Social Europe Europe Journal Volume Issue 2 SummerAutumn 2013 Editorial Board Detlev Albers Founder, University of Bremen † Giuliano Amato Former Italian Prime Minister Elisabeth

Social EuropeJournal Volume 7 • Issue 2

Summer/Autumn 2013

www.social-europe.eu

Contributions byPeer SteinbrückJürgen TrittinHannes Swoboda

Bela GalgocziJürgen Habermas Zygmunt Bauman

Europe After the German Election

Social Europe Journal • Volume 7 • Issue 2 • Summer/Autumn 2013

Editorial Board

Detlev Albers Founder, University of Bremen †

Giuliano Amato Former Italian Prime Minister

Elisabeth Guigou Former French Europe and Justice Minister

Klaus Mehrens Publisher, IG Metall

Henning Meyer Editor, London School of Economics and Political Science

Philippe Pochet General Director of the European Trade Union Institute

Poul Nyrup Rasmussen Former Danish Prime Minister

Karin Roth German Member of Parliament

Angelica Schwall-Düren Europe Minister of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Vera Trappmann University of Osnabrück / Otto Brenner Foundation

Dimitris Tsarouhas Bilkent University Ankara

Editorial Team

Jeannette Ladzik Assistant Editor

Ben Eldridge Design & Layout www.bitmap.co.uk

Social Europe Journal is published by Social Europe Ltd


ThE GErman fEdEraL election of 22nd September 2013 is one of the most hotly

anticipated events of this year’s political calendar. angela merkel’s leadership in the Eurozone crisis over recent years has been very controversial to say the least. The austerity course championed by the German Chancellor has caused massive economic and social prob-lems and has driven European partners apart.

But would the German opposi-tion govern in a significantly dif-ferent way if they were to win the election? We talked to the leading candidates of the German SPd and Greens, Peer Steinbrück and Jürgen Trittin, and asked what they think of the current government’s European policy course and what they would change if they were to assume office this autumn. as the austerity course has been a key point of division it received special attention in our interviews.

austerity and future-proof eco-nomic policy was also the over-arching topic of our interview with hannes Swoboda, leader of the S&d Group in the European Parliament. Less than a year before the next European elec-tions, Swoboda outlined how he would bring about greater solidar-ity in Europe and explained the means by which he would pursue necessary structural reforms in the Eurozone and beyond.

The current economic policy course is also the reason why many commentators believe that the European Social model is under threat. The ETUI’s Bela Galgoczi in his article investigates the rela-tionship between two ESms – the European Social model and the European Stability mechanism – before leading thinkers Jürgen habermas and Zygmunt Bauman take a broader view and examine how the current European crisis has changed European politics and democracy.

This issue provides detailed information about the German federal election but also a broader framework to think about the cur-rent European predicament. as the European crisis rumbles on, it becomes ever more important to be able to do both things: analyse current events but also set them into a broader framework that helps us to understand the deep-seated issues and develop solu-tions. We hope you enjoy reading the contributions in this issue.

Editorial

Henning Meyer

Editor of Social Europe Journal and Research Associate at the Public Policy Group (PPG) of the London School of Economics and Political Science


The Eurozone Crisis and the Future of the European UnionPeer Steinbrück

Angela Merkel’s European Policy and the Future of Europe Jürgen Trittin

The Progressive Way Out of the Crisishannes Swoboda

ESM: European Social Model or European Stability Mechanism – is there a crash?Bela Galgoczi

Democracy, Solidarity and the European CrisisJürgen habermas

Europe Is Trapped Between Power and Politics Zygmunt Bauman

Contents

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5 Social Europe Journal • Volume 7 • Issue 2 • Summer/Autumn 2013

‘I want to see Europe doing more to encourage growth, innovation and employment, and making available the necessary financial resources’

ANGELA MERKEL’S EUROPEAN policy has so far not succeeded in solving the Eurozone cri-

sis and has been widely criticised across Europe. If you became the next German Chancellor, what would you change in the German European pol-icy approach? Would you change the current austerity policy that is widely viewed as the main reason for Europe’s bad economic performance?

absolutely, yes! fiscal retrenchment and reforms aimed at increasing competitive-ness are undoubtedly right, especially in the European crisis countries. But the austerity programs now being imposed on these countries are misconceived and dangerous. The current crisis strategy is clearly too one-sided. The consequence is recession in the countries affected, rap-idly rising unemployment, a widening gap between rich and poor and social tensions that could also threaten the future of democracy in these countries. So as well as promoting sound fiscal discipline, I want to see Europe doing more to encour-age growth, innovation and employment, and making available the necessary finan-cial resources.

But if you are asking me what I would do differently if I were German Chancellor, then there is another aspect to this that matters greatly to me. This has to do not so much with specific polit-ical initiatives, but rather with the gen-eral stance adopted by Germany in its political engagement in and for Europe. What I believe is this: if Europe does not want to be broken apart by this crisis, and is not prepared to settle for a stick-ing-plaster solution that simply seeks to avoid the worst, then its political actions must be guided by a sense of solidarity and an acceptance of collective responsi-bility. That means that Germany’s policy towards Europe must have larger aims in view than simply pushing its own short-term national agenda at the European level. Instead such a policy must serve the higher interest that Germany has in the creation of a strong Europe. Unfortunately this is a consideration that the present German government loses sight of all too often.

Angela Merkel often talks about the need for Eurozone crisis countries to adjust their competitiveness, i.e. prices and wages. A balance of payments crisis is often regarded as the key underlying structural problem of the Eurozone. But in this context both deficit and surplus countries play an important role. What do you think surplus coun-tries such as Germany need to do in order to help overcome the Eurozone crisis? Are higher wages and a legal minimum wage in Germany part of the solution?

The Eurozone Crisis and the future of the European Union

Peer Steinbrück

SPD Chancellor candidate for the German federal election in September 2013


‘neither Germany nor france nor the United Kingdom will be able to promote their interests in the global arena more effectively on their own than if they stick together’

The basic problem is this: mrs. merkel takes a one-sided view of the crisis in the Eurozone, seeing it as something that in truth it only is in part – namely a debt crisis affecting individual countries. as for the underlying causes of the crisis – the excesses on the financial markets, the deficits in the European banking system and the structural weaknesses in the European Economic and monetary Union – she more or less blanks them out. and this is precisely why far too lit-tle is being done about stricter regulation of the financial markets and the bank-ing sector, and about improving coordi-nation of economic policy between the EmU member states. I know we’ve had a whole series of resolutions and agree-ments, not to mention several growth packages, an EU 2020 strategy and the Euro Plus Pact; but there has been little concrete progress on any of this, let alone any sensible coordination designed to ensure that the desired economic incen-tives translate into more jobs.

What Europe still lacks is a consistent and definitive coordination of economic, fiscal and social policy with the clear aim of securing growth and prosperity for the long term. as I see it, that entails not only a commitment by deficit coun-tries to improve their competitiveness, but also an acceptance of responsibility by surplus countries such as Germany to contribute something towards the cor-rection of economic imbalances within the Eurozone. This is one reason why fair wage settlements and a legal minimum

wage are important and sensible steps, which my party wants to see introduced in Germany.

The British Prime Minister David Cameron has recently given a speech in which he demanded a special deal for the United Kingdom in the chang-ing European Union. What is your reaction to his speech? Can there be a special deal for a single country? Or would this be the beginning of the end for the European Union as every mem-ber state would then seek to opt-out of the aspects of the Union they don’t like, making the EU effectively ungovern-able? What solution for this problem do you see? Could the future of the EU be a multi-speed Europe with the Eurozone at its core and a second tier of non-Euro member states?

Europe is a political community. as such it can only function if all the member states are willing to embrace a certain degree of solidarity, and if they share the belief that this European Union possesses a value from which all of them collectively benefit. But if one country thinks only of itself and asks how it can extract the max-imum possible advantage from the EU, and is not willing to put something back into the European community, then it weakens the EU as a whole and damages its own long-term interests. The value of a strong and united European Union for us all is self-evident in my view: in the 21st century, when ideas and values, poli-tics and economics have become global commodities, Europe can only hope to compete successfully as a united whole. neither Germany nor france nor the United Kingdom will be able to promote their interests in the global arena more effectively on their own than if they stick together. and this is precisely why it is so important for the United Kingdom not to leave the European Union, because it brings a political and economic weight to this community that we really need going forward. Of course, in the future – as in the past – not all member countries will


always move ahead at the same speed and on the same broad front. and of course we will also need to make further progress towards a better European economic and financial policy, particularly within the European Economic and monetary Union. But this internal differentiation must not be allowed to lead to a situation where European unity as a whole starts to disintegrate. and that would certainly be the result if European policy were to become some kind of bazaar, where each member is only intent on getting what it thinks is best for itself by threat-ening to opt out or leave the European Community. This would not work in the long run.

Where do you see the European Union ten years from now?

That is probably harder to predict than ever before. a great deal depends on what decisions the EU takes – or doesn’t take – in the next few years in order to get itself out of the crisis and position itself bet-ter for the future. What happens in the immediate future will determine whether Europe emerges from the crisis unified and strengthened, and whether it will be in a position ten years from now to hold on to its prosperity, its model of society, and indeed its freedom and democracy, and to build on these in the face of competition from the world’s other emerging regions. The alternative would be a Europe that is unravelling, economically and politically weakened to the point where it can no longer play an important or creative role in tomorrow’s world. I don’t believe it has to come to this, provided we Europeans can get it together and find the courage to take political decisions that do not always reflect merely the lowest common denominator, but are founded on the awareness that we are stronger together, and can achieve more if we stay together.


