the lisboners

Chiara Tamburini cancelled her contribution to this blog on the 16th of January.

Europe is heading for disintegration unless we start moving now and direct all our efforts towards a strong, democratic Europe that is able to act. For that purpose, we need to set aside our party political interests and join forces in an Alliance for Europe.

Europe is in a deep crisis. A financial, economic, but most of all political crisis of an unprecedented scale. While panic is growing, trust in Europe is declining, and investors are turning their backs on Europe, political decision making has ground to a halt. Politicians are paralysed, dazed, unable to move. They are going around in circles, focusing on each other, shunning the difficult issues while they are losing themselves in diversions and irrelevant details.

The world is changing fundamentally. Technological progress brings about revolutionary societal change. At the same time we witness tectonic movements in geopolitical relations. The hegemony of Europe and the United States is no longer a given. The share of Europe in the world population is shrinking and ageing. The world as we knew it has gone, for good.

In order to safeguard what we have achieved – prosperity, freedom, security – for the future, we need a strong, united Europe. Only a strong Europe offers us opportunities and protection in this new 21st century world. Mere cooperation between states will not do any longer. Only a Europe of citizens, forged together into a political union, on the basis of a shared future and shared values, can work in this globalised world. Only a united Europe can compete with the big world powers. Only a united Europe can protect and promote our social, democratic and environmental values in the world.

But a political union cannot function without democratic structures or legitimacy. The current governance structures of the EU do not allow for such legitimacy. Only a federal Europe, in which citizens have a direct say, and in which decision making is transparent, offers the prospect of democratic legitimacy.

In the current political climate this is not an easy message. But it is an urgent one. For that reason I would appeal to politicians to all rally behind the common goal of a strong, democratic Europe. I call for an Alliance for Europe, where politicians of any party affiliation can unite, together with all others who want to stand up for Europe.

Europe needs us. Now.

Like in any crisis, one of the first victims is always the truth. For those who would really like to know the correct data on “lazy” Southern European workers versus “hardworking” Northern European workers, here is an excelent explanation by the Real-World Economics Review:

Are Greeks and southern Europeans lazy free-loaders who deserve the austerity measures currently being imposed on them by their governments and European creditors?

That’s certainly the story that circulates, even among many otherwise right-minded individuals. But Kash Mansori has run the numbers and that’s now what he discovered.

Reallistically or unreallistically, everybody hopes for good results from the EU summit today. Nevertheless, it is good to keep in mind what could be the worst case scenario:

One of the notable things about the debate in the countries that are most crisis-afflicted – and here I speak mainly from my experience in Portugal – is that immigration-bashing has disappeared from the public discourse. It may return, of course, but take into account these two correlated aspects:

- Portugal’s finally has a real immigration problem: we are losing immigrants, who – as they can’t find jobs in Portugal – go back to Brazil, etc. Sadly, reversal of migration trends suggests that the economy will be in real trouble for a long time to come.
- as Portugal is in a deep crisis, people have more stuff to worry about – their salaries, their pensions – than rant about foreigners.

These two assumptions are admittedly very impressionistic. What I would really like to do is point out this Matthew Yglesias post on immigration and economic recovery, namely the part where he elaborates on the complementary dynamics of high-skilled and regular migration. That’s a debate that often crops up in Europe, and that people often get wrong (“we only want high skilled migrants!”), so it’s worth emphasizing that low-skilled migration can create high-skilled jobs, and high-skilled migration does not exist in a vacuum. Main quote follows:

There’s a very encouraging AP story out from Dan Sewell about how Dayton, Ohio welcomes immigrants as an economic revitalization strategy.

Several points to make about this. One is that some immigrants have high levels of skills. Hence the reference to “Indian doctors in hospitals.” But another is that skills are to some extent a relative concept. (…) Bringing people with new skills into your town creates employment opportunities for people with complementary skills. A new taqueria not only offers local consumers a place to eat, but it’s also going to need an accountant to do its taxes. It’s going to need kitchen equipment and sign installation. But for all that to get off the ground, you need the people who make the tacos. (…) If a lot of people move to Dayton, that means investment in renewing Dayton’s housing stock. It means more customers for Dayton’s supermarkets and convenience stores. It means a broader tax base to support cops and teachers.

Read the whole thing here.

Since I’m working in the European Parliament, the economic crises have always been around. First, there was the Lehman crisis, now there is the debt crisis (or is it rather a credibility crisis? or an imbalance crisis?) I’m no expert on finances and macro or microeconomics, I have other crises to deal with (it’s not like climate change, hunger, war, etc. are simply stopping because we have other things to do). What I find striking is that every crisis needs somebody to be the bad guy who’s responsible for the mess. In 2008, it was the bankers; everybody wanted them to be punished, people where suddenly hiding their profession and their good suits. Nowadays, it’s the Greek, or all the south Europeans together. They also need to be punished, ideally with austerity programmes, until they lay on the ground begging for help. And then we send a troika who says “Well, let’s see if we help you…”. That might be humane, but it’s not very logical. If we kill off the last traces of economy in Greece, as we do with austerity, Greece will go even more into bankruptcy and we’ll have to put even more money into it. Plus we’ll be very unpopular. It is especially amazing that even people, who usually advocate for a progressive social policy in their home countries (be it politicians, trade unionists, workers) seem to have no problem with cutting the tiny wages and pensions of their Greek comrades. Sure, not all Greeks are poor but many are. Where’s the international solidarity? But I’m not even trying to rally one emotion against another. All I’m asking for is a bit more of rationality and less blaming. We shouldn’t check how we can harm the others most but rather look for what helps all of us most. It’s not like we have a shortage of other crises waiting to be tackled.

In a month we may come under pressure to quit the euro. By then turbulence will overcome Spain and Italy. (And what about Belgium? What will happen to a state with a debt equivalent to one hundred percent of GDP, which has no government for over a year and whose parties have been courting the purpose end of the country?)

Leaving the euro may be less intolerable than to stay in it. But treaties do not allow to abandon it without abandoning the European Union, and a Union that failed in the euro will be a shadow of dreams past. What will happen then?
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The Pushmi-pullyu is a two-headed creature. Each half tries to move in the opposite direction and the other set goes nowhere. It can live well for years if it’s grazing in a green meadow. But imagine that times have changed and that the Pushmi-pullyu finds itself in a pool of quicksand: half pull, half pushing, both parts of the creature sink.

The Pushmi-pullyu is an invention from the “Dr. Dolittle” children books, but I found it in a serious book about the European Union (The End of the West – The Once and Future Europe, by David Marquand). In this book the pushmi-pullyu is used to describe the process of negotiations in Brussels – France pulls, Germany pushes, Spain pushes money to farmers, the UK pulls the “British rebate”, the Commission pulls the community method, the Council pulls the intergovernmental method. Once the pushmi-pullyu result was much touted by its commitments.
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