Post by pieter on Jul 1, 2010 1:44:20 GMT -7
Limits to Solidarity
The EU finds it hard to develop a true European identity, yet one is called for more than ever.
Jacques Delors
“Who falls in love with an inner market?”, Jacques Delors once famously remarked.
The then-president of the European Commission had reason to ask, struggling as he was to win the hearts – and not only the minds – of his fellow Europeans in the period leading up to the Maastricht treaty of 1992.
Delors knew that European voters tend to turn against further integration whenever they consider that such integration is being pushed forward too fast. That was what happened with the Maastricht treaty, with the introduction of the Euro, the EU enlargement to the East, and the forging and ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, to name some of the more critical junctures of European integration over the past 20 years.
The set of popular feelings that could have soothed fears of further integration – a strong European identity, feelings of cross-national solidarity, a sense of a common European destiny – has simply not been strong enough.
Apocalypse now?
Now, consider for a moment what Delors would have said today, with an inner market hit by its worst financial crisis ever, a Greek economic tragedy of yet unknown proportions, the future of the Euro marked by uncertainty and national debts and deficits skyrocketing, in blatant contradiction of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). No-one falls in love with things European these days. If anything, the financial crisis seems to have reinforced national egoisms throughout Europe.
Calls for protectionism – once the very enemy of European integration – are heard again in countries such as Britain and France. Greece, for its part, has found it hard to win support from its European neighbours during her downfall, making the idea of EU solidarity seem rather hollow.
Germany – taking pride in her traditionally strong work ethic and high levels of organization – has been particularly sceptical towards bailing out the Greeks, who many Germans consider to be lazy, disorganized and corrupt – and as such largely to blame for their own misery. For months Angela Merkel appeared more focused on winning the regional elections in North Rhine-Westphalia – which she lost – than on solving Greece’s woes: A testimony to yet another weakness of European integration; that most politicians are unwilling to take domestic political risks, even in the face of international crises.
Angela Merkel
And yet Delors was right to point out the importance of patriotic feelings to bind together a political system as vast as the EU, or indeed of any polity, big or small. Well aware of that challenge, Brussels has worked for decades to construct a feeling of ‘Europeanness’ throughout its member states. But no European flag, hymn or rewriting of history has succeeded in forming the sentiments of the various national populations of the Union.
Today, the question is whether it can be done at all. Or, more precisely, what are the major impediments to creating a true European identity that would allow feelings of solidarity to flow more freely across national borders?
War and peace
“Loyalty is never mere emotion”, wrote Josiah Royce in The Philosophy of Loyalty in 1911. His was a time when the national sentiments of the Old Continent – deemed obsolete by both liberals and Marxists believing in a new, post-national order – would once again flare and turn the old European powers against each other in a brutal war.
The American philosopher Josiah Royce (1855-1916)
The irony is that the national sentiments in Europe in the early 20th century were weak compared to the much stronger feelings of national identity – French, German, Danish, Polish and so on – prevalent in the peaceful European Union of today. To understand why, we need to take into account the profound change in the role played by the state in the everyday lives of Europeans over the same period, marked above all by the growth and consolidation of the welfare state.
A strong, modern welfare state takes the responsibility for all its citizens from birth until death, no matter the economic contributions of each and every one of them. In doing so it embodies the feelings of solidarity of all its citizens who are united by a sense of mutual dependence. That dependence makes economic transfers from the well-to-do to the poor, from young to old, and from centre to periphery not only possible, but generally accepted.
In The State we trust
Seen from a global perspective, Europe is the cradle and the homeland of the welfare state. Especially since World War II a strong government role in welfare has gained popular, political and academic support in Europe – and few places elsewhere.
But differences within Europe abound, the state generally taking a stronger responsibility for the welfare of its citizens in the Protestant countries of Northern Europe than in the Catholic South. This may be one reason why support for European integration has always been weaker in the North than in the South. As the political sociologist Stein Rokkan noted, ‘once a population has developed some minimum level of trust in the efficiency and the fairness of the territorial government, it is unlikely to favour the transfer of substantial authority from this body to agencies beyond direct electoral control’. In other words: more is at stake over European integration in Northern Europe than in the South.
