Europe at the Crossroads

When it comes to the future of the EU and European integration, we have now reached a decisive stage: We are experiencing the advanced collapse of a union based on multilateral co-operation into individual, highly self-absorbed nation states. When, these days, the greatest defender of thinking European, French President Emmanuel Macron, is demanding a 'renaissance' of the EU then this fails to recognize that this 'reboot' has long been under way: that is, on the part of the central and eastern Europeans, in particular the Visegrad states, towards a Europe of authoritarian/populist nation states – a development that has been gaining more and supporters in western Europe as well for some time now.

The latest EU elections have dramatically confirmed this tendency towards a new division in Europe between liberal democracies and authoritarian populists. The right-wing populists have gained ground massively and, indeed, not just in eastern Europe: both Matteo Salvini’s Lega and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National emerged as the strongest party in their respective countries. The balance of power in Italy’s populist government of Five Stars and Lega was thereby upended in favor of Salvini. And in Great Britain, albeit rocked by Brexit, Nigel Farage’s new Brexit Party immediately became the biggest party by some margin with almost a third of the votes and 28 of the 73 UK seats. In Poland, on the other hand, the ruling party PiS headed by Jarosław Kaczyński gained further ground through the EU election in a way that should boost its plans to further dismantle democratic institutions, particularly independent courts and a free Press. The same goes for Hungary where Viktor Orbán can carry on governing unchallenged.

Virtually inversely to the right-wing populists, the Greens and Liberals gained ballast albeit to a lesser extent. For the first time since the parliament’s direct elections premiere 40 years ago, and this constitutes the historic dimension of this election, the two European founding parties, Christian and social democrats, no longer enjoy a majority together. This means that new alliances will have to be built from now on. And that augurs as much opportunity as risk because these alliances may be progressive or reactionary – that is today’s key question for the EU.

The German situation at the same time comes over as an exact mirror of the European one on a small scale. They may well have won 53% of the vote at the last federal elections but this time the CDU/CSU (‘Union’) and SPD (social democrats) could only muster 43%, with polls indicating further falls in the offing. This means the German ‘big tent’ parties are at risk of suffering the same fate as their Italian and French sister parties – a continued collapse.

What we are living through these days is the most fundamental erosion yet of the old European system of broad-based party democracy – or, more accurately, its transformation to an as yet unclear shape of things to come.

The conclusion of this transformation in our old popular party system cannot yet be predicted as this process itself is rooted in far-reaching changes merely indicated by the notions of migration, climate change and digitalization. The transformation in our democracy thereby follows a transformation on a grand scale of current capitalism. The latter is coming up against its limits – ecologically, socially but also economically – and thereby unleashing immense conflicts that are impacting upon the whole of Europe.

The entire continent is profoundly divided. Three partly over-lapping lines of conflict are opening up: ecological/post-materialistic, principally in the west, versus economic/materialistic, principally in the east, but also in the south; young v old, and indeed on a cross-border scale; and, finally, cosmopolitan/progressive v national(istic)/reactionary, often going together with the contrast between rural and urban.

All these conflicts come accompanied by huge social differentiations, polarizations and enmities.

The strengthened right-wing populists offer a possibly simple but highly suggestive answer to this: 'My country first' is the slogan of all nationalist/segregationist politicians – one that binds together but also, and this is their dilemma, re-divides. They share just one belief in the end: no to any deepening towards an ever closer union/yes to a mere Europe of nations.

The europhobes’ victory in the EU elections has engendered new aspirations. The attempt to build a single far right populist supergroup out of the divided but also somewhat mutually hostile right-wing parties may be struggling in its early stages yet the consuming goal of most right-wing populists is the same: as the Brexit chaos acted as far too great a deterrent they are no longer pre-occupied with abolishing the EU – in a word, exiting is no longer attractive enough to do that – but with dividing and hollowing out the EU from within. And this is happening in the strategic knowledge that the EU is unable to react decisively against such attacks because it was created solely to act in a co-operative manner – and any weakening or indeed splitting apart through confrontational behavior was never envisaged.

