The European Economic Union and its predecessor the European Coal and Steel Community were founded on the ruins of WWII with the explicit intention to prevent war in Europe. Slowly the European project transcended economic cooperation and turned into a political union unifying more and more countries in a common project. In 2004 this project reached a preliminary climax when most of the former communist countries of central Europe became members and almost all of Europe was unified, basically just leaving the Balkan countries, which still had to overcome their post-war trauma’s, to join at a later stage. But after a brief period of euphoria, in fact only a year later, things started to go wrong when the citizens of France and the Netherlands rejected the ambitious ‘European Constitution’ by referendum. From then onwards things got from bad to worse. The adoption of the Constitution’s watered-down follow-up, the Lisbon Treaty, after many problems and compromises could not hide that the European project was under pressure. The extended EU family of 25, later 27, started to squabble about the way its common future should look like. Citizens started losing interest in a ‘common future’: for new generations in western Europe, the threat of war no longer counted, certainly not after the fall of communism and the end of the Cold War, whereas the citizens of the former communist countries were still trying to develop their own (national) identities which had been suppressed for so long. Many citizens in many western European countries felt their own national identities under threat as well: by immigration from non-European countries on the one hand and by the seemingly undemocratic ‘European bureaucracy’ on the other hand. Where politicians of the established democratic parties failed to explain the importance of the European project to their citizens, populist leaders were keen to play on the feelings of political estrangement thereby securing themselves a central place in the political arena where they could no longer be neglected by the establishment. In some countries the political establishment was reduced to the level of background actors without a chance for a come back, leaving the political arena splintered and, apparently, forever changed.
This was the situation in Europe when the financial crisis knocked on its door for the first time at the end of 2008, followed by the outburst of the sovereign debt crisis in the eurozone in 2011. Since then the European Union has been staggering like a punch-drunk boxer just before the knock-out. Is the great European project down for the count? Does anybody care? Does anybody understand why they should care? Citizens (at least some of them) have turned into recalcitrant ‘indignados’. The ‘European democratic deficit’ has always been blamed for every unpopular measure taken. But, indeed, it cannot be ignored that it is a worrying development that as a result of the euro crisis, powerful structures like the so-called Frankfurt Group are operating without any democratic legitimisation and that in Greece and Italy democratically-chosen government leaders (how incompetent they may have been) have been replaced by technocrats. That a minister of an EU country can suggest that people of another EU country should postpone national elections planned and instead adopt a technocratic government that leaves out the country’s major political parties is –even against the background of the seriousness of the euro crisis– adding insult to injury. Citizens of small and/or poor Member States, instead of feeling a part of a sympathetic whole, feel ‚colonised’ by large Member States and citizens of wealthier Member States feel unfairly used to help finance the economies of the weaker Member States. Solidarity seems to be a lost concept. The PIGs feel manhandled by the ‚Bigs’, especially by the old and new bogeyman Germany.
When Polish finance Minister Jan Vincent-Rostowski said in an extraordinary speech before the European Parliament in September 2011:
”We must save Europe at all costs. The danger of a potential war in the next ten years [...] is a scenario we should contemplate. If the ‚eurozone’ were to disappear, if it were to explode, then there is the risk that the EU may not survive. If the EU can't withstand this shock, the whole European project will be in great danger, which will lead to a situation where, in a number of years' time, we will have to face another great danger,“ he was not trying to catastrophise, he expressed the fears and experiences of a post-war generation. Peace cannot be taken for granted neither can welfare. The European Union is not an end in itself: it is there for a purpose. If citizens feel that purpose got hijacked, it is about time to re-claim and re-think the European project instead of ignoring, ridiculing or even destroying what is left of it.
The dossier ‘Europe – the final countdown or resurrection time?’ will provide an insight into the feelings and ideas which are held towards Europe by elites and (other) citizens in a wide selection of EU Member States. The European Union office of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung has asked politicians, journalists, writers and other intellectuals in more than a dozen countries to describe what they and the people in their countries feel and think about Europe, whether from their perspectives there is a chance to resurrect and reclaim the European project and what would be the main changes necessary to succeed. Between March and December 2012 we will publish contributions by (amnongst others) Nikos Chrysolaras, Dany Cohn-Bendit, Radka Denemarková, Paul Gillespie, Pierre Jonckheer, Hilde Keteleer, Claus Leggewie, Ignacio Molina, Marc-Olivier Padis, Mario Pianti, Sławomir Sierakowski and Veiko Spolitis. We wish you an enjoyable read and are looking forward to your comments.
Marianne Ebertowski, Brussels, March 2012
The views expressed in this dossier are those of the authors alone. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.
For more please visit the website of the European Union Office of the Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung.