In his speech on the state of the European Union on 13 September, President Juncker positioned himself as a shepherd gathering his flock (see EUROPE 11861). He pushed to its absolute limits the logic that under the benevolent and approving gaze of the Commission, all member states and all their citizens will agree, for better or for worse, to move forward towards a common goal. As the successor to Hallstein and Delors, this was his duty.
The trouble is that since the single currency was introduced, with all the upheaval it has experienced in the last few years, the Europe that came into being in the early 1950s has entered a new era. Radically so. No doubt Jean-Claude Juncker is fully aware of this, and far more so than most, but the duties attached to the Presidency of the Commission and the weight of habit have led him to build hypothetical bridges, rather than keep his appointment with history.
Another veteran of European construction, Belgium’s Etienne Davignon, rode to his rescue, saying that “maintaining the cohesion and the unity of the Twenty-Seven” was vitally important, since “creating a hardcore, a variable-geometry Europe” cannot be an adequate response. This former Vice-President of the Commission thought it best, however, to qualify this statement a little: “dynamism requires the capacity to move forward, which implies that a minority not wishing to engage cannot prevent the majority from moving forward, whilst guaranteeing the inalienable right of the latecomers to join the peloton” (La libre Belgique, 20 September; our translation).
This was in fact a deliciously diplomatic way of completely disagreeing with President Juncker: most of the countries not currently in the Eurozone don’t want to join it, because its shortcomings – and their cost to the countries and citizens who bear the consequences of them – are all too apparent to them. Therefore, the only realistic way to ‘gather the flock’ will not be to assert that the grass is green when it has clearly been scorched yellow, but to make sure that the nineteen animals safely gathered in are the envy of those that have remained ‘at large’, so much so that they want to join them in their pen one day.
This is precisely what the ideas put forward by President Juncker to improve the functioning of the Eurozone aim to do. Let us pass over the new “euro accession instrument” (which comes across almost like some kind of gimmick) to go into greater depth on two considerably more substantial suggestions:
- the creation of the post of European Economy and Finance Minister, a remit that should ideally be filled, Juncker argues, by someone who is also the European Commissioner competent in these areas, but elevated to the rank of Vice-President of the Commission, and the President of the Eurogroup. At first glance, this idea seems tremendously appealing because, in his or her capacity as member of the Commission, this person would be answerable to the European Parliament. It would be clear democratic progress compared to the virtual absence of democratic control ‘enjoyed’ by the Eurogroup, even at the height of the crisis. However, what powers exactly would be entrusted to this minister? Which leads us to the second idea...
- Making the European Stability Mechanism into a European Monetary Fund. Juncker told the hemicycle in Strasbourg that this would be “firmly anchored in our Union”. Come again? Some sceptical minds may see this as the wrong right idea, or even outright deception. “Accepting a European Monetary Fund would be to freeze Europe in the status of an international organisation of sovereign national states”, is, for instance, the view of French economist – and Federalist – Bernard Barthalay, who is not alone in expressing concern on the subject. Flanked by Aurore Lalucq (Institut Veblen), the American economist James K. Galbraith and the former Greek finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, observe that creating this European Monetary Fund would be tantamount to giving carte blanche to the Eurogroup, “an anti-democratic black box inside which the general interest and spirit of compromise have given way, behind the people’s backs, to an economic diktat known as austerity” (Le Monde, 15 September; our translation). This group of heterodox economists went on to hit European democrats where it hurts, arguing that this great victory of Germany’s major financial decision-maker, Wolfgang Schäuble, would mark “a new stage towards the collapse of the European project and play into the hands of every nationalist movement in the world”.
Are these ideas just ideological flights of fancy? Tempting, for some, to think so. Yet the fact remains that Juncker put the state of the union speech together in light of the member states and their susceptibilities; his role was just to put forward a few ideas that he hoped would go some small way towards shaking them out of their paralysis and conformism.
But are these ideas at all likely to speak to the hearts of the European citizens? Are they in line with their demands and mindsets? Very little, if at all.
The citizens feature in this speech as no more than a watermark, because the governments alone are masters of the treaties, the sole and indispensable interlocutors of the Commission. However, there is nothing to say that these citizens will agree to stay on the balcony very much longer, before taking to the streets to demonstrate against Europe or to vote, in higher numbers than ever, for all of the extremist nationalist parties that feed off the incompleteness of Europe as the States want it to be. (To be continued)
Michel Theys