EU The Academic view: A vision for Europe is desperately needed – by Maria Graczyk

 Liberals are better at pointing out others’ faults than at doing self-reflection. They spend more time explaining away the popularity of populism than explaining the fall of liberalism, says Jan Zielonka, adding that the EU has become a caricature of a neo-liberal project and needs a new vision.

For now, we are treading water. We are faking reforms, re-heating old ideas we did not accomplish at a time when there was a better economic situation. Real changes will therefore probably have to be forced by external shocks and therefore will be chaotic and painful.

Nevertheless, nothing happens, politicians dig into the wells. And they return to their discredited policy in previous years. Example? Refugees. For many years we have dealt with warlords and we know how it ended. Today, we are returning to the same model. We have become hostages of Erdogan’s policy with his refugee camps. First of all, I would not like to be hostage to his policy, and secondly – it is a denial of all the values on which liberal Europe was built.

It takes two to tango. Not only is Erdogan responsible for what is happening in Brussels-Ankara relations. When he came to power, he was very pro-European. Nevertheless, none of his efforts to get closer to Europe were successful. He was always told “tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.” In this way, we have deprived ourselves of credibility and instruments of influence on Turkey.

Most EU countries were reluctant towards this enlargement. Just as the Turks were stuck in the EU’s waiting room for years.

Turkey must either be accepted or it needs to be said openly that “we do not accept, but we want to expand our relations in specific areas”. Instead, Turkey has been a candidate for years while we have set its terms.

 It was unbelievable. We left our cosmopolitan, pro-European friends in Turkey on the ice. It was similar with Ukraine. I’m not saying that all these problems were solvable, but I know that if we had followed what we declared, it would have not been as bad as it is. We did everything to destroy these good relations.

Read more: Academic: A vision for Europe is desperately needed – EURACTIV.com

Global Economy: Back to the Global Vertical -a politically dangerous development - by Andres Ortega

There are horizontal periods – indeed some people, Thomas Friedman among them, believed some years ago that the world was definitively flat. And then there are periods in which verticality imposes itself again.

In many ways, we are once again moving from the horizontal to the vertical dimension of global affairs.

This “verticality” is making itself especially felt in social terms. Social classes are back on the agenda, although not in the traditional Marxist sense of class struggle.

Rather, we are now coping with the decline of the middle classes and the emergence of a broader “precariat.”

The social escalator is not working as in previous eras, despite renewed growth in many economies following the crisis. Benefits that were taken for granted, such as full-time jobs with social security protections, are disappearing in significant numbers.

Perhaps we are witnessing what Dennis J. Snower calls the “great decoupling,” which he labels “dangerous,” unlike its predecessor, which was “convenient.”

When economic progress is not mirrored or is not linked to social progress, discontent is generated in those left behind. This decoupling ends up manifesting itself in politics.

This is what may be going on in many countries amid the prospect of recovery, an uneven emergence from the crisis and, before that, globalization, which is now generally acknowledged to have produced winners and losers.

The decoupling phenomenon is arising when the advanced economies, both industrial and post-industrial, are recovering from the crisis.

As Marc Fleurbaey of Princeton University argues, we must “prepare people for life and support them in life.”

Central to that is the commitment to education, particularly amid the challenge of technology and its controversial impact on employment and the concept of work.

A smart policy approach in that regard, as Ylva Johansson, the Swedish Employment Minister, points out, is not protecting specific jobs (which may be dying) as protecting workers (which need to be actively equipped and/or a guided toward a new one).

Somehow or other, although no one knows how, remedying the great decoupling will induce the vertical to become more horizontal again. Or so one hopes.

Failing to achieve this will only accentuate more verticality. And vertical moments, as we know, tend to be the more dangerous ones.

Editors note EU-Digest: but the situation is not hopeless. Change is possible. People can and will make the difference. All that is required is for responsible, well educated, socially conscious people, with new ideologies to start speaking out. The outdated, corrupt, political systems in many places of the world must be replaced before it leads to a catasthrophy

If it was possible in France, for a new party to be created within a one year time span prior to their Presidential and parliamentary elections, and for that party to win decisively, in both the Presidential and Parliamentary elections, it can also be done elsewhere. 

The old and established parties have failed the people. The political establishment on both the left and the right have become corrupted by corporate influence and greed. It is high time for change, because the status quo is not acceptable anymore.

Read more: Back to the Global Vertical

Is History Repeating itself?: End of History 2.0, beginning of gloom ?

