Les valeurs de l’Europe
This essay, the outcome of conferences at the Collège de France, is particularly dense read, but no less fascinating for that. Taking inspiration from Hannah Arendt, lecturer in political theory at the Free University of Brussels, Justine Lacroix goes in search of the European values. Steering a course between theory and practice, the history of ideas and contemporary realities, she takes us on a journey to revisit the meaning of European values and gain a greater understanding of the democratic implications.
“The ‘values’, which were included in the preamble to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union for the first time in 2000, have been part of the European treaties since 2009, whereas the previous texts referred only to ‘principles’”, the author reminds us, before adding that “invoking the ‘European values’ now seems to have replaced invoking the European identity (which dominated between the years 1980 and 2000) as the principal pillar of legitimising the European family. This is how protecting ‘our citizens and our values’ is featured among the priorities of the Commission for the period 2019-2024 under the heading of ‘Promoting our European way of life’, which may come as a surprise when we think of principles such as dignity, freedom or equality that are supposed to be universal in scope”.
She goes on to point out that the “freedoms proclaimed in the late 18th century are ‘democracy-generating’ principles, because only a public clash of ideas and the possibility of challenging the powers that be avoided situations in which elected representatives take over entirely from those they represent by forgetting that they are not the people – or in other words, in which the people who exercise public authority cannot claim to appropriate the people’s sovereignty”. She goes on to argue that “the logic of the principle of representation – implying a position enshrined in law and limited in time – is precisely that of prohibiting any form of identification between an ever-elusive population and elected authority figures. In modern democracy, popular sovereignty is not a substance, but a power that nobody can claim to possess or embody”. This holds true in the case of the Rassemblement national in France, as it does in the case of anyone who claims to differentiate and represent “a left-wing populace” or, like Viktor Orbán, to embody “a supposedly uniform popular determination against the constraints imposed by the laws” of Europe.
“What we are seeing today in several parts of the European Union is more a dissociation between the liberal and the democratic components of our political regimes; it is a simultaneous downturn in liberalism and democracy. In these places, the infringements of the rule of law cannot be separated from the blows dealt to the conditions of forming democratic will, be it in terms of the capacity to criticise or to debate. This double downturn takes a wide range of forms – the electoral autocracy in Hungary or the blows dealt to asylum law, the right to safety (which, the author reminds us, essentially covers protection from arbitrary actions) or to the powers of Parliament in democracies in which the freedom of expression of the citizens is furthermore preserved”, Lacroix observes. Most surprisingly, she makes no reference whatsoever to the critical importance of the freedom of the press, its independence and pluralism and of access to information, which are vital pre-requisites in the exercise of choice and democratic control.
“The vision of a monolithic European system entirely dominated by neoliberal logic from the outset does not stand up to historical scrutiny”, the author argues. “Of course, there have been (and still are) forces sceptical towards popular sovereignty among the architects and artisans of European integration, some of whom saw the creation of a vast space of free movement as one of the most surefire ways of preserving the interests of the market of the risks of political and social democracy. However, it should be noted that proponents of radical liberalism have long been sceptical of European integration and saw the treaties (the ECSC and then the EEC) as bearing risks of a form of collectivism and supranational dirigisme”, the author writes.
“Are human rights not just the icing on the cake of a capitalism that is increasingly inegalitarian? This argument has raged for three decades against a backdrop of rising inequality in income and, in particular, heritage within its states. Many authors consider that human rights, in that they favour individual freedom over the principles of equality and solidarity, sanction the destruction of social justice in the name of observance of the market. Far from being breeding grounds for resistance to the new forms of nationalism and sovereignism, they argue, they are contributing to the dislocation of the middle and popular classes, as shown by the decline in a logic of inegalitarian emancipation in favour of a logic of humanitarian compassion. Human rights would appear to have the sole purpose of relieving the most extreme human suffering, while moving us further away from the construction of a common world to be shared between equals”, Lacroix states, observing that this does contain a nugget of truth. However, she adds, “resources set out in the Charter” of fundamental rights can “help to align the defence of human rights upon the needs of a common world”.
As Alain Supiot notes, the Charter of Fundamental Rights (1) “lays the foundation for active solidarity beyond the borders of those who are concerned by trade liberalisation” and, (2) “by locating environmental protection (article 37) or consumer rights (article 38) under the aegis of solidarity, (it) can serve as a basis for rules limiting the commodification of people and things”. It also includes new fundamental rights such as the right to information for workers, the right of negotiation and collective legal action, the right of access to public services. This prompts Lacroix to observe that the “principal obstacle to social progress no doubt has less to do with the fact that the European Union is condemned to an ultraliberal logic than to the absence of a structured coalition in favour of social Europe”. She goes on to argue that “far from being a single community united around values that are supposed to be consensual and specifically ‘European’, Europe should set itself up as the forum for a civilised discussion between different conceptions of human rights. It is first and foremost a ground for democratic battles on the meaning of the principles of freedom and equality, battles that are destined to take place in legislative, judicial and media fora. The Charter could then use its strength to uphold paradigms other than the single market within European integration”. (Olivier Jehin)
Justine Lacroix. Les valeurs de l’Europe, un enjeu démocratique (available in French only). Éditions du Collège de France. ISBN: 978-2-7226-0650-0. 96 pages. €18,00
L’Europe: du marché à la puissance publique?
Among the articles brought together in this collective work, one by historian Blaise Wilfert (Normale Sup), entitled “Les biens publics avant la politique, ou l’histoire longue de la société européenne”, opens with a reference to the famous speech made by Victor Hugo to the International Peace Congress of 1849, which is regularly referenced to “highlight both the ancient foundation (humanitarian, republican and religious) of modern-day European integration, but also, due to its hopeless lack of realism and repeated failure to come together in an institutional form, to truly build Europe”.
