Artwork © Claude Cadi

Claire Dhéret, we heard a lot of alarming numbers on youth unemployment when the eurocrisis was in full swing. Is that still the case, or have things got better? And what’s the situation right now?
Dhéret: It is true that youth unemployment gained a lot of political attention on the policy agenda a few years ago, in the middle of the crisis. But it is also true that political attention is decreasing a little bit now.
At the European Policy Center, we have been very active on youth unemployment for a number of years. We had a task force looking specifically at the implementation of the “Youth Guarantee” across Europe and we now have a substantial pool of knowledge on the issue of youth unemployment. I now believe that it is time to take the debate beyond the usual Brussels suspects and to connect and engage with different stakeholders, in particular at the national and local levels.
The employment prospects of young people have indeed improved. Looking at the EU-28 countries, figures from November 2017 show that the youth unemployment rate was slightly above 16 percent. The situation is slightly worse looking at the eurozone—there, the rate was 18.2 percent in November 2017. These improvements reflect a positive trend that we have observed in the overall labor market in Europe.
But there is a need to look beyond aggregate figures and treat them with a certain degree of caution. First, because I think that it is extremely important to also look at how these positive developments are distributed among the younger generation. We still see that there are strong and important variations across countries. We have levels of youth unemployment that are still above 30 percent in some countries, in particular in Southern Europe. It is also very important to look specifically at the issue of long-term unemployment among the younger generation, because we see that it is really rather difficult to integrate young people who are distant from the labor market. The share of long-term unemployment has not decreased significantly.
Another important aspect is the share of involuntary temporary employment. In 2016 more than 40 percent of young workers worked under temporary contracts, which is a major difference from the rest of the population. There is also a gender dimension—young females are more often affected by involuntary temporary unemployment than young males. Reports and studies also agree that there are very important social determinants. Lower education levels play a major role, of course—60 percent of early school leavers are either unemployed or inactive. And migration matters a lot as well.
But I think we should also look at the impact on social cohesion in Europe. In my view, the level of youth unemployment is also symptomatic of how our social model and the social fabric work in Europe. It also shows to some extent that social mobility remains limited: Young people coming from poor families face more difficulties climbing the social ladder.
I think it also raises a number of questions with respect to our education system. We see that particularly in some member states the education system fails to provide a swift transition into the labor market and fails to equip young people with the skills that are needed. Some studies, for instance some recent data from PISA, show that the share of pupils with a very low level of skills in science and reading is on the rise, which is in my view something that we should put into perspective when we talk about youth unemployment.

You say there is improvement. What is the main reason for that? Is it something the EU did, or is it something that happened in the national states?
Dhéret: I think that both aspects are related. For instance, the Council made this recommendation for the “Youth Guarantee” in 2013, and linked some funding mechanisms to the implementation of the Youth Guarantee at the national level; of course, that encouraged member states to rethink their strategies in the fight against youth unemployment, and pushed them to take up some EU recommendations. So when we look at the situation and public discourse at the member state level, the role of the EU is not necessarily very visible, but I believe that all the efforts made by the European Commission and the attention it has placed on youth unemployment have helped to shift the debate and to force and encourage member states to take some action.

Beata Nagy, have you noticed increased activities on the part of the EU? What is your view on the problem of youth unemployment?
Nagy: I come from the practical side. Our JobAct is a project for unemployed people. It began in 2006 in Germany. This is a long-term project; we’re working with young people, doing art and theater. We can see a difference between 2006 and now, because in 2006 we worked with a lot of young people, and now in Germany we only work with long-term unemployed youth.
We started to expand to Europe two years ago, and now we are in contact with some southern European countries like Spain, Italy, Greece, and Hungary. The situation there is completely different from Germany.
Since we’ve expanded, we’ve had a better picture of the unemployment and we are very motivated to go forward with our idea. We believe the education system has to be renewed. We need a new form of education, and this is artistic education. I think education today is a little bit outdated, and not only for the unemployed. It is also outdated for the employed. We work in summer camps with mixed groups, with unemployed young people and young people who study, and the problem is the same: The balance is too much on professional qualifications—they have to learn really early to think in one direction and to specialize. The education system completely disregards the personal development of each student.
I believe that real learning processes can only begin when you are motivated and you come up with your own questions, when you are interested, when you have a connection with the material. I see it in my own children too—they are only interested in topics if they can be motivated. This is possible when you do art.