The collapse of the Soviet Union and its allied Communist regimes in Europe was hailed as the ultimate triumph of Western liberal democracy and capitalism. Francis Fukuyama, the American academic, called it the “end of history” arguing that the West had finally—and for good—won the battle of ideologies. Scenes of joy swept Western capitals; darkness at noon had lifted! Hallelujah. Anyone caught expressing scepticism or urging humility risked ridicule and humiliation.

Twenty-five years later, we seem to be looking at another “end of history” episode. Except that this time it is playing out not in Moscow, Budapest and Warsaw but in the heartland of Western democracy and  capitalism – London, Washington, Paris, Rome and Berlin. The same remorseless cycle of ideological boom and bust that brought about the demise of Communism is now paying a visit to the capitalist West. Liberal democracy and capitalism—the two great pillars of self-proclaimed Western supremacy—are in deep crisis, spawning in its wake a politics of rage and hate on either side of the Atlantic.

It’s by far the gravest crisis since the Second World War, and threatens the post-War political and economic stability the West has come to take for granted. Economy is already in a tailspin and political and social stability hangs in the balance. There’s a worrying erosion of public confidence in the political class and democratically elected representatives—in effect in parliamentary democracy itself. Demagogues are taking over, prompting fears that power might be shifting from Parliament on to the streets, reminiscent of the 1930s Germany. That may be an exaggeration, but it’s hard to escape a growing sense of public contempt for mainstream politics and a desperate search for alternatives even if it means plunging into unchartered waters.

It is a culmination of years of pent-up grievances exacerbated by the fall-out of the 2008 financial crash whose worst victims were the poor. But what happened next was like rubbing salt into the wound. While millions of middle and working class people lost their jobs and had their homes repossessed, pushing them further into poverty for no fault of theirs, those responsible for the crash—bankers and their cronies in government and elsewhere—got away with it. There was much hand-wringing, mea culpas, and talk of market reforms. A new 21stcentury brand of “capitalism with a human face” was promised, but nearly a decade later it is pretty much business as usual with obscene salaries and bonuses still very much the norm in the corporate sector.

Meanwhile, globalisation has failed to work for the vast majority of lower, middle and working classes. Its promised benefits have bypassed them while benefitting big corporations and a small urban elite. Globalisation was sold to the public as a bold mission to bring the world closer to the mutual benefit of everyone, by breaking down trade barriers and promoting the idea of effectively a single world market. But it was really always about developed nations gaining access to lucrative new emerging markets in Asia and elsewhere. And about Western companies being able to save labour costs by outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries—India, China, Bangladeshi, Sri Lanka, etc. Even Britain's Labour Party’s ultra-Left  leader Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign T-shirts, which sell for up to £17 a piece, were made by “slave labour” in Bangladesh who were paid just 30 pence an hour.

Globalisation has also led to increased economic disparities and a widening of the rich-poor divide as its benefits have not been equitably distributed; and blue-collar workers especially find its gains outweighed by losses. This has got conflated with anger over other issues like racial discrimination, immigration (the Brexit vote was driven solely by concerns over large-scale immigration from other EU states), and corruption in high places completing the image of a system that is not working for ordinary people.

“A big factor in the anger and frustration that people are feeling today… is the realisation that regardless of who is formally elected, an insular ruling elite is actually in power, pursuing a technocratic agenda that serves the interests of rich and well-connected insiders rather than the public,’’ wrote  Steve Hilton, a former adviser to David Cameron, in The Times.

So, when an insurgent pretender promises to bring “our jobs back home”, bring down immigrant numbers, and crack down on corporate greed, people cheer them seduced by the idea that someone is “listening” to them and speaking their language. (We had a glimpse of it in India in the 2014 elections.) In Europe, the anti-establishment mood has been fuelled by European leaders’ strutting and confused response to the Eurozone and refugee crises—the former resulting in massive job losses and welfare cuts; and the latter igniting xenophobia. Like globalisation, the EU is also deemed as a failed project. Both have had the opposite effect of their intended aim. As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz has argued, the EU was intended to foster unity and a sense of shared interests but, instead, it has ended up causing distrust and grievances. Ironically, even its poorer constituents (the ex-Communist East European nations) which have benefited enormously from their EU membership by way of subsidies and the right their citizens enjoy to settle and work in other member states are not happy, accusing Brussels of bullying.

