Commentary
In Greek mythology, King Sisyphus becomes a prisoner of inevitability, existentially condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for the sake of seeing it immediately roll back down. His sense of desperation and futility is reminiscent of what some Europeans feel today. Europe has become a prisoner of the circularity of efforts to stabilise inherently-unstable markets. And each cycle exacerbates the dominance of the economic over the political, the erosion of democratic paradigms, the indifference of citizens, and the divorce between social reality and its political translation. Political discourse is suspended while technocrats redistribute societal resources and aspirations in the name of economic necessity. And we – the Europeans – are sidelined and numbed by the repetitive talk of austerity, economic stability, financial leverage and institutional reforms. These all are presented as inevitable for the health of the market-a bitter medicine required to cease the pain. Needless to say, they will not. The pain is systemic.
Our lives cannot be shaped as a byproduct of economic stability.
For the younger generation of Europeans like us, the ostensibly inevitable changes instituted in recent years will define our future. That is why it is time to take a stand. Our lives cannot be shaped as a byproduct of economic stability. The European Union is more than a market. Its citizens are more than consumers. Our political choices should make the market socially acceptable; the market should not make our political choices economically acceptable. Our generation has ideas, ideals, hopes, needs and aspirations. And we strongly believe in Europe, just not in this particular economic manifestation of it.
We believe in Europe because we are Europe. We construct it today and will do so tomorrow-in Lodz and Odense, Sevilla and Nicosia, one day perhaps in Split and Izmir. We will by travelling, communicating, working, studying. The nation-state might be our passport, but Europe is our identity. Even at home, we are all Europeans. Our hairdresser is from Goteborg, the barista behind the counter of the espresso bar in Dublin is from Venice. We listen to a Belgian band on the radio while eating a pizza in Brno. Our wine is Portuguese, our cheese Austrian. Our favourite football player is born in Gelsenkirchen and plays in Madrid, our university teacher in Budapest is originally from Helsinki. An open and free Europe was the dream of the previous generations. It is our reality.
Conceptualising Europe as a market belittles its citizens, its potential and its credentials. Europe is more than economic rationalisation. Its citizens are not one-dimensional consumers and winners of open markets. Europe’s potential is greater than the next credit rating by Standard & Poor’s. And its credentials require narratives beyond economic stability. It is time to change the European narrative, to enrich the common understanding of Europe by a more-coherent and public idea of what Europe can and should do.
We argue that the market’s honeymoon in Europe must end, and we offer a new narrative towards which the European Union can direct its normative ambitions. We need to decode the singular understanding of Europe as a market and construct its future beyond the market’s rationale. A new Europe must be based on trust between its citizens, geared towards the specific aspirations of its generations and capable of forging a public discourse on its trajectory. To prevent our generation from being lost in the inevitability and circularity of the market, we need to snap out of our own reality and fundamentally question who we are, what we want and how we can actually achieve it.
Trust
Despite the European Union’s own metamorphosis from a post-war economic agreement to a supranational body of great institutional, political and economic power, and despite the ever-greater numbers of citizens who face the daily reality of free movement, the union’s operating code has remained decisively economic. European integration is mainly understood as a successful mode of integrating national economic diversity. But the idea of Europe transcends the objective of economic homogeneity. What sustains Europe is the cultural diversity and trust we experience on a daily basis through personal interactions-whether in the job centre in Brussels, in the Polish supermarket in Uppsala, with the bus driver in Tallinn or with the greengrocer in the port of Naples. Trust reduces the systemic complexity of Europe and stabilizes both the market and the project of European integration more than any regulatory programme of the commission.
European integration is mainly understood as a successful mode of integrating national economic diversity. But the idea of Europe transcends the objective of economic homogeneity.
We do not argue for a substitute to global markets nor the elimination of market dynamics altogether. Rather, we argue for a paradigm shift from a view that embeds the European project in its economic straightjacket to one that embeds it in a continental matrix of inter- and intra-generational trust. As the crumbs of the market are eaten in the near future, the Europe we face will have to be based on trust. The European Union must learn to capitalize on that trust. So far it has allowed markets to internalise both individual and institutional trust for the sake of maximising returns. The union needs to reverse that process. It needs to extrapolate its legitimacy from trust between its citizens. Because it is trust-and not market integration-that is the source of social cohesion, ethnic tolerance, fairness, solidarity and diversity. Before we trust in Europe’s normative premises, economic capacities and institutions, we need to make sure that Europe is able use the potential that lies in the interpersonal trust between its citizens.
