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Europe Daily Bulletin No. 12696

13 April 2021
Contents Publication in full By article 29 / 29
Kiosk / Kiosk
No. 035

L’Union européenne

 

A professor of philosophy and former director of the European schools in Varese and Brussels, Jacques Steiwer presents a critical analysis of the fragile and ineffective institutional structure that constitutes the European Union. This Union he describes as “shaky”, as incapable of standing on a footing of functional democracy as it is of possessing sovereignty. A product of bureaucratic “pragmatism” and political horse trading, “it teeters from crisis to crisis, likely to founder with every step, unless it can pull off feats of strength or sleight of hand on such critical matters as popular acceptance, the rule of law, sovereign debt, the single currency, taxation, a coherent foreign policy, border protection, asylum law and other deeply fundamental questions” (our translation throughout).

 

When a house has been so shoddily built that it could fall down at any moment, the best thing to do is to knock it down and start again on the basis of a better design. In the case of a political edifice, this does not necessarily mean losing everything that has been accomplished. There are many wings of the old building that are unquestionably reusable. But the basic design needs to be completely overhauled”, argues the author, calling for a “communicative and transparent” democracy that is capable of “controlling the financial flows that habitually distort the economy and politics”, whilst being “ecological in the long term” and capable of “making property ownership and existential security accessible even to people of modest means”.

 

Europe’s original sin is that it wants to retain 27 sovereign states, plus a European Parliament, without any direct synergy with the sovereign level. This system ultimately culminates in a conflictual geopolitical situation, with a turbulent management of convergent and competing interests. You just have to look at the rival taxation systems, the nepotistic agricultural policy, the inconsistent attitude towards immigration… Regarding this, the Europeans invented the subtly hypocritical concept (borrowed from the Catholic tradition of casuistry) of subsidiarity: some issues are of local importance and may be governed through decentralisation, with countries becoming regions or departments. Does this make it a federal structure, such as the Republic of Germany or the United States, or a confederal structure, like Switzerland? Neither. It is in fact a bloc subject to democratic communication by a facade of deliberately impermeable technostructures”, Steiwer writes. The democratic deficit which is so frequently analysed is in fact simply the result of a “post-truth democracy” that Donald Trump would be proud of. “A number of truths are created: one in diplomatic discussions behind closed doors, another in the secret services, an eye-catching version in the newspapers, a fourth on the Internet, the next on social networks, and so on. A form of pseudo-positivity has nurtured the coming of an era of flagrant sophistry and demagoguery, of pleasantries aiming to secure the goodwill of the masses, whilst acting against the interests of most of them. If any decisions are made, they are made in camera at the dead of night, at a potlatch ceremony between the tribal chiefs”.

 

To rebuild the house of Europe on stronger foundations, Steiwer argues that it must be given a system of values, an ideology and a doctrine. “A theory of democratic socialism (…) with, as a pillar of public support, effective controls over financial circuitry, with effective controls on all socially committed capital, with minimal control of the markets and needs, meaning that the planning of resources and capabilities should be the foundation of a possible consensus”, he writes.

 

The institutional system needs to be rebuilt from the ground up: “The European Parliament should be made into a legislative body with complete competence. It should be elected at the level of the whole Union, with parties defining themselves as European, sharing consistent manifestoes that are readable by the electorate, so that they can express their preferences in a manner compatible with the transnational complexity”. The author suggests a proportional distribution of seats on the basis of all votes cast at EU level. This European Parliament 2.0 would represent the “sovereign people of Europe internally and the federal sovereignty of the EU externally”. Its prerogatives would include setting a budget, harmonising the taxation systems and distributing resources, controlling the armed forces and federal police and electing a President of the Union, who would “embody its international status without any real powers other than to represent it”. The European Commission would go, replaced by a consultative committee of seven members (two lawyers, two economists and three philosophers) tasked with assisting the Parliament in drafting legislative texts. In a further innovation, there would be a new economic chamber, made up of representatives of unions of workers, employees and civil servants of all member countries. This would be involved in examining all decisions that would directly affect the “everyday lives of the citizens in terms of employment law and industrial policy”, but the Parliament would have the final say, following a back-and-forth process between the two assemblies. As for the executive, this position would be held, without any substantial changes, by the European Council and the Council of Ministers, with the various sectorial formations.

 

Steiwer’s criticism of European integration is frequently harsh, but it is also fair and constructive. However, he devotes no more than about 15 pages to the reconstruction of the house of Europe and I feel that the result is almost as unstable as the existing edifice. The clear separation of the legislative and executive powers is undoubtedly positive, as is the reinforcement of the Parliament, but it is hard to see how a genuine federal administration – and the author seems to wish to entrust it with the bare minimum in terms of budgetary execution, taxation, the armed forces and a federal police force – could be managed by a non-permanent, multi-headed and variable geometry executive. More interesting is the idea of a second, economic and social chamber (Senate?), but its format should be extended to representative organisations other than workers’ unions alone. (Olivier Jehin)

 

Jacques Steiwer. L’Union européenne – Une maison bâtie sur le sable (available in French only). SAMSA. ISBN: 978-2-87593-304-1. 248 pages. €24,00

 

Le sabre et le turban

 

With the recent visit to Ankara of Charles Michel and Ursula von der Leyen providing a further illustration of the weakness and naivete of Europeans in their dealings with autocrats (see also the misadventures of Josep Borrel in Moscow in February of this year), this book should be required reading for all EU diplomats and civil servants in a position of political responsibility. In it, Jean-François Colosimo describes the invariable mechanisms of Turkish politics constituted by nationalism, Sunni Islam and the spirit of conquest. Inevitably, the figures of Mustapha Kemal and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, “believers in the power force, who are brought together in a shared conquest of total power”, feature as a formidable double act (our translation throughout).

