La crise de l’abondance
The development of François-Xavier Oliveau’s theme in this work is nothing short of brilliant. It stresses the urgent need for us to change the way in which we see the world and better manage the resources at our disposal.
The starting point is the following observation: “our economies have the capacity to produce more than enough food, accommodation, energy, means of transport and communication for 100% of the world’s population. This makes it all the more outrageous and untenable that many people still do not have access to them” (our translation throughout). We live in plenty and those who do not could benefit as much as we do, which would ensure peace and well-being, but we continue to be hindered by mindsets that focus on scarcity, which leads to confrontation and war. What we need most today is to learn to manage abundance and regulate its excesses and its adverse consequences. “Abundance itself is the root of our crises. Once, people died of hunger. Today, throughout the world, we are three times more likely to die of obesity than of malnutrition (…). Once, people died of cold. Today, we produce, we drive, we fly, we heat, basically we expend an insane amount of energy, to the point that we are heating up the planet (…). Once, people did not have very much. Today, our waste pollutes the atmosphere, the soil, the forests, the rivers in the oceans (…). Once, people fought over rare gold. Today, the financial markets are crumbling under liquidity. They send the value of real estate and shares skyrocketing, increase inequality, penalise access to ownership”, Oliveau argues.
One of the various forms of abundance affects the ecosystem. Some would like to resolve it by means of negative growth, but this cannot be a solution at the level of the planet, writes the author, explaining: “emerging countries have not yet finished their journey to abundance and have no intention of letting go of their future level of comfort. It would be both unfair and unrealistic for the rich countries to ask them to do so. Although one can make an individual decision to live frugally and promote it as a way of life, counting on planetary-level negative growth would be unreasonable, if not to say completely illusory, short of putting in place a global green dictatorship, which would be highly undesirable”. Instead of this, the author advises a decoupling approach, in other words maintaining abundance whilst using fewer raw materials, less energy and less CO2. He points out that we have already begun this process, but observes that it is still progressing far too slowly. “Historically, businesses have paid for access to capital, they have paid for access to work. They have not paid for resources and have been able to exploit them without limitation, thus damaging nature. The fact that nature is free of charge has long been an opportunity and a driver of abundance, but we must start to see it as a major defect in the market economy that needs to be corrected as a matter of urgency, in order to resolve our crisis of the environment. We must exchange our destructive abundance for a sustainable abundance”, the author goes on to state, recommending that pollution be charged for, by means of constant total taxation and a uniform carbon tax.
Oliveau also devotes many pages to government debt at negative rates “that are an insult to common sense” and injections of cash by central banks, constantly increasing the monetary mass in circulation, without managing to achieve the fixed inflation target due to the downward pressure of prices, resulting from the abundance of consumer products, which is maintained by technological progress. This creation of currency, however, consistently increases inequality by pushing up the prices of shares and real estate and bringing about a transfer of wealth to the benefit of those who borrow. To correct this phenomenon, the author recommends that the European Central bank pay each individual, adults and children, a “monthly dividend” in the order of 50 to 100 euros per month, to achieve the target of 2% inflation. A universal income paid by each member state (to start with, he refers to the figure of 500 euros in the case of France) would help to absorb the major shocks that are heading our way with the development of robotisation and artificial intelligence, by offering everybody a supplementary income. Various experiments have highlighted the advantages of such a system, which would get rid of all forms of stigmatisation, improve access to health care, education and training and allow people to combine several types of activities. An absolute must-read. (Olivier Jehin)
François-Xavier Oliveau. La crise de l’abondance (available in French only). Éditions de l’Observatoire. ISBN: 979-10-329- 0999-7. 318 pages. €20,00
La saga du Brexit
In this short but highly lucid essay, the former diplomat and member of the board of directors of the Swiss Banque Nationale, Jean Zwahlen, walks us through the main phases of Brexit and draws consequences for Switzerland’s future relationship with the European Union, which continues to be its “most reliable partner” (our translation throughout).