Aspirations
If Europe is to be relevant for our generation – and our generation is to be relevant to Europe – we need to move beyond the defeatist hollowness of market stability and embrace the aspirational possibilities of a united Europe. In 1956, the creation of the European Economic Community was an aspirational project. While originally conceived to take the sting out of nationalism and encourage the economic growth of a shattered continent, the promise of peace and prosperity does not seem today to generate the popular legitimacy the EU craves. This is not to question its historic relevance and success. Rather, our concern is that this particular institutional manifestation may consume more goodwill than it produces.
At this moment, the only European dream available to our generation seems to include a lifetime of debt repayment and austerity, fewer opportunities in the labour market than ever before, stripped-down welfare systems, and hollow rhetoric about saving our planet’s natural systems. Simply put, we need Europe to meet the aspirations of our generation on top of the aspirations of its founding fathers and mothers. In order to do so, we must pursue proposals as simple as offering language courses and as complex as increasing energy security with green technology. Such proposals meet the aspirations of our generation, including personal development through mobility, new labour opportunities and a sustainable world. And it allows the European Union to become, once again, an aspirational forum embraced by younger generations because it provides a powerful idea of how to make our societies and our planet a better place. The EU can help us aspire for more. But it needs to stop churning out measures of economic rationalisation without making an effort to embrace a stronger normative vision of-and contribution to-our future.
Public
Our history was nation-based and our present is increasingly European. Our needs and aspirations are ever more of a transnational character, and the economic processes dictating our lives are global. Yet our political system remains national. It is this asymmetry between social reality and political structures that allows for the dominance of the economic over the political and of the executive over the parliamentary. That allows the market to anonymise its founding social capital-the trust between citizens. The asymmetry is so entrenched and systemic that these days markets can overthrow governments. But were politics not meant to tame and humanise the markets, rather than the other way around?
To reassert our capacity to control how we want our societies to function, we need to deconstruct our normative understanding of the public. We believe politics only functions by grace of a direct link between reality and fantasy. All political claims are fantasies: projections of how the future can be better or more just. And the role of politics is to translate those fantasies into reality. At the moment, however, we seem to be barking up the wrong tree. While the national political system remains invaluable in the redistribution of resources, it is no longer capable of constraining the economic system to ensure that it leads to socially-acceptable outcomes. It is incapable of securing our aspirations and needs beyond the nation-state. Yet we continue to articulate our fantasies within national political systems. In doing so, we perpetuate the status quo, allow the national executive to hide behind national interests when discussing transnational needs and aspirations, and enable the sidelining of representative institutions under the guise of inevitability.
If we want to reassert the dominance of the political over the economic, we need a European political space in which decisions are explained, fantasies are articulated and Europe’s trajectory is discussed. We need a space that can capture the trust between its citizens and meet their needs and aspirations, and whose leaders can be changed when it fails to do so. Giving the public a voice requires institutional and normative rebalancing. In institutional terms, we should move toward the establishment of European political parties and parliamentary elections in which each party proposes a candidate for commission president and a reduced role for the European Council in setting the political trajectory of the EU. Such changes would galvanise the transnational political discourse and introduce dynamic partisan politics into the decision-making process. But such changes will not be proposed by national politicians who stand to lose the most in the vast re-enfranchisement of European citizens. Instead, such changes require those citizens to reach beyond the boundaries and create a common, multilingual public space on the transnational level. This would be a space where ideas are exchanged, fantasies are formed and articulated, and politicians are forced to take notice.
Onwards
Condemned by the gods, King Sisyphus’s predicament was eternal. For us, it does not have to be. But if we want to escape the market’s circularity, we need to reassert who we are, what we want and how we can actually achieve it. None of these issues can be convincingly addressed by national political arrangements, nor by the EU as it is now. These shortcomings have allowed the economic system and the executive army of technocrats to take control of the citizens, who are no longer protected by the dominance of politics or representative parliaments. But Europe is more than a market. It has the potential to solve the systemic problems that are at the origin of our current economic, ecological and political crises. But we, its citizens, may have to force it to actually do so.
