Schweighofer, J. (2014) “It’s Now Or Never: More Social, Less Europe in 2015!“, Social Europe Journal, 17 December.
To put it bluntly: Europe, more precisely, the European Union, has not delivered for decades now. The Union safeguards the interests of the employers and the mandarins from Brussels and 27 other capitals. Basically, this kind of integration is not in the interest of workers, trade unions, consumers et cetera. In the current state of affairs, more Europe means less social cohesion. Therefore, disintegration (a “core Europe”, see below) could be in the interest of workers, at least to some extent.
The main reason for that is the highly ideological, “neo-liberal” and “ECOFIN/lobbies driven” agenda of economic policies: more structural reforms and austerity all over Europe, less regulation, no Financial Transaction Tax, no EU-financed investment program, et cetera. In this respect, demanding more Social Europe is a rather naïve and unrealistic position. Speaking about a “European Social Union” is, given the current political climate, nothing more than wishful thinking. Just have a short look at meetings of the Social Question Working Party or the Employment Committee of the EPSCO council, a rather disillusioning experience. Europe does not give the feeling of community, solidarity, (social) security – all deep rooted emotions that the nation states and the regions do deliver, at least as far as globalisation allows and politicians stand up for.
But sometimes history “jumps”: who thought in the winter of 1988 that the fall of communism and the collapse of the Berlin wall would be realised within one year? Nobody! It currently does not look that way but maybe the fall of the neoliberal wall is within reach. In any case, Europe is at a crossroads.
Image: “Europe Rewired” – Source: Social Europe Journal
Relevant posts:
- Amartya Sen (2014) “Social Choice and Social Welfare“, Project Syndicate Organisation, 26 November.
- Dollar, D., Kleineberg, T. & Kraay, A. (2014) “Growth, inequality, and social welfare: Cross-country evidence“, VoxEU Organisation, 19 November.
- Blühdorn, I. (2014) “Erosion Or Exhaustion Of Democracy? The Challenge For Social Europe“, Social Europe Journal, 18 November.