European Un-Peace

On the very day I began writing this text, Eurobarometer published its latest data on the mood of voters in EU member states ahead of the June elections to the European Parliament. I can vividly imagine European public opinion researchers scratching their heads in confusion when the data from Slovenia reached them. We are well above the European average on the question of whether EU membership benefits us, yet near the bottom on expected turnout. Even more surprising is the figure on the reputation of the European Parliament. There Slovenia is right at the tail of all member states, with only the Czech Republic and France behind us. At the same time, we Slovenians are near the very top among those who think the European Parliament should get more powers and influence.

We Slovenians are enthusiastic about the European Union, yet it doesn’t interest us. We are convinced that membership means we live better, yet we couldn’t care less. The logic reminds me of Woody Allen’s joke about two residents of a retirement home, in which the first complains that the food is terrible and the second agrees, adding that the portions are too small.

These data put me in a quandary in writing an article about our attitude toward the European Union. If we were dissatisfied with it because we believed it had brought us nothing good and messed up everything that could be messed up, I would try to answer these reproaches and shed light on them from the other side. Because I believe that sweeping negativism and nihilism of the “nothing good about it” kind are very unwise and dangerous things. If Slovenians were uncritically enthusiastic about the EU, I would point out a series of its mistakes and weaknesses, because I believe that uncritical idolatry of any form of power is also a very unwise and dangerous thing. Perhaps, in thinking about Slovenians’ attitude toward the European Union, we should first think about ourselves and our attitude toward the outside world. The analogy with our attitude toward the former state is simplistic and, like most analogies, imperfect. But it is not entirely irrelevant, because the attitude we cultivate toward Brussels often very much resembles the one we once had toward Belgrade. Which is a paradox. After all, it was precisely European aspirations that guided and motivated us at the time of gaining independence and founding our own state. With the aim, of course, of becoming part of the European family as soon as possible. Now that we have achieved that, we are somehow confused. As the data from the latest Eurobarometer show. It reminds me of an old routine by the legendary comedians Cheech and Chong: I used to be totally messed up on drugs. Then I found Jesus. Now I’m totally messed up on Jesus.

But joking aside. There is of course nothing wrong with supporting something while being critical of it. What is more, as I have already said, such criticism is a democratic necessity, especially when it comes to our attitude toward authority and power. But it is important that we are also critical of ourselves, remain rational and do not allow emotions to overcome reason, however justified our anger. We can be disappointed and furious with politics and politicians, but that should not be a reason to give up on democracy as a system. We can (and must) be critical of and angry about the social hardship brought by some people’s enthusiasm for neoliberal economics, as long as it doesn’t carry us into flirting with already tested (and barely survived) social utopias which in the past, in the name of a never-fulfilled promise of collective social justice and prosperity, denied us individual rights and freedom. We can dislike NATO and weapons, as long as we don’t start believing that this makes us safe and that no one will ever threaten us simply because we won’t be able to defend ourselves. We can be fed up with Fides and the non-stop ruckus at the oncology clinic, as long as this doesn’t seduce us into thinking we can abolish the health system and leave the care of our health to the homeopathic potions sold to us by quacks. We can and must be critical of the European Union, as long as we are aware of what Europe was like when there was no European Union and what it could become again if, by chance, it no longer exists in the future.

A good ten years ago I was an adviser in the office of the then Secretary General of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, a former Norwegian foreign minister, Speaker of Parliament and Prime Minister. While serving in Strasbourg, he was a member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which he also chaired for a number of years. In 2012 the Peace Prize went to the European Union. On its behalf, it was received from Jagland’s hands at the ceremony in Oslo by the then President of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso, and the President of the European Council, Herman Van Rompuy.

