David Cameron at an EU summit in Brussels. Demotix/ olivier Vin. All rights reserved.It is a tough moment to make a positive case for the EU. The
bullying treatment of Greece, based on destructive and discredited neo-liberal policies
and beliefs indicates that the EU has lost its political, moral and economic
compass.
Nor is this crisis of legitimacy in the EU just the product
of the last few months. The impact of the global economic and financial crisis
on the EU and eurozone, resulting in the euro crisis, has been sorely
mishandled for the last seven years – with political, democratic and economic failings.
A European Union that views with passivity and equanimity
the catastrophically high levels of unemployment, and especially youth
unemployment, that persist across several member states due to the crisis, is
an EU that has lost its way and forgotten its purpose and values; it is one
where the behaviour of the eurogroup countries, and the treatment of Greece as
a protectorate, is poisoning the EU's very raison d'etre.
Should the UK go?
In the face of this, is there now a stronger case for the UK
to leave the European Union, as some on both left and right have been arguing
(notably the Guardian's Owen Jones in
a recent piece)?
Or is this not like making a case to abandon parliamentary democracy in the UK
because we are opposed to the Tory government that our democratic system
produced? As Caroline Lucas has argued,
in response to Owen Jones, "profoundly re-imagining what a reformed EU
might look like shouldn't be left to David Cameron" – or one might add, the
majority right-wing governments of the EU currently so undermining the Union.
Is a UK that retreats in isolationist but somehow
progressive splendour really feasible? Surely, European countries must
cooperate in the face of the deep challenges and opportunities we face.
EU failings in the
face of external challenges
Yet, the EU, in part due to its excessive absorption in its
own euro crisis, has been failing in the face of many of those challenges too –
from the muddled, 'fortress Europe' reaction to the current migration crisis in
the Mediterranean, to its deliberate slowdown on bringing the Balkan candidate
countries into the EU, to its half-hearted and unsure policies on dealing with
Putin's revanchist Russia, or the retreat to authoritarianism in Egypt.
But none of these challenges would disappear if the EU
closed down tomorrow. And this is the same EU, with its foreign policy supremo
Federica Mogherini, who just played a significant part in the deal with Iran. It
is the EU which, while not being a perfect voice in global climate change
negotiations, has often pushed a more progressive agenda, albeit without
managing to exert the same clout as the US or China.
This is, as well, the same EU that in its combined
development aid spending from member states and European Commission together is
the largest aid donor in the world. It is a Europe where a number of countries
participated in the US's appalling extraordinary rendition programme (though
not as the EU), but one too where the European Parliament persisted in
reporting on, investigating and discrediting that programme.
It is perhaps ironic that the European Union is often
criticised for being technocratic; yet the current crisis of legitimacy of the
EU derives more than anything from the choices of the current EU member state
governments – most of whom are from the right rather than the left of the
political spectrum.
The EU's structures of cooperation, law-making and debate do
not belong just to the current incumbent right-wing governments, they should be
fought for not abandoned. Surely, what is needed is wide-ranging campaigning
and argument against these policies and for a better Europe, not exit from the
field.
Does the UK belong?
The UK is in a singular position in the EU, having already a
semi-detached, opted-out status, resulting in the governments of Gordon Brown
then David Cameron having the lowest influence
in the EU in its entire 40 year membership.
This is not only the result of the UK not being in the
eurozone, but it is also due to political decisions by Cameron (and before him
Brown) not to engage on how the impact of the global economic crisis was
handled in the EU. David Cameron and George Osborne have very deliberately
stood back from that in the last several years. And their own brand of
'euroscepticism-lite' has also meant they have played a much smaller, and more
obstructive role in a range of EU foreign policy debates and discussions both
in the EU's neighbourhood and more broadly.