Image: trennstrickmaschine.de
Tags:
Commentary
Ending the honeymoon: constructing Europe beyond the market
Commentary
In Greek mythology, King Sisyphus becomes a prisoner of inevitability, existentially condemned to roll a boulder up a hill for the sake of seeing it immediately roll back down. His sense of desperation and futility is reminiscent of what some Europeans feel today. Europe has become a prisoner of the circularity of efforts to stabilise inherently-unstable markets. And each cycle exacerbates the dominance of the economic over the political, the erosion of democratic paradigms, the indifference of citizens, and the divorce between social reality and its political translation. Political discourse is suspended while technocrats redistribute societal resources and aspirations in the name of economic necessity. And we – the Europeans – are sidelined and numbed by the repetitive talk of austerity, economic stability, financial leverage and institutional reforms. These all are presented as inevitable for the health of the market-a bitter medicine required to cease the pain. Needless to say, they will not. The pain is systemic.
Our lives cannot be shaped as a byproduct of economic stability.
For the younger generation of Europeans like us, the ostensibly inevitable changes instituted in recent years will define our future. That is why it is time to take a stand. Our lives cannot be shaped as a byproduct of economic stability. The European Union is more than a market. Its citizens are more than consumers. Our political choices should make the market socially acceptable; the market should not make our political choices economically acceptable. Our generation has ideas, ideals, hopes, needs and aspirations. And we strongly believe in Europe, just not in this particular economic manifestation of it.
We believe in Europe because we are Europe. We construct it today and will do so tomorrow-in Lodz and Odense, Sevilla and Nicosia, one day perhaps in Split and Izmir. We will by travelling, communicating, working, studying. The nation-state might be our passport, but Europe is our identity. Even at home, we are all Europeans. Our hairdresser is from Goteborg, the barista behind the counter of the espresso bar in Dublin is from Venice. We listen to a Belgian band on the radio while eating a pizza in Brno. Our wine is Portuguese, our cheese Austrian. Our favourite football player is born in Gelsenkirchen and plays in Madrid, our university teacher in Budapest is originally from Helsinki. An open and free Europe was the dream of the previous generations. It is our reality.
Conceptualising Europe as a market belittles its citizens, its potential and its credentials. Europe is more than economic rationalisation. Its citizens are not one-dimensional consumers and winners of open markets. Europe’s potential is greater than the next credit rating by Standard & Poor’s. And its credentials require narratives beyond economic stability. It is time to change the European narrative, to enrich the common understanding of Europe by a more-coherent and public idea of what Europe can and should do.
We argue that the market’s honeymoon in Europe must end, and we offer a new narrative towards which the European Union can direct its normative ambitions. We need to decode the singular understanding of Europe as a market and construct its future beyond the market’s rationale. A new Europe must be based on trust between its citizens, geared towards the specific aspirations of its generations and capable of forging a public discourse on its trajectory. To prevent our generation from being lost in the inevitability and circularity of the market, we need to snap out of our own reality and fundamentally question who we are, what we want and how we can actually achieve it.
Trust
Despite the European Union’s own metamorphosis from a post-war economic agreement to a supranational body of great institutional, political and economic power, and despite the ever-greater numbers of citizens who face the daily reality of free movement, the union’s operating code has remained decisively economic. European integration is mainly understood as a successful mode of integrating national economic diversity. But the idea of Europe transcends the objective of economic homogeneity. What sustains Europe is the cultural diversity and trust we experience on a daily basis through personal interactions-whether in the job centre in Brussels, in the Polish supermarket in Uppsala, with the bus driver in Tallinn or with the greengrocer in the port of Naples. Trust reduces the systemic complexity of Europe and stabilizes both the market and the project of European integration more than any regulatory programme of the commission.
European integration is mainly understood as a successful mode of integrating national economic diversity. But the idea of Europe transcends the objective of economic homogeneity.
We do not argue for a substitute to global markets nor the elimination of market dynamics altogether. Rather, we argue for a paradigm shift from a view that embeds the European project in its economic straightjacket to one that embeds it in a continental matrix of inter- and intra-generational trust. As the crumbs of the market are eaten in the near future, the Europe we face will have to be based on trust. The European Union must learn to capitalize on that trust. So far it has allowed markets to internalise both individual and institutional trust for the sake of maximising returns. The union needs to reverse that process. It needs to extrapolate its legitimacy from trust between its citizens. Because it is trust-and not market integration-that is the source of social cohesion, ethnic tolerance, fairness, solidarity and diversity. Before we trust in Europe’s normative premises, economic capacities and institutions, we need to make sure that Europe is able use the potential that lies in the interpersonal trust between its citizens.
