Europe, les trois menaces
In this article, the Reflection Group on the Future of the European Civil Service (GRASPE) explains why the “future of the European Union appears to be seriously compromised by a combination of internal and external threats” (our translation throughout).
On the internal front, the article expresses concern at the “general move to the right of European public opinion”. “Social democracy is receding everywhere and the Greens are simply treading water. This movement coincides with an equally worrying phenomenon: the dams between the traditional right and the far right have given way”, the authors observe, adding that “for instance, the far right is in power or co-governing in Sweden, Finland, Latvia, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Italy and will probably be so very soon in Spain. The FPÖ dominates the political landscape in Austria and the AfD has become Germany’s second party in opinion polls. In France, meanwhile, Emmanuel Macron’s politics and the inability of the left to offer any credible alternative are making the Rassemblement national stronger day by day”. They go on to stress that this “this tidal wave of a shift to the right is largely the result of the damage suffered within European societies from 40 years of unregulated globalisation and European politics guided almost exclusively by a naïve worship of competition and free trade”.
Looking at the two major actors within the European Union, the future seems even bleaker. “In Germany, the coalition in power is extremely fragile and in freefall in the opinion polls. It is also hampered by the fact that one of its constituents is the tiny liberal party FDP, which itself has close ties to the far right and is extremely hostile to any degree of progress in matters of European, social or environmental solidarity. As for the right-wing in Germany, Angela Merkel’s successors have been routed from the CDU to make room for neoliberals who also have no interest in European solidarity”, the authors write. As for France, they add, “Emmanuel Macron no longer has a majority in the Assemblée nationale and is at the mercy of the Republicans, who have also forged close ties with the far right. This movement in France is now even going so far as to call for the rejection of the European treaties. And in any event, notwithstanding his political rhetoric, Emmanuel Macron has barely ever been in any position to move forward specific European dossiers, due to his inability to build coalitions. In practice, his government has spent more time slowing down or blocking a number of European projects under pressure from industrial or agricultural lobbies”.
But with the Russian war in Ukraine, “the question of the enlargement of the European Union to Moldova and Ukraine and most countries of the Western Balkans is now becoming a matter of urgency”. Although “the geopolitical situation is forcing them into the EU as quickly as possible”, it is quite clear that with twenty-seven member states, “the current European institutions are already largely unworkable” and that when there are more than thirty, “their functioning will without doubt grind fully to a halt”. A revision of the treaties must therefore precede any further enlargement, but “even supposing it is possible to begin this process, it is difficult to imagine, in the current internal European context, that it could possibly lead to substantial progress in terms of solidarity, ecology and democracy”, the authors rightly observe.
The attendant risks of this internal political climate come on top of the threats arising from the very difficult geopolitical context. “To begin with, the Ukrainian episode has done nothing to change the strategic vision of the USA, where there is consensus across the political spectrum that China is their number one enemy. They do not accept that it has become a major power in its own right and want to challenge this status. Furthermore, internal political competition in United States has led to a situation in which everybody is trying to outdo everybody else in the confrontation with China”, the authors write, pointing out also that Europeans, who have wrought close economic ties with China along with dependencies that they are now trying to break, are deeply divided over the stance to be adopted. On the one hand, these divisions are benefiting China. On the other, they could lead to a “policy that is neither one thing nor the other”, to the disadvantage of both European camps. While “the war in Ukraine has shone a spotlight on the gap that exists between the West, and therefore Europe, and what is now generally referred to as the ‘Global South’”.
Nor can the solidity of the positive relationship the European Union and the United States be taken for granted: “the recent ‘mid-terms’ have shown, were any evidence necessary, that the country remains divided on a 50/50 basis. Should a Republican administration take over from the administration of Joe Biden, even if Donald Trump were not its President, the massive support the United States has lent Ukraine and its involvement in NATO could quickly end up being called into question”, the authors point out. However, “the Europeans are by no means capable of increasing their autonomous defence capabilities overnight. Without American assistance, the situation could therefore change very quickly on the Ukrainian front and other players, such as Erdoğan’s Turkey, could be tempted to take advantage of this European weakness to revive their aspirations of empire”.
