Examples of the unimaginative elite are easy to find. The financial crisis hitting Europe in late 2007, which rapidly turned into a crisis of the euro, was above all a crisis of the banks which could have been decisively addressed early on and could have been used to complete the fiscal union necessary for the sustainability of the eurozone. Instead, the structural weaknesses of the eurozone and the lack of proper balanced governance of the single market persist, and the crisis has instead been used to reinforce a neoliberal economic model based on austerity and precarity which works to the benefit of a few elites principally in core European countries. [...]
Likewise, the increased migration flows in 2015 were not only predictable but predicted and the European Union not only failed to make adequate preparations for these but failed to use the policy mechanisms already at their disposal, instead allowing itself to get into a ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ situation where each member state blames the other. Few take responsibility and the fortress around the European Union is reinforced. Again, this situation is not sustainable. People will continue to come to Europe, and either efforts to stop them will become so restrictive that the rights of Europeans to move will become caught up in the fortress, or a real coordinated European asylum and migration policy will be developed. [...]
Now let us turn to the history ‘from below’ of the European Union, which is perhaps the real novelty in the past decade: the first time that a European citizenry has really expressed itself as such. The last decade has not only seen crisis, but also citizens mobilising to address them. We have had solidarity actions with and inside Greece and refugee-welcome initiatives, ‘blockupy’ mobilisations against the policies of the European central bank, the launching of NGO boats to rescue migrants in the Mediterranean (most recently the boat Mediterranea in Italy, the first such boat to sail with an Italian flag and therefore in principle the right to dock), Amazon and Deliveroo strikes in the gig-economy, mobilisations to protect or advance women’s rights to abortion in Poland and Ireland, or the rights of LGBT couples in Romania, protests for freedom of the press and against corruption in Romania, Slovakia, Malta and elsewhere. Such civic initiatives have found electoral expression and success, notably at city level. Cities like Barcelona under the administration of Ada Colau have become inspiring paradigms for others. [...]
How the Brexit process evolves will be crucially important for the future direction of Europe. The European Union elites are attempting to use the process to generate legitimacy for themselves negatively: by showing how bad it is to leave the European Union, they aim to build legitimacy amongst their own populations. This shows the staggering lack of positive ideas for the future of the Union amongst the elites. On the other side, the far-right nationalists build their betrayal narrative not only in the UK but across Europe – ‘look at the mendacious European Union which once again frustrates national sovereignty’ – and hope for an even more dysfunctional European political economy they can exploit further.
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