But now the right-wing populists are dead set precisely on engineering such a split. In the west of Europe the leadership role in this strategy lies with Matteo Salvini, in the east with Viktor Orbán. The latter’s anti-European radicalization has been a great model for the European Right and has been obvious for some considerable time.

For years Orbán – active in the ranks of the Christian democrat EPP! – has been on the warpath against Brussels. During the EU election campaign he caricatured Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and the financial speculator George Soros on posters – the first stupidly, the second demonically with anti-semitic allusions. He accuses Soros of being behind a targeted 'population exchange', a classic far right trope. He described Jean-Claude Juncker as a 'first-line socialist' who 'bears final responsibility for the migrants’ invasion' and has exacerbated the growing conflict between central and western Europe. Juncker is thereby turned into a Soros accomplice – all the while an EPP member and therewith in the same party group as Orbán himself. This shows that the (Bavarian) Christian Social Union (CSU) has acted protectively far too long towards Orbán (so they might act together against the federal Chancellor Angela Merkel). Today this type of cooperation has become wholly intolerable.

Although Orbán had fought 30 years ago as a Liberal against communist dictatorship, he now sees himself as the spokesman for a growing movement for an 'illiberal democracy' and openly flirts at the same time with Vladimir Putin. In the same way he had already gloated triumphantly after his 2018 re-election: 'In 1989 we considered the EU as our future. Today we are Europe’s future.'

Behind this lurks no more and no less than a declaration of war against the EU. Orbán’s goal is to shift the EPP – and thereby the entire EU – to the right. And he is far from being alone. The same goal is also being pursued by the (still) EPP member Silvio Berlusconi who, like Orbán, is targeting a new coalition with parties from within the 'democratic right-wing', that is, from the Conservatives right up to the right-wing populists and far right radicals.

This has profoundly split today’s EPP – into a moderate/centrist and a clearly rightist wing. And this split within the EPP rather epitomises the entire EU.

But this development is also – albeit not first and foremost – the inevitable result of the German Chancellor’s policies. With her go-it-alone humanitarian intervention of autumn 2015 – that she didn’t clear with her European partners – to take in refugees coming from Hungary and keep German borders open, Angela Merkel herself considerably boosted the right-wing populists’ advance. The multi-million-strong stream of refugees has provided them even today with highly welcome ammunition for their xenophobic campaigning. Far right populist successes are being sold not least as 'acts of resistance' against the so-called 'diktat' of Berlin and Brussels.

Europe’s future will now significantly depend upon whether the nationalist/selfish course of far right populists makes further inroads – or whether the nation states in times of economic, social and ecological crisis can still muster the required solidarity and cohesion. There’s not a lot going for the latter at the moment. In fact, the European Union is at ever greater risk of changing from a project of de-nationalization into a process of re-nationalization. That, however, puts in grave danger the arguably greatest achievement of the EU – the ending of hostilities between states that faced off each other for centuries as arch-enemies.

After 1945 peace in west Europe was always two-pronged – externally as the absence of war (even though constantly against the military threat backdrop of the Cold War) as well as internally as social trade-off. It was not primarily through the refugee crisis but rather through the preceding financial and economic crisis that a community of free and equal people became an iron-hard relationship of creditors and debtors.

From as early as 2008, with the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the start of the financial crisis, the European Union has been in a state of emergency. The subsequent austerity policies, largely driven by the federal German government, squeezed parts of Europe into social misery and mass unemployment. Meanwhile, a social as well as cultural gulf has opened up all over Europe between losers and winners.

This radical process of diminishing solidarity has had dreadful consequences for the EU while helping a nationalism that was already on the march globally take hold within the union itself. Today, democracy in Europe is being put to its most severe test since the totalitarian 1930s.

But the fact of the matter remains: without a fundamental alteration in German hegemony and in its policy of spending cuts and austerity there can be no solution to the EU crisis. The reason why is these are largely responsible for the increasing divisions of the past decade.

