Europe’s currency and economic crisis is fast becoming an identity crisis, which threatens to undermine the European project. Europeans are fast losing trust in Brussels. It is this that prompted the European Commission to declare 2013 as The European Year of Citizens.
Europe urgently needs to come up with fresh ideas and innovative concepts and to seriously think outside the box
The EU realises that, if it is to survive, it has to remain close to and be owned by its citizens. It cannot depend just on a bunch of politicians and technocrats sitting in comfortable offices in Brussels and Strasbourg.
What does the EU really mean to its citizens? Are they aware of the rights and responsibilities arising from EU citizenship? Do citizens have a say in the sort of Europe that is evolving?
Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, captured this concern in noting that while Europe found over €700 billion to bail out governments and banks in distress, it continues to ignore the devastating social impact arising from the economic crisis and the resulting austerity policies (Reuters, March 11).
At present, there are some 26 million unemployed in Europe, with young people aged between 18 and 24 being among the worst hit. Many commentators are in fact referring to these youths as “the lost generation”.
Europe urgently needs to come up with fresh ideas and innovative concepts and to seriously think outside the box.
Since the start of the economic crisis six years ago, Eurobarometer has been recording plummeting levels of trust in the EU (from 57 per cent in 2007 to just 31 per cent in 2012). One in five EU citizens now believes that EU membership is actually bad for their country, and less than one in two holds that it is actually a good thing. It is no longer just the British (63 per cent) who are Eurosceptic but also countries, such as Italy (53 per cent) and Germany (57 per cent), which have traditionally been seen as champions of the European project.
Equally worrying are the findings of a survey carried out by Ipsos-Publicis on behalf of six leading newspapers representing the largest six EU countries. This survey finds that European citizens do not believe that the EU has the capability to address the challenges it faces, with austerity measures being a dead-end. The majority (54 per cent) of Germans also agree with this, even though they hold that other EU member states should do more to implement the necessary structural and institutional reforms.
In the meantime, European citizens are adjusting themselves to falling disposable income and a more ‘Spartan’ lifestyle. Half of them believe that their children face a more difficult future than they do. In the present circumstances, relying on past solutions is not good enough. Whatever happened to the European dream of becoming the world’s leading, knowledge-based economy? Why is it that its leaders have become so defeatist and its citizens resigned that Europe’s ‘golden era’ is over?
The media put much of the blame on the old continent’s eroding competitiveness and the emergence of less advanced economies (such as China and India) but does not question the neo-liberal policies and trajectory being followed by the EU, which continues to widen the gap between the rich and poor in the bloc.
More Southern Europeans are being obliged to migrate to Germany and other Nordic countries. Labour mobility is not a bad thing, as long as it is a matter of choice rather than survival. Also, it leads to a significant brain drain which restricts the capacity of Southern European countries to regenerate their economies.
Europe has 14 million young people who are not in education and out of a job. Graduates lucky enough to find a job often have to accept miserable pay (€1,000/monthly), poor employment conditions and little job security. This is leading to increased social breakdown, including the spread of anti-immigrant sentiment and increased crime.
These considerations have prompted the EU Commission to come up with a €6 billion programme, known as the Youth Employment Scheme, which seeks to ensure that under-25s receive, within four months of finishing school or losing their job, an offer of work, further education or work-related training. This scheme targets primarily the worst-hit regions in the EU and seeks to combat life-long joblessness at a time when workforce participation is considered critical for an ageing labour force and guaranteeing adequate pensions.
The EU Commission says that it wants to use the European Year of Citizens to promote its dialogue with all levels of government, civil society and business. For this purpose it has launched a number of initiatives including a “Debate on the Future of Europe” which is the first pan-European e-vote.
Next year there will be elections for the European Parliament. The EU is worried that, as things stand, the electoral turn-out will continue to fall. In 2009, the turn-out was just 43 per cent, (about 2.5 per cent less than in 2004). Turnouts for EP elections have been consistently lower than those in national elections. This is not something that the EU is proud of, as it reflects a significant democratic deficit.
The big argument, of course, remains whether the right solution for a stronger Europe lies in more or less Europe. What seems sure is that, whatever route European policymakers decide to take, they need the active support of citizens, and especially the younger generation.