Let’s get straight to the point using someone else’s words: “We have construction mistakes of Economic and Monetary Union and it is time to correct them. It is clear that the core of the current debate has a name: further sharing of sovereignty.” Although this might sound like some idle speech from a hopeful politician, these words were actually uttered by a very down-to-earth economist, Jörg Asmussen, member of the European Central Bank’s Executive Board. He said this on Tuesday July 17th in Brussels, promoting the idea, shaped in collaboration with Herman Van Rompuy, that the European bailout fund could in time become the Eurozone’s budget authority. I am happy to hear that not only some optimistic politicians and Eurocrats, but also some very practical people from the banking and business world share the vision that Europe’s only way out lies in deeper integration. But then why-o-why are we still not doing it? Well, the answer, as far as I can see, lies in the game.
The game is a complicated thing and involves both high rhetoric and vulgar trickery to gain power and popular support, and convince the public of what is right and what is wrong. Unfortunately, it is also a game of nations and states, of national opinion leaders and local politicians – in short, it is a game that encompasses several of the EU’s shortcomings. Indeed, to use the words of Ulrich Speck, “even after decades of European integration, the role of the nation-state as the epicenter of political life in Europe remains unchanged. The entire political life of the EU’s constituting entities, the member states, plays on a national level. Political communication across borders remains rare, and even the creation of a European Parliament hasn’t led to the development of a common political space in Europe.”
So why is this game so important and how can it be a root of Europe’s current crises? Beyond the very important issue of public support, the current state of affairs also shows that the nation-state, in my eyes a dated concept that hampers development, is still the pivotal focus of the EU and more generally international relations – and that is highly problematic, as integration is all about sovereignty bargain, meaning the weakening of the familiar nation-state. However, according to Jan Techau, and I agree, “with budgetary rights affected, the required next step would collide with the mental foundation of all politics in Europe (and perhaps the world): the hugely successful marriage of the nation and the state.” Breaking up this marriage requires a huge political effort on behalf of national leaders, something they are very unwilling to give.
Indeed, as I have argued in previous articles, the crisis in which Europe is currently involved for a large part has nothing to do with economy or finance, but politics. Luckily for me, some highly regarded scholars agree with, such as Bergsten and Kirkegaard who have recently observed that “the euro crisis is fundamentally a political crisis. At its core the crisis is about national sovereignty and the process in which European governments can agree to transfer it to new, required euro area institutions governing banking sectors and fiscal policies.” However, the game continues and nation-states never let their guard down. On the contrary, as Jean Pissani-Ferry observed, they increasingly perceive things as a zero-sum game, “whereby gains for one group are necessarily a loss for another group”, resulting in highlighting “individual Eurozone countries’ failings and the cost that they impose on their neighbours.”
So here’s a warning. This ‘us versus them’ mentality can only weaken the Union and its member states, risk causing the crisis to spiral out of control and block “solutions that would unambiguously improve the overall situation.” Are we really willing to give up half a century of successful integration just because the necessary next step frightens us? Are we this childish that we act like a little boy who pees his pants just because he is too afraid to cross the dark corridor to the bathroom? So here’s a reminder, using again Techau’s words, “European integration is not the utopian dream of emotionally detached post-modernists. It is the ultimate exercise of realism in a world where maintaining the status quo requires unprecedented levels of change.”
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