In fact, large parts of Europe are still experiencing huge levels of unemployment. Germany, on the other hand, is the great exception. And this points to the real problem: Germany’s wage cuts policy, along with the euro, led to current imbalances in Europe. Through Hartz IV and Agenda 2010 (labour and welfare reforms) German wages have scarcely risen for more than a decade despite constant productivity gains. And, whilst the south had to prioritize ‘reforms’, aka dramatic cuts in wages and pensions, Germany has delivered no quid pro quo in return by raising its own wages levels to help out neighboring countries and European domestic demand. Europe’s strongest economy has in the process hugely infringed the imperative of solidarity.

Policies based upon solidarity should, on the other hand, consist of offering fellow European competitors fair opportunities and a greater chance to breathe. So, Germany must finally be ready and willing to push through higher incomes at home, especially among low-earners. That kind of pay increase will, needless to say, be inevitably to the detriment of the German export world champion. The federal republic will have to let go part of its export surpluses.

At the same time, Europe will have to bring in minimum wages as a way of acting against wages dumping. This requires a new, completely different concept of Europe. Instead of a German Europe built on competition for the benefit of the owners of capital, we need the alternative of a Europe built on solidarity for the benefit of the working population. To combat the pan-European adoption of Germany’s cuts policies we need a solidarity-based solution that is unfazed by the necessity of any great debt-reduction or debt moratorium as the federal republic itself enjoyed after the second world war. In the 1953 London Agreement Germany was excused around half of its debts and this immeasurably boosted the German economic miracle.

The same holds true, and indeed on a far grander scale, in the refugee issue. Here, rather than Germany itself, the onus is rather on the rest of Europe. The by far greatest humanitarian crisis of today, the millionfold flight out of Africa and Asia, requires Europe to prove its moral qualities: do we see ourselves as an open society or as one of brutal isolationism? So far the answer of the EU has simply been to build Fortress Europe as impregnable as possible.

The real causes of the refugee catastrophe remain wholly unaffected by this. Without pan-European – and transnational – solidarity this human problem will never be solved.

That starts with the distribution of refugees in Europe – this, certainly, as recent years have shown, cannot be forced through against the selfish positioning of the nation states involved (as otherwise it simply brings resentment and boosts the populists) – and it ends with the removal of the real causes of migration. But that also means getting to grips at last with extremely unfair trade relations, especially between Europe and Africa. Finally, however, it also requires the creation of a new, fairer world economic order.

What this all goes to show is that Europe’s crisis cannot be resolved nationally but only transnationally. In the crucial question of European solidarity there must come to pass the birth of what Jürgen Habermas has called a new 'European community of destiny‘. Without a shared response to poverty and unemployment, flight and disintegration, populations will continue to be played off against each other and we will experience, as we did in the 20^th century, what Habermas calls the 'fake conversion of social issues into national ones' with all their dreadful consequences, that is, the return of nationalism and grudges.

Herein lies the real irony of the last virtually 30 years: the catch-up popular/democratic revolution of 1989 signified for the east of Europe a return to national sovereignty. Yet today’s global crises – migration, poverty and climate emergency – prove that the old nation state is no longer capable of solving crises. Given new global challenges it is all the more true that we need to break out of narrow nation state borders and think and act against neoliberal globalization in European dimensions.

But if Europe’s democratic politicians and citizens do not succeed in creating the vision of another, more solidarity-bound Europe, the right-wing populists or far right parties will grow further – and so will enemy camps within Europe. Then a democratic Europe could very swiftly become an authoritarian/nationalistic one.

Even so, the right-wingers are also afflicted by this new confusion in Europe. It is still completely unclear who stands for what exactly and who goes with whom. Right-wingers are still acting in a variety of alliances. If the right-wing factions do manage to get their act together after this EU election, possibly under the leadership of Matteo Salvini or Viktor Orbán, then, united and strengthened, they might play a devastating role in the EU. Should they unite around a new nationalist Internationale their one big goal will be: weakening the EU so as to strengthen their individual motherlands or so runs their naïve mantra.

Yet, on the other hand, this can work both ways: Europe’s states can only be strong when they’re united. So, the pro-Europeans will have to give a decisive answer to the frontal attack of the right-wing populists.

