KEEPING FAITH IN THE EU?
Paper given at a conference hosted by the University of Winchester Centre for Theology and Religion
in Public Life (TRiPL) on Saturday 9 April 2016
A soul for the union?
BEN RYAN Researcher, Theos
The premise for this talk rests on two basic questions. First, what is the EU fundamentally
for? Second, what is it that would prevent it realizing that purpose as we look towards the
future?
That first question requires a brief return to what was being discussed this morning and the
origins of this project. I know that this is meant to be future-looking but realistically you
cannot build up a model for the future without the foundations being in place from what came
before. The original purpose is therefore a relevant thing to briefly think about.
The principles of the early European project as I see them are essentially those of the
Christian Democrat parties of the 1950s. The fundamental guiding ideology rested on
‘solidarity’, ‘subsidiarity’ and an overall driving political and moral mission.
Solidarity encompasses both the idea of solidarity between nations (i.e. peace – as the
immediate burning necessity of the 1950s) but also in the early treaties, between classes and
peoples. Hence the remarkable focus on living and working conditions in the early treaties –
which fitted into a wider concern of Christian Democrats (admittedly of a slightly
paternalistic sort) to create welfare states.
Subsidiarity was a term suggested for the European project by the French politician PierreHenri Teitgen. He suggested it based on his reading of the papal encyclical Quadragesimo
anno, in which Pope Pius XI used the term to talk about the just ordering of society.
So in that encyclical he called for subsidiarity because “It is an injustice and at the same time
a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what
lesser and subordinate organisations can do.” The EU glossary takes that idea and turns it
into:
The principle that: [E]nsures that decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen and
that constant checks are made to verify that action at Union level is justified in light of the
possibilities available at national, regional or local level. Specifically, it is the principle
whereby the Union does not take action (except in the areas that fall within its exclusive
competence), unless it is more effective than action taken at national, regional or local level.
Often ignored in that is that this isn’t just about not infringing on national powers but on local
ones. Hence the much maligned CAP policy was originally envisaged as a particular means
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of supporting local agricultural communities from exploitation by centralizing industrialized
powers.
The two overarching principles together used economics as a means to an end – the end being
a political goal of a new sort of politics with an explicitly moral (we might even argue
spiritual) purpose. Economics was an important constituent aspect – as the means by which
better working and living conditions would be accomplished; as the means by which peace
would be bolstered; and as the tool by which German military power was going to be
neutered. But it was an instrument – not a goal.
That is a whistle-stop tour of the soul of the 1950s European project as I see them.
Are those principles still there? Do they have anything to say on the future of Europe?
The UK debate has been abysmal – on both sides of the fence, but actually worst from the
Remain camp. The “Britain stronger in” website typifies the intellectually vapid, patronising
and morally empty tone of the large part of the Remain campaign. It consists largely of
videos from important and well known business people repeating scary economic. Leaving
aside the validity of those claims (some are certainly stronger than others) what is depressing
is that 1. There is no sense of values or ideology here – the whole argument amounts to that
we are slightly better off financially – as if that is all that counts. 2. Just why it is that anyone
thinks getting people’s rich bosses to tell them how to vote is anything other than patronising
and elitist is beyond me.
The Out campaign is little better, with Farage in particular guilty of constantly falling back on
the decidedly dodgy claim that EU membership costs the UK “£55 million a day”. Far
stronger things to talk about (and the better Brexiteers major on these) are the issues of
sovereignty and democracy. (To declare an interest I find neither totally convincing and am
happy to say why if pressed – but that is tangential to my current point).
The point is that what the UK debate reveals – and what the response to the Eurozone crisis
and Greece reveals – is that there has been a hollowing out of the European project’s soul –
its own sense of mission and values. There are those who talk about solidarity, peace,
subsidiarity – but each is beset by its own set of serious problems.
At this moment in time the predominant guiding value of the EU appears to be a neoliberal
economic orthodoxy. That is the justification for the reckless steamrollering of Greek
democracy and the imposition of immensely damaging austerity politics in Greece and
elsewhere. An obsession with sovereign debt, and GDP have come to dominate the debate.
Whereas once economics played an ancillary role in the realisation of the greater political
values of the European project today it is seen as the primary end in and of itself.
Ultimately this is a fundamentally weak basis on which to be basing a political project. If the
appeal of the EU is to be based only on an idea that it makes states richer then it is no wonder
Eurosceptic parties are gaining ground across Europe. It is a touch sell to Spanish teenagers,
Greek pensioners, and indeed anyone else that the EU is making them much richer at present.
This is inevitable – loyalty based on financial gain ceases to exist once the money stops.
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So, if the EU is to flourish, survive and prosper there needs first and foremost to be a
recognition that the underpinning critical values need a rethink. If they are genuinely
economic then frankly the Brexiteers (or at least some of them – there are of course many
stripes of Eurosceptic and solutions to post-EU Britain), have a point – we should get rid of
the legal, social, and political structures and make do with some sort of economic zone.
If, on the other hand the EU were to embrace either the moral identity of its foundation or a
new but still values-based fundamental approach to then it would be a stronger Union.
What is needed – if we want a European Union that matters – is a rediscovery of what the EU
is for – a moral project for the conscious creation of a better world politics.
At the beginning of this talk I said there were two questions that had to be answered – what
was the EU for and what prevents it from realizing that purpose.
I hope from what I said so far I have made a reasonable case for the first question. The
purpose of the EU is to be a moral force – a political entity which exists in order to further a
political conception of international governance with particular moral mission. It had such a
mission in its origins, it has been a struggle to successfully embody them throughout EU
history and on some counts there have most certainly been failures – yet the principles are
there.
