Politics

ازمة اوروبا تبدأ في الوطن

Dec 4, 2017 Mark Leonard

لندن- إن الإنقسامات العميقه ضمن اوروبا تهدد بشكل متزايد القيم التي على اساسها قام المشروع الأوروبي " إتحاد أقرب من أي وقت مضى" وفي سنة 2015 خلال ازمه اللاجئين رأى العديد من المعلقين ان هناك انقسام بين الثقافه الترحيبيه للمستشاره الألمانيه انجيلا ميركل ورؤية رئيس الوزراء الهنغاري فيكتور اوربان القائمه على اساس النقاء العرقي : جسور غرب اوروبا ضد جدران شرق اوروبا.

لكن التهديد الآخر للوحده الأوروبيه يأتي من الدول الأوروبيه نفسها ففي المانيا فإن المحادثات لتشكيل تحالف بين يسار الوسط ويمين الوسط قد انهارت وفي هولندا احتاج رئيس الوزراء مارك روتي لفترة 208 يوم من أجل تشكيل حكومه جديده بعد الانتخابات في مارس وفي المملكه المتحده فإن السلطة السياسية هناك في حالة فوضى بسبب بريكست وفي بولندا قام القوميون البيض والنازيون الجدد بالخروج في مسيرة ضخمه في شوارع وارسو.

هل الاختلافات اكبر بين الدول الأعضاء أو ضمن الدول الأعضاء نفسها؟ إن الجواب على هذا السؤال مهم للغايه فلو كانت اكبر مشاكل اوروبا هي كونها مقسمة على اساس الحدود الوطنيه فإن من الممكن عندئذ ان تحاول الدول الليبراليه مثل فرنسا والمانيا تغيير توازن القوى ضمن البلدان غير الليبراليه على نحو متزايد .

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 20 Comments on this article

Peter Schaeffer Dec 29, 2017

If the meaning of "liberal" in Europe, is a Europe than can not defend its borders, than either "liberalism" or Europe is dead (perhaps both). A region that can not stop alien intruders from overwhelming it, is doomed. A region that will not stop crime-prone, welfare-dependent migrants has no future. If the future of Europe is Cologne and Rotherham, then Europe has no future. Modern European "liberalism" is a suicide pact. Suicide pacts do not end well.
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Phil Cartier Dec 12, 2017

I pretty much agree with (BERNHARD KOPP Dec 5, 2017)
The EU is not a union in any political sense of the word. It is a coalition of bureaucrats, industrialists, and banks. The EU is not any kind of democracy. Virtually all the laws and regulations are proposed and implemented by the bureaucracy. The people subject to them have virtually no say in them. It could be much more successful as a democratic republic of countries wishing to bind themselves together with a constitution and a representative government with term limits. There is a vulgar term for bureaucrats making regulations for and with the advice of industrialists, and complemented by banks financing the operation through control of the money supply.
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Ted Smith Dec 9, 2017

Interesting how so many commentators are repurposing the word “liberal” to mean stuff they don’t like.

The essence of liberalism is a commitment to a set of immutable rights e.g. right to privacy, free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of faith and from faith. It also looks to enshrine those rights in a codified form and protect those rights through institutions like courts and to seek a segregation of institutions of the state, from politicians, from mass media, from business and other vested institutions. It seeks to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority.

There is nothing intrinsically liberal about supporting mass immigration; “safe spaces” in universities; self-censorship on the topic of Islam, or any of the other things people seem to accuse liberalism of. Indeed, these are all arguably illiberal positions.

Liberalism can co-exist with democracy and with conservative politics. What it cannot coexist with is what we see in Hungary, Poland and Russia (to take current examples in Europe). Here we see institutions under attack to make them compliant with ideology. We see journalists cowed; minorities stigmatised as a way of creating political support from anger; exclusive ethno-nationalism rather than inclusive nationalism (like Scotland).

The EU , however imperfect, has been a beacon for liberal values, especially as the former Easten bloc collapsed and new polities were sought. So what do all the opponents of liberalism want to replace it with?
- Varsovian Warsaw Dec 27, 2017
  
  Show me a Liberal in Eastern Europe and I'll show you someone who's got something illegal to hide in his family. In 1989 the Communists entrenched their rights to their ill-gotten gains. Liberals across Europe were told to cheer as Jewish property heirs were forever denied rights to regain their property in Poland.
  
  "e.g. right to privacy, free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of faith and from faith. It also looks to enshrine those rights in a codified form and protect those rights through institutions like courts and to seek a segregation of institutions of the state, from politicians, from mass media, from business and other vested institutions. It seeks to protect minorities from the tyranny of the majority."
  
  I'm a Brit living in Poland and very much in the know as to what's happening (incl. knowledge gained from outside of the media).
  
