Английский язык для специальных и академических целей: Международные отношения и зарубежное регионоведение. Часть 1 - [79]

The Reader

Roland Dannreuther is professor of International Relations at the University of Westminster, London.

FOUR SCENARIOS FOR THE REINVENTION OF EUROPE

http://www.ecfr.eu/page/-/ECFR43_REINVENTION_OF_EUROPE_ESSAY_AW1.pdf

Mark Leonard⁶³

November 2011

Looming behind the euro crisis is a larger and more fundamental challenge: the near-collapse of the EU's political system. The markets have now forced Silvio Berlusconi and George Papandreou out of office, and their impatience with the slow pace of decision-making has moved the crisis from the periphery to the core economies of the eurozone. While the traders rage, European leaders have been inching towards agreement on the steps that are needed to save the euro. But while they see the need for “more Europe”, they do not know how to persuade their citizens, markets, parliaments or courts to accept it. This is the root of Europe's political crisis: the necessity and impossibility of integration.

The economic necessity is easy to grasp. In order to deal with the imbalances in the eurozone that led to insolvent banks, excessive sovereign debt and real estate bubbles, there is a growing consensus that the single currency area needs greater integration. Many people are now calling for fiscal union to be complemented by economic and even political union. There is still disagreement among member states about the details, but most economists point to five key elements: a quasi-finance ministry to set and enforce fiscal rules; the ability to raise its own resources; common banking supervision, regulation and deposit insurance; common representation in international institutions; and a mechanism for ensuring the democratic legitimacy of these processes.

However, what is economically necessary is politically impossible. The steps needed to save the euro could be blocked by any one of a number of forces: a taxpayers' revolt in creditor nations such as Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and Slovakia; a revolt against austerity in debtor countries such as Ireland or even France; the rulings of judiciaries such as the German Constitutional Court; or the collapse of markets or re-grading of rating agencies. Meanwhile, a weakened David Cameron has promised his Eurosceptic backbenchers that he will make British support for any treaty change contingent on a renegotiation of British membership of the EU.

While elites across Europe are aware of these dangers and are generally committed to finding a European-level solution, they continue to see the root causes of the crisis differently in different countries. Because leaders have been slow to accept the legitimacy of other countries' concerns and positions, the EU still lacks a deep-seated consensus on what needs to be done that both creditor and debtor countries can support. The lack of a common understanding of the causes and responsibility for the crisis has made it harder for the eurozone countries and the EU to get ahead of the crisis and persuade markets that they are really prepared to do what it will take to stop the contagion.

The Reader

In fact, the crisis is driving European countries even further apart and creating a perception of a “European ‘clash of civilizations'”. In particular, three blocs are emerging within Europe: a Germanic bloc that wants austerity and rules, a Latin bloc that wants growth, and an Anglo-Saxon tendency that wants to loosen ties with the EU altogether. Of course, these blocs are based on hypocrisy and misinformation: for example, the country that broke the Stability and Growth Pact most dramatically was Germany; Spain met all of the Maastricht criteria well into the crisis; and Italians have very low levels of personal debt. Nevertheless, based on these perceptions, northern creditors are resisting a “transfer union”; Eastern Europeans are insisting that others should accept painful reforms as they did; and debtors are resisting the austerity measures that are being imposed on them.

Thus European leaders find themselves caught between global markets that have lost patience with multilateral decision-making on the one hand and voters who have lost patience with globalisation on the other. As they explore various different scenarios to integrate the Eurozone, they are struggling to find a zone of the possible between these two extremes. Europe must develop institutional arrangements for a two-speed Europe that will strengthen rather than weaken Europe's ability to play a role in the world and to rethink Europe's political agenda to win back the consent of its citizens. Former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband has distinguished between two crises that Europe faces: an acute euro crisis, which requires Europe to strengthen its core; and a chronic crisis of a power transition to the east, which requires Europe to integrate its periphery. In solving the acute crisis, Europe must also avoid exacerbating the chronic crisis.

Jean Monnet vs. Marine Le Pen: technocracy and populism

If the eurozone's core economic problem boils down to the creation of a common currency without a common treasury, its political dilemma lies in the development of common policymaking without a common politics. The EU was built at a time when citizens were deferential and relations between states were seen as being above politics. Thus shielded from the cut and thrust of political debate, national leaders had the space to pursue visionary foreign policies. But this “permissive consensus” began to erode with the signature of the Maastricht Treaty 20 years ago when the EU entered domestic politics. Since then, rather than developing a continental politics, European integration has been defined by two contradictory but mutually reinforcing forces that operate on both the European and national level: technocracy and populism.