The spectre that had haunted Europe has now morphed into real flesh and blood. Eurosceptic gains in the European Parliament election have laid bare the most fundamental internal antagonistic contradictions within Europe. These contradictions lie in the economic management, in the social structure and in the political foundation upon which the EU functions.
During the last decade, the EU has awarded various gifts to capital: ‘January sales’ privatisations of lucrative social assets; deregulation that facilitates irregularities in financial accounting, tax avoidance and occasionally outright fraud; massive subsidy to failed private banks forcing the reluctant taxpayer to shoulder the private debt.
Inversely, labour has been punished by legislation restricting the right of industrial action while enabling employers to erase any speck of decency in working conditions, hence, zero contracts.
This economic model has led to contraction, massive unemployment and higher poverty rates.
Recently the European Central Bank admitted the eurozone economy is stagnating once again and that further reductions in wages, pensions and conditions of work will be necessary. The ECB, though, did not dare say that this medicine will cure the malady because the doses already administered during the last years only increased the illness.
The latest symptoms to emerge are evident in the shrinking of the French and Italian economies and the collapse of Portugal’s Banco Espirito Santo, which will now be rewarded by nearly €5 billion from taxpayers’ money in order to survive.
Another internal contradiction is evident in the great social divide within the EU, especially in southern and eastern Europe.
Socially, the EU is not made up of 28 nations but only of the two nations “between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy... as if they were inhabitants of different planets” as Disraeli would again describe this social divide were he still among us today.
Modern parlance defines the two nations as “the one per cent and the 99 per cent”.
To make matters worse, deceiving the working class seems to be the favourite sport of the EU top authorities, at least when they are not indulging in their renowned perks and privileges.
They keep assuring labour unions that legalising the exploitation of workers and dismantling the welfare state is actually being carried out in the interests of the same workers because, eventually, this will lead to better conditions. Extending the argument, we could argue flogging should be reinstated as a short cut to prosperity!
Yet, the most fundamental contradiction within the EU pits Brussels’ centralism against the democratic rights of the people. The European Commission is unelected yet almighty.
European Parliament resolutions are discarded as a matter of routine and major decisions are taken behind closed doors and, finally, rubber stamped. The European Central Bank is exempt from any democratic accountability. The people of Europe were force-fed the Lisbon Treaty after having rejected it in its original constitutional form. This method of command politics, under the shadow of German domination, has been overtly rejected in the recent European elections by the voters who either abstained or elected more representatives demanding a change of direction.
The demand and support for democratic decentralisation has never been so strong in the EU
Brussels’ immediate reply to this democratic demand was the closing of ranks between the centre right and the centre left to ensure further centralisation of political power. This tactic is simply illogical.
These contradictions are not static states of being but forcefully demand resolutions or else they escalate and eventually may also erupt.
Angela Merkel is the foremost heavyweight that will soldier on towards a stronger Brussels, which, after all, means a stronger Germany.
Martin Shulz and Jean-Claude Juncker stand by her side, as any differences between the three are only quantitative and, even then, of no massive tonnage.
On the other hand, the demand and support for democratic decentralisation has never been so strong in the EU.
The popular trends towards independence in Scotland and Catalonia also express the necessity of less centralism within the EU.
The path that the EU finally embarks upon will be the fundamental determinant of its future.
The EU will certainly not wither away if decentralisation had to win the day. Indeed, Europe would become more manageable as more responsibility would have to be shouldered by the leaders of the nation states.
Inversely, a stronger Brussels will only escalate and prolong the popular rejection of EU political power centralisation.