The decision provoked stormy reactions in the media and among the public, many of them negative and mocking. Which was understandable in its way. Let us recall the historical context of the time. Europe had still not recovered from the consequences of the global financial crisis caused by the banking crash in the United States. The crisis caught the European Union unprepared. The monetary union created by the Maastricht Treaty was an unfinished project, lacking appropriate and effective safeguards and mechanisms for financial solidarity between member states in the event of crises like the one in 2008. The European banking system was on the brink of collapse. The consequences of the crisis—and of the way it was handled—were very painful, but not equally painful for all member states. Those in southern Europe not only went through a very deep recession but had to accept and implement extremely painful austerity measures in exchange for the financial assistance that saved them from bankruptcy. The social, economic, political and demographic consequences of these measures were extremely painful for the hardest-hit countries, above all Greece. Unemployment in Greece rose from less than 8 percent to 23 percent between 2008 and 2015. Almost 94 percent of households suffered a substantial drop in income. More than a third of the population found itself on the brink of poverty. The crisis also affected the health, and especially the mental health, of Greek citizens. The number of suicides rose. The demographic consequences, still felt today, included a marked fall in the birth rate and an increase in emigration, especially among the young. The fact that in some countries the crisis was so deep and painful also, and above all, because of the past financial irresponsibility of their political and economic leaders and elites did nothing to lessen the hardship citizens felt in the course of, and because of, the rescue. The crisis deepened the divide between Europe’s north and south. On one side, northerners accused southerners of irresponsible profligacy; on the other came reproaches that the richer member states did not care about their severe social hardship. But the citizens of both were united by common anger at the way European banks were bailed out. Perhaps somewhat simplified and generalized, but not entirely inaccurate, the prevailing belief was that profits always stay with the bankers, while losses, as a rule, are paid by taxpayers out of their own pockets.

The global financial crisis did not mark the beginning of the social and political upheavals we are witnessing today, but it gave a great boost to the rise of populist politics and its increasingly successful march to power. Many Europeans, not only in the southern half of the continent, blamed the European Union and its measures to resolve the financial crisis for their problems and hardship. Whether all these effects were entirely justified and grounded in objective facts is of secondary importance. On a personal level, for many European citizens the culprits for all the misery were personified above all by two people, Angela Merkel in Berlin and José Manuel Barroso in Brussels. The image of the Oslo ceremony, at which the latter strutted about with a medal for services to world peace, made many people’s blood boil.

I was puzzled by the decision myself. “OK, I get it, the EU is cool,” I said to Jagland, in the professional jargon we experts on European affairs use when talking among ourselves. “But why now of all times, when the EU is getting on everyone’s nerves?” “You don’t get it at all,” my boss replied, with the look bosses use when answering subordinates’ stupid questions. “They had to get the prize now, precisely because it’s getting on everyone’s nerves.”

According to his explanation, the decision was considered and deliberately provocative. The aim was not to divert attention from the weaknesses and mistakes the European Union had committed in its responses to the financial crisis. As a social democrat, Jagland was of course sensitive to criticism that European leaders, in rescuing the financial system, had neglected the social effects it caused, and thereby endangered the political project to which he had been committed since the very beginning of his political career. In 1990 he published in Norway the book My European Dream, which, however, did not convince his fellow citizens to vote a few years later for joining the European Union. But that took away neither his courage nor his drive. Because he was worried that Europeans, in their anger, however justified, would forget that the project of European integration cannot be reduced merely to an opinion of the current leadership and a reaction to one of the otherwise frequent crises the European Union had gone through since its creation, he wanted to draw attention to its fundamental mission: ensuring peace and stability on the European continent. The Nobel Peace Prize was meant as a reminder that the project of European integration is, from its very beginning, first and foremost a peace project. And that in assessing the importance of its existence we must take into account not only legitimate aspirations (and the related criticism) about what an ideal Europe should be in our opinion, but also the memory of the Europe we had before it.

He firmly rejected accusations that with this decision the Norwegian Nobel Committee was “rescuing” the EU leadership of the time from criticism and the political consequences of their controversial decisions. In his view, the warning about the existential importance of European integration for peace on the old continent was not addressed only to European citizens. It was also a reminder to the political leadership of the time in Brussels and other European capitals of where frivolity, arrogance, short-sightedness and political opportunism in responding to the legitimate expectations of their voters can lead. If voters do not have confidence and material proof that the European Union effectively protects their economic, social, political, democratic, security and other interests and rights, then not only the future of the EU institutions but stability and peace in Europe are at stake.

To the question of how much my former boss and the other members of the Norwegian Committee contributed to securing the future of European integration, it is still hard to give a definitive answer, above all because that future is far from secure. Nor am I sure whether Barroso and his colleagues really understood the prize as a warning. On the other hand, in responding to the crises that followed, first migration and above all health, the European Union did show that it had learned something from its own mistakes. How much this was thanks to the Nobel Peace Prize is another question, but the fact is that the response to the global health crisis was considerably more Keynesian and based on solidarity, while the tiresome harping on about not being able to spend money you don’t have was, for now at least, put on the back burner for fear of the social and political consequences of another deep social crisis.