Bruno Benifei, how serious is the situation now? We’ve discussed how it’s improved. Would a new kind of approach to education be part of the answer?
Benifei: I was working on the European Solidarity Corps—it isn’t something that’s going to solve the occupational issue in the European Union, but it is something that can create new opportunities, including opportunities to learn the kind of soft skills that are such an important issue. We are talking about fostering a spirit of solidarity among young people in terms of voluntary work and internships and jobs. I have been focusing on that a lot because in the end you have people being treated as volunteers who in reality are workers. We need to avoid this kind of exploitation.
I also want to mention the soft skills because one of the possible effects of having a lost generation is the risk of damages that aren’t immediately perceivable, both to the long-term unemployed, inactive young people, and to society as a whole. For example, we look at young people who have been long-term unemployed, they usually lose their soft skills to organize their life around a job, they can get into drug dependencies more easily, addictions or develop mental health problems. In some areas of the European Union, they tend more toward criminal behaviors than elsewhere.
The situation is still uneven. In some European countries, to talk about a lost generation or youth unemployment is like a fantasy. I come from Italy, where in some areas we have two percent youth unemployment, but in other parts we have Greece-style unemployment rates. So it is also about regional divides.
But it is also about discussing the future. I want to put this on the table: Our effective cohesion policies, our implementation of the European Fund, is that enough? I am in doubt, to be frank. Let us not only look at the existing huge differences, but also at the impact of long-term unemployment, because the costs to society and the state are so huge—much higher than for increasing investment in better public employment services and mobility experiences.
The existing European programs have huge problems reaching the young people who need support to reenter the labor market the most. On the Youth Guarantee, the youth unemployment initiative, we approved the Guarantee in the last plenary. The problem is that it’s not European; it is based on national and regional implementation. One important point to take into account is the non-European nature of social unemployment policy: It limits what we can actually do. We’ll see what happens with the European Social Pillar and the discussion in the next European elections on treaty changes, which are being discussed by French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker.

Claire, you already mentioned the differences between the countries. Where would you say is the situation the worst, and is there a common problem or is it a specific situation?
Dhéret: I think there are variations across countries, but also across regions. In some countries, you see that some regions perform much better than others. You see that there are huge problems in Southern Europe, in particular in Greece, in some regions in Italy and Spain, also to some extent in Portugal. It is very important to go beyond these figures of youth unemployment and also look at the quality of employment and jobs, because you see that in some countries the level of youth unemployment has decreased, but there is still a question of whether the kinds of jobs which young people have are offering a sustainable transition toward more stable jobs.

Would you say it is a common European problem? Or is every region affected in a different way?
Dhéret: The problem is more acute in regions where the figures are higher, but overall, it is also more profound and deeper than we think. Lots of people have put the blame on the economic crisis, and it is clear that the economic crisis has aggravated the level of youth unemployment. But at the same time, there is a profound transformation of the labor market, at the economic and the societal level, so that people no longer work in the same types of jobs. We see across Europe that there are also new forms of employment. The share of young people involved in these new forms of employment is higher than for the rest of the population. This profound transformation raises a number of questions, not only about the labor market but also about the social fabric and the functioning of the welfare state in Europe.

The post “Youth Unemployment Is Symptomatic of How the Social Fabric Works in Europe“ appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork © Claude Cadi

According to Walter Hallstein, one of the founders of the European Union, the EU is a community of law, and thus a community of the rule of law. Is that still the case today?