In what comes close to being argument in favour of the institutional agreement between Switzerland and the EU, Zwahlen expresses his view that Boris Johnson made two errors of assessment. Having “thrown himself boldly into negotiations, bragging that he held an excellent hand of cards that would guarantee him an excellent agreement, he made the bitter discovery that the EU also had a good hand of cards, which allowed it successfully to defend its interests whilst remaining united”. He “failed to take sufficient account of the difference in weight and dependency of the two sides” and Switzerland’s situation is even less favourable, as it depends on the EU for 47% of its exports and 65% of its imports. The author goes on to stress that Switzerland is surrounded by the EU and that “the geopolitical constellation is evolving in a way that is not favourable for Switzerland”. He explained that “as a small country which is highly dependent on the proper functioning of the multilateral order and its rules of law, we have become vulnerable due to the weakening of this order and the emergence of major predatory powers”. “Although as things stand, the EU is not a real major power, it is trying hard to become one, for instance by reinforcing its members’ collaboration in strategic areas so that it will also have greater autonomy”, Zwahlen observes, adding that “it is in our interests for it to succeed, as it is with the EU that we have the greatest politico-social affinities and the closest economic links”.
“Using the concept of sovereignty, as the proponents of Brexit did ad nauseam, is an anachronism as, in the 21st century, there are no longer any international relations of sovereignty in the traditional sense of the word (…). The act of God is the reality. We should now be talking about power or might rather than sovereignty”, the author observes, adding: “it is therefore incorrect, even misleading, to claim, as Boris Johnson did, that the United Kingdom recovered its sovereignty by leaving the EU. At the very most, it has regained a certain degree of autonomy that may well, depending on circumstances, end up giving it less power and less might”. Zwahlen observes that “on its own, the United Kingdom will probably never manage to conclude agreements as favourable as the ones it would have been part of as a member state of the EU”; “it will no longer be involved in the processes of defining standards governing trade. It will therefore be downgraded in the competition between countries to attract investments”; it “also risks no longer being able to participate in the EU’s reflections on new areas of international cooperation: digitalisation, cyber-security, Internet governance, regulating the GAFA, energy security, the fight against terrorism, etc.”.
It is unfortunate that the Swiss Federal Council neglected this warning. On 26 May of this year, when it refused to sign the institutional agreement, it inconvenienced Switzerland alone. And it hopes of entering into “political dialogue with the EU on continuing cooperation” certainly seems laughable in view of the current challenges. (OJ)
Jean Zwahlen. La saga du Brexit – Quelques pistes de réflexion pour l’accord institutionnel entre la Suisse et l’Union européenne (available in French only). Fondation Jean Monnet. Débats et Documents, edition 20, April 2021. ISSN 2296-7710. 31 pages. The text can be downloaded free of charge from the foundation’s website (http://www.jean-monnet.ch )
The EU and China: Sanctions, Signals, and Interests
Whilst acknowledging that the sanctions are still legitimate on the grounds of the universality of human rights, Sven Biscop questions their appropriateness and effectiveness in the case of China. Sanctions connected to the situation of the Uyghur people in Xinjiang have done nothing but prompt completely disproportionate Chinese retaliatory measures. The author argues that when dealing with an authoritarian regime, the desired changes can in many cases be brought about more quickly by adopting a general set of rules that avoids stigmatising the regime, but imposes a possible cost upon it. A general ban of access to the European market for the products of forced labour would probably lead China to change its production processes and employment conditions so as to avoid losing market share. Biscop also considers that truly effective sanctions should be reserved for protecting the vital interests of the EU or peace and security at international level. (OJ)
Sven Biscop. The EU and China: Sanctions, Signals, and Interests. Egmont. Security Policy Brief, edition 145, may 2021. 4 pages. The text can be downloaded free of charge from the Institute’s website (http://www.egmontinstitute.be )
Du rôle de l’UE dans les exportations d’armes
In this report by GRIP, the authors take the view that “despite undeniable progress in the framework of analysing the risks associated with exports [of weapons], European divisions over exports to Saudi Arabia and the other countries of the Gulf involved in the war in Yemen illustrates the current limits in terms of convergence and the application of international law”. The common position of 2008 “should not, however, be seen as a total failure”, they argue, explaining that “without it, the discord between the practices of the member states would probably have been far greater. Furthermore, the EU was able to take the common position onto the international stage to become one of the pillars of the provisions of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT)”.