  Donald Tusk encountered no problems from the EU when he ordered the secret service to access the mobile phone billing information of 52 journalists so he could blow their contacts; when he effectively suppressed Poland's leading newspaper (Rzeczpospolita) because it printed a story about Smolensk he didn't like (almost all the journalists had to leave, but the paper's name lived on limply); when he arranged for the editor of Fakt tabloid to be sacked for not being slavishly pro-Tusk; when he stacked the top courts with appointees with a view to stopping the next govt functioning; when he tried to bankrupt state-owned companies for cheap privatization, incl. a complicated scam aimed at toppling national airline LOT, which involved his son; when he entered into an illegal fuel importation racket with Putin which cost the Polish taxpayer a billion euros; when Tusk allowed FSB officers to roam Polish military HQ unattended; when he allowed the long-lasting monopoly of information on Polish TV to continue; when he passed legislation allowing the EU's biggest property scandal to arise - including defrauding of Holocaust assets; and finally when he allowed 500,000 children to go hungry in Poland every week through poverty ... because the Liberals weren't collecting taxes for reasons and friends best known to themselves.
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Henk Crop Dec 8, 2017

In his State of the Union Address (17 Sept. 2017) EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker declared: "Africa is a noble and young continent"... " We will also work on legal pathways. Irregular migration will only stop if there is a real alternative to perilious journeys.... legal migration is a necessity for Europe as an aging continent. "

In the past year the world's population grew by 83 million.
Of these, 30 million grew in Africa. Population in Europe grew by 0,359 million.
( The Globalist november 10, 2017 )

At the root of the success of Europe - as a continent of democracy, law, civil rights and as a continent of industrialization and prosperity - is its Western Culture.
A culture developed over the last 400 years.
Mr. Juncker expresses no need to protect and foster this precious culture, as he declares" There is no religion, no belief, no philosophy when it comes to the refugees ." ( January 30, 2017)

I do not know if he had these words in mind when mr. Ibraham Assane Mayaki proposed ( PS december 5, 2017) to send 440 million Africans to Europe, over the next 15 years. ( the EU has now a population of ca. 500 million).
In the EU you must speak the language and have an education for almost any job.
Also it must be noted that the African cultures have not brought much properity to that continent over the past 60 years, despite massive foreign aid. This raises the question how they will integrate.

I think the EU Parliament or the EU Council should invite mr. Juncker to explain himself.
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j. von Hettlingen Dec 6, 2017

Mark Leonard says the EU project of forging a "closer union" is not being threatened by illiberal "saboteurs" in Eastern Europe, but by internal divisions within each member state, even in the "bastions" of liberal values, like France and Germany. In fact this "crisis" is homegrown. He points out that within the EU, polarisation has formed a “50-50 society” in "almost every other" member state - with one camp being "half cosmopolitan" and the other "half communitarian."
Elections in many EU countries are too close to call that it is near impossible to predict which side will win, because it is likely that it will be won by only a very small margin. Britain's last year referendum on its EU membershp is a good example. Now it is grappling with the daunting task of leaving the Union. The French elections earlier this year pitted the cosmopolitan population in urban areas against their provincial counterpart in rural France.
Recent history shows that such "50-50 societies" often tip the scales, opting "in or out of deeper integration with a single election or referendum." Given the chances of voter-fickleness, that often lead to wild electoral swings, one should not "rule out the possibility that Le Pen will be elected president of France, or that the anti-EU Five Star Movement will come to power in Italy. By the same token, the more moderate Civic Platform might return to power in Poland."
The author asks: "Which gulfs are wider – those between member states or those within them?" There is a remedy to address division among member states if national borders were the problem. It would just require "liberal-leaning" countries like France and Germany "to change the balance of power within increasingly illiberal countries." A multitrack Europe which has "a smaller club with better benefits" could be the answer. Member states that "wish to join this privileged inner circle would have to agree to a new – or rather, the original – set of rules; and countries that break the rules would be left out. There would finally be a cost to breaching EU standards."
But if a country is deeply divided, it requires leaders with acumen to play the role of unifiers. They have to reach out to all factions and reconcile their differences, with the aim of building an inclusive society and reaching compromises. Germany had emerged divided since the September elections. Now Angela Merkel is struggling to form a new coalition government, after the failure of reaching a deal with the pro-business, eurosceptic Free Democrats and the ecologically minded Greens, who want to uphold Germany's refugee policy, the "Willkommenskultur."
The author says that Germany under Merkel - even without a "Jamaica coalition" - "still has a stable liberal majority in the Bundestag. The same cannot be said for the rest of the EU," which is deeply polarised by divisive politics. As the EU is "both a society of states and of citizens.... intra-national divides are as important as the diplomatic spats between countries."
According to Robert Mundell’s theory of “optimal currency areas" - apparently "cultural and institutional differences between EU countries have not changed much over the past three decades of European integration." But what is unsettling is that "the divisions between countries are far smaller than the differences within countries. Or in other words, on the issue of freedom of movement, there is greater polarization between London and the British Midlands than between the UK and Poland."
The author comes to the conclusion that a "multi-tiered" Europe that brings together "coalitions of the willing to address specific issues" may just be a myopic solution, as much could be reversed in an electoral process, This "intra-societal challenge" to the European project will not go away. There is no "quick institutional fix" to resolve a "deep, generational problem that goes to the heart of national identity, history, and geography." It remains to be seen how viable these "50-50" societies are. Perhaps in two or three decades they would be replaced by something else.
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Bernhard Kopp Dec 5, 2017

