to solve Europe’s problems, many of which are in the control of national governments.



In a paper to be published this month, Bruegel economists will argue that if the EU wants to promote growth, it needs to focus on small technical changes to open up the trade in services, while tackling corporate tax avoidance requires the rewriting of several highly technical regulations. It is easy to romanticise the big ideas of the past, but behind the single market – the EU’s flagship policy of the 1980s – was “lots of tedious micro work”.

Wolff warns EU institutions to be wary about over-promising what Brussels can do, giving the current debate on promoting equality as an example. “Social policy is national. Redistributive social policy is national … The EU has almost no instruments to ensure income inequality and education. The fact that income inequality in the UK is very high has almost nothing to do with the EU. It is very much to do with the choices of previous UK governments.”



Instead of embarking on policies of “no substance”, he wants the European commission to focus on where it can make a difference, such as fighting tax evasion and welfare fraud that arise from the EU’s free movement of labour policy.

Immigration

Europe may remain a haven of relative prosperity, peace and democracy, but the sense of perma-crisis is taking its toll on core values. Perhaps even more than Brexit, the agreement between Brussels and Ankara last year to send back to Turkey refugees who had arrived in Greece has create a deep unease inside European institutions.

People sit near their container home in the Ritsona refugee camp, north of Athens, in December. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images

It may have served to stop the migrant influx, but at a heavy cost, taking a toll on the cardinal EU value of openness. To avoid taking in populations fleeing war zones, the EU preferred to give billions of euros to a government that is violating the principle of freedom of expression.

Held to ransom by the populist governments of eastern Europe that are implacably opposed to taking their share of refugees, the EU opted instead for realpolitik.

Enlargement

Europe can be cynical when its interests are at stake. This goes for the policy of enlarging the EU, even if that hasn’t been acknowledged: there’s no question of starting new accession procedures with any outside country. The union of 28 (soon 27) wants a pause. Turkey, Montenegro, Serbia, Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia and Kosovo may face a long wait.

Since the union seems less able to defend democracy and human rights, what message is it sending beyond its borders? What is it for? Is it just there to protect its own societies from the perils of the outside world? If so, that is short-sighted. After all, the dangers to the EU are not just external, as Brexit and the rollback of freedom in eastern Europe have amply demonstrated.