The EU project

In Greece, the Syriza party has challenged liberalism from the left, as it leads protests against EU and International Monetary Fund austerity programmes that have plunged the population into recession and revolt. As elsewhere in Europe, the Far Right might have taken advantage of this economic crisis, too, had the government not arrested the Golden Dawn leadership on murder and other charges.
Syriza won an overwhelming victory, coming only a couple seats short of an absolute majority. In a sign of the ongoing realignment of European politics, that party then formed a new government not with the centre-left, but with the right-wing Independent Greeks, which is similarly anti-austerity but also sceptical of the EU and in favour of a crackdown on illegal immigration.
European integration continues to be a bipartisan project for the parties that straddle the middle of the political spectrum, but the Eurosceptics are now winning votes with their anti-federalist rhetoric. Though they tend to moderate their more apocalyptic rhetoric about ‘despotic Brussels’ as they get closer to power, by pulling on a loose thread here and another there, they could very well unravel the European tapestry.
For decades, European integration created a virtuous circle – prosperity generating political support for further integration that, in turn, grew the European economy. It was a winning formula in a competitive world. However, as the European model has become associated with austerity, not prosperity, that virtuous circle has turned vicious. A challenge to the Eurozone in one country, a repeal of open borders in another, the reinstitution of the death penalty in a third – it, too, is a process that could feed on itself, potentially sending the EU into a death spiral, even if, at first, no member states take the fateful step of withdrawing.
In Eastern and Central Europe, the growing crew who distrust the EU complain that Brussels has simply taken the place of Moscow in the post-Soviet era. Brussels, they insist, establishes the parameters of economic policy that its member states ignore at their peril, while Eurozone members find themselves with ever less control over their finances. Even if the edicts coming from Brussels are construed as economically sensible and possessed of a modicum of democratic legitimacy, to the Euroskeptics they still represent a devastating loss of sovereignty.
In this way, the same resentments that ate away at the Soviet and Yugoslav federations have begun to erode popular support for the European Union. Aside from Poland and Germany, where enthusiasm remains strong, sentiment toward the EU remains lukewarm at best across much of the rest of the continent, despite a post-euro crisis rebound. Its popularity now hovers at around 50% in many member states and below that in places like Italy and Greece.
The European Union has without question been a remarkable achievement of modern statecraft. It turned a continent that seemed destined to wallow in ‘ancestral hatreds’ into one of the most harmonious regions on the planet. But as with the portmanteau states of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia, the complex federal project of the EU has proven fragile in the absence of a strong external threat like the one that the cold war provided. Another economic shock or a coordinated political challenge could tip it over the edge.
Unity in diversity may be an appealing concept, but the EU needs more than pretty rhetoric and good intentions to stay glued together. If it doesn’t come up with a better recipe for dealing with economic inequality, political extremism, and social intolerance, its opponents will soon have the power to hit the rewind button on European integration.
Excerpted from: ‘The Collapse of Europe?’.
Courtesy: Commondreams.org