But to cut to the chase, trying to find specific causes for the crisis gripping the West is to miss the wood for the trees. The short point is that an exhausted West has run out of tricks in the face of a new emerging global order; and an increasingly assertive citizenry not willing to be taken for granted. There is a feel of decay that it cannot remain business as usual for too long. If someone, somewhere is contemplating an “End of History 2.0” thesis, time to rush it out.

Large swathes of middle-class Americans and Europeans are willing to take a punt on anyone who doesn’t sound like a conventional politician. The Trump-isation of American politics, the Brexit vote, and the increasing appeal of populist right-wing figures such as Marie Le Pen in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, and groups like Alternative for Germany (APD) in Germany are a manifestation of this crisis. According to The Economist, “populist, authoritarian European parties of the right and left now enjoy nearly twice as much support as they did in 2000, and are in government or ruling coalition in nine countries”.  This is no mid-summer madness that has suddenly seized millions of people; nor is there a right or left-wing conspiracy to destabilise the West.

How did it happen?

It is a culmination of years of pent-up grievances exacerbated by the fall-out of the 2008 financial crash whose worst victims were the poor. But what happened next was like rubbing salt into the wound. While millions of middle and working class people lost their jobs and had their homes repossessed, pushing them further into poverty for no fault of theirs, those responsible for the crash—bankers and their cronies in government and elsewhere—got away with it. There was much hand-wringing, mea culpas, and talk of market reforms. A new 21stcentury brand of “capitalism with a human face” was promised, but nearly a decade later it is pretty much business as usual with obscene salaries and bonuses still very much the norm in the corporate sector.

Meanwhile, globalisation has failed to work for the vast majority of lower, middle and working classes. Its promised benefits have bypassed them while benefitting big corporations and a small urban elite. Globalisation was sold to the public as a bold mission to bring the world closer to the mutual benefit of everyone, by breaking down trade barriers and promoting the idea of effectively a single world market. But it was really always about developed nations gaining access to lucrative new emerging markets in Asia and elsewhere. And about Western companies being able to save labour costs by outsourcing jobs to low-wage countries—India, China, Bangladeshi, Sri Lanka, etc. Even Labour Party’s ultra-Left  leader Jeremy Corbyn’s campaign T-shirts, which sell for up to £17 a piece, were made by “slave labour” in Bangladesh who were paid just 30 pence an hour.

Globalisation has also led to increased economic disparities and a widening of the rich-poor divide as its benefits have not been equitably distributed; and blue-collar workers especially find its gains outweighed by losses. This has got conflated with anger over other issues like racial discrimination, immigration (the Brexit vote was driven solely by concerns over large-scale immigration from other EU states), and corruption in high places completing the image of a system that is not working for ordinary people.

“A big factor in the anger and frustration that people are feeling today… is the realisation that regardless of who is formally elected, an insular ruling elite is actually in power, pursuing a technocratic agenda that serves the interests of rich and well-connected insiders rather than the public,’’ wrote  Steve Hilton, a former adviser to David Cameron, in The Times.

So, when an insurgent pretender promises to bring “our jobs back home”, bring down immigrant numbers, and crack down on corporate greed, people cheer them seduced by the idea that someone is “listening” to them and speaking their language. (We had a glimpse of it in India in the 2014 elections.) In Europe, the anti-establishment mood has been fuelled by European leaders’ strutting and confused response to the Eurozone and refugee crises—the former resulting in massive job losses and welfare cuts; and the latter igniting xenophobia. Like globalisation, the EU is also deemed as a failed project. Both have had the opposite effect of their intended aim. As Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz has argued, the EU was intended to foster unity and a sense of shared interests but, instead, it has ended up causing distrust and grievances. Ironically, even its poorer constituents (the ex-Communist East European nations) which have benefited enormously from their EU membership by way of subsidies and the right their citizens enjoy to settle and work in other member states are not happy, accusing Brussels of bullying.

But to cut to the chase, trying to find specific causes for the crisis gripping the West is to miss the wood for the trees. The short point is that an exhausted West has run out of tricks in the face of a new emerging global order; and an increasingly assertive citizenry not willing to be taken for granted. There is a feel of decay that it cannot remain business as usual for too long. If someone, somewhere is contemplating an “End of History 2.0” thesis, time to rush it out.

Read more: End of History 2.0, beginning of gloom

European Unity: The only plan B for Europe is rebuilding power for change - by Lorenzo Marsili

Europeans today are caught between a failing and undemocratic EU and equally failing and undemocratic national states. As Yanis Varoufakis prepares to launch a new movement for the democratisation of the EU, what’s the way out of the impasse?