So how can convergence and control on exports be bolstered? The first option, at community level, would involve the EU in the future acquiring more competence in the field of arms exports, on the basis of those it already has in the double-usage sector, at least for equipment produced with the involvement of the European Defence Fund or transferred under the European Peace Facility. In essence, the EU could adopt a regulation that would embed the eight criteria of the current common position, so that keeping to these could be subject to Commission verification and, in the event of a dispute, the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice of the EU. The member states could continue to derogate from European law by invoking their essential interests on the basis of article 346 TFEU. However, the authors stress, “article 346 could not be used as a free pass, allowing the member states systematically to trample on the common rules. The CJEU has made it clear in several judgements that recourse to this article is possible only in the event of exceptional and duly justified situations”.
The authors nonetheless recognise that the community option is still currently coming up against the opposition, to varying degrees, of several member states. They therefore suggest benefiting from the debate on the ‘strategic compass’ to engage the member states in carrying out a more thorough identification of the “circumstances under which arms exports could contribute to destabilising the region, countering the interests of the EU or even creating a threat to a member state”. “The compass could furthermore explicitly ask countries that are preparing to examine a licence to take account of the EU’s interests overall, rather than just their own national interests. The notion of ‘EU first’ could be developed in this framework: countries engaged in territorial disputes with one or more member states of the EU or threatening their territorial integrity would not be able to benefit from any arms sales allowing them to achieve material military parity or superiority”, the authors explain, adding that “the recent sale of German submarines to Turkey, a country violating the maritime sovereignty of Greece and Cyprus, both of which are member states of the European Union, is symbolic of scenarios that the EU should be able to prevent in the future”.
Another article by Kyriakos Revelas published a few days apart stresses that the “case of Turkey shows the inconsistencies of an arms export policy based on fragmented decision-making, strong focus on industrial interests and the absence of strategic perspective”. The attitude taken by Germany, but also by Italy and Spain, for which Turkey constitutes the largest and second-largest armaments customer respectively, is particularly unacceptable as there are precedents in which other member states have shown solidarity by ceasing supplies to third countries. In 1982, France and Germany approved an embargo to be placed on Argentina by request of the United Kingdom during the Falklands War and, in 2014, France declined to supply two Mistral helicopter carriers to Russia by request of Poland and the Baltic states. (OJ)
Maria Camello, Léo Géhin, Federico Santopinto. Comment renforcer le rôle de l’UE dans les exportations d’armes (available in French only). GRIP. Report 2021/1. ISSN 2466-7710. 25 pages. The text can be downloaded free of charge from the website of the Group for Research and Information on Peace and Security (http://www.grip.org )
Kyriakos Revelas. EU arms export policy: achievements and current challenges. Centre international de formation européenne. Policy Paper No. 116. May 2021. 5 pages. The text can be downloaded free of charge from the website of CIFE (http://www.cife.eu )
Extreemrechts
You cannot always judge a book by the cover. With its interesting toad image and the intriguing subtitle “history does not repeat itself (in the same way)”, this work by historian Vincent Scheltiens and Unionist (ABVV, Flemish equivalent of the General Labour Federation of Belgium) Bruno Verlaeckt promised an original treatment of the topic of the far right. The authors sketch us a brief but powerful history of European far-right forces since the end of the Second World War, stressing the elements of convergence between the various components of a movement that is made up of established parties, such as Rassemblement national in France and Vlaams Belang in Flanders, as well as a wide range of associations and splinter groups, some of which are openly neo-Nazi in flavour. It is, however, to be regretted that the highly militant bias of the authors has led them to deny the crisis of identity sweeping through many European societies and to diminish the role described as “political Islam” in the fragmentation of the social body and the development of forms of Islamophobia. (OJ)
Vincent Scheltiens and Bruno Verlaeckt. Extreemrechts – De geschiedenis herhaalt zich niet (op dezelfde manier) (available in Dutch only). Academic & Scientific Publishers. ISBN: 978-9-4611-7112-2. 139 pages. €18,50