The mythological princess Europa was recently chosen to become the new face of the euro. Fitting, after all, because it is she who gave her name to the continent. The story goes as follows. Zeus, the king of the gods, was enraptured by the beautiful girl Europa and decided to abduct her disguised as a white bull. Eventually she became the queen of Crete and all ended happily – by Greek mythology standards at least, because I’m not so sure that being raped by a big bull is a ‘happy ending’. Yet historians are not sure whether she was actually raped or seduced, because both words apparently are very close in ancient Greek – so much for the cradle of civilisation.
In a way, the choice for Europa to become the new face of the Euro could not have been timelier, as we are today not sure either whether we want to seduce or rape modern Europe. I suppose what we want is to seduce her, but if she struggles we’ll settle for rape. And she’s struggling all right. The EU budget talks are not going well because of a dispute between those who want to cut the spending to save some money and those who want to maintain or increase the spending to support economic growth. We are also still facing the sovereign debt crisis and the Greek issue, which do not give any cause for celebration either. Meanwhile, all over Europe people are striking and protesting on the streets.
So why is Europe stuck in this crisis? Is it because there is no money? Not really: the Europe-wide GDP is only 2% below the peak of 2008 and lifestyles are still more affluent than ever before. Is it because governments spend too much? That definitely is part of the problem: if only Greece or Portugal had been more careful with their spending in the past, we might not have to rescue them today. Yet they are not the only countries that spent over their budget, as practically all European – or even Western – countries are today looking for money to fill their gaping debt cracks.
In my view the real problem is political, even ideological. After all, the only real answer to the crisis is better financial and economic coordination, everything else is “merely” fiscal technicality. What is stopping the leaders of Europe from reaching agreement and presenting a consistent and coherent answer to the crisis is simply their diverging view on the future of the integration project. Taking into account the rather extraordinary situation of the euro crisis, diverging ideological perspectives on the intrusion of governments in the economy impede an effective response. Some would have governments spend more money to boost the economy, while others would raise austerity to get a hold on sovereign debts. Some would empower Brussels to generate a Europe-wide answer, while others want their national governments to stay in full control. So clearly, endless bargaining leads only to minimal outcomes or no outcomes at all.
A popular solution to this, both among the public and politicians, is that politicians should think of the greater good of society and look beyond their narrow national or party-political visions. This seems easy enough, but poses a major problem for the democratic process – whatever is left of it at the international level. After all, liberals and socialists are elected based on entirely different stories, and likewise each country has its own political preferences; and both are obliged to honour their supporters in order to remain democratic. So when deciding on policy in the EU’s unanimity system, a socialist cannot suddenly stop being a socialist to meet liberal demands, and neither can national representatives suddenly disregard their country’s preferences for the sake of agreement, for if they would then they are no longer the representatives of their people and are hence can no longer claim to be democratically empowered.
This is the reason why for many areas the EU has come up with flexible methods of integration, and why for many more areas flexibility is needed. The political atmosphere and popular opinion do not allow for an easy transfer of powers to Brussels – although in my view that would probably be the best course of action – but it is clear that this intergovernmental bargaining only deepens the crisis. So what do you do if option A and option B become impossible? You invent option C. And that is exactly what should happen. I’m not saying that simply calling whatever you come up with a ‘flexible method’ will solve anything; neither do I have the answer written down here. Bridging the existing differences is no easy task and that must be recognised. All I’m saying is that pig-headed bartering is not the way forward and that the severity of the situation requires more creative thinking on how to manage cooperation between several nation-states. If we want this to work, we’ll need seduction, not rape.
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