For over half a century, the integration of Europe’s national states has contributed to greater peace and prosperity for its peoples. This accomplishment is presently threatened by an unprecedented coincidence of multiple (‘compounded’) crises – environmental, economic, social, political, cultural, and even of health and external security. Unless its institutions and policies are re-examined and re-designed, the region could well degenerate to its previously contentious and potentially violent status – an outcome that virtually no one could desire.
This initial paper (and those that follow) is dedicated to responding to this unfortunate conjuncture. Its purpose is to begin a debate about ‘what to do’, biased by the presumption that none of these crises can be resolved by the national states of the region acting independently or even by forming temporary alliances among themselves and, therefore, it is only by reforming the institutions and practices of the European Union (EU) that a satisfactory and mutually acceptable solution can be found and implemented.
It and the following Europolitan papers represent a return to the origins of political science. Its approach is deliberately normative in that it focuses on the creation of a Euro-polity and its democratization, both of which are presumed to be desirable outcomes. It deals only marginally with what has already occurred or even with what is presently occurring, i.e. it is less positivist and more ‘projectivist’ (if that concept exists).[1] In other words, the focus is on process, not product.
There are few historical precedents for the substance of such an effort. As the famous dictum of Charles Tilly put it: “states make war and war makes nations” – not to mention, more stateness. The claim here is that this can be done differently: “national states can make peace; peace can make for greater prosperity; and, eventually, this can make for new national, sub- and supra-national, interests, identities and authorities.” Moreover, the resulting outcome is not likely to be as uniform and coincident as was the case within the war-mongering national states of Europe. The effort will involve deliberation and negotiation among representatives from various levels of pre-existing political authority from the municipal to the provincial to the national to the supra-national and the end-product is not likely to be a singular political unit with a super-ordinate common identity and explicit hierarchy of sub-ordinate units, but a system of ‘multi-level or multi-centric governance’ in which citizens will possess ‘nested’ interests and identities that can be brought to bear in different combinations to solve different conflicts and exploit different opportunities. It goes almost without saying that this will be the most complicated and original polity the world has ever seen.
Its basic underlying organisational principle is ancient, if a bit exotic sounding: subsidiarity. The tasks assigned to the different levels of decision-making should correspond to their relative capacity for problem-solving by collective action and preference should always be accorded to that unit which is closest in distance and identity to those most directly affected. Moreover, this process of assignment will have to be flexible since the conflicts and opportunities that emerge are very likely to be changing in nature. The historical precedent for this was ‘federalism’ in which a constitution was drafted and ratified that was presumed to fix these tasks (compétences in the inimitable French) between the levels of government (Kompetenzkatalog is the inimitable German) once and for all. Needless to say, in actual practice, real-existing federalisms had to repeatedly and usually pragmatically revise these assignments – generally, by increasing those of the central government. Any revision of EU institutions will have to recognise this ‘design flaw’ and ensure that eventual re-distributions of compétences will be legitimately recognised and approved by the peoples of Europe – even if retro-actively.
Crisis is hardly a novelty to the process of integrating Europe’s national states. Whether conceived negatively, i.e. by removing barriers to their exchange, or positively, i.e. by crafting rules to govern these exchanges, the result was bound to produce unanticipated results. The sheer increase in their interdependence meant that progress in advancing in one policy area unavoidably affected functionally adjacent ones. Moreover, since this was accomplished peacefully — usually by protracted negotiation and compromise — the agreements reached were almost by definition incomplete – if not based on the lowest possible, momentarily common, denominator. The resulting product almost always failed to meet expectations and succeeded in generating frustration.
But this turned out to be an advantage. Uniquely, when compared to all other efforts at integrating world-regions, Europe managed to exploit these successive crises to expand both the scope and authority of its common institutions. These ‘spill-overs’ drove the process beyond the limited (‘realist’) calculations of foreign offices and nationalist politicians. The distinctive element lay in the civil societies of its member states. These interest associations and social movements could mobilise across national borders and, in alliance with national and trans-national administrators, ensure that the opportunities generated by crisis would be exploited expansively – something that proved not to be possible in efforts made in other world-regions.
The present situation is, however, radically different. Now, these European crises are not singular and sequential, but multiple and coincident. They interact in ways that make the treats they pose highly uncertain. They cut-across existing causes and cleavages, dis-empowering the expectations of existing institutions of civil society, not to mention those of political parties.
Unlike the previous scenario, very few of the present crises are the unanticipated functional result of EU policies.[2] With the exception of the persistent national imbalances generated by the common currency, the Euro, and the fact that free movement of persons within the EU has no doubt affected the crisis generated by massive foreign immigration from Africa and the Middle East, all of them involve substantive issues that the EU was not designed to deal with (but which European citizens somehow expect it to handle): the degeneration in climate conditions, the spread of COVID-19, the threat of Russian imperialism, the ambiguity of United States’ support for NATO and, most importantly, the decline in the legitimacy of liberal democracy.
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My conclusion is that Europe’s previous strategy of purely pragmatic and dis-jointed revision has exhausted its utility. If European integration is to survive and prosper, it will have to adopt a new strategy. In subsequent papers, I shall explore what I consider to be the most promising, namely, the deliberate formation of a democratic Euro-polity. Only by creating such a political unit will the region have the capacity to respond effectively to the multiple challenges facing it. This polity will have to be unique in design, given the diversity of the identities and interests of the region’s peoples. It will have to have its own fiscal resources and corresponding democratic and legal mechanisms of accountability for their use. It will have to exploit multiple levels for taking authoritative decisions, along with novel means for subsidising their respective capacities and coordinating their policies. Most of all, Europe will have to be and to act creatively, extracting ideas from its past as well as inventing new ones for its future. I am convinced that Europeans can accomplish what has never been done before – to form, peacefully and democratically, a ‘more perfect union’ out of previously sovereign units with distinctive national identities.
Philippe Schmitter
Emeritus Professor
European University Institute
Comments
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[1] According to Google the term does not exist. There is an alternative label — ‘futurist’, which sounds too pretentious and gimmicky.
[2] It is at least arguable that the origins of most of the present crises are primarily national and/or infra-national. However, as their citizens and rulers become increasingly aware that agents at these levels of authority are utterly incapable of coping with them alone, they shift their attention and demands upward. It is still unfortunate for the EU and its legitimacy as a polity that the citizens of Europe have come to expect it to respond effectively in policy areas which it was neither legally nor prospectively equipped to deal with.