Jürgen Trittin

The leading candidate of the German Greens for the federal election in September 2013

angela merkel’s European Policy and the future of Europe

ANGELA MERKEL’S EUROPEAN policy has so far not succeeded in solving the Eurozone crisis and has

been widely criticised across Europe. The recent Italian election has again shown the level of discontent with Europe’s political direction. If you were part of the next German government what would you like to change in the German European policy approach? Would you change the current austerity policy that is widely viewed as the main reason for Europe’s bad economic performance?

The crisis is not, as mrs. merkel wants us to believe, the result of excessive state debts, but is due to a crashed banking system that increased the level of debt of banks and private households. The fact that governments all over Europe had to bail out the ailing banking sector led to an increase of state debts. The sec-ond cause of the crisis are the economic imbalances between the member states of the Eurozone. Obviously, the Chancellor ignores these root causes of the crisis and rather continues to impose strict austerity policies. I do believe that we need sound fiscal and budgetary policies through-out the EU-member states. however, the recession many EU member states are facing and the alarming increase of unemployment rates in the southern and some eastern European states, especially among young people, show that austerity alone is the wrong way out of the crisis. We desperately need more investments in sustainable growth and education in order to create jobs and offer a perspec-tive for young people in Europe. But the

recent compromise on the long-term EU budget, pushed for by mrs. merkel, shows that the priority is again given to big agro businesses rather than to invest-ments in growth and jobs. This is a wor-rying development and the wrong policy for the future of the EU. In the course of the negotiations on the European fis-cal treaty we forced the government to impose a financial Transaction Tax and increase investments. a new government in Germany would certainly stick to this approach: solving the debt crisis not by austerity measures but by an European tax pact that strengthens the income side of the state budgets and thus gives more room for investments in sustainable growth and education.

Angela Merkel often talks about the need for Eurozone crisis countries to adjust their competitiveness, i.e. prices and wages. A balance of payments crisis is often regarded as the key underlying structural problem of the Eurozone. But in this context both deficit and sur-plus countries play an important role. What do you think surplus countries such as Germany need to do in order to help overcome the Eurozone crisis? Are higher wages and a legal minimum wage in Germany part of the solution?

There is no way around it: we need to reduce the economic imbalances within the Eurozone. This includes both defi-cit and surplus countries like Germany. 25% of Germany’s export surplus was generated in Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain and Portugal. So for years Germany has


benefitted from a policy of economic imbalances at the expense of deficit states that consequently had to face a downturn and in turn an increase of their state debt, which led to the current crisis. Solving the structural problems within the Eurozone is therefore in Germany’s own best inter-est. It is important to strengthen the competitiveness in the deficit states and at the same time increase the domes-tic demand in Germany, for example by implementing a legal minimum wage. Germany is one of the last countries without a minimum wage in Europe. furthermore, the EU needs to evolve into a real economic and monetary union. a common currency without strongly coordinated economic, financial and fis-cal policies just won’t work. We have to reduce our state debts in Europe, impose strong regulation of the financial markets and establish a common, effective bank-ing supervision as well as an European pact against tax evasion.

The British Prime Minister David Cameron has recently given a speech in which he demanded a special deal for the United Kingdom in the chang-ing European Union. What is your reaction to his speech? Can there be a special deal for a single country? Or would this be the beginning of the end for the European Union as every mem-ber state would then seek to opt-out of the aspects of the Union they don’t like, making the EU effectively ungovern-able? What solution for this problem do you see? Could the future of the EU be a

multi-speed Europe with the Eurozone at its core and a second tier of non-Euro member states?

The truth is, the way out of the crisis can only be achieved by more integration and more coordinated policies on the European level. It is not acceptable that david Cameron obviously wants to ben-efit from the advantages of a common European market but is not willing to contribute to a more integrated Europe. I would be happy to see a pro-active and constructive role of Great Britain con-cerning the future of Europe, but in the end it is the British citizens who will have to decide whether to stay in the EU and integrate further or not.

Where do you see the European Union ten years from now?

Ten years from now, the states in crisis have hopefully recovered and we have implemented a real economic and mon-etary union in the EU. The regulation of the financial markets with an effec-tive banking supervision and an imposed financial Transaction Tax will be useful measures to avoid another crisis in the Eurozone and to make the responsible players take a share of the costs of the cri-sis. The EU will be on its way towards a sustainable economy based on renewable energies and resource efficient produc-tion. most importantly, ten years from now, the European Union will hopefully be stronger than ever, economically, but also politically and democratically. for the Green Party, it is crucial to strengthen democratic participation and control of political decisions by a stronger European Parliament. We as Greens stand for a stronger and integrated European Union. To achieve this goal, we also need to shift national competences to the European level in order to obtain more political sovereignty. all this can only be done by triggering a broad public debate on what kind of European Union we want and by making people participate in the debates and decisions on Europe.

‘It is not acceptable that david Cameron obviously wants to benefit from the advantages of a common European market but is not willing to contribute to a more integrated Europe’


The Progressive Way Out of the Crisis

Hannes Swoboda

Leader of the S&D Group in the European Parliament

This is an abbreviated version of an interview that first appeared in ‘Basta! An End To Austerity’ by Hannes Swoboda and David Gow

WHy DO PEOPLE feel that the crisis – which has been going on for several years – is get-

ting worse every day rather than better?

There are several reasons and it would be naïve and simplistic to say there’s only one. There’s, of course, the ques-tion of the extreme liberalization of mar-kets, especially financial markets; more competition, with China and India add-ing a billion more workers to a more or less common market. There’s the really restrictive, neo-liberal reaction to that kind of development and this is the basic reason for the prolongation of the crisis.

So, it’s not that there’s an endemic crisis in Europe or that Europe is in perma-nent decline?

no. There is a rebalancing between the different continents. If you look back 150, 200 years ago China had a much bigger share of the global economy and then the US and Europe made extraordinary

advances in the 19th and 20th centuries. now, of course, with the new growth of China and the BrICs there’s a rebalanc-ing but that is not the problem. The real reason is the neo-conservative view that we can only compete if we reduce labour costs, wages, salaries and workers’ rights. We, the European left, insist it is also a matter of public policy: our competitive edge is guaranteed through investment and quality skills. We cannot win if we downgrade to Chinese labour relations and salaries. We can only win this com-petition or be able to sustain our position in the world if we aim for qualifications and quality – and that means investment, both public and private.

Each day brings more bad news, espe-cially for countries ‘in the programme’, so is there any sense of light at the end of the tunnel?

I see not enough light at the end of the tunnel. We have to put back steam and power into the economy but the eco-nomic policy championed by the right today is wrong. There’s no country tak-ing the lead or helping to turn the situ-ation around. Germany and some other smaller countries are satisfied they’re in a better position but are not trying to create any stimulus or incentive for increased economic activity. But this is exactly what would lead other countries out of the crisis. Quite apart from the fact that it would be good for Germany, which has got its own social problems and still needs to modernise its infrastructure and spur its faltering growth.

‘Our competitive edge is guaranteed through investment and quality skills. We cannot win if we downgrade to Chinese labour relations and salaries’


So, the surplus countries, especially Germany, are not doing enough, not showing enough solidarity?

Of course we need more solidarity but, equally, we need more reforms in the countries with bigger problems. The Germans, especially angela merkel, hold the position that you have to beat the people, make them obey, punish them into reforming. It’s a moralistic way of dealing with them, a Calvinistic view that the people we’re punishing are lazy, especially in the south…You have to whip them into reforms – and that’s the phi-losophy you see every day in the German media. There’s no sense of incentives, of transfers of know-how or technology… The policies of investment-led growth we’d like Germany to pursue are not a simple act of solidarity but in the coun-try’s own interests. This way, it can both address its pressing problems such as the rise in inequality at home and secure its economic future by boosting growth and jobs among its euro area partners.

Given that there are almost six million young people who are out of work (it’s nearly as high as 60% in Greece and Spain, almost on the scale of the 1920s and 1930s) how does the democratic left offer hope?

first of all, the democratic left must offer comprehensive policies of reform. States like Greece and Italy need a lot of reforms, of modernisation in the sense of restruc-turing the state to make it more efficient, more responsible – and more responsive to the citizens… advancing society, pro-ducing an alternative to austerity, means public investment in education, research and development, infrastructure and other sectors. We’re not saying we’re against reducing debt but it must take place over a longer period. Saying we’re in favour of higher debt is nonsense because debt recklessly incurred is a heavy burden on the state; we don’t want taxpayers’ money to feed bondholders but, like a well-run business, borrow only to invest,

to create growth and jobs. Let’s reduce debt by all means but without destroy-ing our future at the same time. Slashing spending on education, research and vital infrastructure, as we’ve been doing, will leave a terrible legacy for future genera-tions. and no one country can make this good it on its own.

you say there must be structural reforms but which ones and how would they come about?

The first element is public investment which is a powerful tool to rebalance our economy, raise competitiveness and help spur the industries of the future. But the rate of investment is going down enormously, even in richer countries like Germany, the infrastructure is deteriorat-ing to the point where bridges may have to be closed because they are dangerous to cross. So we back investment in nec-essary infrastructure and in broadband investment to help create modern jobs, education, training and housing.

Slowing down the pace of debt repay-ment makes room for reasonable invest-ment at the national and European scale, to modernise the economy and make it more competitive at the international level. Structural reforms to repair the weaknesses that, emerging in the past two or three decades, have created the deep-est and longest recession since the 1930s are urgently required. To do so demands not just stricter, smarter regulation of the financial sector but also a reform of cor-porate governance. Europe must end the culture of short-termism in business and encourage companies with incentives to invest for the long-term, through innova-tion and r&d.

