by JURGEN HABERMAS
(The Eurozone crisis has raised calls for greater political integration of the EU. However, sociologist Jürgen Habermas argues that the tactics adopted by European leaders have sidelined what should be their main priority: the well-being of citizens, established within a democratic framework. Excerpts.)
In the short term, the crisis will require careful attention from Europe’s political actors. But above and beyond this effort, they should not neglect the problem of fundamental weaknesses in the structure of the monetary union that can only be resolved by the development of an adequate political union: the EU does not have the necessary remit to harmonise national economies, which are marked by drastic divergences in their capacity to compete.
The “pact for Europe” that has recently been reinforced has only served to aggravate a long-standing problem: non-binding agreements in the circle of government leaders are either ineffective or anti-democratic, and it is for this reason that they should be replaced by common decisions taken in a clearly defined institutional framework.
The German federal government has become the catalyst for the increasing dissolution of solidarity in Europe, because it has spent too long ignoring the single constructive issue that Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has laconically described as the issue of “More Europe”.
All of the governments concerned have found that they are unable to deal with a dilemma posed by the need to address the imperatives of major banks and rating agencies and their fear of a loss of legitimacy that will deprive them of the support of their frustrated populations. And the scatterbrained incrementalism of their response is a testament to their lack of a wider perspective.
The financial crisis that has been ongoing since 2008 has stalled the mechanism for the funding of states that relies on payment by future generations; and while we await a solution to this problem, it appears unlikely that austerity packages that are difficult to implement on the level of internal politics can be reconciled with the maintenance of an acceptable level of state services.
Given the weight of these problems, we should expect that politicians would be willing, without delay and without imposing conditions, to put their European cards on the table so as to rapidly raise awareness among the population of the relationship between the short-term costs and the real usefulness of the European project, that is to say from a historical perspective.
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(Thanks to Harsh Kapoor os SACW)