Finally, “the strategies set in train to speed the energy transition in Europe, with the Green Deal and Fit for 55, and in the United States, with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), are radically different and are engendering (…) a logic of commercial clashes between the two sides of the Atlantic. On all these fronts, relations between the United States and Europe are therefore at great risk of worsening in the coming months”, the authors warn.
Difficult economic perspectives are also added to the mix. Germany is likely to be severely adversely affected over a long period of time by growing tensions between the United States and China stemming from the rising polarity of electric cars, “a segment in which its industry is severely lagging behind both American and Chinese car manufacturers”. “The German industry has therefore sailed into extremely turbulent waters” and the “likely resulting damage to the industrial heart of Europe coincides with the effects of its considerable delay in all areas of high technology (platform economy, artificial intelligence, semi-conductors, green technologies, biotechs…) resulting from the dearth of sovereign European industrial policies”, the authors note, adding that “after 40 years of policies guided primarily by blind faith in competition and free trade, Europe is looking down the barrel of advanced technological vassalisation”.
Despite this bleak prognosis, the article concludes by calling for a “strong dose of optimism of will (Gramsci) to succeed in pushing European integration forward, in spite of everything, towards greater ecology, solidarity and democracy over the coming years”. After all, “Europe and the Europeans have already shown that in situations of adversity, they are capable of leaps forward that would previously have been thought quite impossible”.
It is worth noting that the same edition of the GRASPE bulletin also contains a very well-documented article on the new migration and asylum pact. (Olivier Jehin)
Georges Vlandas (editor). L’Union européenne dans les médias – Atonie générale, sursaut récent (available in French only). GRASPE. Bulletin of the Reflection Group on the Future of the European Civil Service no. 47, July 2023. 159 pages. The review can be downloaded free of charge from the website: https://aeur.eu/f/87b
Les Balkans
In this work, journalists Jean-Arnault Dérens and Laurent Geslin take us on a tour of the Balkans in 100 questions, demonstrating that the “problems and challenges currently facing the countries of south-eastern Europe today are not the result of the ‘exceptionality’ or even ‘exoticism’ of the Balkans” (our translation throughout). “On the contrary, from the authoritarian tendencies of the States to the nationalist demagogy fuelled by the declining intellectual elite or the widespread racism, xenophobia and revisionism, via the increasing precariousness of work, violent control of the borders and the pillaging of natural resources, the Balkans have often been forerunners of tendencies that have gone on to sweep across the rest of Europe”, they write in their introduction.
“While the EU very often props up corrupt autocrats in the name of regional ‘stability’, many people of the Balkans have lost any hope of ever seeing their country move towards the famous European ‘standards’ – functioning rule of law, a more or less effective social protection systems. Tired of waiting for Europe to come to them, they are leaving in their droves and the exodus movement that is emptying south-eastern Europe represents the main challenge for the future of the countries of the region, even those that are members of the European Union, such as Greece and Croatia”, the authors stress.
However, this diaspora reports: “in 2021, transfers of funds of the diaspora stood at 1.2 billion euros in Kosovo, representing 18.5% of GDP. In 2020, they represented 1.27 billion in Albania, or 9.8% of GDP, 1.63 billion in Bosnia & Herzegovina (93% of GDP), 524 million euros in Montenegro (9.3% of GDP)”, the authors note, going on to stress that the data almost certainly fall short of reality, “as a lot of funds are transferred outside the banking networks, by direct payments when returning to the country”.
Although the accession process has come to a halt and with war raging in Ukraine, “the presence of the Kremlin can be observed in Serbia, even though the European Union remains far and away Belgrade’s largest trading partner, but also in the Republika Srpska of Bosnia & Herzegovina, and in Montenegro, where Moscow has considerable influence, not least within the Serbian Orthodox Church”, the authors explain. Additionally, “although Serbia has refrained from adopting European sanctions against Russia, it voted in favour of the United Nations resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine and is opposed to the ‘breakdown of the territorial integrity any UN member state’”, to quote President Vucic speaking in March 2022. “No such caution is holding back Milorad Dodik, who became President of the Republika Srpska again in 2022, and who compared the situation of Russians in Ukraine to that of the Serbians of Bosnia & Herzegovina and who regularly brandishes the threat of the entity breaking away from the rest of the country”, they add, going on to refer to the influence enjoyed by Turkey and China in the region. (OJ)
Jean-Arnaut Dérens, Laurent Geslin. Les Balkans – Carrefour sous influences (available in French only). Tallandier. ISBN: 979-1-0210-5554-4. 350 pages. €19,90
L’Union européenne dans les médias
This study by the Fondation Jean Jaurès focuses on the situation in France, where barely 57% of respondents said that they had recently seen or heard a news item concerning the European Union, putting France in bottom place out of the 27 member states when it comes to access to European information.