The biggest threat to European nations and to the EU is: ineffectiveness, inefficiency, organized irresponsibility, no accountability, insufficient democratic legitimacy. People are frustrated for good reasons. People will continue to vote 'protest' since they feel that this is the only hope for a shake-up of the political elites and eventual change to the better.
- Henk Crop Dec 5, 2017
  
  Just some recent examples:
  - Last year it was agreed that EU Governments will not save failing banks with tax money.
  Italy has since then saved two banks in violation with the agreement.
  Yet 15 % of the Italian Bankloans are still bad. Totalling Euro 325 billion Euro or 20 % of the Italian GDP.
  Last week the Italian minister of finance, mr. Pardoan, responsible for all this came to see his Dutch counterpart to urge him to go along with proposals for an EU Bank Union and
  an EU insurancesystem for savers. Risks to be borne by the Dutch taxpayer.
  
  - The EU parliament moves for one week per month from Brussels to Strassbourgh, at a cost of Euro 144 million per year to the EU taxpayer. Which is also a humilation to the EU Parliament.
  With the Brexit, EU offices could now be moved to Strassbourgh and avoid the Parliament moving around without cost to France and saving money to the EU taxpayer.
  However mrs. Loiseau, French EU liaison, told us that France will refuse to cooperate in any way.
  
  The europhiles always tell us what is wrong with the memberstates.
  However when you put the spotlight on Brussels and see the sometimes shameless and exceptional rigid behaviour, I think many citizen will wonder what kind of partners we must have "closer cooperation" with.
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John Nick Dec 5, 2017

It seems that Europe is most of all liberal. More than being democratic, more than being a place of elective control over political choices.
Once you have a written agreement including punitive measures to implement liberal policies, the political life, the popular choice is nullified. There are no more political parties, electoral process, political choices. It's very hard to name such a political system a democracy. A proper name would be a liberalocracy.
In other historical times we named such regime aristocracy but this notion is no longer suitable as it includes the privilege by birth, so we have to invent new words and new thoughts on things happening around ass.
The privilege by capital is what identifies better the group that holds captive the political system and to this definitory element is added the bureaucracy, the state apparatus in desperate aspiration to join the privilege by capital but always forced to justify their claims by presenting themselves as the natural necessity, the mandatory elite. Plutocracy and elitism working together.
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Mauricio Duran-Loriga Dec 5, 2017

If Locke were alive he would send all these European "liberals" to the gallows, under treason charges. And nobody would regret.
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Steve Hurst Dec 4, 2017

So - in the EU does the morass compass point True North or spin

Just about every country in the EU has a minority party attempting to hold that country hostage with every country then in turn trying to hold the EU hostage to their fortune. Camels and committees comes to mind
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Henk Crop Dec 4, 2017

You can list an awful lot of differences. But what is mostly missing, except for a small elite of Europhiles, is the attraction of being part of a great venture.
The EU could be a great and promision project. With great ecnomical potential and benfits in security.
too much initives have been undertaken. Too many mistakes have been made.
- the introduction of the Euro,
- implementtation of Schengen without external borders protected
- outdated, unpractical and unsustainable immigration policy
- the Brexit, which should not have happened
- mass immigration by Germnay, solistic and in violation of EU agreements
- debts / morals; you can spend more money than you can afford and then expect someone else to refund

It appears to me that the management of the EU project has fallen in the hands of the sergeants and that the generals are missing.
Sergeants: tacticians, eargerly solving the operational problems, not caring about the consequences, just make some scores
Generals: strategiscs, who oversee the whole project, who carefully plan long term consequences, who listen to advise and solves conflicts of interest with wisdom.
who maintain cohesion

I think there are several ways to proceed with the eU
- Jan Czaja Dec 4, 2017
  
  Henk,
  Great comment and perfect summary with your sergeants vs generals comparison. We are either living in barren years, or maybe its the influence of mass media, but there's definitely lack of visionaries out there. The best example of this is Mrs. Merkel, a great manger i.e. leading from behind type of governance, however, when confronted with real crisis, the results always leave nobody pleased or unhappy. You could call it art of compromise but I would call it lack of any real principles, except political preservation. I don't think this will change anytime either, despite Macron's Jupiterian visions, he ain't no Napoleon. As such, EU will continue to stumble like a drunk sailor, from crisis to crisis, until that one event, where either become united or just go our own separate ways.
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