Regions are not to be found; they have to be made – whether from the adjacent sub-units of national states or, even more ambitiously, from the combination of previously sovereign national states. The emerging European Union is no exception. Its (unspoken) motto has always been: “How do we make Europe without Europeans?”[1] Only with the existence of a functioning regional polity that provides its peoples with greater security and opportunity can one expect to create the eventual changes in interests and identities that are required for its institutional development and political legitimacy.
Geographically, Europe seems to have an appropriate configuration. It is a distinctive peninsula attached to the vast Asian continent, with intrusive seas to both the North and South and lengthy navigable rivers running in all directions. These have historically provided relatively easy access for its peoples to exchange with each other (and also to invade each other). Superimpose upon the map the artificial boundaries that they have imposed upon one another, and the image becomes quite different. Nowhere on the planet have so many independent political units persisted for so long in such close (and dangerous) proximity to each other. Project the image chronologically and you will discover that, despite repeated attempts by force to integrate these units into a single empire, this has never been accomplished for an enduring period.[2]
The pretense of the European Union is that this can be done peacefully and consensually – without relying on a single hegemonic actor and without eliminating the distinctive cultures and identities of its peoples. Indeed, it could even be argued that its transformation into an effective and legitimate regional polity is an imperative for their survival since, in its absence, these smaller and less well-endowed polities are likely to be overwhelmed by the increasingly disruptive forces of a globalised market economy – the major headquarters of which lie outside the region.
From the beginning, the process of regional integration has relied on a relatively simple accomplishment: as the result of collective decisions by member states, trans-national exchanges – of goods, services, investments, persons and, of course, ideas and ideals – should increase between them more rapidly than the same transactions with non-member states. The further presumption is that those affected will become aware of these expanded opportunities, come to value them positively and, eventually, to develop new conceptions of interest and identity at the regional level.
Unfortunately, the process is never limited to these ‘functionally’ determined outcomes. Not only will these increased transactions produce what are called ‘externalities’: positive and negative impacts upon other economic, social, and political affairs, but they usually also involve important ‘internalities’: namely, tensions and conflicts over the respective national rules governing these transactions. Merely removing the previous barriers to exchange – the tariffs, quantitative restrictions, non-convertible currencies, infrastructural obstacles, etc. – provides the initial incentive, but once they begin to increase, these exchanges are bound to be affected by national differences in regulating, pricing, subsidising and taxing them. Coming up with a new set of rules – ‘an even playing field’ — consensually is very likely to be a contentious process and their impact is even more likely to have a differential impact across the member states. In other words, the process of supra-national integration is never purely functional; it always has a political component and, hence, an increased reliance upon a regional polity with its distinctive resources and compétences.
One aspect of Europe as a region cannot be discerned topographically. As a result of a very lengthy, intense, and sometimes violent series of exchanges, its peoples have nevertheless acquired a common set of principles, a political culture, that has come to be presumed by most of them to guide how they should govern themselves. Europe may not yet have an identity, but it does have such a widely shared conception of how its citizens should govern themselves. The problem remains that, given differences in their historical trajectories, the states of the region persist in translating these common principles into a set of uncommon, distinctively national, institutions.
What are the principles to which a revised Euro-polity should conform?
I have already mentioned one in the previous paper: subsidiarity. Whatever compétences should it acquire, they should correspond to the most proximate level of government that is capable of resolving the problem at hand. This becomes increasingly critical as the unit in formation adds yet another level of aggregation to the distribution of authoritative allocation. Moreover, given the dynamic nature of the current challenges, the classical federalist solution – a constitution drafted and ratified that is presumed to specify definitively the powers of each level – is not feasible. What is needed is an on-going process that can be revised consensually to cope with the uncertainty generated by today’s multiple, simultaneous crises.[3]
The second foundational principle is democracy, understood generically as the exercise of citizenship such that it ensures both equal access to political participation for those living within its territorial confines, and the collective capacity to hold rulers accountable for their actions in the public sphere. For this to be effective and credible, a number of other pre-conditions also have to be fulfilled: transparency in public policy-making, multiple sources of information, freedom of speech and association, regular, free, fair and competitive elections, etc. Unfortunately, most of the existing literature on this topic (and it is very extensive) begins with the presumption that the citizens involved have already constituted a demos, a social group with a distinctive identity and sense of common destiny. This is precisely what is lacking in Europe. The challenge is to re-imagine how to combine citizen participation and accountability in a collectivity which has not yet acquired this characteristic – a demoi-cracy in the words of Kalypso Nikolaidis.[4]
Legality is the most obvious third principle. Again, we find a combination of two processes: (1) the formation of collectively binding decisions on the citizenry by a prescribed process and (2) the application of this process through institutions that are sufficiently independent in taking their decisions and, therefore, capable of treating citizens equally and fairly. The entire edifice of the liberal version of democracy rests on a single Latin axiom: Pacta sunt Servanta, namely, that actors should obey the rules that they have agreed upon … extended to include also the rules that their foregoers have previously agreed upon. In the case of an eventual Euro-polity based on an international treaty or treaties, the axiom implies that, in the event of conflict, its laws should be superior to those of its member-states. This practice not only assures a relative degree of behavioral predictability among the actors involved, but as we shall see in subsequent Europolitan papers, it also ensures that the interests and identities of minorities that fail or choose not to be included in the transient majorities produced by competitive elections are protected and, hence, capable of competing in them in the future.