Political sociologist Stein Rokkan
Meanwhile, the EU is lagging far behind even the weakest of its member states in the provision of welfare to its citizens as social, work-related and educational matters remain largely a national responsibility. The issues most important to common Europeans – kindergartens, schools, work, hospitals, pension rights and so on – are still in the hands of their national governments, who can be re-elected or disposed of in national elections.
While politically visible and seemingly powerful, the EU is therefore largely irrelevant to its own citizens in day-to-day life. As the historian Tony Judt puts it, ‘the state [remains] the core legitimate representative of its citizens, in a way that the transnational union of Europeans, for all its passports and parliaments, [can] not hope to match […] What, after all, should a citizen of Europe do if her house were fire-bombed? Call a bureaucrat?’
Historian Tony Judt
Words, words, words
Adding to these shortcomings of the EU is the low level of political integration, or rather, the disparities between a fully integrated European market and an underdeveloped European polity.
The SGP and the introduction of the Euro diminished the scope for political action of national governments, setting limits to their national debt and budget deficits (not that many of them care these days) and ruling out devaluation, money supply and the fixing of interest rates as political tools. Yet a common fiscal policy for Europe does not exist, save the common agricultural policy and the various structural and regional funds handled from Brussels. This means that there are no strong political instruments available to level out the economic differences that the Monetary Union tends to fuel. Accordingly, no European authority takes – or is relied on to take – the responsibility for the more marginal groups of EU citizens, whether geographically or socially defined.
Still, some observers choose to be optimistic about further European integration. “Greece’s debt crisis has had a welcome political side-effect”, Jürgen Habermas, that most European-minded of all European intellectuals, recently told the Financial Times. “At one of its weakest moments, the EU has been plunged into a discussion concerning the central problem of its future development”.
German philosopher Jürgen Habermas
That problem – the blatant lack of symmetry between political and economic integration – seems unlikely to be solved soon, however, as the prevalent mood across Europe is a deep uncertainty towards the future and a strong scepticism to further integration. For instance, European unification and harmonization of social policies does not at all seem to be desired, national disagreements on such issues running deep.
Indeed, the ‘discussion’ that Habermas places his beliefs in is already taking place – and has been going on for many years. But it seldom produces tangible results.
Love hurts
The debate will surely stay with us. We live in a world marked by globalization, in which an ageing, sluggish Europe is falling behind its fast-running global competitors. The IMF is coming in to help Greece, as if Europe was some part of Latin-America or the Caribbean. Political leaders worry, or say they do. But most Europeans remain stubbornly national-minded, going about their daily business as if nothing much has happened.
And yet the Greek meltdown – its consequences in other countries yet unknown – demonstrates that Europeans are more interdependent than ever before, only weak in their understanding of being so. Doubtlessly a true European identity would make it easier to tackle the current crisis. But such sentiments would have to be, as Royce reminded us a century ago, far more than ‘mere emotion’.
Going even further back, Machiavelli wrote in the early 16th century that the nature of man is such that he feels obliged by any gift bestowed upon him. Strong feelings of identity, loyalty and solidarity always have a material element. In the modern world, welfare rights are such an element, and so it matters a lot who delivers them: the politician next door or some office in Brussels.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was an Italian philosopher/writer, and is considered one of the main founders of modern political science.
Flags and hymns – whatever their look, sound or origin – are simply not enough to bring about true solidarity, at least not in the multilingual, multicultural conglomerate that is Europe. But for the time being – and probably for many years to come – the EU doesn’t have much more to offer. The limits of solidarity in Europe are not fixed forever, but it would take massive political changes to move them.
SJUR HOLSEN (born 1969) is a journalist with Norwegian newspaper Bergens Tidende and a former diplomat.