Labour market reform is certainly nec-essary but, for us, its purpose must be to create a well-trained, adaptable work-force and promote partnership between management and employees. We can agree to more flexibility on the labour market if it is combined with more secu-rity, the famous ‘flexicurity’ in nordic countries, where a higher percentage of


public spending goes into training and retraining. That can be self-sustaining in the long run because now we would have less money being spent on unemploy-ment benefits and more on training and retraining. The ratio between spend-ing on benefits and on retraining has to change and employers and unions must agree on developments such as short-time working to keep people working in a crisis and then enabling them to go back to full time work, again with advantages for both sides. People keep their jobs and the employer keeps good people, retain-ing skilled labour. There are many oppor-tunities for both sides to agree upon measures and especially to combat youth unemployment.

What kind of society do you envisage?

If, for example, we take just 20% of the tax currently evaded and stashed away in tax havens (estimated to amount to a total of €1 trillion every year), we could have investment, public and private, to create jobs and to green our economies – for the ecological reconstruction of our society. The wrong turn Europe has taken in this long period of conservative ascendancy is to put the economic bottom line ahead of everything else. That is a poor, impover-ished vision of life, and even as an eco-nomic philosophy – as we have seen – it is fragile and self-defeating.

There is a major chance that the next recovery will not take place on the old terms – putting the bottom line ahead of everything else – but will be a new modern model that can be an example to others, to the US and China. You can compete and have growth and jobs and, at the same time, reduce your ecologi-cal footprint on the earth and the eco-system. What some have called a realistic utopia. We are the only group which can combine creating jobs, the social dimen-sion and ecological renewal.


Bela Galgoczi

Senior Researcher at the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) in Brussels

ESm: European Social model or European Stability mechanism – is there a crash?

ThE aCrOnYm ‘ESm’ stood for a long time for a set of common European

social values, goals, illusions even, to express a certain common iden-tity for the EU especially when compared to other regions of the world, notably the US. for a few years now, ESm has been the lead-ing acronym in the media for the Eurozone’s main crisis manage-ment tool, the European Stability mechanism. Just a coincidence, one may say, but there is a deeper layer behind this shift of focus. mario draghi even declared the European Social model as dead and indeed it has an uncertain future given the current state of the Eurozone and the entire EU.

Beyond the coincidence of the acronyms, there is a fundamen-tal clash between Europe’s social ambitions and the way adjust-ment is under way. The condi-tionality of any bailout or support from the Stability mechanism is geared clearly in one direction: austerity, cost cutting and under-mining of social standards, this all

means ‘rebalancing’ downwards. Greece has lost 25% of its GdP during this process up till now.

The idea of the European Social model has always taken the back seat in the process of European integration. Some of the politi-cal science literature (Streeck, W 2000; Scharpf, f 2002; martin, a & ross, G 2006) argued that while the single market project has always been the hard core of European integration backed by hard law and its flagship project EmU, albeit on the base of an incomprehensive architecture as we have bitterly learned during the crisis, the social dimension has always been based on decla-rations, wish lists and, well, the Open method of Coordination. more than that was just based on ad hoc ideas, e.g. some sort of a tax harmonisation, or even cor-ridors of budget redistribution ratios, although the latter should not be seen as a totally unrealistic idea. While the EmU has clearly been a new stage of integration and much of the underlying regu-latory framework is based on fis-cal rules (by far not satisfactory as we again learned during the recent crisis), it is hard to imag-ine seriously that one can have a common fiscal platform among member states that have public expenditure ratios of GdP in the range between 34% and 57%. and indeed, some elements of social

‘The idea of the European Social model has always taken the back seat in the process of European integration’


spending have been scrutinized during the rebalancing act: pen-sion systems and social spend-ing are under huge pressure, but again the direction is downwards.

Besides debt consolidation and fiscal austerity, the other main dimension of crisis management focuses on the adjustment in the divergence of competitive posi-tions among EmU members. The therapy here is also biased into one direction: downwards. On the one hand, adjustment poli-cies are asymmetrical with the whole burden of correction put on deficit countries, while sur-plus countries are not seriously involved. On the other hand the correction in the competitiveness gap (gap in unit labour cost devel-opments) is forced out through the price channel (dominantly through a cut in labour costs, ie. wages) while non-price aspects of competitiveness (economic and export structure, productivity, quality) are ignored. This again results in a downward bias.

all this leads to asymmetric and downward adjustment, where mostly peripheral, lower income countries are affected. The result of this crisis management strat-egy is a persistently growing gap between surplus and deficit

countries that manifests itself in a diverging Europe (a detailed anal-ysis is given in ETUC/ETUI 2013).

Where has the big European dream about convergence been lost?

From convergence to divergence – where is the EU heading to?Beside the historical founding principle of the EU as a peace-keeping project, it was the pros-pect of convergence that gave true substance to the European idea for millions of people. This seemed to work for several dec-ades. now that Europe’s flagship project, the single currency, is in trouble and responding to the external shock posed by the finan-cial crisis and adjustment therapy forces its member states into a diverging downwards spiral, this essential and fundamental mis-sion seems to be evaporating.

The promise of income conver-gence – between poorer and richer member states and among the poorer and richer regions within them – has been an underpinning feature of European integration from the outset. In this respect, a glance back over fifty years of EU history up to the crisis pro-vides confirmation of an unprec-edented feat. as stated in a recent

World Bank (2012) report: ‘The European convergence in con-sumption levels in the last four decades is unmatched. Except for East asia, the rest of the world has seen little or no convergence’. Indeed, already by the early 1990s the incomes of more than one hundred million people in the poor South – Greece, Southern Italy, Portugal, and Spain – had grown and moved closer to those of the more prosperous areas of Europe. Similarly, between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s, the income levels of one hun-dred million people in Central Eastern Europe were dynami-cally converging towards levels in the richer part of the continent. figure 1 offers a historical glance at the economic divide in Europe, showing that Central Eastern European countries still have sub-stantially lower per capita GdP levels (at PPS) than the EU27 aver-age. The data also indicate mile-stones in the last fifteen years, showing the varying convergence

Figure 1 Income gaps and convergence: GDP/capita as percentage of EU27 total for selected years and countries (based on market prices at PPS)


dynamic of individual countries in the different periods.

most of the convergence took place between 2000 and 2007, after which it lost momentum or even went into reverse. It is apparent also from the graph that Greece and Portugal stand out as having displayed no convergence whatsoever over the whole fif-teen-year period. The year 2008, with the onset of crisis, marked a halt in these processes of conver-gence achieved via a catching up of the less prosperous countries and regions, placing a question mark over the continuing sus-tainability of some of the progress achieved in the earlier phases of European integration.

although 2008 was a common point of fracture for both East and South, the experiences of these two regions were significantly dif-ferent. While convergence ground to a definite standstill in Southern Europe, in the Central Eastern European (CEE) countries the much stronger impetus towards convergence came to a more abrupt halt which, in some cases, nonetheless proved no more than temporary. Indeed, in most CEE countries – and particularly those with the lowest per capita GdP levels – a rapid process of catch-ing up had been observable in the years before the crisis. In Southern Europe, however, the picture had been more mixed, even during the boom period, with Spain hav-ing achieved significant conver-gence, while Greece and Portugal had tended to stagnate. Latvia and Lithuania, the two coun-tries which suffered the most dramatic falls in output in 2009 (17.7% and 14.8% respectively), nonetheless showed still impres-sive overall convergence for the 1995-2011 period as a whole, with per capita GdP levels relative to

the EU27 rising from 31% to 59% for Latvia and from 35% to 66% for Lithuania.

The picture for Southern Europe is much bleaker: between 1995 and 2011 the region showed no convergence – in the case of Greece and Portugal – or, in Spain, only limited convergence to EU27 levels. Thus, while Spain still achieved some convergence over these 16 years, from 91% to 98%, Portugal saw none over the entire period (77% in 1995 and still in 2011), while Greece actu-ally suffered a loss of conver-gence (from 80% in 1995 to 77% in 2011). all three countries suf-fered significant setbacks in the wake of the crisis, most particu-larly Greece with a 14% drop in its relative income level between 2008 and 2011.

What matters is economic structure, not costsThe different pattern in the catch-ing-up process in the East and the South is the result of a number of underlying structural differ-ences among European countries that have affected their respective paths in economic integration. We take a look at four important driv-ers of economic integration that played a key role in convergence: exports; the balance-of-payments situation and its structure; foreign direct investment (fdI); and the role of credit flows.

Currently, the most pro-nounced division in Europe appears between ‘surplus’ and ‘deficit’ countries, as determined by their balance-of-payments position within the Euro area, with the core ‘surplus coun-tries’ clustered around Germany and the ‘deficit’ ones around the mediterranean. a similar dis-tinction applies beyond the Euro area, with a number of CEE

countries belonging to the ‘sur-plus’ core (e.g. the Czech republic and Poland) and the more periph-eral CEE crisis-ridden countries (e.g. the Baltic states) falling into the ‘deficit’ group. This division between surplus and deficit coun-tries thus cuts across the histori-cal divisions between the East and the West of the continent.

The Czech republic, hungary and Slovakia had broadly bal-anced trade even before the cri-sis, whereas Latvia, Bulgaria, Greece, romania and Portugal were, during this period, used to have persistent and double-digit trade deficits.

