BERLÍN – Hace unos 2.500 años, el antiguo filósofo griego Heráclito concluyó que la guerra es el padre de todas las cosas. Podría haber añadido que la crisis es la madre.
Afortunadamente, la guerra entre las potencias mundiales ha dejado de ser una opción realista, por la amenaza de destrucción nuclear mutua, pero las crisis internacionales importantes, como, por ejemplo, la actual crisis financiera mundial, siguen con nosotros… lo que tal vez no sea malo.
Como en la guerra, las crisis alteran fundamentalmente el status quo, lo que significa que brindan una oportunidad –sin la fuerza destructiva de la guerra– para el cambio que en tiempos normales apenas es posible. Para superar una crisis es necesario hacer cosas que antes apenas resultaban concebibles, por no decir inviables.
Eso es lo que ha ocurrido a la Unión Europea a lo largo de los tres últimos años, porque la crisis financiera mundial no sólo ha sacudido a Europa hasta sus cimientos, sino que, además, ha adquirido tales proporciones, que puede acabar con ella.
En comparación con el comienzo de 2009, ahora nos encontramos con una UE en gran medida diferente, que ha quedado dividida entre una vanguardia de Estados miembros que componen la zona del euro y una retaguardia, compuesta de Estados miembros que siguen fuera de ella. El motivo no es una mala intención, sino la presión de la crisis. Para que el euro sobreviva, los miembros de la zona del euro deben actuar, mientras otros Estados miembros de la UE con niveles diversos de compromiso con la integración europea permanecen al margen.
De hecho, casi todos los tabúes que existían después de la erupción de la crisis ya han quedado abolidos. La mayoría se había debido a la instigación alemana, pero ahora se los ha eliminado con el apoyo activo del Gobierno de Alemania.
Es una lista impresionante: la responsabilidad nacional en materia de rescates bancarios, el carácter sagrado de la proscripción por el Tratado de la UE de los rescates de los gobiernos, el rechazo de la gobernación económica europea, la prohibición de la financiación directa de los Estados por el Banco Central Europeo, la negativa a apoyar la responsabilidad mutua por la deuda y, por último, la transformación del BCE, que ha pasado de ser una copia del antiguo Bundesbank a ser un Banco de la Reserva Federal Europeo basado en el modelo anglosajón.
Lo que queda es el rechazo de los eurobonos, pero también eso desaparecerá en última instancia. Lo único que hemos de preguntarnos es si ese tabú caerá antes o después de las próximas elecciones generales alemanas, que se celebrarán el año que viene. La respuesta depende del rumbo futuro de la crisis.
Alemania, la mayor economía de Europa, está desempeñando un papel a veces extraño –y a veces exageradamente– en la crisis. En ningún momento desde la fundación de la República Federal en 1949 había sido tan fuerte ese país. Ha llegado a ser la potencia más destacada de la UE, pero ni desea ni puede dirigir.
Precisamente por esa razón, muchos de los cambios habidos en Europa han ocurrido pese a la oposición alemana. Al final, el Gobierno de Alemania ha tenido que recurrir al arte del giro político de 180 grados, con el resultado de que este país, pese a ser económicamente fuerte, ha ido debilitándose institucionalmente, dinámica ejemplificada en su reducida influencia en el Consejo de Gobierno del BCE.
El antiguo Bundesbank pasó a mejor vida el 6 de septiembre, cuando el BCE aprobó su programa de “transacciones monetarias” a las claras –compra ilimitada de bonos estatales de los países de la zona del euro con problemas– con las objeciones de un solo disidente: el Presidente del Bundesbank, Jens Weidmann. Y el enterrador no fue el Presidente del BCE, Mario Draghi, sino la Canciller alemana, Angela Merkel.
El Bundesbank no cayó víctima de una sinistra conspiración de la Europa meridional, sino que se volvió irrelevante. Si se hubiera salido con la suya, la zona del euro habría dejado de existir. Anteponer la ideología al pragmatismo es una fórmula para el fracaso en cualquier crisis.