But this loss of influence can be reversed. The current
debacle over Greece has shown very clearly the political dominance and
centrality of the euro group of countries. The UK, as one of the largest EU
member states, could certainly re-assert itself and drive debates across the EU
from tackling unemployment to climate change to migration. What is clear though,
is that the current policy positions of the Cameron government – with Labour's
policy stances in some disarray – would not be progressive on most of these
issues.
So it is a domestic and national political debate that has
to be won, as well as a pan-European debate, argument and campaign for more
progressive policies, if the UK is to reassert itself in a positive way in the
EU.
EU is a mixture of
corporate and social
It is also too easy to caricature the EU as a corporate
playground. Free movement of people – to work, live or study in another EU
country – is something to be welcomed (if not by UKIP) and not simply, or even
mainly, a mechanism for promoting corporate deregulation and profit.
EU competition laws sometimes challenge some of the biggest
corporations; the EU has tackled extortionate mobile roaming charges. And
social policy is not extinct: the UK's new laws in the last decade against age
discrimination at work come out of a directive first agreed in Brussels in
2001. The EU's information and consultation directive, giving workers in larger
companies some minimum rights in the face of redundancies, was opposed by
Blair's first government – but under EU majority voting rules, the UK finally
had to back down.
And while David Cameron may want to roll back some of the
EU's social and employment policies – to revert to the Tories 'social chapter
opt-out' that Blair reversed – it is highly unlikely in the current climate
that he would achieve such a wide-ranging opt-out.
The transatlantic trade and investment partnership (TTIP)
negotiations are of considerable concern and potentially very damaging in a
number of areas: but the ongoing pan-European campaigning, that has led to mass
lobbying of the European Parliament, has been highly influential.
This is live and participative politics. And with the UK
government as one of the main proponents of a more deregulated deal, it is not
obvious why leaving the EU would position the UK in a less rather than more deregulated
free trade environment (as Caroline Lucas has cogently argued).
If the EU (without the UK as a member) did a deal with the US on creating a
transatlantic trade area, what would the UK do – not access that trade area or
just take on all its conditions without having had a say?
Making the
anti-austerity case
The EU is an organisation that reflects both its long-term
aims, laws and rules and its contemporary politics. As such it is always a
mixture of the left-wing, progressive and right-wing. What is surely of
greatest concern at present is the neoliberal, right-wing dominance of the
eurozone, and the incorporation of neoliberal, anti-Keynesian tenets into
eurozone treaties and agreements. Some leaders, notably EU President Donald
Tusk, have so absorbed a belief in these policies, that any counter-proposals including
Keynesian macro-economic arguments are labelled extremist.
But the UK is not part of the eurozone. And if it is outside
the EU altogether, even if one day under an anti-austerity government, the UK
won’t be able to exert its influence to the benefit of young unemployed in
Greece, Spain, Portugal or Italy, joining up to make the case for changing this
deeply damaging and anti-democratic mantra from within the eurozone. Rather it
would be in a 'fax democracy' position like Norway ie on the receiving end of
EU policies or lacking access to the EU's markets, universities and so on.
The idea that the UK leaving the EU could somehow assist in
promoting anti-austerity across the continent, as Owen Jones argues, is puzzling. How could "the threat of Brexit" help
Syriza and Podemos as Jones suggests, when the UK’s Tory government is utterly
ignored in current eurozone debates (where US pronouncements have clearly been
at least listened to).
If the UK did vote to leave, the chances are high that the
UK's own union would dissolve and an independent Scotland would join the EU,
leaving behind it a not very progressive England as a rather isolated state on
the edge of Europe.
Referenda are blunt tools. The British population will be
invited next year to vote on whether it wants the UK to stay as a semi-opted out
member of an EU in the midst of a moral, political and economic crisis.
There won't be an option on the voting form for saying the
UK must rebuild its influence, and the EU change direction. That is what
participative democracy has to do. But any progressive economic, political and
foreign policy approach to global and European challenges surely must make the
case for the UK to cooperate with all the other countries in Europe. And the
ability of the UK to do that outside of the EU is close to zero.
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