Susanne Baer: Yes, it is—but we need to explain and we need to defend it. In fact, there is immense pressure on the rule of law in Europe today. It has to be distinguished from a rule by law, where the law is abused to achieve political goals irrespective of the rights and freedoms of individuals. But if fundamental rights are crushed in an EU member state, this is unacceptable. Properly understood, in a constitutional legal order, the law is in fact the instrument to stop that, and not to facilitate anything some people in power want. The rule of law is still in place in Europe, but we need to take a strong stance against those who undermine it.

Would you agree from a Hungarian point of view, Zsuzsanna?

Zsuzsanna Szelényi: Well, this is obviously a very important question in the case of Hungary. Over the last eight years, we have experienced a European Union that, as an institution and a community of law, was not able to acknowledge in detail what has been going on in one of its member states, namely Hungary. The EU was not capable of addressing the anti-liberal developments and holding back the Hungarian government from overriding its supermajority and abusing the law. After seven years of power, a small circle now dominates the Hungarian political and business arena which was created by law and is fully served by the law.
I believe the law is never a complete tool by itself. The written law always represents a philosophy and a concept, and if a political circle doesn’t keep to this philosophy itself, it can easily abuse the law and rule by law.
In my understanding, the European Union was the result of a strong political will; it is created as a legal structure and is itself a set of institutions and legal agreements. But if the party elite in a member state can systematically disregard the collective values behind these instruments, then the EU is far from perfect. This is a deep concern in Europe today: So far the legal instruments of the EU were not capable of countering the emerging illiberal and authoritarian tendencies. Illiberalism is a political trend which law cannot sufficiently handle.

Baer: These observations on the developments in Hungary are indeed worrying, which would also apply to some other member states where we see very problematic developments, as in Poland, for example. This is why it is so important to reconsider the constitutional dimension of Europe. Of course, Europe is not a state and it does not have a written constitution like a national state. Yet we also know that the Treaties are a legal frame with a similar function, namely to limit power and prevent abuse. Right now, we also see reactions to the erosion of democratic commitments in some member states, including the European Court of Justice that is gradually transforming itself into more of a constitutional court, protecting fundamental rights and the separation of power. For a long time, the ECJ has been an important source of integration, since the means of integration was law. Today, the ECJ also needs to step in as a constitutional court.
Overall, the constitutional dimension of Europe is one tool to disarm those who want to crush democracy, and to eventually take the law out of their hands. It may not be sufficient because the law is never all that is needed—but a tool it is. Legal acts need to be declared invalid if they do not deserve to be called democratic and if they do not respect fundamental rights.
Right now, Europe is on a learning curve. I agree that is has to learn very quickly how to address these issues, and it has to develop more of a constitutional dimension. The Article 7 procedures the Commission has started against Poland are a mechanism of last resort. It may be wise to have more in our basket to address diverging developments in different countries. The challenges are not limited to Hungary or Poland, since populism and calls for illiberalism are more and more common in many societies. So it is on all of us to develop stronger constitutional mechanisms to safeguard and support a deep political commitment to the values, to the mechanisms, to eventually master the challenging moments in a transnational democracy. We need a political climate and a lasting commitment. However, and as a member of a constitutional court, I tend to believe that it is always good to have a constitutional mechanism as a back-up.

Szelényi: I agree, but the problem is: Europe does not have a constitution as such. The member states are ruled by their own constitutions, which obviously have certain requirements. These are protected in the Treaty of the European Union, which is thus not a full constitution on its own. And there are constitutional courts in the countries we are discussing which are important institutions for maintaining checks and balances—they are the first institutions that come under attack by the illiberal governments.
This happened in Hungary and in Poland, and we will probably encounter this problem again. It is so easy to make an institution like a constitutional court dysfunctional. The institution is there, but it does not fulfill its roles to safeguard the constitution because it is filled with people who are too loyal to the illiberal elite. In Hungary we have reached the stage where many analysts believe that it has become impossible to change the government through normal elections. Because of dozens of legal changes—including the amendment of the election law, the media law, the advertisement law, the party finance law and many more, all which curtailed the opportunities of the opposition—the democratic space has been seriously shrunken. No fair elections can be held in Hungary. The Constitution Court had nothing to say to these legal changes. We will have elections in three months, so we will see, but I can tell you as an opposition politician that we face incredible difficulties, and many of them are of a legal nature. The European Union could not respond to this significant challenge, because it would have required a systemic approach that the EU institutions do not apply.