This is all the more true as the required 'self-assertion of Europe' (in Helmut Schmidt’s words) is today double-headed: on the one hand, it is directed internally, against the declared enemies of liberal democracy in the EU but also externally, against the external enemies of democracy, from Turkey via Russia to China (and even as far as Trump’s America). This interplay of internal and external anti-democratic forces makes the EU’s current situation so precarious – it is gripped in a vice.

And, what’s more, there is one last big global problem: a new movement like Fridays for Future (school climate crisis strikes) puts our entire western growth model quite rightly under question.

When it comes to the great lines of conflict in western societies we have, meanwhile, got used to distinguishing between cosmopolitans and nationalists, globalists and nativists. The sociologist David Goodhart talks of 'anywheres' and 'somewheres': while the former benefit from globalization and can move around wherever and whenever they wish, the 'somewheres' are immobile or, on the one hand, firmly rooted but, equally, tied to a particular place that they cannot easily leave. Therefore, they feel especially threatened by the effects of globalization.

Along with this spatial contrast we are also living through another temporal dimension embodying an even more striking contradiction. Whereas one may (or even must) leave a place in an emergency we cannot change the times in which we live. And this produces enormous conflicts.

Fridays for Future bring this conflict to a head as follows: well-heeled elderly people are squandering the life opportunities of us young people. Even if this dramatic expression fails to recognize that the elderly generation often live much more frugal and sustainable lives and consume modestly it does hit the crucial mark in principle: on one side there is the radical supremacy of the present with all its opportunities for consuming in today’s capitalist system. On the other, and in fierce contradiction to this, the desire for safeguarding the future (of the planet).

Up till now this conflict appeared a long way off but now it is suddenly close by as the supposed 'after us the deluge' is no longer an afterwards but could happen in our lifetime – certainly for the younger generations. The prevalent obsession with instant consumption and gratification turns out to be a radical absence of forward-looking vision. That has huge implications for our debates on freedom and justice. The question is whether we wish to further curtail or prolong the future. But then that would mean finally and radically saving our (supposedly) endless resources.

The EU, given it wishes to be a progressive alternative, will have to address this issue in future. This is, in an even more fundamental manner, an issue of democracy. Who may consume how much? And who decides – how we work, what we produce and, not least, what we consume?

Up until now the population – more precisely, a part of it – pays merely vague lip-service to the need for change but most people are wholly unaware of the tough consequences the required social/ecological transformation will engender. And that too will ensure immense new conflicts within the individual nation state but also at EU level.

How all these conflicts will turn out is an utterly open question. But one thing is clear: the big questions of today are radically different from those of yesterday. We have already lost far too much time. So, future confrontations will be much tougher and more substantive. Yet this at least creates an opportunity to at least revitalize our democracy – including at EU level as the significantly greater turnout at the recent polls showed.

Ralf Dahrendorf, one of the first to recognize the dangers of globalization and to warn of an authoritarian 21^st century, spoke as early as in 1996 in 'Papers on German and international politics' on squaring the circle as the incumbent task for western democracies in Europe to perform in a globalized world. First, they must retain their competitiveness in the raw winds of the world economy without, second, sacrificing social cohesion, and do so, finally, in the difficult circumstances of unwieldy democratic institutions in free, discursive societies.

Those days Dahrendorf (who died in the summer of 2009) knew nothing about the coming split within the West and the EU. Similarly, he under-estimated the perhaps greatest global problem, that is the climate crisis that emerged a good 30 years ago and remains unresolved. With its impact upon all areas of human life, from food and poverty via violence and war to migration, this emergency undoubtedly represents the true mission for this century.

Still, a new generation appears firmly determined to take on this task, one that, equally, will decide the EU’s future. Whether, by the way, Europe’s liberal democracies are up to the challenges of a globalized world or, in the end, the authoritarians will take power in Europe is anybody’s guess. It could go either way right now: a fresh start for progressive alliances inside the EU or a relapse into authoritarian nationalisms.