Crisis Of European Politics
One problem with the current financial crisis is its highly apolitical character. National politics is presently in large measure depoliticized, in which complex issues about the design of society are reduced to a tenth percentage point more or less economic growth. The remarkable political consensus of modern times is to stay focused on GDP figures, while reducing other parameters like mental wellbeing, illiteracy, crime figures to background noise. On the European plane, no such process of depoliticization took place, because Europe was never politicized in the first place. The European Union was shaped as a project led by war weary and progressive elite which was exclusively focused on a workable European project and not in its democratic features. Only in 1979 were citizens granted the right to vote, for a European parliament with no real power. In this sense, European integration suffers from an inverse problem. Politicians of later generations who became mature in a stable Europe can be blamed for this political gap.
Significantly, a more severe problem is the weakness of the underlying structure of the European Union, which has become painstakingly clear with the current Euro crisis. Europe was found on the willingness of a few European states to cooperate in world which was dominated by two super powers, the US and the USSR. In this sense they succeeded to put Europe back on the world map. Although US secretary of state Henry Kissinger angrily remarked in the seventies whom he should call if he wanted to speak to Europe, the European Union was increasingly capable of presenting itself as a credible alternative in a bipolar world.
Unfortunately, integration was never taken a step further than a pooling of national sovereignty. We see this in the nature of armed force. Every country in Europe possesses a small army, but still the countries are unwilling to integrate their armies to form a more formidable force. This leads the bizarre situation that, for example, the British high command doubts if it can still protect the Falkland Islands from Argentina in the case of a new attack. The British navy might exaggerate its message in a time of spending cuts, but like all exaggerations they bear a significant amount of truth. Only under the supervision of the US are European nations willing to cooperate in a deeper and more profound way –NATO. Luckily, the European continent is not under attack by any foreign power, which would produce quite a stir –to say the least. Fortresses of national sovereignty no longer sufficiently protect.
The problem is even more immediate in the case of the Euro zone crisis. In a time of globalized markets, European countries wanted to have the benefits of a single currency to boast their macro-economic infrastructure, but without surrendering any of their fiscal and budgetary prerogatives. Now, we face the daunting prospect of the unravelling of the Euro zone and no national politician is able to stop it. Many blame Angela Merkel as leader of Europe’s most eminent country for not being courageous enough to solve the problem. I think this is a severe underestimation of the problem. Merkel is a strong leader who has put the CDU/CSU again at the heart of German politics.
As the British political philosopher David Held has mentioned, the gridlock problem is not due to weak politicians, but weak politics. National politicians lack the means to solve European problems, because they do not have a transnational mandate. For example, Merkel is elected to serve the interests of the German people and not serve the Euro zone as a whole. In the end, no one can be held politically accountable for European affairs. If no one is held accountable for the public interest, then it is hard to see why a democratically elected leader would altruistically sacrifice the national interest of his people and voters for a country which is not his own and for a people he has never met.
Without transnational political institutions European politics is gripped in the classic free-rider problem in which every country is gripped by the fear for the sucker-effect. In this respect, the Euro crisis is cocooned by a larger, although largely unaddressed, crisis of politics.
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