Baer: When we observe these circumstances, what we see is also that we are paying a high price right now for an overemphasis on the economic side of the European Union in the very beginning. The EU started with economics in the West, way before we ever dreamed that the Berlin Wall would fall. Now, we observe what Kim Scheppele calls “autocratic legalism” in new member states. There, the EU has not succeeded to convey, and local and national forces have not succeeded to establish cultural mechanisms to underpin Europe as an not just an economic structure, but also a cultural and political home.
Thus, we may have to upgrade Europe rather quickly, to counter the challenges. This may take also more than the usual mechanisms. Certainly, there will be a handful of multilateral agreements between states that feel like they are on the same side. But to save the project and protect our home as Europe, there has to be a lot of support well beyond the EU organs and institutions, including support from civil society, from academia, from the larger political allies in the world. So this is a call for all of us, not only the EU.
Certainly, I also agree that there is a structural weakness within the EU. After 1989, so many of us hoped that we had “won.” We really believed that. Constitutional lawyers in the world believed that we had made it, and that this injustice that inspired post-1945 and post-1989 constitutionalism would not happen again. Now there is the rapid development of what you just described, namely the destruction of constitutional courts, attacks on fundamental principles, very smart ways to destroy the fabric of democracy, along with the shocking resurgence of anti-Semitism, racism, and overall political brutality. It is a shock to many Europeans that it is happening so fast. One could have foreseen a lot of it, maybe, but so many are also optimists. Now there is the urgency to find proper ways to act and react.

Szelényi: I think the urgency is there. But to stay with the authoritarian topic—and I think this is the right term to use—this is what we are seeing now, and it is not only an Eastern phenomenon. We are just more vulnerable because our liberal democratic structures and mindsets are not so strong. At the regime change, when I was very young, everyone was quoting Ralf Dahrendorf, saying that you can change the rules of the economy in six months, you can change the legal system in six years, but you need sixty years—basically two generations—to change a society’s mindset. I think this very true, and it is a returning concern when we talk about the future of Europe and how decision-makers should adapt the European Union legal structures.
Democracy is fragile if civil society is weak. In Central and Eastern Europe this is the case, which means that few people participate in the political processes in general, far less than in Western Europe. Politics dominate society’s life. A weak civil society is the result of the lack of social capital, which is a typical post-communist phenomenon. From a recent comparative research we know that Eastern European societies suffer from very low social capital because organic communities were destroyed during communism. People were watching each other—you could not trust anybody, even in your family. Also you would not think that you could make any difference. Civil society development, which is based on social trust, is the most difficult to rebuild. Many of us feel some kind of responsibility for not seeing this problem earlier. I think that civil society and democracy building is of strong interest for the European Union to invest in because it is compelling to reinforce the unity of the EU.

Did we overestimate the power of law to facilitate European integration?

