Prompted by the reset in thinking brought about by the euro crisis,
there has been a flurry of publications dealing with a possible
future of Europe recently. To begin with Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Guy
Verhofstadt – both of the rarest of species: Well known Members of
the European Parliament (EP) – published their federalist manifesto
Debout l'Europe! Martin
Schulz, President of the EP weighed in with his entry
tellingly entitled The Tied Up Giant – Europe's Last Chance.
Jürgen Habermas has also made his voice heard with an essay Zur
Verfassung Europas. Even that
weathercock of the subject du jour,
Bernard-Henri Levy, has co-signed a manifesto on Europe ou
le chaos? together with a number
of other European writers.
Ulrich Beck with his short essay on
The German Europe fits
right into this – important – fad. In his book, he provides a
criticism of the current state of Europe, while at the same time
putting forward a new Rousseauian social contract for a better future
Europe. His is an integrationist vision that he proclaims a necessity
for Europe if it is to be “capable of finding answers for [today's]
fundamental transformation and great challenges without falling into
the trap of xenophobia and violence.”
For Beck, Europe has become German
in a process that is determined by economic might on the one hand and
“Merkiavelli's”
(in)action on the other hand. Said inaction is what in particular
reinforces German power. It is not the fear to be dominated by German
money – or tanks – that prompts the submission to German policy
preferences, it is the all-dominating fear – inherently part of
modernity's risk
society
– of a forced exit from the Euro prompted by the absence
of German money that results in the political might of the country.
This German inaction has been
described and criticized (Beck: “Germany has become too
powerful to allow itself not to take a decision”)
elsewhere of course, Beck's analysis is nothing new in this regard
then. It also comes up surprisingly short when he claims that Merkel
had seized her chance and changed the balance of power in Europe.
Even while admits himself, that the current situation is untenable
with the crisis still very much – and once again – raging.
Germany's hesitant action at every
recurring point of deep crisis might be sufficient to contain the
problem of the day; an end to the crisis per se
cannot come without deep structural and institutional solutions.
Current German might in that regard is merely a temporary phenomenon
based on a specific politico-economic problem-set that allows the
country to position itself as a normative model whose policy
solutions others are expected to apply.
This temporary and sectoral – because economic – hegemony might
of course be translated into a more enduring institutional and
structural format once a sort of new European Union (2.0) has
emerged. Yet, Germany has so far produced little but a cacophony of
voices advocating changes with little tangible proposals emanating
from the supposed leader of the pack. It is is difficult to argue
then that Merkel has – at least so far – managed to implement a
lasting shift of powers within the EU's complex governance system.
Beck finally lays out his vision for
a social contract for Europe. He regards this kind of contract as the
overcoming of an out-dated national state of existence –
Nationalzustand.
Europe of course is not a society though, which means that a
“post-national society of national societies” has to be
constructed instead. The fact that there is no European people hardly
matters in this regard since our societies are increasingly
individualized in the first place.
The Erasmus generation were to live
this kind of individualized European life horizontally
already, even while the vertical,
institution-oriented process of integration, prompts their criticism
of Brussels. For Beck, this new social contract needs to be
accompanied by more social security at the European level especially
to address youth unemployment in Southern Europe. Increased
integration furthermore were to go along with an increased bottom-up
democratization process, leading to aforementioned individuals
emerging as the sovereign of European democracy.
The German sociologist lays out an interesting vision of a German
Europe, dominated by Merkiavelli's government. Yet, his analysis is a
disappointingly temporal nature, not taking into account demographic,
economic, nor even institutional changes, that will seriously impact
the intra-EU balance of power as he presents it. His proposed social
contract, finally, is an interesting idea that Beck seems to have no
idea how it could be implemented though.
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