There is no need to believe, with George Soros, that the EU is on the verge of collapse to believe that it is on the verge of irrelevance. Becoming little more than a dysfunctional common market shunned by its citizens and promoting tensions and antagonisms between states and between people.There is no Plan A for Europe. Mild adjustments to the status quo - the Juncker investment plan, the youth guarantee, additional fiscal leeway of a few decimals points or a banking union already surpassed by history - are unable to seriously address the historical challenges banging at our doors each day.

Plans for increased integration of parts of the European Union get regularly touted. There are some grounds to being diffident of such plans. Any deepening of integration risks in fact reinforcing the undemocratic nature of a Union of financial rules deprived of democratic accountability.

At the same time there is no viable national Plan B either. There is no space for political emancipation through a more or less harmonious abandonment of the European Union. The sirens of nationalism - be they on the right or on the left - sing a song of destitution and disempowerment.

Sovereignty belongs to the people, not to states or to institutions. Too often is this forgotten. Popular sovereignty is not going to be recuperated by the construction of micro-nations barricading and barking against flows of people and of capital but ultimately at the mercy of decisions taken elsewhere. There is no return to the golden age of the Bretton Woods agreements, when financial capital could be trapped within national boundaries for an emancipatory vision of “capitalism in one country”. Today, national boundaries can only trap refugees escaping war. Their invocation plays squarely into the hands of the far-right.

Recent years have marked a watershed in a post-1989 world-view characterised by talk of the end of history and of a third way of non-conflictual management. This is evident in the return of a political rhetoric that dares put into question the fundamentals of our economic and democratic system - from Sanders to Corbyn via Spain and Portugal. While, less promisingly, it is equally evident in the rise of a new far-right in Hungary, Croatia, Poland, and France.

One thing is for sure. This is no longer the time for the status quo. And that means relinquishing despondency and melancholy and rebuilding the ambition for root-and-branch change - at all levels.

We need to stop portraying the EU as an all-powerful behemoth impeding any real change at national level. 

This rhetoric is false and only benefits supporters of the status quo. What we lack is the capacity for articulating and promoting a new vision for all those policies over which national sovereignty makes sense. Ambitious plans for income redistribution, fighting privations and the protection of the commons, fair integration of migrants, tax justice, fair and free access to education for all, and more. In this sense, the campaign of Bernie Sanders is inspiring. 

Failure to achieve progressive national policies is not due to the EU. It is due to the incapacity of the progressive field to win popular consent. I have much sympathy for Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Oskar Lafontaine, and other old left leaders who met recently in Paris to expound a Plan B for Europe. But I often feel their attacks on the EU have more to do with justifying their political failure nationally than opening up a new field of action for their countries.

At the European level, ambition means returning Europe to being the place where we can regain power to define all that is no longer possible at the national level. Not because the EU impedes it, but because on certain issues medium-sized nations no longer have a say.

Europe is the only space large enough to be able to rein in the rule of financial capital, forcefully addressing the scandal of 62 people in control of half of global wealth. It is the only space where it will be possible to free Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and provide a new technological infrastructure free of surveillance. Where a new ecological understanding of development can be fostered and forced on the rest of the world through commercial treaties based on climate justice and not competition to the bottom. Or, again, where we can nurture a multipolar alternative to US militarism and the rising nationalisms - often with an ethnic basis - of many emerging powers.

United We stand Divided  We Fall

It is the capacity to decide through political struggle how to tackle systemic and historical issues such as these that popular sovereignty should really be about.

Until today European parties have failed to articulate and organise a convincing way out of our multiple crises. National parties have hidden behind unpronounceable acronyms at the European level - who knows the meaning of GUE/NGL? - creating umbrella-groups where they individually maintain their feeble autonomy and collectively maintain their tragic impotence.

A genuine multi-level political force  - and not necessarily a political party as traditionally understood - is long overdue. A transnational coordination summing up the plurality of national forces into a single and recognisable European political actor capable of campaigning and organising over all those issues that require European-level action. 

We have an example of this multi-level dynamic – albeit limited at the national level – in Spain. Where a clearly Catalan force such as the list headed by Ada Colau participates, at state level, in a political project that is able to act as a national political subject in its own right.

Rebuilding power for change ultimately means rebuilding ambition and innovating political practices. Beyond sterile arguments over the benefits of an independent nation-state or of a united Europe, what we should really be talking about is how to organise to transform both.

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