 

The author offers a reminder of the scale of ethnic cleansing carried out by Turkey over the 20th century to achieve a homogenous nation: “in a hundred years, the Turkish state, which continues to deny the murder of 1.6 million Armenians, expelled 2 million Greeks, forced 100,000 Jews out, caused 90,000 Assyrians (Syriac and Aramaic peoples: Ed) to flee, drove out 80,000 Yazidis, excluded 6,000 Dönmeh (Jews who converted to Islam in the 17th century), prohibited 15 million Alevites and 20 million Kurds from legal existence (there are some overlaps between these two groups: Ed) and harassed 3 million Zaza people and 200,000 Laz”. “People wishing to understand something of the reason for Turkey’s constant malaise need to take account of all its ghosts. Their presence is still palpable in its human geography interspersed with inanimate decor, in which the protagonists of long ago have been reduced to eternal silence. From the enamelled vestiges of the Byzantine churches of Cappadocia to the rubble of the Armenian city of Ani, from the dilapidated Jewish quarters of Istanbul to the charred remains of the Kurdish villages of Dersim, from torture site to sanitised site, millions of tourists have rushed to take photographs of the huge Cenotaph which the Turkish Ministry of Culture grandiosely declares to be part of the ‘great Anatolian civilisation’”, Colosimo writes, before adding: “as these memorial places are also places of martyrdom, the only excuse that these myriad sleepwalking visitors have lies in the precautionary mutism of their governments. Western chancellors have encouraged the Turkish terror machine by focusing on its progressive appeasement, trading on the Turkish aspiration to become Europeanised”. This is a utopia, argues the author, who sees recent history as evidence of the contrary.

 

An Orthodox theologian, the author does not shy away from stressing the contrast between, on the one hand, a Turkey which aims to control the Turks and influence other Sunni Muslims on European soil (as highlighted once again by the recent scandal around the construction of a Turkish mosque in Strasbourg) via the Diyanet (a budget of €2 billion and staff of 120,000, including 70,000 imams) and Millî Görüs, and on the other, the marginalisation and general irritations which the same Turkey inflicts on its own soil upon other religions (with the highly symbolic conversion of old Orthodox churches, most notably the Church of St Sophia, into mosques). Colosimo goes on to argue that “stripped of any international status, deprived of its Halki training centre for half a century, exposed to the threats and attacks of the nationalist far right and the radical Islamic fringe alike, confined to district of Phanar, which the state deliberately filled with impoverished country folk and fundamentalists, seeing its places of worship closed down on mendacious administrative pretexts, the patriarchate (ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople: Ed) is literally being suffocated”.

 

Over the course of the book, Colosimo recounts the Turkish manoeuvring aiming to restore a form of power in the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Middle East and Mediterranean. In the heart of the last of these, Cyprus, the northern part of which has been under occupation by Turkish troops for nearly half a century, is emblematic of the tactical blackmail regularly exercised by Turkey, but also of its breaches of international law, passively assisted by the Europeans, even when the territorial waters or exclusive economic zone of one of their own is violated, as was the case in 2020 with Cyprus and Greece. But there have also been interventions in Libya, Syria and in support of Azerbaijan in its reconquest of High Karabakh. “The truth is that Turkey advances by anticipating our evasions. Dispatches of troops or mercenaries, provisions of arms or munitions, supplies of logistics or intelligence: the list of its military interventions would seem grotesque were it not a tragic manifestation of the fact that nobody seems willing or able to stop Erdoğan”, Colosimo writes.

 

Migrants represent another boon for Erdoğan, the author goes on to stress: “money, recognition, patience, support, silence: European governments Erdoğan them all, along with the alleged effort to keep at its point of arrival a fire that he has incessantly fanned at its point of departure. He upped the ante by gaining a foothold on the shores of Tripoli, more soil ransacked by civil war, another sluice from which the growing destitution of the South flows into the declining plenty of the North”. (OJ)

 

Jean-François Colosimo. Le sabre et le turban – Jusqu’où ira la Turquie? (available in French only). Cerf. ISBN: 978-2-2041-4344-8. 210 pages. €15,00

 

Het moois dat we delen

 

This is a story of everyday life, that of an ordinary family in a popular residential district of a Belgian town. A story that the author, a Moroccan Belgian born in 1987 in Vilvoorde, weaves patiently, distilling the information that shapes the characters and reveals the background with great economy, but also with a great deal of sensitivity and empathy. The short chapters follow each other like scenes from a living room, with its memories, challenges, hopes and worries. The story is almost banal, with its words left unspoken, its conflicts based on misunderstandings, differences, rejection of the other. It also opens up to encounters, sharing. This unexpected encounter takes place between a young woman of Moroccan descent with a troubled past, and an older Belgian man, who has seen the area in which he lives change completely. This is the fourth novel of Ish Ait Hamou, who is also a dancer and choreographer, which may explain the rhythm of the writing. His style takes on the form of a kind of pointillism that keeps the reader’s curiosity piqued right to the final page. (OJ)

 

Ish Ait Hamou. Het moois dat we delen (available in Dutch only). Angèle. ISBN: 978-90-223-3695-3. 270 pages. €22,00

Contents

SECTORAL POLICIES
EU RESPONSE TO COVID-19
EXTERNAL ACTION
INSTITUTIONAL
ECONOMY - FINANCE
NEWS BRIEFS
CORRIGENDUM
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