Foreword

The EU has been in permanent crisis mode since the economic and financial crisis. Its false remedies for overcoming the crisis have bolstered imbalances within individual countries and among the member states. Unemployment and social decline have become reality for many European men and women as before. They perceive the EU as a problem far more than a solution. On top of this comes the advance of globalization that many workers associate with competitive pressures, wage dumping and untrammeled market forces – all at their expense. The process of transformation under way, what’s more, increases their anxieties as it means fundamental changes and insecurities. Europe’s nation states on their own cannot master these challenges and go head to head in competition with China or the USA. In the end the European Union, in this context, is as a shared economy with a common set of values alone in a position to protect European industries and their employees effectively and create new prospects for the revival of the EU’s promise of prosperity.

For many Europeans, however, this is an abstract prospect as they experience the increasingly chaotic global developments as a genuine threat. This is manna from heaven for right-wing populist movements and parties. Even if the advance of the right-wing populists in the European elections did not match one’s worst fears they now dispose of around a quarter of the votes in the European Parliament. Like Brexit proponents, they suggest that lost control over one’s own living environment can be won back with segregation and particularism. They play off workers against each other so as to spread fear and loathing. The lack of trust in European institutions makes it easier for these parties to discredit the EU or to make the EU responsible for problems that are down to national governments. As important democratic actors, then, trade unions must always and again make clear that our goal is a fair distribution of corporate profits and prosperity – and that the answer to the problems of our time can never be discord but solidarity.

Europe will, however, only survive and have a future if it is a social, solidarity-based Europe. As a Europe that puts working men and women at the heart of its endeavours. A Europe that opposes the logic of pure competition and views social and ecological balance not as a barrier but as the precondition for the future sustainability of the economy and thereby for generating prosperity. One that aims at social dialogue and the extension of co-determination. Restores collective agreements and protects, stabilizes and strengthens them. After the European elections of 2019 there’s a long way to go to reach this kind of Europe. The possible path to be taken, the reform discussions to be had, the likely nature of a social and solidarity-based Europe: it’s the aim of this collection of essays to help find these.

This volume will not bring to an end the debate – and, one hopes, the constructive argument – over the right course for a Europe with a future. This cannot come as a surprise to anybody. The problems and challenges are too great, the notions about the EU’s future too variegated. I hope this volume will enrich the current debate.

Wolfgang Lemb