“Of the seven years studied, from 2015 to 2022 (…), there were four years during which EU news was reported in at least 3% of all televised news subjects of the historical television channels”, states Théo Verdier (our translation throughout). The private channels performed even less well. “Out of one hour of audiovisual information (television and radio) broadcast in France between 2020 and 2022, the audience was exposed on average to 94 seconds concerning European Union affairs”. Unsurprisingly, the networks of radio station France Bleu and the television channel France 3 remain the major purveyors of European news, particularly in the border and coastal regions, with subjects relating to fishing, agriculture and transport. By way of conclusion, the author voices concerns that the European elections of 2024 will conclude a sequence of intensive mediatisation that began with war in Ukraine in 2022. However, the “State has leverage that it ought to deploy more decisively than has been the case thus far, by means of numerical indicators that could be set in place for both private and public channels”, with a view to increasing the visibility of the European Union, Verdier proposes. (OJ)
Théo Verdier. L’Union européenne dans les médias – Atonie générale, sursaut récent (available in French only). Fondation Jean Jaurès, June 2023. 17 pages. This study can be downloaded free of charge from the website of the foundation: https://aeur.eu/f/87c
Slavernij aan de Schelde
In this book, the journalist David Van Turnhout (Gazet van Antwerpen) looks back over the investigations he carried between 2019 and 2022 on the trafficking and exploitation of human beings in Flanders, with the ramifications of these practices in Europe.
Through a series of cases, he unveils part of this modern slavery, which is not limited to the banks of the river Escaut alone. Amongst others, we discover the story of a Bengali welder who suffered exploitation in Qatar, before arriving in Poland, where he found a relatively well-paid job that he would leave, only to find himself under the control of an Italian company that tempted him away with a better job. This company, Irem General Contractor, would initially confine him to a village of containers in Hungary, which he would be unable to leave, as none of the promised legal processes had been carried out on his behalf, before being transferred to Belgium, where he was found accommodation at Borgerhout and sent to work for the petrochemicals company Sabic on the other side of the border, in Bergen op Zoom, in the Netherlands.
Although Van Turnout shows us the various facets of this form of exploitation – no legal status, poor pay, if any, illegal work conditions and hours, insalubrious accommodation – he also provides us with a reminder of the conditions that underpin migration: 31.5% of 160 million Bengalis are living in a situation of poverty and 11 million of these do not have enough to eat. Around 700,000 Bengalis leave the country each year, mainly (82%) to Arab countries, and contribute an annual 15 billion dollars a year to the Indian economy through the money they send home to their families.
Over the course of the book, the reader discovers the extent of the phenomenon, which affects a number of major companies, including the Austrian chemicals firm Borealis, where 55 Filipino, 17 Bengali and 105 Turkish workers are being exploited, and the German chemicals giant BASF (52 illegal workers). These groups often hide behind recruitment agencies and conventions, allowing them to avoid their own liability. But the real kicker is without question the fact that these Bengali workers had to pay 7000 euros to a recruitment bureau in India at the very start of the process, in the hope of a monthly salary of 2500 euros to repay their investment and help out their families left at home. Upon arrival, however, they discover that the reality was very different, with 1250 euros’ pay for 190 hours of work a month, or nine-hour days at an hourly rate of 6 euros.
A must-read for anybody wishing to understand that this phenomenon is not just a matter for far-distant countries. In the 21st century, slavery still exists and it is on our doorstep. (OJ)
David Van Turnhout. Slavernij aan de Schelde – Economische uitbuiting en mensenhandel in het hart van Europa (available in Dutch only). Manteau. ISBN: 978-9-0223-3987-9. 189 pages. €22,50