The European Union
Europe shows a different and even more serious state of affairs, with the negative effects of globalized capitalism on the less competitive countries, firms and workers combining with a sharp acceleration in the institutional process of unification.
The Maastricht Treaty of 1991 laid down both the basic constitution of the European Union (EU) and the rules of the monetary union, which was to come into force at the end of the century. Many hoped that, on the strength of this extraordinary constitutional revolution, Europe would be able to speak with one voice, and that this voice—given the political, economic and cultural weight of our continent—would be able to counter the more negative aspects of globalization for the less privileged classes of the advanced countries, tempering the individualistic- liberal model prevalent worldwide with the spirit of the “European social model.” As is all too evident today, this hope has foundered: the explicit rules of Maastricht—applied to the countries belonging to the European monetary system—function in practice as a transmission belt and boost mechanism for those implicit in the world neoliberal system. There are two reasons for this: to begin with, it is a matter of constitutional rules enshrined in binding treaties and agreements, and, above all, the rules are upheld by the strongest countries in the Union, with Germany in the first place.From an economic point of view, I believe that today the transition from “implicit” to “explicit,” from rules and constraints self-imposed through a national democratic process or imposed from outside, makes no decisive difference. Even if released from observance of the Maastricht rules and the subsequent agreements, a competitively weak country would be led to behave as they prescribe, for it would come under the constraints of the globalized, neoliberal international system to which it belongs (Biasco, 2016, 163 ff.).
From a political point of view, however, subjection to the Maastricht rules and subsequent agreements makes a big difference, for it allows the Union authorities to intervene in the decision-making of the individual states continually and in considerable detail, highlighting yet further the limitations to their sovereignty. Greece, and indeed Italy, too, together with the economically weaker countries in general, exemplifies such intervention and the reactions it provokes. Of course, these are voluntary limitations of sovereignty, accepted on the basis of treaties freely undersigned, but the institutions imposing these constraints are not recognized as an authority whose decisions must be bowed to on the basis of a universally accepted criterion of legitimization. The Union is not a federal state endowed by a European demos with the authority to impose decisions taken democratically. The European Parliament is not a true parliament, and the European Commission is not a government answerable to it: the most important decisions are taken by the council of heads of state and government on the basis of power relations that do not depend on the will of the European citizens as a whole, expressed through a majority vote. It may be objected that even in a true federation the various state units experience strong constraints on their sovereignty and are subject to the decisions of the federation. However, the analogy is deceptive, and the shortcoming in the principle of democratic sovereignty in Europe is evident. In America, the citizens of the states are also citizens of the federation and vote for its government, thereby democratically controlling the controllers of their states. In short, what democratic power is taken from them at the state level is returned to them at the federal level. This is not the case in the EU, where the elections for parliament do not give the powers to control the true government of the Union democratically.
The reason for this state of affairs is no secret: the member states of the Union, and indeed the less numerous states belonging to the Eurogroup, are disinclined to forego their sovereign prerogatives any further and merge into a single, federal-type state.
The identity-making bonds that join them, the “fraternity” necessary to accept democratic decisions at the European level, are far from sufficient.5 And if we consider the time and conflicts it took even for countries enjoying highly favorable conditions to attain it in the past—here I am thinking above all of the history of the United States, in the eighteenthcentury group of states showing marked linguistic, historical and cultural uniformity—it is hardly likely that such an objective can be attained within a foreseeable period in Europe. The “democratic deficit” of the Union is thus doomed to persist, and with it, the continual tensions between the decisions of the single sovereign states, taken democratically, and the rules that the Union seeks to impose. These tensions are generating populistic rebellion, as well as attempts at secession where possible (if the immediate costs are not too heavy), as in the case of a country that belongs to the Union but not to the European monetary system. Brexit has an important lesson to offer in this respect.And yet, even if the constitution of the true federal state were possible, even if the levels of “fraternity” were strong enough to support a true sovereign state at the European level—this is a pure thought experiment, any such possibility being totally unrealistic today—it is highly questionable whether elimination of the democratic deficit that the Union suffers from would suffice to mitigate the protest behind the populist movements and the widespread impression of misgovernment. Actually, the protest is not against the democratic deficit nor against the deterioration in the input of democracy, but against its results on the output side—against unemployment, precarious employment, distribution of income perceived as increasingly unjust, poorer prospects of social improvement for most of the population and uncontrolled waves of immigration. Nor is there any certainty that the democratic government of the Union would yield satisfactory results for those suffering the negative consequences of the present phase of development. Even with a government responding to a true European Parliament, parties might predominate in supporting a policy of proceeding along the road of neoliberalism and globalization. This is the pattern that has been unfolding in the United States, and it might very well be the case in Europe. Ordo-liberalism, a variant of neoliberalism as it is understood today by the German elites, might well prevail against inevitably more complex and controversial positions favoring radical reform. (A European social model? A new Bretton Woods?—Where are the European political figures advancing realistic proposals on these issues?) They would also be fiercely opposed by the financial elites and all those benefiting from the present situation.
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