In place and stead of the “United States of Europe” dreamt of by Victor Hugo, the Europe we know “could not be established in any other way than patiently, without exaltation, around lateral, timely and technical operations, with numerous detours, around an empty, stateless heart, with no lyrical and geopolitical excess in any direction”, the author stresses, before reminding the reader that “Victor Hugo was also an active militant, along with other very close members of his family, in favour of creating international copyright”, an initiative which enjoyed greater success!
European integration is not a recent phenomenon. It is “far more political than anybody lets on”, writes Wilfert, stressing that “by aiming (in the 1950s) to reconstitute European growth and the growth dynamic in a continent devastated by war and decades of anti-liberal imperial policies, it arrived at methods and means of functioning which had, on the one hand, already been experienced and which aimed first and foremost to invent inter-national frameworks for the regulation of extremely powerful transnational dynamics”.
The author concludes by saying: “the national democracies have benefitted profoundly from European integration, from the enormous increase in power from which their States have benefitted, thanks to the renewal of inter-nationalisation. However, they remain for the large part becalmed in an ancient political discourse, from precisely that Ancien Régime, that of sovereignty. The fact that it has gone from being the sovereignty of the monarch to being the sovereignty of the people has changed everything for their domestic political order, but has reproduced the narrow confines of this summary and caricature-like concept for the international order, for the transnational dynamics. The possibility and form of a democratic European res publica remains problematic, if we persist in trying to think of it in terms of sovereignty”.
In another article, Theresa Neef, Panayiotis Nicolaides, Sofia Balladares, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty and Gabriel Zucman make the case for the creation of a “European register of assets (or European fiscal cadastral register), which would list the owners of all the different assets, for instance financial or real estate, owned in Europe”. If the line of argument underpinning the article aims to guarantee greater effectiveness of the sanctions brought in by the European Union against Russian oligarchs, the objective pursued by creating a fiscal register of this kind would also encompass the fight against tax fraud and tax evasion and money laundering. The authors propose two options to bring it about: (1) creating a task force similar to the working group of the Eurogroup which coordinated the creation of Banking Union and the European Stability Mechanism or (2) using existing national institutions, but stepping up the automatic and harmonised exchange of information and overseeing the creation of an EU-wide database.
In response to the Qatargat scandal, Lola Avril (University of Eastern Finland) and Antoine Vauchez (University Paris 1) discuss the fight against corruption. “At a time when the states and the European Union are being called upon to carry out the ecological transition of our societies and economies and face a multitude of crises, Qatargate shed light on the vulnerability and unpreparedness of the European institutions to the power politics influence that has grown up on its doorstep. These monumental challenges now require it to lay the foundation stones for a new ‘art of separation’ in which protecting the autonomy of decision-making spaces and political discussion is at front and centre and guaranteeing the perpetuity of democracy and the European Union. Because it is the laboratory and the shop window of the member states, but also because it has made the fight against corruption one of the pillars of its enlargement policy, Europe has a particular responsibility to bear here”, they argue.
The authors suggest the creation at European level of an “Observatory of the integrity of democracy, to be permanent and independent and given (…) a broad mandate allowing it to build its own methodologies and accumulate knowledge of the systematic threats and networks of interests hampering the functioning of European democracy (revolving doors, subcontracting the EU to consultancy firms, European public procurement, lobbying spend, etc.)”. Pointing out that whilst useful, the policies of transparency are insufficient in themselves, they suggest the adoption of a directive on “the criminal protection of the integrity of democracy in the functioning of the European Union” setting out new offences in terms of (1) active and passive corruption, (2) active and passive trafficking of influence and (3) conflicts of interest. (OJ)
Eric Monnet, Antoine Vauchez (edited by). L’Europe: du marché à la puissance publique? (Available in French only) PUF. La vie des idées. ISBN: 978-2-1308-6802-6. 121 pages. €11,00
Zeit eine europäische nukleare Abschreckung
In this article, which was published before the European elections (and the general elections in France) in the latest edition of the publication Paneuropa Deutschland edited by Bavarian former member of the European Parliament (CSU) Berndt Posselt, General Walter Spindler* argues the case for the EU to adopt its own conventional and nuclear deterrent. He also calls for a move to qualified majority decision-making at the Council (rather than unanimity) to ensure more effective decision-making in the framework of the implementation of the ‘Strategic Compass’.
The nuclear deterrent of the EU he describes should under no circumstances be a substitute for that offered by the United States within the framework of NATO, but should work in partnership with it. It would reinforce the European pillar within NATO and would be “a quantum leap in the perspective of the defence union”, stresses Spindler, who would base it on the French nuclear deterrent. He suggests reproducing the existing model in the framework of NATO, with American nuclear weapons apt to be used by other allies, such as Germany or Belgium, in accordance with the dual-key principle, with the air forces of these states using aircraft (F-16 then F-35) of American origin to do so. By replicating this model, the decision-making autonomy enjoyed by France, which is not a member of the NATO nuclear planning group, would be preserved. And the current Franco-German cooperation aiming to develop a new-generation fighter jet (SCAF), with Spain and Germany hoping to come on board as well, could lead to a common aircraft that could transport French weapons, the General explains, raising the possibility of creating an EU-NPG as a mirror of the NATO counterpart and of joint meetings of the two nuclear planning groups. (OJ)
*Now retired, Major General Walter Spindler was dismissed from his duties as head of the training command of the German army in 2017 by Ursula von der Leyen, then Defence Minister, following revelations of sex abuse scandals barracks. He was sacked for failing to investigate the allegations properly.
Walter Spindler. Zeit eine europäische nukleare Abschreckung (available in German only) Paneuropa Deutschland. May 2024. ISSN: 0932-7592. 35 pages.