Yesterday, during my speech in plenary, I spoke to the citizens of the Union about my hopes and fears regarding our future resulting from the pandemic that is plunging Europe into the worst crisis it has experienced since the Second World War. Today, dear readers of Agence Europe, I would like to share these thoughts with you as well.
In addition to its impact, the shock caused by the coronavirus worries me deeply, particularly when I think about the risks for our societies.
The first risk is that, once again, it will be the most vulnerable who pay the highest price: people who are locked down in housing that is too cramped, in neighbourhoods made of concrete, who are homeless or whose jobs are hanging by a thread; asylum seekers who are trapped in inhumane conditions on the Union's borders; the populations of the South, who have already been affected by war, dictatorship, the depletion of resources, climate change, and now by the pandemic. If we repeat the mistakes that were made a decade ago, injustice could reach unprecedented heights, to the point of jeopardising the very existence of our societies.
The second risk is that, in the name of the health emergency, our democracies may find themselves permanently weakened, undermined, as in Poland, or even suspended indefinitely, as in Hungary. And we may see our societies moving inexorably towards a state of permanent and widespread surveillance.
The third risk is that the pandemic will provide the ideal excuse for continuing the limitless exploitation of our planet and putting a stop to our societies' attempts to return to the path of harmony with nature. Climate change, the collapse of biodiversity and the depletion of the planet's resources have not been stopped by the coronavirus. Indiscriminately re-starting the global economic machine could be far more deadly than the pandemic itself.
The fourth risk is that this crisis will deal a fatal blow to the European Union's ideal of transnational democracy. When the pandemic hit our shores, the “everyone for themselves” approach was the dominant one. And today, there are people who persist in their stubborn refusal to agree and lead a collective strategy together. The European Union has the means at its disposal to restore its economy; and if we have to go into debt to do so, we must do so collectively, and we will re-pay the debt collectively.
On this matter, I would like to address Wopke Hoekstra, the Dutch Finance Minister, his Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, and all those who are hiding behind them. Germany, Austria, Finland and all the states that are considered “sober” were the first, and the principal, economic beneficiaries of European integration. It is outrageous to hear Dutch politicians giving lessons in budgetary discipline when their country has been trying for decades to organise tax evasion for its own benefit and to the detriment of other states.
But the worst-case scenario is not certain to happen unless we accept it. Because this crisis might open up new horizons for our societies, with the victims as unexpected as they are welcome.
The first could be the hierarchy of professions, which places the bosses of multinationals, financial traders, professional speculators and rentiers at the very top of our societies. Today, we are rediscovering the importance of the work carried out by those who care for us, those who cultivate the land and produce our food, those who enable us to move around and those who collect our rubbish, those who, through their art, make us think or come alive and broaden our horizons, and those who have always enabled us to learn and will continue to do so in the future.
A second victim of the pandemic is the idea that the market is the best guarantor of general well-being. The crisis has shown once again that it is actually democratic institutions and public services that are the main custodians of general well-being.
Another victim of the virus could be the obsession with always wanting “more and more”. We are discovering that working on a global scale is not always the most appropriate way, and more importantly, that excessive maximisation of efficiency - measured solely in terms of profit - always comes at the expense of resilience.
In the process, homo œconomicu, that dehumanising perversion that reduces human beings to the mere satisfaction of their immediate material desires, might disappear. Because we are discovering anew that living undoubtedly requires a certain level of material comfort, but that it also requires time, space and ideas that allow us to relate to others and to the world.
More fundamentally, the coronavirus could deal a fatal blow to the myth that humans are the undisputed masters of nature.
The pandemic marks a brutal and global standstill for humanity. It is up to us to seize this moment, where life is frozen in time, to choose the path our societies are going to take: it is unthinkable and totally irresponsible to simply want to “restart the machine” on the same course it was on before the coronavirus.
While the pandemic has exposed the extreme vulnerability of our societies as a result of the international division of labour produced by neo-liberal globalisation, economic self-sufficiency and inward-looking attitudes do not provide better guarantees of resilience. We will need to create a new balance between the local and the global, and between efficiency and resilience.
We need to rethink the way our societies function, taking life, rather than profit, as our guide. This requires collective intelligence and creativity; after the urgent battle against the pandemic, it will be up to us to prepare another future.
The pandemic and its consequences mean that the very raison d'être of the European Union is at stake. If we are not capable of acting in total solidarity in the face of a challenge of such magnitude, which affects us all, what is the meaning of the European Union?
National self-interest will lead us to disaster; only together will we find the way forward to our future.
Philippe Lamberts:
Co-President of the Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament