CERCLE DIPLOMATIQUE - issue 03/2020

LE MONDE ESSAY
Why we really need to become
European citizens
Ulrike Guérot
is a German political thinker
and founder and Director of
the European Democracy
Lab (EDL). In April
2016, Danube University
Krems appointed her as
Professor and as Head of
the Department of
European Policy and the
Study of Democracy.
donau-uni.ac.at
Three months of lockdown are over, slowly “normal” life is coming back in Europe.
While enjoying the first steps at the beach across Europe or sitting again in restaurants,
the autumn is announced to be rough: some percentage points less growth.
E
uropean economies will be hit seriously with
yet unknown social consequences and nobody
knows how long the downturn will last. In
March, when applauding the medical staff across the
European continent, we swore each other solidarity
at all price. Too traumatizing were the pictures of
Bergamo, where Cuban, not European doctors helped
out. Europe took a long time to get its act together.
But now it does!
Together in, together out, that was the slogan. No
difference by nationality, that was the promise. In difference
to the banking crisis that hit Europe a decade
before, this time no country was particularly responsible
for neglectful budgeting: the nasty virus Covid-19
hit all EU member states in the same manner
and didn’t know borders. All European citizens being
equally (innocently) affected by the crisis, nobody left
behind turned into a political motto, who’s specificity
is precisely that it is an apolitical statement in its essence.
Managing the Covid-19 crisis is, by any standards,
unideological. Consequently, most elements of
rather ideological monetary politics, e.g. the “European
debt brake”, the 60%-debt rule for state budgets
or even Macron’s highly contested pension reform
were wiped away in next to no time. For a moment,
everything seemed possible in Europe, everything for
the citizens, everything for their rescue, everything for
their well-being.
This is new! In 2010, during the banking crisis, Europe
had put banks before people. Austerity policy
had strangulated European economies instead of
bringing growth back, with unseen social consequences
that had their effects on the rise of populism. This
lesson is learned. With Corona, Europe is placing its
citizens above money. The only thing still missing is
that we still need to really become European citizens.
Yet, as the crisis moves on, and the economic disaster
looming at the horizon is getting a price tag, the
call for European solidarity seems muted. National
discourses are on the rise again: Who pays for whom
and, above all, who conditions, who controls the
trans-border money flows? Why the Dutch should
pay for the Italians, one can read. But aren’t we all European
citizens? Living in and from the same single
market that no EU-country can stabilise alone?
The so-called “Frugal Four” (Austria, Denmark,
Sweden and the Netherlands) are obstinate with respect
to the European Rescue Package (ERP), worth
750 billions – out of which 500 billions direct aid and
another 50 billion credit lines, a plan initiated by Angela
Merkel and Emmanuel Macron in May 2020, to
everybody’s surprise. The plan foresees, for the first
time in the EU’s history, a direct lending capacity for
the EU as juridical entity, who then distributes the
money to its member states. The ERP-money will be
added to the EU budget and thus embedded in its institutional
control. The effect is nothing less than identical
interest rates for all EU countries –which are supposed
to pay back the credit lines at least partially,
instead of Germany for example lending at some 0.5%
while Italy needs to pay 2.5% at capital markets – a
huge difference when lending a lot of money! A closer
look on the ERP reveals that cross-border fiscal transfers
within Europe would effectively increase of 0.6%.
Nothing to fear an uncontrolled transfer union. It is
too early to say whether the ERP will – ex post – be
intitled “Hamiltonian Moment” for the EU, in essence,
a state foundation moment through mutualization of
debt as in the USA in the 19th century. Probably not.
But, on combination with first steps into tax autonomy
for the EU and European wide social programs –
e.g. a European unemployment scheme, public European
goods in the health sector or a European
pandemic agency etc. – the ERP is definitely a novelty
for Europe and could be read a tiny step into European
statehood. This is not trivial, as, at the end of the
day, there will ultimately be no such thing as European
citizenship without a European state. So, are we European
citizens? Or are we, at the end of the day, Austrians
and Portuguese, Italians and Dutch? Does the very
fact to which EU country a ‘European’ citizen belongs,
makes a difference in how well or not these citizens
will get out of the Corona crisis?
The Merkel-Macron plan, in a way, is the economic
translation of the solidarity vow together in, together
out: every country lends money at the same conditions.
All EU member countries should have the same
PHOTOS: BEIGESTELLT, ADOBE STOCK
potential to help their citizens – who ultimately are all
European citizens - through the crisis: stabilise their
industries and firms, help their students and families,
modernise their infrastructure and health systems.
The idea of the plan is precisely to close the gap between
the Northern and Southern Europe, with the
Northern countries being more in position to mobilise
money to the rescue of their economies and citizens:
130 billion alone in Germany with its programme
announced as “Wumms”. ECB charts, indeed,
show that there are asymmetric capacities: those
countries less affected by Covid-19 (Austria, Germany)
can do more than those most affected (Spain, Italy
and France). If one wants to level this, fiscal transfer is
not only the natural consequence, but a European obligation.
In a political entity – which Europe wants to be –
all citizens need to be equal in front of the law. In this
respect, Corona is a unique chance for Europe to upgrade
the notion of European citizenship. In the current
legislation of the EU as legal community, goods
and money are de facto equal in front of the law: the
goods in the single market and the money in the single
currency, the euro. The only ones who do not benefit
from legal equality in the EU are the European citizens
themselves, although they are the political
subjects of the EU as political entity. The EU grants
equal rights to European citizens, when it comes to
their function as consumers, customers, workers or
service providers. But the EU does not consider European
citizens as equal when it comes to the essence of
citizenship: voting, taxations and social rights. In these
three key things – Pierre Rosanvallon, a famous
French sociologist, calls them “le Sacre du Citoyen”,
the “Sacred” of citizenship – European citizens are, at
the end, Italians or Slovenes, Greek or Irish, Fins or
Spaniards. And their reciprocal countries decide
about whether or not they get unemployment aid, basic
income or, worse, a bed for intensive care or not.
In the long run, European democracy cannot function
without applying the general principle of equality
to all its citizens – independently of national origin.
Corona is the chance for Europe to realise this. More
precisely: the heads of some states and governments
still need to realise this. European citizens, in their
great majority, have internalised this evidence intuitively:
in April 2020, in a poll carried out by University
of Oxford, 71% of European citizens across the continent
pronounced in favour of a European basic income.
They really want to be European citizens!
50 Cercle Diplomatique 3/2020