Aspirations
If Europe is to be relevant for our generation – and our generation is to be relevant to Europe – we need to move beyond the defeatist hollowness of market stability and embrace the aspirational possibilities of a united Europe. In 1956, the creation of the European Economic Community was an aspirational project. While originally conceived to take the sting out of nationalism and encourage the economic growth of a shattered continent, the promise of peace and prosperity does not seem today to generate the popular legitimacy the EU craves. This is not to question its historic relevance and success. Rather, our concern is that this particular institutional manifestation may consume more goodwill than it produces.
At this moment, the only European dream available to our generation seems to include a lifetime of debt repayment and austerity, fewer opportunities in the labour market than ever before, stripped-down welfare systems, and hollow rhetoric about saving our planet’s natural systems. Simply put, we need Europe to meet the aspirations of our generation on top of the aspirations of its founding fathers and mothers. In order to do so, we must pursue proposals as simple as offering language courses and as complex as increasing energy security with green technology. Such proposals meet the aspirations of our generation, including personal development through mobility, new labour opportunities and a sustainable world. And it allows the European Union to become, once again, an aspirational forum embraced by younger generations because it provides a powerful idea of how to make our societies and our planet a better place. The EU can help us aspire for more. But it needs to stop churning out measures of economic rationalisation without making an effort to embrace a stronger normative vision of-and contribution to-our future.
Public
Our history was nation-based and our present is increasingly European. Our needs and aspirations are ever more of a transnational character, and the economic processes dictating our lives are global. Yet our political system remains national. It is this asymmetry between social reality and political structures that allows for the dominance of the economic over the political and of the executive over the parliamentary. That allows the market to anonymise its founding social capital-the trust between citizens. The asymmetry is so entrenched and systemic that these days markets can overthrow governments. But were politics not meant to tame and humanise the markets, rather than the other way around?
To reassert our capacity to control how we want our societies to function, we need to deconstruct our normative understanding of the public. We believe politics only functions by grace of a direct link between reality and fantasy. All political claims are fantasies: projections of how the future can be better or more just. And the role of politics is to translate those fantasies into reality. At the moment, however, we seem to be barking up the wrong tree. While the national political system remains invaluable in the redistribution of resources, it is no longer capable of constraining the economic system to ensure that it leads to socially-acceptable outcomes. It is incapable of securing our aspirations and needs beyond the nation-state. Yet we continue to articulate our fantasies within national political systems. In doing so, we perpetuate the status quo, allow the national executive to hide behind national interests when discussing transnational needs and aspirations, and enable the sidelining of representative institutions under the guise of inevitability.
If we want to reassert the dominance of the political over the economic, we need a European political space in which decisions are explained, fantasies are articulated and Europe’s trajectory is discussed. We need a space that can capture the trust between its citizens and meet their needs and aspirations, and whose leaders can be changed when it fails to do so. Giving the public a voice requires institutional and normative rebalancing. In institutional terms, we should move toward the establishment of European political parties and parliamentary elections in which each party proposes a candidate for commission president and a reduced role for the European Council in setting the political trajectory of the EU. Such changes would galvanise the transnational political discourse and introduce dynamic partisan politics into the decision-making process. But such changes will not be proposed by national politicians who stand to lose the most in the vast re-enfranchisement of European citizens. Instead, such changes require those citizens to reach beyond the boundaries and create a common, multilingual public space on the transnational level. This would be a space where ideas are exchanged, fantasies are formed and articulated, and politicians are forced to take notice.
Onwards
Condemned by the gods, King Sisyphus’s predicament was eternal. For us, it does not have to be. But if we want to escape the market’s circularity, we need to reassert who we are, what we want and how we can actually achieve it. None of these issues can be convincingly addressed by national political arrangements, nor by the EU as it is now. These shortcomings have allowed the economic system and the executive army of technocrats to take control of the citizens, who are no longer protected by the dominance of politics or representative parliaments. But Europe is more than a market. It has the potential to solve the systemic problems that are at the origin of our current economic, ecological and political crises. But we, its citizens, may have to force it to actually do so.
Image: trennstrickmaschine.de
Tags: Commentary