Actualmente, la zona del euro está en el umbral de una unión bancaria, con una unión fiscal que vendrá después, pero, aun sólo con una unión bancaria, la presión con vistas a la unión política aumentará.
Con 27 miembros (28 con la próxima adhesión de Croacia), las enmiendas del Tratado de la UE serán imposibles, no sólo porque el Reino Unido sigue resistiéndose a una mayor integración europea, sino también porque serían necesarios referéndums en muchos Estados miembros. Esos plebiscitos se convertirían en un arreglo de cuentas para los gobiernos nacionales sobre sus políticas de lucha contra la crisis, que ningún gobierno sensato desearía.
Eso quiere decir que durante algún tiempo serán necesarios acuerdos interestatales y que la zona del euro se desarrollará hacia un federalismo interestatal, lo que seguramente resultará apasionante, pues brindará posibilidades completamente inesperadas para la integración política.
Al final, el ex Presidente de Francia Nicolas Sarkozy ha prevalecido, porque hoy la zona del euro esta dirigida por un gobierno económico de facto que comprende los Jefes de Estado o de Gobierno (y sus ministros de Hacienda) de sus países miembros. Los federalistas europeos deben acogerlo con beneplácito, porque, cuanto más lleguen a constituir dichos Jefes de Estado o de Gobierno un gobierno de la zona del euro en conjunto, más rápidamente tocará a su fin su doble papel en el ejecutivo y el legislativo de la UE.
El Parlamento Europeo no podrá colmar el vacío resultante, pues carece de soberanía fiscal, que sigue correspondiendo a los parlamentos nacionales y permanecerá en ellos indefinidamente. Sólo los parlamentos nacionales pueden colmar el vacío y necesitan una plataforma común dentro de la zona del euro –algo así como una “Eurocámara”– mediante la cual pueden controlar la gobernación económica europea.
Los federalistas del Parlamento Europeo y de Bruselas en general no deben sentirse amenazados. Al contrario, deben reconocer y aprovechar esta oportunidad extraordinaria. Los diputados a los parlamentos nacionales y los diputados al Parlamento Europeo deben reunirse rápidamente y aclarar su relación. A medio plazo, podría surgir un Parlamento Europeo con dos cámaras.
La crisis brinda una oportunidad magnífica a Europa. Ha determinado el programa para los próximos años: unión bancaria, unión fiscal y unión política. Lo que falta es una estrategia para el crecimiento económico en los países afectados por la crisis, pero, en vista de los disturbios en aumento en la Europa meridional, semejante estrategia es inevitable. Si los europeos reconocen la oportunidad que su crisis ha creado… y actúan con audacia y decisión para aprovecharla, tienen razones para sentirse optimistas.
Traducido del inglés por Carlos Manzano.
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Epicuro Samos
Delinquents love wars and crisis, it's their habitat. So to delinquents wars and crises are opportunities to improve or impose their power over the others. To civilized persons wars and crises are crime times, and no civilized people see a war or a crisis has a opportunity time, only delinquent see that way. The Joschka Fischer discourse show the kind of person he is. No civic person see any good thing in a war neither in a crisis. War and crisis don't have any good thing to justify them. Inventing justifications and good results to wars and crisis are the typical discourse of delinquents. Civilization need to clean up and neutralize people that see barbarianism (wars and crisis) has good thing. Europe need to restore civilization and clean up the barbarianism. Everybody is fed up of this "barbarian europe". Barbarian tribes and cultures are no good, neither to them selves. They love wars and crisis since ever. And since they arrive europe in IV century, Civilized Europe disappeared to be this stinky hole of bad neighbors. Time to people has Joschka Fischer go to the past, time to end the barbarian europe that destroy our lives. Time to restore civilization and put away this ignorant people. Economy is a Greek concept that barbarian never understood, they confuse economy with market (his delinquent game). Market economy is the same as tell war peace. Market is the same like war, with the same proposes (power) and same rules (win/loose rules) and same results: destruction of economy.
