The question put by Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans does not, as everyone now realises, apply only to the European Union and several of its members. It is all of the Western world, including the United States promised by Donald Trump, which now has to ask itself where its leaders went wrong. Why did the disconnect between a majority of citizens and the traditional elites have to happen in Washington as it had done in London with Brexit.
The situations are different on either side of the Atlantic. They are not any more alike within the Union. The answers to Frans Timmermans’ question cannot, then, be the same for all. Yet it is possible to trace what could be a common thread. What are the 24% of the American electorate who gave Donald Trump his victory saying, or the 52% of those British citizens who voted who chose to break away from the rest of the continent? First and foremost, that they do not want a world open to the four winds, a world where the rich get richer and multinationals richer still thanks to the misguided indulgence of the states, a world where the middle classes feel robbed little by little of their place in society, every month a little more, and much worse for the poorest. Novelist and essayist Pascal Bruckner summed up the situation very well when he argued in French daily Le Monde that victory for billionaire Donald Trump paradoxically was consecration of a revolt of the middle and working classes against inequality: “In a sense, it rounds off the cycle that began with Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, triumphal neoliberalism that elevates the market to sole arbiter. For three generations this allowed the wages of some to be squeezed and to swell the salaries of others. The hoi polloi looked on stupefied as the 1% minority grabbed the national wealth, unwavering in the belief that the rich were worth all they had”. Bruckner adds, in comments that go beyond the American experience: “In throwing thousands of families out onto the streets and refusing to penalise dishonest bankers, the 2008 crisis merely added fuel to the belief that the American dream had been stolen by a handful of haves and was in danger of disappearing in the globalisation tsunami”. Even though it may not carry the same symbolic weight, might one add that the “European dream” has not come out unscathed from the period of, in truth, one and a half generations?
We now have to accept that the world, the way it is going, is out of kilter with most people. They are, without any shadow of doubt, not expressing their feelings well, with xenophobic, racist rhetoric and completely untrammelled extremist discourse, all of which leave a very nasty smell. But here we are, this generation which uses sometimes despicable words to express its disquiet, anxiety cleverly seized on by Donald Trump, becoming its mouthpiece, now holds sway in Washington and London. And, though the tone may differ – without being too dissimilar as they all bear the stamp of nationalism reinvigorated by the crisis – in Budapest and Warsaw, perhaps soon it will be Vienna and (who knows) thereafter The Hague and Paris? “Where have we gone wrong?” asked Frans Timmermans a few days before the seismic shock that rocked the United States. This response from Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, chair of France’s Economic Analysis Council, holds true on both sides of the Atlantic: “When the benefits of globalisation and technical progress are not redistributed, closing borders may be seen as the only way to protect or re-create jobs, particularly in industry. But it’s costly and ineffective”. Yet that is the hope to which cling those, from the far Left and from the far Right, who bemoan that Wallonia did not fight to kill off the free-trade deal with Canada but only to improve it. In Europe, they would have voted for Donald Trump.
Vice-President Frans Timmermans also wondered why European countries had failed to inspire young people, who, believing our societies hold nothing for them, are attracted to Salafism and sometimes terrorism. His heartfelt reaction is a Zola-esque “I accuse!”: “That’s what happens when young people do not share a common aspiration. We have failed in our duty to foster citizenship”. Much could be said on this last point but it is a matter reserved to each of the Union’s member states. Rather let us ask why it is that the Union has not managed to bind European citizens – not just young people – in a shared dream.
Clearly, the role played by the member states for over 60 years has something to do with it. In some capitals the fear has long prevailed – and still prevails – that the Europe which some (be reassured they are becoming fewer and fewer among the governing classes) want to construct might cast an unwelcome shadow on their sovereignty burnished by History. Suffice it to state at this point that some capitals have, one may say euphemistically, done nothing to make Europe an ideal espoused by the nation, “its” citizens. Duly noted, and the growing anti-European populism is the price to pay. Jean Monnet’s shared dream was to unite European citizens, not to create a coalition of member states. The fact of the matter is that the member states are trying for better or worse – and rather worse than better in recent years – to remain no more than a confederation. Since Communitarian Europe gave way to a Union reduced to the “acquis” and the dictatorship of the most powerful capitals, European citizens, unhappy at not uniting, have returned, if not to hating one another, at least to viewing others as competitors who have to be distrusted and against whom there has to be protection.
The European Community was supposed to tame globalisation; in fact, the European Union has been tamed by globalisation – with the support of the institutions that embody it. Calls have long been made for the economic and social policy that prevails in the Union, or at any rate in the eurozone to take different, less dogmatic, directions. On 18 August of this year, ahead of the visit to the island of Ventotene by Chancellor Merkel, President Hollande and President of the Italian Council Matteo Renzi, the heads of the French and Italian sections of European Movement wrote to make specific recommendations. They proposed that a “tax snake” similar to the currency snake before the single currency be put in place to reduce, over the course of 10 or 15 years, the tax differences that are the cause of unemployment in Europe. They suggested, too, that the three leaders demonstrate their clear desire to protect “wage capital” just as they had successfully done for “financial capital”. They asked the leaders to propose to their partners and the institutions that “an instrument be put in place to tackle youth unemployment and to launch a plan for a ‘minimum citizen’s income’ to address the rise in poverty in Europe”. They went on: “Without a strong gesture of this sort, which has already been too long delayed, voters will turn against this ‘ultra-liberal’ machine”. That says it all! What response was given to French MEP Jean-Marie Cavada, or to the Italian Pier-Virgilio Dastoli who was the right-hand man of the same Altiero Spinelli whom the trio of leaders honoured on Ventotene (see EUROPE 11606)? Whatever it was, it is not among the initiatives that have been taken since. It is true that the recipients of the letter are not the custodians of the common European interest, only of the interest of those who elected them.
And yet, had the letter reached the right hands and been read with the attention that it deserved, it might have raised hopes of breathing some new life back into the shared European dream! It is a wasted opportunity. No doubt there will be others but beware: time is running out to stand up to those who would dig the grave of the European ideal. It is now up to European decision-makers to realise that Frans Timmermans’ formidable question is an invitation to consider this thought from Romanian philosopher Cioran: “We only act out of fascination for the impossible, which is the same as saying that a society that cannot bring forth a utopia and dedicate itself to it falls under the threat of ossification and ruin”. The time is now for Europeans to choose a shared dream, even against the will of those who would limit their universe to the nation, if we are to avoid a nightmare which will, surely, affect us all. Michel Theys