(Days fly – Lack of action is disaster)
by Apostolos Bokas
Europe’s crisis of decision-making
A growing number of crises reveal that both the EU institutions and individual Member States struggle to make timely decisions in order to protect the collective interests of the Union and the European people.
The delay in taking initiative or reacting, especially in periods of historical accelerations, causes immeasurable costs to the economy and almost eliminates the Union’s position to negotiate and to function as a crucial regulator in global affairs driven by the principles and values of Western civilization. So do the gaps caused by waiting to analyze all consequences and every possible combination of policies.
Yet beyond the political, economic, and social consequences, which are more or less evident to everyone, there are also deeper consequences threatening even the foundations of the Union.
When hesitation becomes strategic weakness
- The perception that the EU is a failed Union of states, lacking the capacity for intervention and therefore reliant on decisions and actions of other countries, is becoming universal. The inability to take initiative, the delayed and often insufficient reaction to crises, gives ground to and even multiplies arguments against the very idea of the Union.
- When situations demand a strong statement from the Union in order to clear things up and offer direction, the Union wastes time in internal negotiations, as its leaders are held back issuing vague statements in order to avoid reactions from the states. As a result, others are transforming the conditions and EU and Member States have no other option left than to adapt to the new reality. Furthermore, following the fact that big economic institutions are adapting themselves to changes faster than the Union, their lobbies issue demands to protect their interests even at the expense of other groups’ interests, establishing the perception that decision making centers are driven by the influence of economic elite.
- Depending on the crisis and on how directly Member States are exposed to its effects, national governments are often compelled to take measures and decisions, unable to wait for a unified framework or a coordinated response. In fact, they often speed up their decisions to make sure that Union takes their position into account or to claim an exemption from common rules. Even governments and political parties that are not openly anti-European, are often adopting behavior and rhetoric similar to that of the Euroskeptic forces that subject them to ever more intense criticism. The erosion this causes, even within their own party base, is difficult to reverse once conditions normalize.
- National governments are also forced by circumstances into bilateral negotiations aimed at protecting their vital interests. They often thus achieve less, even in terms of their narrow national interest, than they could have achieved through timely collective action.
The price of fragmented responses
The above consequences are multiplied as a result of neoliberalism’ s dominance in Europe the previous decades. The assumption that markets could allocate resources more efficiently than public institutions, has caused the deregulation of critical public infrastructure and services. Therefore, member states and the Union as a whole, discover in times of crises, that they cannot interfere to regulate the economy even when it’s obvious that markets operate against the public and social interest.
The loss of democratic control over strategic sectors
The dominance of profit maximization, even in times of crisis, could be limited through maintaining control over critical infrastructure or through intervention in strategic productive activities. Typical examples include energy policy, which in practice prevents control over price-setting mechanisms, airports granted to companies which raise prices during a fuel crisis, financial institutions that have evolved from entities independent of governments into powers overseeing entire economies and states, the petroleum supply chain, which is in practice protected from the possibility of losses and many others.
A Union at a crossroads
It is almost a self-fulfilling prophecy that the Union, as it exists today, will dissolve because it fails to respond to the needs of the era. The question is whether we will return to national isolation and protectionism, as forces outside Europe seek, believing it easier to reap benefits through bilateral agreements and the creation of satellite states on the European continent, or whether the Union will transform into an institution capable of producing outcomes primarily in favor of European people, but also to the benefit of global society, assuming that its decisions are founded upon universal principles and values such as Democracy, Justice, and human rights.
In the first case, it is certain that national isolation will eventually generate conflicting interests and possibly conflicts, even military ones. In the latter, it major reforms will be required that will provoke reactions, many of which will in fact come from outside Europe.
Who will decide Europe’s future?
The related consequential question is who will decide which of these paths is taken. Citizens, as victims of inertia, are more easily drawn toward national isolation, seeking among other things to assume themselves nationally the responsibility of defending their interests.
The second option, can also be adopted by citizens who are victims of inertia, provided that they will find a common basis, they will join political forces and choices that are not yet available. We have to take into account that even political parties that promote the enrichment of European Union are oriented in their national audience and others in order to gain space and support in some audience they often downgrade national social interests.
Beyond false choices and political inertia
This fact comes as an outcome of the domination of communication over politics. False dilemmas prevail, as does the repeated invention of internal or external enemies, rather than the development of ideas, proposals, and genuine confrontations between different conceptions of the public national and European interest.
Perhaps initiatives undertaken by European citizens can add more realistic options within each state and Europe as a whole. People need to understand that diversions disadvantage progress, that the majority has the same interests regardless of nationality, that public interest, social interest, economic interest could be better served by a union.
In any case, there seems to be little time left for still more inertia.