In order to satisfy any or all of these principles, the future Euro-polity has to have a requisite degree of autonomy. Unless it possesses a sufficiency of own resources, directly obtained from its citizens and their corporations, as well as a capacity for directly implementing them to their benefit, it is very unlikely to generate the sort of changes in identity and interest that are ultimately needed to legitimate the effort. A major (but then politically necessary) design flaw in the institutional format of the current European Union is its virtually complete dependence upon the goodwill and cooperation of the fiscal, administrative and judicial agencies of its member states. It may have citizens, but they rarely come into direct contact with it or its agencies. No one should wonder why they regard ‘Bruxelles’ as remote and mysterious. If this were not enough, the governments of member states have quickly learned the utility of blaming it for unpopular (but necessary) decisions they would have had to take anyway (but less effectively). Only once they are being taxed, regulated, fined, subsidised, and even incarcerated directly by its agents will these citizens demand the representation and accountability from the EU to which they are entitled.
Although it is nowhere formally inscribed, the long-term success of the institutions of European integration rests upon solidarity – defined as a collective commitment to promote the convergence of life chances and well-being among and within its member states. When viewed among all of the potential trans-national regions of the world, Europe seems unusually privileged in terms of material wealth, human capacity for innovation and physical infrastructure. Nevertheless, thanks to its turbulent history, these public and private goods are unequally distributed across its national states and their sub-national units. And the very functional success of removing barriers to exchange among them can modify these disparities, for example, when previously peripheral national sub-units become strategically significant border crossings or are further marginalised by the direction of new flows of goods and services. The internal politics of its member states has long been structured according to this left-right issue – whether and, if so, how much to re-distribute from the ‘naturally’ favored to those ‘less naturally’ favored. In the case of a future Euro-polity, this issue seems likely to be transposed to the trans-national level and to become, eventually, the central orienting principle of its emerging party-system.
Sustainability in the sphere of the physical environment is an obvious and immediate normative imperative, being dramatically reinforced by current climatic events throughout Europe. And it is a principle that manifestly cannot be satisfied at the level of individual national states or their sub-units. Indeed, the problem is global, not regional. But an integrated Europe has the potential to play an ‘oversized’ role in this domain, partly because it is a significantly large market such that its regulations are bound to affect the decisions of firms outside of it, and because the sheer example of trans-national cooperation on these issues at this level can serve as a prototype for other world regions and even global agreements.
At its foundation, the process of European integration did not have to deal with what for most political units is their over-riding design imperative: security. The standard excuse for stateness, bolstered by national identity, is that it is necessary to possess a monopoly of the exercise of legitimate force within a given territory in order to prevent the invasion or subversion of that territory by another state. All of the original six that signed the Treaty of Rome in 1957 were already members of an overarching protective alliance, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). And this situation persisted to the extent that newly entering national states (with a few ‘neutral’ exceptions such as Austria, Sweden and Finland) all became NATO members before joining the EU.[5] The collapse in 1991 of the then most threatening state, the Soviet Union, momentarily strengthened this perception that the EU itself did not have to provide security. This has proven illusory for two very real and threatening developments: (1) the emergence of an aggressive and expansionist-minded Russia to the East, and (2) the re-emergence of an isolationist and self-involved United States to the West. The future of the Euro-polity will ultimately depend on its own capacity to provide security – internal and external – to its citizens.
***
This is a daunting list of principles to be satisfied during the formation of an eventual, effective and legitimate, Euro-polity, but they do not have to be accomplished simultaneously, least of all included in a single document. That was amply demonstrated by the failure of the European Convention to draft a new constitution for the EU. As soon as Valerie Giscard D-Estaing announced that “This is our Philadelphia,” the project was doomed. Not only was the timing wrong, but the strategy was not appropriate.
Integration – unlike unification or federalisation – is not a product but a process. And, the longer it takes, the more likely that its challenges and objectives will change. It inevitably involves that initial functional effort at encouraging mutual transactions among members, but coping with the avoidable ‘externalities’ and ‘internalities’ can be a lengthy, differentiated and critical process. That process is presently at a critical juncture, but the collective response can and should still be both incremental and experimental. Whatever decisions are taken with regard to institutions or compétences, they should always be tentative and potentially reversible. The Euro-polity will have to creep, not be proclaimed, into existence.
Philippe Schmitter
Emeritus Professor
European University Institute
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[1] One is reminded of the famous expression of Massimo D’Azeglio after the success of Italy’s Risorgimento: “Abbiamo fatto l’Italia, basta fare gli Italiani.” It is comforting to remind oneself that virtually no European national polity had a strong common identity before it started to practice democracy (the exceptions might be two latecomers: Norway and Finland). It is democracy that produces the demos, not the inverse.
[2] With the exception of the Roman Empire, but that was some time ago.
[3] While it sounds easy to define, subsidiarity has been difficult to apply in practice. In orthodox federalist systems, it is usually enshrined in a so-called Kompetenz Katalog – a list of explicitly designated powers to the central governing institution. None of the foundational treaties of the EU has such a specification, which is fortunate given the radically changing nature of the crises it has been called upon to deal with.
[4] Kalypso Nikolaidis, “The Idea of European Demoicracy,” in Dickson, J. and Eleftheriadis (eds), Philosophical Foundations of European Union Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 247-274..
[5] And Finland and Sweden currently seem to be ‘correcting’ this ‘design flaw’.