André Rebentisch @agonarch
A "European Parliament with two chambers could emerge.". That is probably the best reform idea so far. Looks also like a feasible solution to the seat issue and the general shortage of plenary time in Strassbourg.
Brenda Jones
Europe's trail by crisis is clearly everyone's trail by crisis, as our world now functions as a closed system—what affects one, affects all. Further, Europe's financial crisis is symptomatic of a much larger global crisis that affects every system—ranging not only from financial but economic, governmental, educational, social, environmental and ecological as well. Everyone feels this systemic crisis on some level, and it is life-threatening.
The solution is integration and union, but on a higher dimension of life where the objective is "human integration" built on reciprocity and love. The old paradigm of "I am for me"—whether on a national, multinational, or individual level—no longer works in this interconnected and interdependent world. This is why further integration of the European Union will fail without taking this into account.
We need to come into harmony with the universal law of balance and giving. Then we will develop in a positive way, in sync with our expanding universe and the forces that operate behind it. As we correctly relate to both our natural environment and each other, we will experience an abundant and happy life on all levels.
For further reading: http://ariresearch.org/
Frank O'Callaghan
The EU has fractures through it. The creation of a single currency without the requisite structures and underlying integration of economies was rash. It need not end in disaster if some reasonable measures are taken.
The generation of great virtual wealth beside widespread poverty and insecurity is a world-wide phenomenon of the last thirty years. The policies of low taxation of opulence in parallel with the regulation of the consequently poor damages our society.
Europe has an opportunity to change. The question is: in whose interest this change should be. Without a clear vision of this no real improvement is possible.
Morten Lynge
"...but also because popular referenda would be required in many member states. These plebiscites would become a reckoning for national governments on their crisis policies, which no sound-minded government will want.
This means that intergovernmental agreements will be needed for some time to come, and that the eurozone will develop in the direction of inter-governmental federalism. This promises to be exciting, as it will offer completely unexpected possibilities for political integration."
I find this part very, VERY hard to stomach!
Essentially he's saying, though not in those words:
"The voters does not want to do what we (the politicians) want, so we must find a way to do it anyway!"
How on earth can something like that come from a supposedly DEMOCRATIC politicians?
Alexandros Liakopoulos @alexliako
Mr Fischer,
While you are one of the main responsible for the creation of the current "could-be-seen-as-an-opportunity" financial crisis, as you and your European colleagues at the time FAILED to bridge and/or fill the POLITICAL DEMOCRATIC GAP of the Internal Market Project of the EU and that of the newly inserted at his time Monetary Union, I truly understand the effort you make with this article to "underwrite" your own mistakes, failures and catastrophic neoliberal choices! But in the same time, I do not forget, nor that your government along with the French one was "pushing" back in 2003 for the "non-inspection policy" of Eurostat over National Statistic Agencies, neither that you where the main "transfert-belt" of the Neoliberal Doctrine the Social-democrats of Schroeder were applying in Germany to the European level, nor that with these specific choices and the parallel maintenance of an incomplete Economic Union facing "structural imbalances", the main aim of the German "Deep State's" Orientation was to CHAMPION THE EU, through economically extincting everybody else, who did not have the German "engine", a solid "buyers-community" at its periphery (or should I call it "vital space"?) and the ability to internally maintain the structural imbalances of the "Common Market".
In the same spirit - knowing the "School of Neoliberalism" and its teachings that you obviously adopt as you politically imposed thed during your mandates - I totally understand your "optics" of the "crisis": as your idol Milton Friedman was teaching, "every crisis is a great opportunity, as it makes something that till yesterday was looking out of imagination, impossible or even false, to become possible, feasible and right. If and When the necessary circumstances are created, everything is possible", he was teaching. Obviously you got his message and you should be proud to be announced one of his greatest... "students" (or should I say "followers", as he is more seen as The Neoliberal Doctrine Pope, rather than as an economic professor with much blood on his and his students-followers hands?).