The EU finds it hard to develop a true European identity, yet one is called for more than ever.
Jacques Delors
“Who falls in love with an inner market?”, Jacques Delors once famously remarked.
The then-president of the European Commission had reason to ask, struggling as he was to win the hearts – and not only the minds – of his fellow Europeans in the period leading up to the Maastricht treaty of 1992.
Delors knew that European voters tend to turn against further integration whenever they consider that such integration is being pushed forward too fast. That was what happened with the Maastricht treaty, with the introduction of the Euro, the EU enlargement to the East, and the forging and ratification of the Lisbon Treaty, to name some of the more critical junctures of European integration over the past 20 years.
The set of popular feelings that could have soothed fears of further integration – a strong European identity, feelings of cross-national solidarity, a sense of a common European destiny – has simply not been strong enough.
Apocalypse now?
Now, consider for a moment what Delors would have said today, with an inner market hit by its worst financial crisis ever, a Greek economic tragedy of yet unknown proportions, the future of the Euro marked by uncertainty and national debts and deficits skyrocketing, in blatant contradiction of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP). No-one falls in love with things European these days. If anything, the financial crisis seems to have reinforced national egoisms throughout Europe.
Calls for protectionism – once the very enemy of European integration – are heard again in countries such as Britain and France. Greece, for its part, has found it hard to win support from its European neighbours during her downfall, making the idea of EU solidarity seem rather hollow.
Germany – taking pride in her traditionally strong work ethic and high levels of organization – has been particularly sceptical towards bailing out the Greeks, who many Germans consider to be lazy, disorganized and corrupt – and as such largely to blame for their own misery. For months Angela Merkel appeared more focused on winning the regional elections in North Rhine-Westphalia – which she lost – than on solving Greece’s woes: A testimony to yet another weakness of European integration; that most politicians are unwilling to take domestic political risks, even in the face of international crises.
Angela Merkel
And yet Delors was right to point out the importance of patriotic feelings to bind together a political system as vast as the EU, or indeed of any polity, big or small. Well aware of that challenge, Brussels has worked for decades to construct a feeling of ‘Europeanness’ throughout its member states. But no European flag, hymn or rewriting of history has succeeded in forming the sentiments of the various national populations of the Union.
Today, the question is whether it can be done at all. Or, more precisely, what are the major impediments to creating a true European identity that would allow feelings of solidarity to flow more freely across national borders?
War and peace
“Loyalty is never mere emotion”, wrote Josiah Royce in The Philosophy of Loyalty in 1911. His was a time when the national sentiments of the Old Continent – deemed obsolete by both liberals and Marxists believing in a new, post-national order – would once again flare and turn the old European powers against each other in a brutal war.
The American philosopher Josiah Royce (1855-1916)
The irony is that the national sentiments in Europe in the early 20th century were weak compared to the much stronger feelings of national identity – French, German, Danish, Polish and so on – prevalent in the peaceful European Union of today. To understand why, we need to take into account the profound change in the role played by the state in the everyday lives of Europeans over the same period, marked above all by the growth and consolidation of the welfare state.
A strong, modern welfare state takes the responsibility for all its citizens from birth until death, no matter the economic contributions of each and every one of them. In doing so it embodies the feelings of solidarity of all its citizens who are united by a sense of mutual dependence. That dependence makes economic transfers from the well-to-do to the poor, from young to old, and from centre to periphery not only possible, but generally accepted.
In The State we trust
Seen from a global perspective, Europe is the cradle and the homeland of the welfare state. Especially since World War II a strong government role in welfare has gained popular, political and academic support in Europe – and few places elsewhere.
But differences within Europe abound, the state generally taking a stronger responsibility for the welfare of its citizens in the Protestant countries of Northern Europe than in the Catholic South. This may be one reason why support for European integration has always been weaker in the North than in the South. As the political sociologist Stein Rokkan noted, ‘once a population has developed some minimum level of trust in the efficiency and the fairness of the territorial government, it is unlikely to favour the transfer of substantial authority from this body to agencies beyond direct electoral control’. In other words: more is at stake over European integration in Northern Europe than in the South.