The key distinction to be consid-ered here is the one we see between countries that experienced credit bubbles in terms of huge credit expansion that was then followed by a credit crunch and recession and those with a more balanced development. The credit expan-sion underpinned the current-account deficits in the South and in the deficit countries in the East. With the credit crunch and the accumulated high debt, short-term growth and convergence effects achieved through credit expan-sion evaporated all of a sudden and turned into their reverse.

When looking at key features of ‘deficit’ and ‘surplus’ countries on the periphery, we see impor-tant structural differences in their economies. While ‘surplus’ countries in the East had a large scale of foreign direct investment into their productive sectors and have a high export share in their GdP, this is not the case for the deficit countries in the South. for illustration figure 2 shows export shares for this group of countries.

moreover some figures also indicate that even if wage and unit labour cost develop-ments showed a high grade of


divergence in the decade up to the crisis when the competitive positions of periphery countries (both in the East and the South) deteriorated substantially in com-parison to Germany, there is no fundamental cost competitive-ness problem if we look at the lev-els of productivity and wage costs in their tradable (manufacturing) sector. figure 3 shows that based on the manufacturing sector, periphery countries would not have a cost competitiveness prob-lem with Germany. The problem some have is more of a structural nature: the share of manufactur-ing and exports in general is very low in their economy.

The case of the two peripheries in Europe demonstrates that the competitiveness problem of some of the mediterranean countries is much more due to deeply rooted structural problems than just price and costs levels. Since the therapy is focused almost exclusively on cost and wage cuts, not addressing their structural problems, it is not only that their previous achieve-ments in convergence are wiped out, but their future perspectives are also put at stake.

although tackling these struc-tural problems through cost

adjustment (wage and spend-ing cuts) can deliver temporary results in cost competitiveness at the price of a dramatic increase in poverty and unemployment, in the end these inevitable ‘side effects’ also jeopardize the suc-cess of the entire adjustment. Cost adjustment is simply not an adequate way of addressing the longer-term structural problems (such as the share of manufactur-ing in the whole economy, export shares, qualitative composition of exports, place in the international division of labour, etc.).

The problem, to put it bluntly, was not that consumers in the surplus countries had been buy-ing less olive oil and port wine due to rising unit labour costs in Greece or Portugal. In other words, the cure chosen to date is one that tackles the symptoms but not the causes of the problem.

Even if part of the achieved convergence before the crisis can be deemed as not sustain-able, this points to a policy fail-ure. European institutions, in a series of reports and commu-nications, were proud to give account of growing employment and income convergence in many of the periphery countries

up to 2007. This progress was also seen as partial achievement of the Lisbon targets. If much of this was not based on real perfor-mance it is also a strong criticism of EU policies. European leaders cannot just shrug their shoulders and say, sorry, what we believed and welcomed as achievement turned out to be (partially) fake. It was just an illusion, we can wipe this out. It is a matter of fact that much of the unsus-tainable expansion was due to a huge capital allocation problem resulting also from irresponsible finances and lending practices (dominantly through banks in surplus countries). now ordi-nary working people should pay the price and those who blew the bubble are safeguarded.

ConclusionsThe crisis has highlighted the diversity of economic models and of their sustainability during hard times and external shocks in the European ‘peripheries’. Convergence of income levels

Figure 2 Exports of goods and services (% GDP)


between poorer regions in the South and the East towards the level of rich countries in the centre has been one of the big European objectives and seemed to func-tion for several decades. This also strongly contributed to the legiti-macy and public support of the European Union. Convergence, although mostly driven by eco-nomic processes, had also been a fundamental factor in maintain-ing a European Social model amid diversity at member state level.

While divergence in the eco-nomic catching-up processes, particularly after 2008, showed an East-South division, the mul-tiple fault lines characterizing the diversity of political and economic structures can be shown to cut across historical and geographic country groups. The credit crunch of 2008 highlighted the divi-sion between the countries with current account surpluses, the European ‘core’ around Germany including also the Central Eastern European exporters, and the ‘deficit’ countries, including

mediterranean countries and a number of countries in Central Eastern Europe. Given the lack of effective adjustment mechanisms in the Euro area, the surplus-deficit divide quickly turned into the difficult creditor-debtor rela-tionship. The ‘debtor’ countries then experienced a prolonged agony of negotiated and imposed adjustments in the context of crisis-driven Euro area institu-tion-building. Given the unequal power relations between debtors and creditors, the concerns of the latter inevitably came to domi-nate the nature of the adjustment efforts made.

What we clearly see now is that if convergence is driven by eco-nomic processes only, the result will not be enduring and bal-anced; more political and institu-tional integration is needed, the Single market alone will not do the job. The paradox and most worrying phenomenon is that political integration in the form of economic governance that evolves through the current crisis management practice of the EU is precisely doing the opposite: it drives diversity further up to the point that may tear the Eurozone and the EU apart.

Figure 3 Wage-adjusted productivity in manufacturing in selected countries, 2009

ReferencesETUC/ETUI, 2013: Benchmarking Working Europe – 2013, ETUI, Brussels.

Andrew Martin and George Ross, 2004: ‘Introduction: EMU and the European Social Model’, in Andrew Martin and George Ross (eds.), Euros and Europeans. Monetary Integration and the European Social Model (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

Fritz Scharpf, 2002: ‘The European Social Model: Coping with the Challenges of Diversity’, Journal of Common Market Studies Vol 40, No 4 (2002), p. 665.

Wolfgang Streeck, 2000: Competitive Solidarity: Rethinking the European Social Model, In: Karl Hinrichs, Claus Offe, Herbert Kitschelt, Helmut Wiesenthal (eds): Kontingenz und Krise, Campus, Frankfurt, New York, 2000.

World Bank, 2012: EU11 Regular Economic report: Coping with External Headwinds, World Bank Office, Zagreb.


Jürgen Habermas

German sociologist and philosopher

democracy, Solidarity and the European Crisis

ThE EUrOPEan UnIOn owes its existence to the efforts of political elites

who could count on the passive consent of their more or less indif-ferent populations as long as the peoples could regard the Union as also being in their economic interests, all things considered. The Union has legitimized itself in the eyes of the citizens primar-ily through its outcomes and not so much by the fact that it has fulfilled the citizens’ political will. This state of affairs is explained not only by the history of its ori-gins but also by the legal consti-tution of this unique formation. The European Central Bank, the Commission, and the European Court of Justice have intervened most profoundly in the every-day lives of European citizens over the decades, even though these institutions are the least subject to democratic controls. moreover, the European Council,

which has energetically taken the initiative during the current cri-sis, is made up of heads of gov-ernment whose role in the eyes of their citizens is to represent their respective national interests in distant Brussels. finally, at least the European Parliament was supposed to construct a bridge between the political conflict of opinions in the national arenas and the momentous decisions taken in Brussels – but this bridge is almost devoid of traffic.

Thus, to the present day, there remains a gulf at the European level between the citizens’ opin-ion and will formation, on the one hand, and the policies actu-ally adopted to solve the press-ing problems, on the other. This also explains why conceptions of the European Union and ideas of its future development have remained diffuse among the gen-eral population. Informed opin-ions and articulated positions are, for the most part, the monopoly of professional politicians, eco-nomic elites, and scholars with relevant interests; not even pub-lic intellectuals who generally participate in debates on burning issues have made this issue their own.1 What unites European citizens today is the Eurosceptic mindset that has become more pronounced in all of the member countries during the crisis, albeit in each country for different and

‘There remains a gulf at the European level between the citizens’ opinion and will formation, on the one hand, and the policies actually adopted to solve the pressing problems, on the other’


rather polarizing reasons. This trend may be an important fact for the political elites to take into account; but the growing resist-ance is not really decisive for the actual course of European policy-making which is largely decoupled from the national are-nas. The actual course of the cri-sis management is pushed and implemented in the first place by the large camp of pragmatic politicians who pursue an incre-mentalist agenda but lack a com-prehensive perspective. They are oriented towards ‘more Europe’ because they want to avoid the far more dramatic and presumably costly alternative of abandoning the Euro.

Starting with the roadmap that the European institutions have designed for developing a ‘Genuine Economic and monetary Union’, I will first explain the technocratic dilemma in which this project is likely to become entangled (I). In the second part I would like to present alterna-tive steps towards a supranational democracy in the core of Europe and the obstacles we would have to overcome on that road (II). The major hindrance, the lack of solidarity, leads me in the last and philosophical part to a clarifica-tion of this difficult, yet genuinely political concept (III).

IThe Commission, the Presidency of the Council, and the European Central Bank – known in Brussels parlance as ‘the institutions’ – are least subject to legitimation pressures because of their rela-tive distance to national public spheres. So it was up to them to present, in december 2012, the first more detailed document in which the European Union devel-ops a perspective for reforms in

the medium and long term that go beyond the present, more or less dilatory, reactions to critical symptoms.2 Within this expanded timescale the attention is no longer focussed on the cluster of causes that, since 2010, have con-nected the global banking crisis with the vicious circle of over-indebted European states and undercapitalized banks refinanc-ing each other. The important and long overdue ‘Blueprint’, as it is called, directs attention to long-term structural causes inherent in the monetary Union itself.