So, you say this is a real "opportunity" for Europe, something that makes me suspicious: if this specific "crisis" and if all "crises" are seen as "opportunities" - irrespectively to the blood through rising crime, blood through new kind of deep poverty, public frustration, public unrest, suicidal "exploding data", undemocratic oriented decisions that overlook the democratic deficit EU is facing and proposing to deepen it even further as a means to overcome the "crises", etc - could someone suspect with "vital suspicions" that someone in your position of the past, could - and would if he made that choice, according to national, international, supranational or even private interest that prevail the public interest, according to the neoliberal-neorealist nationalistic orientation you widely manifested during the Yugoslav invasion of NATO - create the necessary environment for a future financial crisis to appear, "pushing" Germany to the seat of the European Champion (or should I say Emperor) it has always wanted since the late 19th century???
Was that too complicated question? Sorry for that, let me rephrase: all today's decisions future results can be projected with a quite safe mode, as was also the case in your times: so, you knew what was coming, and if you didn' t know, you SHOULD KNOW! PEOPLE WERE YELLING AT YOU at the IGC 2000, on the streets of Berlin, of Genova and Florence, of Brussels, etc., saying they could not tolerate your actions! But, you "opted" for these specific policies that today manifest widely their results: neoliberal transformation with economic "stagnation" within Germany, "under-inflation" policies that boosted the european "structural economic devides" rather than "bringing the gap between poor and rich nation member states, NATO alignment that always putted a halt to the further unification of Common External and Defense Policies of the EU, while also made the Balkans the Caucasus a US play-yard after half a century and "opened" those markets to the German economic interests, etc. I remember that even your "teacher", short of speak, Milton Friedman, was doubting a monetary Union can stand without a Political Union. I also remember Dimitris Tsatsos, EMP and Representative of the EU Parliament in the IGC 2000 YELLING AT YOU that NO POLITICAL UNION CAN NEVER BE SET ON PLACE, WITHOUT ADDRESSING ITS PRIMAL PROBLEM OF DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY, DEEPENING THE DEMOCRACY, BEFORE ACCEPTING NEW INSTITUTIONALLY IMPOSED HIERARCHIES AND THEIR DECISION!
Chancellor Kohl as all other political leaders who REMEMBER what the European Union stands for, as they have lived the WW II and the efforts to get Europe out of the hatred, the mistrust and its bloody past, oftenly condemns ANY ATTEMPT OF GERMANY TO CONQUER EUROPE! He and everyone with COMMON SENSE, that likes to LEARN FROM HISTORY RATHER THAN READ HISTORY AS A NOVEL, would blame your "analysis" as shallow, nationalistic oriented (trough a "misleading" and informally stated conclusion of yours, that Germany "has lost" during the crisis, more or less) and unwilling to accept its own merit to the current European problems!
Mr. Fischer,
More or less I blame you and your policies for our current situation. Of course I blame not only you, I also blame other people, policies and "powers": however, they all bear with them the "label" of a mixed neoliberalist economic policy, neorealistic German external policy seeking to CONQUER Europe through a brilliant plan (Germany pushes the EU to become more "federal", while it "nationalize" the EU as a whole, through the decisions of its High Constitutional Federal Court and/or through its Parliament) and a Social Insensitivity, Unconsciousness and Senseleness!