Political sociologist Stein Rokkan
Meanwhile, the EU is lagging far behind even the weakest of its member states in the provision of welfare to its citizens as social, work-related and educational matters remain largely a national responsibility. The issues most important to common Europeans – kindergartens, schools, work, hospitals, pension rights and so on – are still in the hands of their national governments, who can be re-elected or disposed of in national elections.
While politically visible and seemingly powerful, the EU is therefore largely irrelevant to its own citizens in day-to-day life. As the historian Tony Judt puts it, ‘the state [remains] the core legitimate representative of its citizens, in a way that the transnational union of Europeans, for all its passports and parliaments, [can] not hope to match […] What, after all, should a citizen of Europe do if her house were fire-bombed? Call a bureaucrat?’
Historian Tony Judt
Words, words, words
Adding to these shortcomings of the EU is the low level of political integration, or rather, the disparities between a fully integrated European market and an underdeveloped European polity.
The SGP and the introduction of the Euro diminished the scope for political action of national governments, setting limits to their national debt and budget deficits (not that many of them care these days) and ruling out devaluation, money supply and the fixing of interest rates as political tools. Yet a common fiscal policy for Europe does not exist, save the common agricultural policy and the various structural and regional funds handled from Brussels. This means that there are no strong political instruments available to level out the economic differences that the Monetary Union tends to fuel. Accordingly, no European authority takes – or is relied on to take – the responsibility for the more marginal groups of EU citizens, whether geographically or socially defined.
Still, some observers choose to be optimistic about further European integration. “Greece’s debt crisis has had a welcome political side-effect”, Jürgen Habermas, that most European-minded of all European intellectuals, recently told the Financial Times. “At one of its weakest moments, the EU has been plunged into a discussion concerning the central problem of its future development”.
German philosopher Jürgen Habermas
That problem – the blatant lack of symmetry between political and economic integration – seems unlikely to be solved soon, however, as the prevalent mood across Europe is a deep uncertainty towards the future and a strong scepticism to further integration. For instance, European unification and harmonization of social policies does not at all seem to be desired, national disagreements on such issues running deep.
Indeed, the ‘discussion’ that Habermas places his beliefs in is already taking place – and has been going on for many years. But it seldom produces tangible results.
Love hurts
The debate will surely stay with us. We live in a world marked by globalization, in which an ageing, sluggish Europe is falling behind its fast-running global competitors. The IMF is coming in to help Greece, as if Europe was some part of Latin-America or the Caribbean. Political leaders worry, or say they do. But most Europeans remain stubbornly national-minded, going about their daily business as if nothing much has happened.
And yet the Greek meltdown – its consequences in other countries yet unknown – demonstrates that Europeans are more interdependent than ever before, only weak in their understanding of being so. Doubtlessly a true European identity would make it easier to tackle the current crisis. But such sentiments would have to be, as Royce reminded us a century ago, far more than ‘mere emotion’.
Going even further back, Machiavelli wrote in the early 16th century that the nature of man is such that he feels obliged by any gift bestowed upon him. Strong feelings of identity, loyalty and solidarity always have a material element. In the modern world, welfare rights are such an element, and so it matters a lot who delivers them: the politician next door or some office in Brussels.
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was an Italian philosopher/writer, and is considered one of the main founders of modern political science.
Flags and hymns – whatever their look, sound or origin – are simply not enough to bring about true solidarity, at least not in the multilingual, multicultural conglomerate that is Europe. But for the time being – and probably for many years to come – the EU doesn’t have much more to offer. The limits of solidarity in Europe are not fixed forever, but it would take massive political changes to move them.
SJUR HOLSEN (born 1969) is a journalist with Norwegian newspaper Bergens Tidende and a former diplomat.