The Economic and monetary Union took shape during the 1990s in accordance with the ordoliberal ideas of the Stability and Growth Pact. The monetary Union was conceived as a sup-porting pillar of an economic constitution that stimulates free competition among market play-ers across national borders, and it is organized in accordance with general rules binding for all member states.3 Even with-out the instrument of devaluing national currencies, that is not available in a monetary union, the differences in levels of com-petitiveness among the national economies were supposed to even out of their own accord. But the assumption that permitting unre-strained competition in accord-ance with fair rules would lead to similar unit labor costs and equal levels of prosperity, thereby obvi-ating the need for joint decision-making on financial, economic and social policies, has proved to be false. Because the optimal con-ditions for a single currency in the Eurozone are not satisfied, the structural imbalances between national economies that existed from the start have become more acute; and they will become even more acute as long as the

European policy pattern does not break with the principle that each member state takes sover-eign decisions within the relevant policy fields without taking other member states into considera-tion; in other words, exclusively from its own national perspec-tive.4 In spite of some conces-sions, however, until now the German federal government has clung steadfastly to this dogma.

It is to the credit of the Commission and the Presidency of the Council that they have addressed the actual cause of the crisis – namely the faulty design of a monetary union that still holds fast to the political self-understanding of an alliance of sovereign states (as the ‘Herren der Verträge’). according to the aforementioned reform proposal, the so-called Blueprint, three essential, though vaguely defined, objectives are to be realized at the end of a path projected to last five years: first, joint politi-cal decision-making at the EU level on ‘integrated guidelines’ for coordinating fiscal, budget, and economic policies of the individual states.5 This would call for an agreement that pre-vents the economic policy of one member state from having nega-tive external effects on the econ-omy of another member state. furthermore, an EU budget based on the right to levy taxes with a European financial administra-tion is envisaged for the purpose of country-specific stimulus pro-grams. This would generate scope for selectively focused public investments through which the structural imbalances within the monetary Union could be com-bated. finally, Euro bonds and a debt repayment fund are sup-posed to make possible a partial collectivization of state debts.


This would relieve the European Central Bank of the task of pre-venting speculation against indi-vidual states in the Eurozone that it has currently assumed on an informal basis.

These objectives can only be realized if cross-border transfer payments with the correspond-ing transnational redistribution effects were to be accepted. from the perspective of the constitu-tionally required legitimation, therefore, the monetary Union would have to be expanded into a real political union. The report of the Commission naturally pro-poses the European Parliament for this purpose and correctly states that closer ‘inter-parlia-mentary cooperation as such does not … ensure democratic legitimacy for EU decisions.’6 On the other hand, the Commission takes into consideration the res-ervations of the heads of state and adheres so radically to the princi-ple of exhausting the present legal basis of the Lisbon Treaty that it conceives the transfer of compe-tences from the national to the European level as occurring only in a rather gradual and inconspic-uous way.7

The obvious aim is to post-pone a revision of the Treaties to the very end. The Commission accords the expansion of steer-ing capacities priority in the short and the medium term over a corresponding enlargement of the basis of legitimation. Thus the ultimate democratization is presented as a promise, like a light at the end of the tun-nel. Supranational democracy remains the declared long-term goal on paper. But postponing democracy is a rather dangerous move. If the economic constraints imposed by markets happily meet the flexibility of a free-floating

European technocracy, there arises the immediate risk that the gradual unification process which is planned for, but not by, the people will grind to a halt before the proclaimed goal of rebalanc-ing the executive and the parlia-mentary branches is achieved. decoupled from democratically enacted law and without feedback from the pressing dynamics of a mobilized political public sphere and civil society, political manage-ment lacks the impulse and the strength to contain and redirect the profit-oriented imperatives of investment capital into socially compatible channels. as we can already observe today, authorities would more and more yield to the neoliberal pattern of politics. a technocracy without democratic roots would not have the motiva-tion to accord sufficient weight to the demands of the electorate for a just distribution of income and property, for status security, pub-lic services, and collective goods when these conflict with the sys-temic demands for competitive-ness and economic growth.8

Summarizing this analysis, we are trapped in the dilemma between, on the one side, the eco-nomic policies required to pre-serve the Euro and, on the other, the political steps to closer inte-gration. The steps that are neces-sary to achieve this objective are unpopular and meet with spon-taneous popular resistance. The Commission’s plans reflect the temptation to bridge, in a techno-cratic manner, this gulf between what is economically required and what seems to be politically achievable, only apart from the people. This approach harbors the danger of a growing gap between consolidating regulatory compe-tences, on the one hand, and the need to legitimize these increased

powers in a democratic fashion, on the other. Under the pull of this technocratic dynamic, the European Union would approach the dubious ideal of a market-con-forming democracy that would be even more helplessly exposed to the imperatives of the markets because it lacked an anchor in a politically irritable and excitable civil society. Instead, the steering capacities which are lacking at pre-sent, though they are functionally necessary for any monetary union, could and should be centralized only within the framework of an equally supranational and demo-cratic political community.

II But what is the alternative to further integration based on the present model of executive feder-alism? Let us first consider those path breaking decisions that would have to be taken at the very beginning of the route leading to a supranational democracy in Europe. What is necessary in the first place is a consistent decision to expand the European monetary Union into a Political Union (that would remain open, of course, to the accession of other EU mem-ber states, in particular Poland). This step would, for the first time, signify a serious differentiation of the Union into a core and a periphery. The feasibility of nec-essary changes in the European Treaties would depend essentially on the consent of countries pre-ferring to stay out. In the worst case a principled resistance could only be overcome by a re-founda-tion of the Union (based on the existing institutions).

The decision for such a core Europe would amount to more than merely a further evolution-ary step in the transfer of par-ticular sovereign rights. With the


establishment of a common eco-nomic government the red line of the classical understanding of sovereignty would be crossed. The idea that nation states are ‘the sovereign subjects of the treaties’ would have to be aban-doned. On the other hand, the step to supranational democracy does not need to be conceived as a transition to a ‘United States of Europe.’ ‘Confederation’ versus ‘federal state’ is a false choice (and a specific legacy of the constitu-tional discussion in 19th century Germany).9 nation states could well preserve their integrity as states within a supranational democracy by retaining both their roles of the implementing admin-istration and the final custodian of civil liberties.10

at the procedural level the de-thronement of the European Council would mean switching over from intergovernmentalism to the community method. as long as the ordinary legislative pro-cedure, in which the Parliament and the Council participate on an equal footing, has not become the general rule the European Union shares a deficiency in legitimation with all international organiza-tions that are founded on treaties between states. This deficiency is explained by the asymmetry between the scope of the demo-cratic mandate of each single member state and the encom-passing reach of competences of the organization exercised by all of member states in concert.11 as national citizens see it, their politi-cal fate is determined by foreign governments who represent the interests of other nations, rather than by a government that is bound only by their own demo-cratic vote. This deficit in account-ability is intensified further by the fact that the negotiations of the

European Council are conducted out of the public eye.

The community method is preferable not only for this nor-mative reason, but for the rea-son of enhancing efficiency too. It helps to overcome national particularisms. In the Council, but also in inter-parliamentary committees, representatives who are obligated to defend national interests must bargain compro-mises between obstinate posi-tions. By contrast, the deputies in the European Parliament, which is divided up into parliamen-tary groups, are elected from the perspective of party affiliation. This is why, to the extent that a European party system is taking shape, political decision-making in the European Parliament can already be conducted on the basis of interests that were generalized across national borders.

These are the fundamental decisions necessary for trans-forming the monetary Union into a Political Union that will not fall into the trap of technocracy. That would require, however, to overcome the high, almost insur-mountable, institutional hur-dle of a change in primary law. The first step, namely calling for a convention which is author-ized to revise the Treaties, must be expected from the European

Council, hence from the very institution that is least suited to developing smooth and coopera-tive resolutions. This would not be an easy decision for the mem-bers of the European Council who are at the same time heads of national governments. On the one hand, the thought of their re-election already leads them to recoil before this unpopular step and in addition they do not have any interest in disempowering themselves either. On the other hand, they will not be able to ignore indefinitely the economic constraints that will sooner or later require further integra-tion or at least a manifest choice between painful alternatives. at the time being, the German gov-ernment is insisting that priority should be accorded to stabilizing the budgets of individual states by national administrations, mainly at the expense of their social secu-rity systems, of public services and collective goods. along with a handful of smaller ‘donor coun-tries’, it is vetoing the demand of the rest of the members for tar-geted investment programs and for a form of joint financial liabil-ity that would lower the interest rates on the government bonds of the crisis-hit countries.

In this situation, the German government holds the key to the

‘as national citizens see it, their political fate is determined by foreign governments who represent the interests of other nations, rather than by a government that is bound only by their own democratic vote’


fate of the European Union in its hand. If there is one government among the member states capable of taking the initiative to revise the Treaties then it is the German government. Of course, the other governments could demand assis-tance on grounds of solidarity only if they themselves were ready to accept the complementary step of transferring required sover-eignty rights to the European level. Otherwise, any assistance founded on solidarity would vio-late the democratic principle that the legislature that levies the taxes has also a say in the decision on how to allocate the funds and for whose benefit to use them. So the main question is, whether Germany not only is in a posi-tion to take the initiative, but also whether it could have an interest in doing so. In particular, I am looking for a specifically German interest that goes beyond the kind of interests shared by all member states (such as the interest in the economic benefits of stabiliz-ing the monetary Union or the interest in preserving European influence on the international political agenda in the emerging multicultural world society, an influence which is diminishing in any case).12

In the wake of the shock of the defeat of 1945 and the moral catastrophe of the holocaust,

prudential reasons of regain-ing the international reputa-tion destroyed by its own actions already made it imperative for the federal republic of Germany to promote an alliance with france and to pursue European unifica-tion. In addition, being embed-ded in a context of neighboring European countries under the hegemonic protection of the United States provided the con-text in which the German popu-lation at large could develop a liberal self-understanding for the first time. This arduous transfor-mation of a political mentality, which in the old federal republic remained captive to fateful con-tinuities for decades, cannot be taken for granted. This shift in mindset occurred in tandem with a cautiously cooperative promo-tion of European unification. moreover, the success of this pol-icy was an important precondition for solving a more long-standing historical problem that I am con-cerned with in the first place.

after the foundation of the German Empire in 1871, Germany assumed a fatal ‘semi-hegemonic status’ in Europe – in Ludwig dehios’s words, it was ‘too weak to dominate the continent, but too strong to bring itself into line.’13 It is in Germany’s interest to avoid a revival of this dilemma that was overcome only thanks to

European unification. This is why the European question, which has been intensified by the crisis, also involves a domestic political challenge for Germans. The lead-ership role that falls to Germany today, for demographic and eco-nomic reasons, is not only awak-ening historical ghosts all around us but also tempts us to choose a unilateral national course, or even to succumb to power fanta-sies of a ‘German Europe’ instead of a ‘Germany in Europe’. We Germans should have learned from the catastrophes of the first half of the twentieth century that it is in our national interest to permanently avoid the dilemma of a semi-hegemonic status that can hardly held up without slid-ing into conflicts. helmut Kohl’s achievement is not the reunifica-tion and the re-establishment of a certain national normality per se, but the fact that this happy event was coupled with the consistent promotion of a policy that binds Germany tightly into Europe.

