Europe’s sovereign debt crisis has revitalised the debate about deepening the EU. In the past eighteen months, a new political narrative has been written which led to the creation of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), opened a big debate on the need for “Eurobonds”, and stimulated ideas for a real fiscal union to prevent the current fragmented and inefficient approaches to resolving the Eurocrisis.
About ten days ago, these developments went into overdrive with a clear plea from German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble for a new Treaty change in order to establish a full fiscal union, and a remarkable intervention by former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, demanding no less than a “United States of Europe”.
Schröder made his call in the context of an event organised by a new European think tank called the “Council for the Future of Europe”. This new player on the Brussels scene was created by Swedish billionaire Nicolas Berggruen and seems to have the support of other famous “Europeans”, such as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former Spanish Prime Minister Felipe González and former European Commission President Jacques Delors.
One can ask the question: what is going on here? Is European integration on the verge of having another one of those historic moments in which it is able to convert a crisis into a new phase of European cooperation? Have European leaders finally woken up?
I think we need to be a bit sceptical in this case. What we are experiencing with these appeals for more Europe is no more and no less than a drive for more of the same Europe. Political and economic elites are trying to save a model of Europe which they created after 1992 and which is based on the deregulated casino capitalism where “the market” should be given as much freedom as possible to create wealth for the few, which can later be “shared” with the many. It is a Europe for the power and wealth elites, not for European citizens. It might have worked when the economic pie was still growing; it does not work now that this pie has started to shrink as a result of geopolitical power shifts and increasing resource constraints.
Yes, we need more Europe, but first and foremost we need another sort of Europe which puts People and Planet first – a Europe which has social equality, jobs and redistribution, as well as ecological sustainability and climate and energy security as its key priorities. If Europe wants to win back its citizens, nothing less will do. Europe needs a new vision and most likely new leaders and new institutions. Deepening the EU’s economic governance alone will not be sufficient. Europe might have to re-boot and find new Founding Fathers.
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