So to answer the second question – what prevents it from realizing that purpose?
Undeniably there is a problem here. We need the EU to have a collective set of values – to
inspire an identity and to have citizens within a European demos. And broadly speaking we
do not have that (though there are some stirrings of it in some ways).
In a sense that is unsurprising, in fact it would be incredible if we were there. We are talking
about an organization whose formal origins are only 65 years old. Trying to establish norms
and laws and identities in 3 generations is a daunting prospect.
Especially because in practice the EU in its current format is far younger even than that,
established by the Maastricht treaty only in the early 1990s and of course most notably
expanding dramatically in 2004. In 1951 there were six member states, all of whom shared an
identical recent history, a broadly similar cultural and religious outlook, the financial and
other support of the USA and the opposition of the USSR to bond them. Today there are 28
member states spread over a far more disparate area.
Eleven and a half (Germany being the half) are only one generation removed from
communist rule, two (Spain and Portugal) are only two generations out of authoritarian right
wing dictatorship. 1 (Cyprus) is literally divided in half. Among applicant countries one
(Turkey) was at war with an EU member state within the past 50 years, another (Serbia) was
at war with Slovenia and Croatia and perpetuated a massacre in fellow applicants Bosnia and
Kosovo.
Given all that, expecting some sort of collective European identity centred on the EU is a tall
order.
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However, that does not absolve the EU of the accusation that it has done a bad job frankly at
motivating and resonating with its citizens. The hollowing out of values has been a serious
issue which has occurred in part because the EU has become, in the philosopher Jurgen
Habermas’s words, a “technocratic hegemony” – one which was broadly tolerated by citizens
only while the economic boom continued.
Technocratic centralized tinkering, which has at times exceeded the democratic mandate and
certainly moved beyond public loyalty is contributing to the EU crisis (see Larry Siedentop
for further discussion of this).
It is worth noting that there is also a problem here in the very design of the EU. Were the EU
what its detractors say it is – a sinister body intent on becoming a genuine superstate with the
desire to impose itself upon and eliminate nation states, then it would be finding life much
easier.
By which I mean – if you want to create a state and claim it as a unified thing with a shared
identity then European history has plenty of advice to provide. The 19th century statesman
Massimo d’Azeglio famously said in 1861, “we have made Italy, now we must make
Italians”. The aphorism is often quoted because it gets to the heart of the problem that faces
many new states. Politically, legally and economically it is possible to create a state with
borders marked wherever it is convenient to do so.
Europe in the 19th century proved this repeatedly, seeing, for example, the emergence of
Italy and Germany from a collection of disparate little states, and the spread of France to take
over Savoy. The end of the European empires demonstrated the legal possibilities further
with African and Asian states defined and given independence in a way that often bore little
resemblance to the borders of ethnic, linguistic, religious, or clan groups. There are, of
course, other older European states with similar (arguably) artificial unity – including the UK
with its constituent national members and Spain with its significant Catalan, Basque and
Galician regions. Some of these new states have proved remarkably durable, while often
retaining some fierce regional identities. Others have failed – look at Yugoslavia for quite
how far a previously cohesive entity can break up – someone born in Belgrade in 1918 would
today have lived in seven different states without leaving the city.
Most successful attempts at nation building take time, external catalysts and often, if we’re
really honest, heavy handed centralized power. The EU ought rightly to be careful to resist
the latter and hope that catalyst from a world war or other catastrophe is not necessary – but
nonetheless we are left with a challenge in how to actually do anything that would help.
So where does that leave us? We have an EU that needs to develop a sense of identity and
restore a sense of values to what it does. But we have had decades of hollowing out of that
vision and some difficulties instrumentally in how we arrive at changing that situation.
I want to conclude with some very tentative suggestions which we can discuss further:
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First. The Commission and other institutions – with the help of a driving civil society – need
to recognise their primary purpose does not lie in the promotion of nation GDP, but in being a
moral force.
There needs to be a demonstration of this by a conscious change in policy to focus on
rebuilding the moral purpose.
We should note that no single policy will achieve anything substantial. And there is a danger
in simply doing more and more politics that only deepens the sense of top-down technocracy.
The point is that the task of creating values identities and affections will take time. These
policies are merely commitments that might aid the process – stepping stones towards
creating that identity.
There are a number of areas in which we can focus these and I consider several in the third
part of my report (A Soul for the Union) but to focus on one simple example:
There is broad acceptance I think that a resolution of the refugee crisis is a moral issue and
long overdue resolution. We need to reform the Dublin system for refugees as it is clearly not
fit for purpose.
The Dublin protocol means it is only possible to apply for asylum once you have already
arrived in the country where you are applying. What this means in practice is that rather than
take the perfectly safe ferry services from North Africa for which a ticket costs less than €50,
refugees are instead forced to use smugglers’ boats which, apart from being far more
dangerous (they are generally un-crewed), also cost the refugee anywhere between US$2,000
and US$10,000.
Basic reform of the system by allowing applications from abroad would stop or at least
reduce deaths in the Mediterranean, prevent smuggling and ease the burden on the poorest
states which are currently manning the border (notably Greece, Italy, Cyprus Malta). This
could be supported further still by the reinstatement of a proper search and rescue service in
the Mediterranean.
Neither that – nor any other policy would fully recreate a moral mission – but it is a start, it is
a commitment – public and necessary, towards taking practical and political steps towards a
moral purpose.
I want to suggest that that is where the soul of the political body should lie – and it is only by
owning such policies that I can envisage a European Union flourishing in the future.
The more negative flip side of that equation is that a Union which does not (re)discover such
an identity may be doomed. And at present there are far too few stirrings or signs of life to be
having significant faith in the future.