Germany has not only an interest in a policy of solidar-ity; I would suggest that it has even a corresponding norma-tive obligation. Claus Offe tries to defend this thesis with three contested arguments. To date, Germany has derived the great-est benefit from the single cur-rency through the increase in its exports. Because of these export surpluses Germany furthermore contributes to aggravating the economic imbalances within the monetary Union and, in its role as a contributory cause, is part of the problem. finally, Germany itself is even benefitting from the cri-sis, because the increase in inter-est rates for government bonds of the crisis-hit countries is matched by a decrease in the interest rates on German government bonds.14

‘Whereas ‘justice’ and ‘injustice’ were already the focus of controversies in the first literate civilizations, the concept of solidarity is an astonishingly recent one’


Even if we accept these argu-ments, the normative premise that these asymmetric effects of the politically unregulated inter-dependencies between national economies entail an obligation to act in solidarity is not quite easy to explain.

IIIThis leads me to the final and philosophical question: What does it mean to show solidar-ity, and when are we entitled to appeal to solidarity? With a little exercise in conceptual analysis I intend to exonerate appeals to solidarity of accusations of moral stuffiness or misplaced good intentions that the ‘realists’ want to level against them. moreover, showing solidarity is a political act and by no means a form of moral selflessness that would be misplaced in political contexts. Solidarity looses the false appear-ance of being unpolitical once we learn how to distinguish obli-gations to show solidarity from both moral and legal obligations. ‘Solidarity’ is not synonymous with ‘justice’, be it in the moral or the legal sense of the term.

We call moral and legal norms ‘just’ when they regulate prac-tices that are in the equal interest of all those affected. Just norms secure equal freedoms for all and equal respect for everyone. Of course, there are also special duties. relatives, neighbors, or colleagues can in certain situa-tions expect more, or a different kind of, help from each other than from strangers. Such spe-cial duties also hold in general for certain social relations. for example, parents violate their duty of care when they neglect the health of their children. The extent of these positive duties is often indeterminate. Of course,

it varies according to the kind, frequency, and importance of the corresponding social relations. When a distant relative contacts his surprised cousin once again after decades and confronts her with a request for a large finan-cial contribution because he is facing an emergency situation, he can hardly appeal to a moral obligation but at most to a tie of an ‘ethical’ kind founded on fam-ily relations (in hegel’s terminol-ogy one, rooted in ‘Sittlichkeit’ or ‘ethical life’). Belonging to an extended family will justify prima facie a duty to help, but only in cases when the actual relation gives rise to the expectation that e.g. the cousin can count on the support of her relative in a simi-lar situation.

Thus it is the trust-founding Sittlichkeit of informal social rela-tions that, under the condition of predictable reciprocity, requires that the one individual ‘vouches’ for the others. Such ‘ethical’ obli-gations rooted in ties of an ante-cedently existing community, typically family ties, exhibit three features. They ground exacting or supererogatory claims that go beyond moral or legal obligations. On the other hand, when it comes to the required motivation the claim to solidarity is less exact-ing than the categorical force of a moral duty; nor does it coincide with the coercive character of law either. moral commands should be obeyed out of respect for the underlying norm itself, without regard to the compliance of other persons, whereas the citizen’s obe-dience to the law is conditional on the fact that the sanctioning power of the state ensures general compliance. fulfilling an ethical obligation, by contrast, can nei-ther be enforced nor is it categori-cally required. It depends instead

on the expectations of reciprocal favors — and on the confidence in this reciprocity over time.

In this respect, unenforceable ethical behavior also coincides with one’s own medium or long-term interests. and it is precisely this aspect that Sittlichkeit shares with solidarity. however, the latter cannot rely on pre-political com-munities such as the family but only on political associations or shared political interests. Conduct based on solidarity presupposes political contexts of life, hence contexts that are legally organized and in this sense artificial ones.15 This explains why the credit of trust presupposed by solidarity is less robust than in the case of eth-ical conduct because this credit is not secured through the existence of a quasi-natural community. What is missing in the case of soli-darity is the moment of conven-tionality in antecedently existing ethical relations.

What lends solidarity moreo-ver a special character is, second, the offensive character of press-ing or even struggling for dis-charging the promise which is invested in the legitimacy claim of any political order. This for-ward-looking character becomes particularly clear when solidarity is required in the course of social and economic modernization, in order to adjust the overstretched capacities of an existing politi-cal framework, that is to adjust eroding political institutions to the indirect force of encompass-ing systemic, mainly economic, interdependencies that are felt as constraints on what should be in the reach of the political con-trol of democratic citizens. This offensive semantic feature of ‘soli-darity’, over and above the refer-ence to politics, can be elucidated by turning from an unhistorical


conceptual clarification to the history of that concept.

The concept of solidarity first appeared in a situation in which revolutionaries were suing for sol-idarity in the sense of a redemp-tive reconstruction of relations of reciprocal support that were familiar but had become hollowed out by the surpassing processes of modernization.16 Whereas ‘jus-tice’ and ‘injustice’ were already the focus of controversies in the first literate civilizations, the con-cept of solidarity is an astonish-ingly recent one. although the term can be traced back to the roman law of debts, only since the french revolution of 1789 did it slowly acquire a political mean-ing, albeit initially in connection with the slogan of ‘fraternity.’

The battle cry of ‘fraternité’ is a product of the humanist gener-alization of a specific pattern of thought engendered by all of the major world religions – namely of the intuition that one’s own local community is part of a universal community of all faithful believ-ers. This is the background of ‘fra-ternity’ as the key concept of the secularized religion of humanity that was radicalized and fused with the concept of solidarity during the first half of the nine-teenth century by early socialism and Catholic social teachings. Even heinrich heine had still used the concepts ‘fraternity’ and ‘solidarity’ more or less syn-onymously.17 The two concepts became separated in the course of the social upheavals of approach-ing industrial capitalism and the nascent workers movement. The legacy of the Judeo-Christian eth-ics of fraternity was fused, in the concept of solidarity, with the republicanism of roman origin. The orientation toward salva-tion or emancipation became

amalgamated with that toward legal and political freedom.18

By the midst of the 19th cen-tury, an accelerated functional differentiation of society gave rise to extensive interdependencies behind the back of a paternalis-tic, still largely corporative and occupationally stratified, every-day-world. Under the pressure of these reciprocal functional dependencies the older forms of social integration broke down and led to the rise of class antago-nisms, which were finally con-tained only within the extended forms of political integration of the nation state. The appeals to ‘solidarity’ had their historical origin in the dynamic of the new class struggles. The organiza-tions of the workers movement, with their well-founded appeals to solidarity, reacted to the occa-sion provided by the fact that the systemic, mainly economic, con-straints had outstripped the old relations of solidarity. The socially uprooted journeymen, work-ers, employees, and day laborers were supposed to form an alli-ance beyond the systemically generated competitive relations in the labor market. The opposi-tion between the social classes of industrial capitalism was finally institutionalized within the framework of the democratically constituted nation states.

These European states assumed their present-day form of welfare states only after the catastrophes of the two world wars. In the course of economic globaliza-tion, these states find themselves in turn exposed to the explosive pressure of economic interde-pendencies that now tacitly per-meate national borders. Systemic constraints again shatter the established relations of solidar-ity and compel us to reconstruct

the challenged forms of political integration of the nation state. This time, the uncontrolled sys-temic contingencies of a form of capitalism driven by unrestrained financial markets are trans-formed into tensions between the member states of the European monetary Union. If one wants to preserve the monetary Union, it is no longer enough, given the structural imbalances between the national economies, to pro-vide loans to over-indebted states so that each should improve its competitiveness by its own efforts. What is required is soli-darity instead, a cooperative effort from a shared political per-spective to promote growth and competitiveness in the Eurozone as a whole.

Such an effort would require Germany and several other coun-tries to accept short and medium-term negative redistribution effects in its own longer-term self-interest – a classic example of solidarity, at least based on the conceptual analysis I have presented.

This is the text of a speech delivered at

the KU Leuven on 26th April 2013


Endnotes1 Justine Lacroix and Kalypso Nicolaides, European Stories: Intellectual Debates on Europe in National Contexts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).

2 COM/2012/777/FINAL/2: ‘A Blueprint for a Deep and Genuine Economic and Monetary Union: Launching a European Debate’ (cited in what follows as ‘Blueprint’).