That does not mean we can breathe a sigh of relief. Crises follow one another and compete with each other. Jean Monnet’s often-quoted observation in his memoirs, that Europe would be built through crises and would be the sum of the solutions adopted for them, is, to put it mildly, facing ever harder tests. Blind faith in the thesis that the EU will emerge stronger from every crisis is colliding with harsh reality and with the traps set for European integration by illiberal populism and all sorts of prophets—right and left—of the wonderful future awaiting us on our return to the golden age of “free and sovereign” nation-states. That age, of course, never existed in history. But why let facts spoil effective populist lies?

People today are disappointed with Europe, many are angry. This frustration often outweighs the benefits people actually enjoy because of their country’s membership of the European Union. As the Eurobarometer data show, Slovenia is a very good example of this apparent paradox. Apparent, because no politics can compensate for the loss of confidence in the future merely by invoking past successes. And the fact is that people today are afraid of the future. For a political, social, legal and economic project based on the principles of liberal democracy, this is a very bad omen, since it gives an opening to alternative ideological projects built on different value foundations. To stop the current trends, which are looking ever better for populist and nationalist authoritarians, the European Union—and those of its member states that still swear by the values on which the European project was founded from the start—must change a great deal in themselves. Merely pointing a finger at the scoundrels who don’t like democracy and human rights will not be enough. People expect a European Union that is successful, effective and consistent in recognizing their expectations and solving their problems.

The European Union has gone through a whole string of crises in recent years, and one could say that life has turned Monnet’s maxim on its head. Today many see in it the sum of all the mistakes and weaknesses it has shown in dealing with them. Sometimes it seems that the EU and its bureaucracy do not take these frustrations seriously enough. They wake up a few months before the European elections, start clamoring about the threat posed by growing support for extremist, populist and anti-EU forces, and then, once they have again squeezed through an ever narrower eye of the needle, things go on more or less as before. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Perhaps, at least until something kills us.

The crisis in the Middle East and the killing of Palestinian civilians we are witnessing in Gaza is the latest of the crises further weakening the reputation of and support for the European Union. This is not changed by the fact that its powers to intervene directly are limited and that many project onto Brussels their frustration and anger at the positions, actions—and inaction—of their own governments. People are fed up, and Brussels is a handy target for directing anger. The extreme nationalist right cheers on Netanyahu’s conduct, because in him and in his ruthlessness toward the Palestinians and toward all international norms and obligations they see an ally in establishing unbridled sovereignty, in which power within and beyond its borders can finally do whatever it likes to consolidate its positions of power. As a bonus, they use their cheering for Netanyahu’s conduct as an alibi against accusations of their own latent antisemitism. On the other side, a large part of public opinion, appalled and outraged by the bloodshed, watches the confusion, indecision and double standards of most European governments. And into this situation barges Russia from the side, happily pouring fuel on a fire it largely helped to light.

Equally dangerous is the marked retreat from the goals of the green transition and the measures to combat the consequences of environmental change, which followed the populist exploitation of the hardship and problems of European farmers. Instead of critically reviewing these measures and ensuring that they are economically sustainable and socially just—which, given the enormous funds the EU devotes to supporting agriculture, is not an insurmountable challenge—European leaders fell into the right’s demagogic trap and deepened divisions between people. Many, especially the young, feel that politics has opportunistically sacrificed their future in order to win a few points of support among people who will not have to live in that future. And in these circumstances we are now going to have elections to the European Parliament.

So why, with all this, wouldn’t someone use these elections to show the European Union, and the part of politics that swears by it, the middle finger? Either by not voting at all, or by circling the names of those who sell stories—black, red or brown—about the happiness, security and abundance that await us once we finally free ourselves from Brussels’ shackles?

For an answer, we need to go back into history. To think about why the European Union actually came into being. Where we were when it did not exist, and where we could return if it disappears. I cannot award Nobel Prizes in support of my views; I can only explain why I myself, in these circumstances and with all my criticism and well-founded reproaches, still—and increasingly—support the project of European integration and the European Union.

