More than just a crisis of the public health systems across the EU, the coronavirus crisis is also a crisis of the health of our democracies, the poor health of our economic system and a crisis of the unhealthy relationship between the European Commission, its Member States and the citizens of this political construction. Seventy years on since the Schuman Declaration, the coronavirus crisis is a stark reminder of the weaknesses of the political project imagined by the Founding Fathers and forces us to relaunch the EU as a Climate security social project based on a new social-environmental economic model.
Since its onset, the European project has gravitated around the provision of a key public good: peace, defined in 1950 as the absence of war. Then came along functional integration, which promoted structural peace and provided a range of other public goods to what is now a European Union of 28-1 Member States. And yet, the Europe of the Industrial Revolution, the economic logic of which was built into the Schuman declaration, was by definition a Europe at war with nature, with the climate, with air quality and biodiversity.
“What do we want? Climate Justice. When do we want it? Now” shouted the European youth on the streets of Berlin, Brussels, Belfast and Bucharest on September 20th 2019, the largest yet climate protest in European Union history.
The response came in the form of the European Green Deal, which was meant to be a combination of a New Deal for Europe and a Green Deal, making it a green focused reorientation of the economic logic driving the EU. However, while the New Deal introduced social security for Americans and focused on immediate measures, the European Green Deal is struggling to move forward. Based on Roosevelt’s Deal, it should have introduced a Climate Social Security system and some immediate measures of support (i.e. carbon dividends to citizens) to support them through the transition to a net-zero emissions economy.”
The EU Green Deal should have made the economic pledges necessary to guarantee access to all Europeans to a stable social-environmental climate for their foreseeable future. This would have required a strong focus on urgent mitigation policies and emissions abatement in the next 5 years and the safeguarding the future of pension funds currently still tied to fossil fuel investment funds (and therefore at risk of collapse). The stable climate is a prerequisite for economic stability in the future, in Europe and beyond. And yet, our European Social Security is still in the making, we do not yet have a minimum basic income across this space or equal health rights across the EU, nor unified pension schemes. This has to be urgently fixed through a Common Social-Environmental-Economic Policy.
In a world where children are striking from school because they are too concerned about a total collapse of the planetary system, the idea of job creation without climate guarantees seems to be ironic. Educational systems across Europe are becoming obsolete. In a climate democracy, they would need to be able to adjust in accordance with the changing times and the very loud asks of their key audience: the youth. As a result, a focus on education fit for the 21st century should be pursued at Union level, with a view to making the jobs required in the climate transition available already within the next 2-5 years.
The social inequalities left unaddressed across the European Union have never been more visible than during the current covid19 crisis and only worked to amplify the gender and generation gaps as well as the economic inequalities inside Member States (with 40% of children in Romania having no access to the Internet while also being expected to finish up the school year online). Furthermore, the novel coronavirus impacted different countries at different rates, showing us that some populations in Europe carry a heavier percentage of respiratory illnesses than others, as a result of exposure to environmental air pollution, often carried across the border from another Member State.
While these inconsistencies require urgent fixing, talking about institutional design solely or simply focusing on financial assistance is yet another way to dodge the bigger questions. Looking at the wrong elements will continue to erode the European project by advancing its incoherence. Our plaguing inequality highlighted by the current pandemic and the climate emergency are fast tracking our need to step ahead.
The Future of Europe is either that of a climate democracy, putting health, environment and citizens first, or it will simply be a victim of its own short-termism. Looking at the state of our Union in May 2020, a new 28-1 European Union is clearly begging to be built, one in which the linear model of a faulty economic logic, a model rather unnatural in its wastefulness of resources, disconnected from all other models of the natural systems in which it unfolds, is changed around. Instead, a new social-environmental model would prioritize local resilience, a circular economy, equilibrium between consumption and available resources, between the health of individuals and communities, between economic and health rights, with a more balanced equality between political institutions and citizens.
The Post-corona European financial recovery can and must start from a right to health and a right to clean air for all in the EU so that the resilience of citizens in the face of similar viruses is prioritized (air quality directly linked to number of deaths). This will require a speedy phasing out of all fossil fuel-based forms of energy by 2025. In order to achieve that, an EU budget steered around the climate social security dimension and based in particular on a higher carbon price, with redistributive and reinvestment measures, is required. This has to be seen as an investment plan for the EU for restarting the economy along the environmental and health social dimension. Anything short of it will be a step towards a possible dissolution of the European project.
Suzana Carp,
Head of EU Engagement Sandbag
A longer version available at: https://bit.ly/2Telvzw