Having that in mind, I am not amazed you concretely propose to disregard the public frustration and the clear lack of political authorization of Each National People to their respective National Governments and/or European Officials to go further the way of austerity-unification-EU's German Occupation we are moving till now! I am not even amazed you do not bother to talk about subjects as Democratic Legitimacy of your proposals, Social Cohesion Impact, Equality of Member States in the New Federal Intergovernmental Europe you are proposing, etc. What I am only amazed of is that you really learn nothing from the current drama you and your "colleagues-same thinkers" have created and that even now that you see - you cannot miss to see! - the results of your actions in human pain and "human capital", you still remain calm, "untouchable" from the real manifestations of your choices and actions! So, stating I am amazed, I only ask myself if the neoliberals have a human soul after all, or they do manifest a "transformation" of the human kind, into a soul-less one, that "doesn' t have the problem of bearing a consciousness and moral guilts", as A. Lombachievski puts it (Political Ponerology), and - therefore - are capable of all sorts of crimes, even the ones he calls "wide-scale Social Bads" (genocides, wars, racial or other pogrom operations, etc).
So, looking at your position on the subject of the crisis, while Greeks are dying, Spanish are dying, Germans will soon be dying to fulfill your, your political "friends" and your ideology' s and nation' s goals, in the same time that internationally neoliberalism gets recognized as a model very much responsible for the mess we all face today, one think I could propose, with all my social solidarity towards you and your health: please sir, STOP WRITING AND VISIT A DOCTOR TO EXPRESS YOUR THOUGHTS! IT WILL COST US ALL MUCH LESS IN THE YEARS TO COME!
PS to all the rest: Mr Fischer prefers to put "Europe on Trial by Crisis" rather than put himself! Who can blame him? All GUILTY PEOPLE do not act this way, refusing their involvement to the crime and throwing the guilt to someone else? The same thing does this article here! A much needed article would be on "Fischer's Trial by History" or even "Merkel's Trial by History"! But I am sure, no such article will ever appear in the public eyes, without the Massive World Propaganda disproportionately "bear it", "brake it", "defame it" in the public eyes, etc, etc. But even if such article will never be written and/or reach the public eyes, HISTORY IS NEVER LATE IN ITS RANDEZ-VOUS FOR DELIVERING ITS LESSONS! Whether there will be an article or not, Fischer's and Merkel's politics will soon - very soon - be beaten and successfully overturned, from the European People, exactly as History TEACHES, whether Mr Fischer and his kind read it during their vacation in order to "kill time", or they read it as a vital, indispensable TOOL for the formation of each specific political decision they make!
Richard Dolan
"This crisis offers a tremendous opportunity for Europe. It has defined the agenda for years to come: banking union, fiscal union, and political union. What remains missing is an economic-growth strategy for the crisis countries ..."
It's certainly true that monetary union with banking and fiscal union is a recipe for disaster. And Fischer's paen to Union! sounds so lovely, so anodyne. Fantasies often do. This one only lacks its Evelyn Waugh to give it the proper send-up.
The trouble is sketched earlier in Fischer's piece -- the voters, alas, don't seem to like the prospect of ever more union, perhaps because they have the innate sense to suspect that grand ventures often go spectacularly bad. Not to worry, the political elites will rescue the benighted untermenschen from their folly. Democracy of the participatory sort will have to take a back seat, at leaset for a while and perhaps for longer than that, while all that 'inter-governmental federalism' by Those Who Know Best does its magic, making actual democracy not the first but surely one of the more significant casualities of this crisis-too-good-to-waste.
And if there were to be such a union, first fiscal then political, what would it look like? Evidently, it would not include the British, and perhaps not the Finns and other northerners as well. Fischer states (accurately) that teh Brits and perhaps others have no appetite for the union he imagines, and so the only possibility is that they will have to be left by the wayside.
Even for those who might be inclined to give the Fischerian union a go, what would its economic policies (those 'economic-growth strategies' he mentions) look like? There are many different models on display in the EU today -- pretty much each member-state has its own, and some have worked out better than others. So will the Greeks slowly become more like the Germans, the Spanish like the Finns?
Europe, with all its differing languages, cultures, religions, ethnicities and histories, has evolved into a system of nation-states, a form of political and social organization that seems to fit its complex diversities quite well. Perhaps the more important lesson from today's euro-crisis is that a union forced on such diverse societies in the name of an an airy dream of an 'alles menschen werden bruders' concept of union has a way of turning out very badly indeed.