3 This state of affairs is expressed politely in the ‘Blueprint’ (p. 2): ‘EMU is unique among modern monetary unions in that it combines a centralised monetary policy with decentralised responsibility for most economic policies.’

4 This was already noted at an early stage by Henrik Enderlein, Nationale Wirtschaftspolitik in der europäischen Währungsunion (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2004).

5 To this corresponds the authority of the Commission ‘to require a revision of national budgets in line with European commitments’ (‘Blueprint,’ p. 26); this competence is clearly intended to go beyond the already existing obligations to exercise budgetary discipline.

6 ‘Blueprint,’ p. 35.

7 The ‘Let me have my cake and eat it too’ strategy adopted by the proposal of the Commission avoids the overdue decision (‘Blueprint,’ p. 13): ‘Its deepening should be done within the Treaties, so as to avoid any fragmentation of the legal framework, which would weaken the Union and question the paramount importance of EU law for the dynamics of integration.’

8 See the relevant works of Wolfgang Streeck, most recently: Gekaufte Zeit. Die vertagte Krise des demokratischen Kapitalismus (Suhrkamp), Berlin 2013 and my review in: Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik Heft 5, 2013.

9 Stefan Oeter, ‘Föderalismus und Demokratie,’ in Armin von Bogdandy and Jürgen Bast (eds),Europäisches Verfassungsrecht (Heidelberg: Springer, 2009), 73-120.

10 Habermas, The Crisis of the European Union, trans. Ciaran Cronin (Cambridge: Polity, 2012).

11 Christoph Möllers, Die drei Gewalten: Legitimation der Gewaltengliederung in Verfassungsstaat, Europäischer Union und Internationalisierung (Wielerswist: Velbrück, 2008), 158ff.

12 The fact that the finalité of the unification process has not yet even been defined provides an opportunity to broaden the focus of the public discussion which has been confined to economic questions until now. The perception of the shift in global political power from West to East and the realization that the relationship with the United States is changing, for example, cast a different light on the synergetic advantages of European unification. In the postcolonial world the role of Europe has changed not only when seen in the light of the dubious reputation of former imperial powers, not to mention the Holocaust. The statistically supported projections for the future also foresee for Europe the fate of a continent with a shrinking population, decreasing economic weight, and dwindling political importance. The European populations have to learn that only together can they uphold their social welfare model of society and the diversity of their national state cultures. They have to combine their forces if they are going to exercise any influence at all over the agenda of international politics and the solution of global problems. To renounce European unification would also be to turn one’s back on world history.

13 For an interesting analysis, though one still colored by a national historical perspective, see Andreas Rödder, ‘Dilemma und Strategie,’ Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 14 January 2013, p. 7.

14 Claus Offe, ‘Europa in der Falle,’ Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik, Heft1 (2013): 67-80, here 76.

15 By the way, nationalism obscures this difference between political solidarity and pre-political bonds. It appeals without justification to this kind of communitarian bond when it assimilates the civic solidarity of Staatsbürger to the ‘national solidarity’ of Volksgenossen (tying people of the same descent).

16 Karl H. Metz, ‘Solidarität und Geschichte,’ in Bayertz (ed.), Solidarität, 172-194; for a critical treatment, see Wildt, ibid., 202ff.

17 See the entries in the subject index of the edition of Heine’s works by Klaus Briegleb (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1976), vol. 6, II, 818.

18 Hauke Brunkhorst, Solidarität: Von der Bürgerfreundschaft zur globalen Rechtsgenossenschaft (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002).


Zygmunt Bauman

Emeritus Professor at the University of Leeds and one of Europe’s foremost sociologists. Author of Liquid Modernity (Polity 2000) and many other books on contemporary society

Europe Is Trapped Between Power and Politics

ThaT ThE dISEaSE which brought the European Union into the intensive-

care ward and has kept it there since, for quite a few years, is best diagnosed as a ‘democratic deficit’ is fast turning into a common-place. Indeed, it is taken increas-ingly for granted and is hardly ever seriously questioned. Some observers and analysts ascribe the illness to an inborn organic defect, some others seek carriers of the disease among the personalities of the European Council and the constituencies they represent; some believe the disease has by now become terminal and beyond treatment, some others trust that a bold and harsh surgical inter-vention may yet save the patient from agony. But hardly anyone questions the diagnosis. all, or nearly all, agree that the roots of the malaise lie in the breakdown of communication between the holders of political offices (policy-makers in Brussels and/or the politicians of European Council) who set the tune and the people called to follow the set score with or without being asked and offer-ing their consent.

at least there is no deficit of arguments to support the diag-nosis of the ‘deficit of democracy’ inside the European Union. The state of the Union, no doubt, calls for intensive care, and its future – the very chance of its survival

– lies in a balance. Such a condi-tion we call, since the ancient beginnings of medical practice, ‘crisis’. The term was coined to denote precisely such a moment – in which the doctor faces the necessity to urgently decide to which of the known and available assortment of medical expedients to resort in order to nudge the patient onto the course to conva-lescence. When speaking of crisis of whatever nature, including the economic, we convey firstly the feeling of uncertainty, of our igno-rance of the direction in which the affairs are about to turn – and secondly the urge to intervene: to select the right measures and decide to apply them promptly. describing a situation as ‘critical’, we mean just that: the conjunc-tion of a diagnosis and a call for action. and let me add that there is a hint of endemic contradic-tion in such an idea: after all, the admission of the state of uncer-tainty/ignorance portends ill for the chance of selecting the right measures and prompting the affairs in the desired direction.

Let’s focus on the most recent economic crisis largely responsible for laying bare the critical state of the political union of Europe. The right point to start is to remember the horrors of the 1920s-1930s by which all and every one of succes-sive issues of the economy have tended to be measured since – and


ask whether the current, post credit-collapse crisis can be seen and described as their reiteration, throwing thereby some light on its likely sequel. While admitting that there are numerous striking similarities between the two crises and their manifestations (first and foremost massive and prospectless unemployment and soaring social inequality), there is, however, one crucial difference between the two that sets them apart and ren-ders comparing one to the other questionable, to say the least.

While horrified by the sight of markets running wild and caus-ing fortunes together with work-places to evaporate and while knocking off viable businesses into bankruptcy, victims of the late 1920s stock-exchange col-lapse had little doubt as to where to look for rescue: of course to the state – to a strong state, so strong as to be able to force the course of affairs into obedience with its will. Opinions as to the best way out of the predicament might have dif-fered, even drastically, but there was virtually no disagreement as to who was fit to tackle the chal-lenge thanks to being sufficiently resourceful to push the affairs the way the opinion-makers eventu-ally selected: of course the state, equipped with both resources indispensable for the job: power (ability to have things done), and politics (ability to decide which ones of the proposed things ought to be given priority). alongside the overwhelming majority of the informed or intuitive opinions of the time, John maynard Keynes put his wager on the resource-fulness of the state. his recom-mendations made sense in as far as the ‘really existing’ states could rise to such popular expectations. and indeed, the aftermath of the collapse stretched to its limits the

same post-Westphalian model of a state armed with absolute and indivisible sovereignty over its territory and on everything it contains – even if in the direction as diverse as the Soviet state-man-aged, German state-regulated and US state-stimulated economies.

This post-Westphalian ideal type of an omnipotent territorial state emerged from the war not only unscathed, but considerably expanded to match the compre-hensive ambitions of a ‘social state’ – a state insuring all its citi-zens against individual misfor-tune (selectively striking caprices of fate) and the threat of indig-nity in whatever form (of poverty, negative discrimination, unem-ployment, homelessness, social exclusion) that haunted pre-war generations. It was also adopted, even if in a somewhat cut-down rendition, by numerous new states and quasi-states emerging amidst the ruins of colonial empires. The ‘glorious thirty’ of years that fol-lowed the war were marked by the rising expectations that all har-rowing social problems had been or were about to be resolved and left behind; and the tormenting memories of pre-war poverty and mass unemployment were about to be buried once for all.

Something largely unforeseen happened, however, that jostled most of the Europeans off the

then selected track. In the 1970s the heretofore uninterrupted eco-nomic progress ground to a halt and was supplanted by a seemingly unstoppable rise in unemploy-ment, seemingly unmanageable inflation and above all the grow-ing and ever more evident inabil-ity of the states to deliver on their promise of comprehensive insur-ance. Gradually yet ever more starkly, states manifested their inability to deliver on their prom-ises. Gradually, but apparently unrelentlessly, the faith and trust in the potency of the state started to erode. functions claimed here-tofore and jealously guarded by the states as their monopoly and widely considered by the public and the most influential opinion makers and guardians of common sense as the state’s inalienable obligation and mis-sion seemed suddenly too heavy for nation states to carry. Peter drucker famously declared that people need, should and shortly will abandon hopes of salvation descending ‘from above’ – from the state or society; the number of ears keen to absorb that mes-sage grew at accelerating pace. In the popular perception, aided and abetted by the chorus of a fast growing part of the learned and opinion making public, the state was degraded from the rank of the most powerful engine of

‘The “glorious thirty” of years that followed the war were marked by the rising expectations that all harrowing social problems had been or were about to be resolved and left behind’


universal well-being to that of a most obnoxious and annoying obstacle to economic progress and indeed efficiency of human enterprise.