The traditional cliché that the European project is an answer to the horrors we experienced in the Second World War convinces few people. Put crudely, people find it hard to imagine a direct link between the Brussels bureaucracy and the horror of the concentration camps. They react to such rhetoric much as they do to that hackneyed “never again,” which politicians utter once a year while laying this or that wreath and then forget, even though “here we go again” is pushing its way into every pore of social and political life. To understand this causal link better, we need to remember what Europe was like before the Second World War, and also what it was like immediately after it.

Europe at the start of the Second World War was described in June 1940, after Nazi troops had marched into Paris, by the Newsweek correspondent in Bucharest, R. G. (Rosie) Waldeck. The fall of France, she wrote, crowned twenty years of democracy’s unfulfilled promises to master unemployment, inflation, deflation, labor unrest and party egoism; a Europe tired of itself and doubting the principles by which it lived felt almost relieved that everything had been settled, and considered Hitler an unpleasant but very clever man who had made his country strong—so why not try it that way? With minimal adjustments, this text could describe not only the mood in today’s Europe but also the key points of the election programs of ever more numerous and influential political parties.

How it all ended, we know. You know, never again. The postwar European project was an answer to the Europe that Rosie Waldeck described. It was not (only) an attempt at economic cooperation that has only in recent years expanded into a political project, as some like to present it. Europe as an economic, legal, political and social project was conceived from the very beginning as a defense mechanism to protect Europeans from themselves. It laid the foundations for a different coexistence between European nations, which throughout history had as a rule settled open questions through wars and killing one another.

Even the economic cooperation that represents the beginnings of what we today know as the European Union had political goals from the start. The reason for this was above all the conditions in war-ravaged postwar Europe. The first years after the defeat of Nazism have more or less been lost from our collective memory. They are usually squeezed into a shortcut between the German capitulation and the economic boom that lasted almost two decades in Western Europe, until the mid-1970s. But the first postwar years were different. Economic difficulties, the demographic consequences of the war, destroyed infrastructure and the debts states had run up during the years of fighting began to create a social climate that was becoming similar to the one a decade earlier. In France governments changed amid strikes, each weaker than the last; Labour in Britain was running out of breath; and in the opinion of some, the painful consequences of the war the Nazis had started were creating the conditions in Germany for their return. That was certainly the impression formed by George Marshall, the US Secretary of State, when in March 1947, on his way to Moscow, he visited a number of European capitals. The answer was the Marshall Plan, one of the most successful and effective economic aid programs in history. Without it, postwar Western Europe could easily have turned in a different direction. It matters for the project of European unification in at least two respects. First, it included a mechanism that made aid conditional on trade among the recipients. The first seeds of today’s single market were planted by the Americans. Second, with an injection that triggered the postwar economic boom, it enabled European politicians, above all Christian democrats, conservatives and people’s parties, to build a welfare state based on a high level of social protection and solidarity. Given the economic programs of most of the modern successors of these parties, this is almost hard to believe, but let us remember that these were politicians who had not only survived the war but had also experienced the prewar economic, social and political crisis that led to it.

A text about the European Union that begins with today and ends deep in the past may strike many as upside down. I stress the importance of historical memory because I would like Slovenian voters not to send to the European institutions populist demagogues who sell us fairy tales about the wonders of unbridled sovereignty, nor oddballs who would like to shoot at chemtrails from Brussels and Strasbourg, spit on vaccines and peddle Russian propaganda. I would like people, in deciding whether to vote, and how and for whom, to be guided not only by legitimate questions, criticism and complaints about the conduct of the European Union and its member states today, but also by an understanding of its historical role and importance in preserving stability and peace on the European continent. This does not mean we should grant indulgences to today’s European political leaders—quite the opposite; it is a warning to them too. The European Union will be able to carry out its peace mission successfully only if it is based on the values on which it was built after the Second World War. And if it puts those values into practice. So that European citizens feel it and believe it. The formula for peace in Europe is, at least on paper, simple. A self-confident and strong European Union based on social justice and respect for human rights, respect for international law, humanism and solidarity, not just rhetorically but every time and consistently, including when it is hard and requires courage. When the European and all other elections come, support those political ideas and parties, whether left or right, that support such a European Union. If we let it collapse, no “never again” will save us. “Here we go again” is too close in today’s Europe for us to gamble recklessly with our fate.