Opened by our Director, Dr Sarah Wolff, the CER 2018 Inaugural lecture was dedicated to one of the most debated and controversial issues surrounding the EU.
Time: 6:30 - 8:00pmVenue: ArtsTwo Lecture Theatre, Queen Mary University of London, Mile End Campus
Opened by our Director, Dr Sarah Wolff, the CER 2018 Inaugural lecture was dedicated to one of the most debated and controversial issues surrounding the EU. As a general disentrancement from the latter is mounting, the question about how and why to reform its Institutional asset in order to hand powers to its citizens appears pivotal as it has never been before. In addition, by adding another layer of reflection, Dr Wolff emphasised throughout her introduction the extent to which the wave of illiberalism, populism and Euroscepticism that are dangerously recasting the global order should be contextualised as a product of a much broader disease affecting representative democracies on a world-wide scale. This is why debating alternative institutional perspectives on how to solve the EU’s democratic deficit is conditional on grasping its intrinsic complexity as much as assessing those viable hypotheses and reform projects that aim to enhance a more participatory EU. Therefore, while some initiatives are blossoming throughout the Old Continent to allow citizens to have a bigger say in the upcoming EU elections, such as in the form of new transitional parties, lists and movements from across the left-right political spectrum, by listening and comparing the ideas and visions of two of the most prominent thinkers and experts on the EU, the Inaugural lecture offered a great chance to engage with the ongoing debate from a privileged perspective.
First of our speakers to take the stage, Marie Le Conte, who is a French freelance political journalist living in London, set out her ideas by firstly proposing a critique of the Manifesto for a European Republic, also the title of a book that was published in 2016 by our other guest speaker, the Berlin-based political thinker, Professor Ulrike Guérot.
Pointing to what she sees as its two key features, Le Conte started arguing that the EU is encompassed at once by complacency and panic. In this respect, by recalling a conference in Brussels which she attended in 2016 soon after the Brexit Referendum, she reported that the mood among most of the EU bureaucrats and officials at that time was one in which they felt the EU was finally back on track. However, following the Italian elections, and the progressive deterioration of the political contexts first in Hungary and then in Poland, nowadays, the EU appears to be in crisis more than ever.
Therefore, despite the fact that she acknowledged that we need to make people feel more European, she expressed her scepticism about the establishment of a European Republic as a viable and effective solution. Her argument revolved mainly around two key points.
Firstly, since there is no such thing as a European demos, which could create new structures and institutions – as the double-chambers system with a Senate and a House of representatives - it fails to help actively shaping a shared European identity among EU citizens. On the contrary, she pointed out that this might eventually (and unintentionally) backfire empowering the fierce rhetoric of Eurosceptics and populists. The second point she made was about the yearning of the nation state. With regards to the establishment of a European Republic - which essentially aims to bypass the obstructing role of nation states in EU policy-making – she criticised the timing of the proposal since the widespread appeal of Eurosceptics is rooted in the very opposite nationalistic concept of ‘taking back control’. Again, the most likely result of bypassing the national-domestic dimension would be that of reinforcing the tendency of people harbouring their identities within the more secure boundaries of their own nation states.
The English translator of Professor Guérot’s book ‘Why Europe should be a Republic: A political utopia’, Ray Cunningham then offered an insightful overview of those essential elements underpinning her Manifesto. In the first place, it is pivotal to emphasise that the author sees the nation state as the key political entity which impairs the development of a real and meaningful EU polity. In other words, the most controversial and problematic issues that the EU is currently facing - such as economic inequality, its democratic deficit epitomised by an opaque and obscure policy-making, as well as the mismanagement of migration and a piecemeal social policy – are essentially the results of the failure of the nation states. Therefore, the political utopia of establishing a European Republic is the only effective solution that would create the conditions for a long-term sustainability of the EU as a meaningful political project.
The last speaker of the evening, Professor Ulrike Guérot concluded by specifying the wider political intensions and objectives that lay behind her Manifesto. In this sense, she pointed out that her ambition in 2016 was not that of following a plan to achieve a European Republic, but that it was rather to write a book of anger against the political inertia of the EU system. Particularly, from her personal point of view as a German national, she wanted to achieve two goals. First, by deconstructing Germany’s dominant role within the EU governance structure, she attempted to question its political responsibility in the aftermath of the financial crisis. A responsibility, she added, that is largely dismissed as a result of the appeal of a Manichean rhetoric which portrays Europe as divided into a productive and disciplined north, as well as a lazy and undisciplined south. Moreover, as her second goal, Professor Guérot went on arguing that this was also intended as an offer to those in the eastern and southern parts of Europe. In other words, to those who have suffered the most - throughout the crisis - as a result of the German model of unfair trade surplus and wage compression. Therefore, by recalling the very notion of citoyen – as it came out of the French revolution –, and then by emphasising a common political legacy which stretched from Aristoteles and Plato to John Locke’s concept of the Commonwealth, she stressed that guaranteeing the equality of rights and obligations to all is the very first necessary condition to establish a meaningful EU citizenship. In conclusion, Professor Guérot illustrated her vison of what she sees as the Europe of the 21st century. A political union that, in the form of a European Republic fulfils its democratic ethos by embedding the principles of voting equality, tax equality and same access to social rights.
The inaugural lecture followed by a Q&A session. The entire event is available to watch here.
Antonio AstolfiIntern at the Centre for European Research