Just as during the Great depression of 1920s-1930s, the opinion setters as well as the wid-ening circles of the general public deemed to know this time what kind of vehicles are called for to replace the extant ones, not so long ago viewed as trusty yet increasingly rusty and overdue for a scrap yard. Once more, it seemed to be obvious as well what kind of powerful force is destined, willing and able to lead the way out of the current crisis. This time, however, public trust was all but withdrawn from the political state only to be reinvested in the ‘invisible hand of the market’ – and indeed (as milton friedman, ronald reagan, margaret Thatcher and the fast expanding bevy of their enthu-siastic acolytes kept hammering home) it is the market ability of unerring knack for spotting profit chances that would accomplish what the ethics-inspired state bureaucrats abominably failed to achieve. ‘deregulation’, ‘privati-zation’, ‘subsidiarization’ were to bring what regulation, nationali-zation and the communal, state-guided undertakings so obviously and abominably failed to deliver. State functions had to be and were to be shifted sideways, to the market, that admittedly ‘pol-itics-free’ zone, or dropped down-wards, onto the shoulders of human individuals, now expected to divine individually, inspired and set in motion by their greed, what they did not manage to pro-duce collectively, inspired and moved by communal spirit.

The ‘glorious thirty’ were there-fore followed by the ‘opulent thirty’; the years of a consumerist

orgy and continuous, seemingly unstoppable growth of GnP indi-ces all over the place. The wager put on pursuit of profits seemed to be paying off: its benefits, as later transpired, came into view much earlier than its costs. It took us a couple of dozens of years to find out what fuelled the consumerist miracle: not so much the magic ‘invisible hand of the market’, as the discovery by the banks and the credit card issuers of a vast virgin land open to and yelling for exploitation: a land populated by millions of people indoctrinated by the precepts of ‘saving-books culture’ and still in the throes of the puritan commandment to desist the temptation of spending money, particularly its unearned variety. and it took yet a few years more to awaken to the som-bre truth that initially fabulous returns of investing in virgin lands must soon reach their natural limits, run out of steam and even-tually stop coming altogether. When that ultimately happened, the bubble burst and the fata mor-gana of perpetual and infinitely expanding opulence vanished from view under the sky covered with dark clouds of prospectless redundancy, bankruptcies, infi-nite debt-repayment, a drastic fall in living standards, the curtailing of life ambitions – and of social degradation of the upward-look-ing middle classes to the status of defenceless ‘precariat’.

another crisis of another agency, then? a collapse of one more vehicle in which the hope of the ‘economic progress’ perpetuum mobile had been invested? Yes, but this time with a difference – and a fateful, semi-nal one. as in the previous cases, old vehicles of ‘progress’ appear today to be overdue for the scrap heap, but there is no promising

invention in sight in which one could reinvest the hope of carry-ing the rudderless victims out of trouble. after the loss of public trust in the wisdom and potency of the state, the turn has come of the dexterity of the ‘invisible hand of the market’ to lose cred-ibility. While almost every one of the old ways of doing things lies discredited, the new ways are – at best – at the drawing board or an early experimentation stage. no one can swear, hand on heart, the effectiveness of any of the latter. Too well aware of the hopes that failed, we have no hopeful run-ners-up to bet on. Crisis being the time of deciding what way of pro-ceeding to choose, in the arsenal of human experience there seem to be no trustworthy strategies left to choose from.

We are now painfully aware, at least for a moment and until the human, all-too-human, therapy-through-forgetting will have done its job, that if left to their own devices the profit-guided mar-kets lead to economic and social catastrophes. But should we – and above all could we – return to the once deployed yet now unemployed or under-employed devices of state supervision, con-trol, regulation and manage-ment? Whether we should, is obviously a moot question. What is well-nigh certain, however, is that we couldn’t – whatever answer we choose to that ques-tion. We couldn’t because the state is no longer what it used to be a hundred years ago, or what it was believed/hoped then soon to become. In its present condi-tion, the state lacks the means and resources to perform the task which effective supervision and control of the markets, not to mention their regulation and management, required.


Trust in the state’s capacity to deliver rested on the supposition that both conditions of effective management of social realities – power and politics – are in the hands of states assumed to be a sovereign (exclusive and indivis-ible) master within its territorial boundaries. By now, however, the state has been expropriated of a large and growing part of its past genuine or imputed power, which has been captured by the supra-state, for all practical intents exterritorial global forces operat-ing in a politically uncontrolled ‘space of flows’ (manuel Castells’ term), whereas the effective reach of the extant political agencies did not progress beyond the state boundaries. Which means, purely and simply, that finance, invest-ment capital, labour markets or circulation of commodities are beyond the remit and reach of the only political agencies currently available to do the job of super-vision and regulation. It is the politics chronically afflicted with the deficit of power (and so also of coercion) that confronts the challenge of powers emancipated from political control.

To cut the long story short: the present crisis differs from its historical precedents in as far as it is lived through in the situa-tion of a divorce between power and politics. That divorce results in the absence of agency able to do what every ‘crisis’ by defini-tion requires: choose the way to proceed and apply the therapy which that choice calls for. The absence, it looks, will continue to paralyse the search for a viable solution until power and politics, now in the state of divorce, are re-married. It also looks, how-ever, that under conditions of global interdependence such a remarriage is hardly conceivable

inside one state, however large and resourceful; or even inside an aggregate of states, as long as power is free to abandon at will and without notice any territory politically monitored and con-trolled by political units clutching to the ghosts of post-Westphalian illusions. It looks like we are fac-ing now the awesome yet impera-tive task of raising politics and its institutions to the global level, on which large part of effec-tive power to have things done already resides. all pressures, from brutally mundane to sub-limely philosophical, whether derived from survival interests or dictated by ethical duty, tend to point nowadays in the same direc-tion – however little we have thus far advanced on the road leading there. Inside the European Union, a half-way inn on that road, those pressures feel more severe and pain more than in any other area of our globalized planet.

deficit of democracy is by no means a unique affliction of the European Union. Every single democratic state – every political body that aims or pretends to a full sovereign rule over its terri-tory in the name of its citizens and not by the will of a machiavellian Prince or Schmittian Führer – finds itself currently in a double bind, exposed to the pressures of extraterritorial powers immune

to the political will and demands of the citizenship, which it can’t at any rate meet due to its chronic deficit of power. With power and politics subject to separate and mutually autonomous sets of interests, and state governments tussling between two pressures impossible to reconcile, trust in the ability and will of the politi-cal establishment to deliver on its promise is fast fading, whereas communication between ruling elites and the hoi polloi lies all but broken; election after election, electors are guided by the frustra-tion of their past hopes invested in the currently ruling team – rather than by their preference for a specific policy, or commit-ment and loyalty to a specific sec-tor in the spectrum of ideologies.

The European Union, as an aggregate of nation states charged statutorily with the replacement of an inter-state competition with cooperation and sharing, finds itself in a truly unenviable plight: a need to assume an incongru-ous mix of mutually incompatible roles – of a protective shield or a lightning rod intercepting and arresting, or at least attenuating, the impact of powers freely roam-ing the global ‘space of flows’ and of an enforcer pressing its mem-ber states to absorb the remainder of the force of impact that resisted interception and managed to

‘There is, however, only so much which the most ingenious reforms can achieve as long as they are considered and handled as a solely internal European affair’


break in through the outer circle of trenches. no wonder that the attitudes of the member states’ populations to the Union’s poli-cies tend to be and to stay ambiv-alent, vacillating between the extremes of Hass and Liebe: an attitude mirroring the persistent ambivalence of the two-in-one role which the Union is bound to play more by the stark necessity it cannot control than by a choice it is free to make.

There is little doubt that there is much room yearning for reform and improvement in the Union’s ailing structures struggling for a modicum of coherence under the condition of unmitigated ambiva-lence. There is, however, only so much which the most ingenious reforms can achieve as long as they are considered and handled as a solely internal European affair. The roots of Europe’s problems – dis-coordination of power and politics brought about by globality of powers confronting locally con-fided and territorially constricted politics – lie far beyond Europe’s control. The problems Europe faces can be alleviated but hardly can they be fully resolved and pre-vented from rebounding unless the power and politics presently sepa-rated and in the state of divorce are brought back into wedlock and forced to work in tandem.

and so, in the case of badly needed and urgently demanded constitutional adjustment, quick fixes – let alone ultimate and last-ing solutions to the current prob-lems – are unlikely to be found and put in place. Whatever else the sought-after reform of the Union will be, it can’t be a one-off deed, but only a process of perpetual reinvention. This is the ‘hard fact’ reality we have little choice but to accept and consider in our thoughts and actions.

and there is something else we need to consider and focus our thoughts and actions on. Whether we are aware of it or not, and whether by design or by default, the European Union is a labora-tory (if not unique, then surely the currently most advanced on a global scale) in which ways to deal with the outcomes of present dis-coordination of power and poli-tics are designed, explored and put to tests. This is, arguably, the most important and consequen-tial among Europe’s current con-tributions to the condition and prospects of the planet; indeed, to its chances of survival. Europe’s present quandary anticipates the challenges which the rest of the planet – the whole of the planet and all of its inhabitants – are bound, sooner or later, to expe-rience first-hand, face up to and live through. Our present pains may yet (are destined to?) prove to be the birth pangs of a human-ity at peace with itself and draw-ing proper conclusions from the demands of its new – irrevers-ibly globalized – condition. What presently feels like an unbearably hurtful squeeze of a vice may yet be found in retrospect to have been severe, yet transient pain inflicted by forceps wresting sal-vation out of an impending doom.

To keep that in mind is our, Europeans, joint responsibility.


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Documents

Social Europe Europe Journal Volume Issue 2 SummerAutumn 2013 Editorial Board Detlev Albers Founder, University of Bremen † Giuliano Amato Former Italian Prime Minister Elisabeth