Baer: I don’t think so. The law is, in our societies and beyond the nation-state, a condicio sine qua non (a condition without which it could not be), to rely on each other, and a foundation of trust. But law is not sufficient by itself. We did not overestimate the law, but we underestimated other factors. We underestimated the necessity to seriously invest in the rule of law, as the machinery that gets things going, not just to hold Sunday speeches but to build democracy from the ground up and to restore it, again and again. Look at Germany today: A unification treaty does not do the job on its own. Now there is a demand for new programs of more exchange between former East and West Germany, for more investment in democracy building, and for a greater commitment to a democratic culture. We see a need for what I call a deep commitment to democracy. Many people think Germany is fine, and not as far apart internally. But there is a necessity to step up to prevent extreme disjunctions early on. And this is not a German problem ony, since we also see the necessity in the United States, or in Latin American countries.
Overall, globalization and rapid economic change accelerate the pressure on what we considered regular mechanisms of politics, and this creates possibilities for disruption in ways we have never seen before. That is where the urgency is coming from. It is not only the area of law, but a tragic combination of pull and push factors which are currently putting the whole system—economics, politics, society, culture—in a very shaky state. Therefore, we should not under-emphasize the law, but we should also not rely on law alone. We will need more.

Szelényi: Definitely. Law and civil society are two important things, but power basically lies on the political level. Because of the rapid changes in the world, every European, even the ones who never leave their villages and don’t speak any other language, feel a kind of existential insecurity. This is what the authoritarian type of politics abuses, and to me it seems like no viable alternative is being offered. The alternative so far is the status quo, which is not satisfactory any longer. So our task is to provide a new liberal democratic alternative, a politics that is more sensitive to people’s real fears and that shapes the future of the European Union. At the moment, populist-authoritarian politics is the trendsetter.

Baer: Again, we have to understand the political structures we live in and take nothing for granted. Everything is always on the move. We can’t fall back on old recipes, we need constant innovation. Even institutions in serious jeopardy, like the constitutional court in Hungary, mus strive to regain a role in democratic developments, based upon and eventually reinstituting the rule of law. Namely, the decision taken by the Hungarian Court on the attempt to regulate the behavior of judges seems to be very interesting because it may be an attempt to stop a problematic development. I have not given up hope in these institutions. But they have to live up to their function to deserve their name.

The post “There Is Immense Pressure on the Rule of Law in Europe Today” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Youth unemployment in Europe has been one of the major political, economic, and social challenges of the last decade. Even though statistics indicate progress on youth unemployment, young people still have problems in accessing the labor market.

This is not only a major challenge for the long-term competitiveness of the European economy. Also, the younger generation’s lack of prospects is also likely to fuel social malaise and trigger generational conflicts.

Join us for our European Encounter on youth unemployment Brando Benifei (MEP), Claire Dhéret (Senior Policy Analyst, European Policy Center), and Beata Nagy (Art Director, JobAct Europe, Projektfabrik) on Tuesday, January 30,  2-4 pm at the EPC Conference Center, 14-16 Rue du Trône, 1000 Brussels.

Register your interest to attend by e-mailing n.news [at] epc.eu

We’re looking forward to seeing you there!

The post “A Lost Generation?” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork © Arnaud Dechiron

There’s been a lively debate in Germany recently on the future of the transatlantic relationship. Is the postwar alliance destined for the dustbin of history?
SERGEY LAGODINSKY: I really don’t think it’s possible to replace the transatlantic relationship, its vision and values. And another point that is important to me: you cannot have it all! If Europe does not have a special, close, westward-looking relationship with the United States, then the continent will be drawn toward the East. We Europeans are not strong enough to develop and sustain our own sense of mission. Rather, we will come under pressure from the East.
One thing is new, though, and German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel touched on this recently: For the first time since World War II, we need a foreign policy strategy for the US. The question is, what kind of strategy?

Gabriel also spoke of a vacuum that exists as a consequence of US President Donald Trump’s policies. What if the other player in this relationship no longer shares the same values and goals in foreign and security policy?
LAGODINSKY: You have to keep trying, you have to be inventive, and you have to be interesting to the other party. And the other party is not just President Trump. There are a variety of other players in the US we can work with – on climate change, on refugee policies, and so on. This is something we are doing at the Heinrich Böll Foundation. The underlying idea is that, yes, we have to have a strategy vis-à-vis the present US government, but also one that addresses US society in its complexity and in its diversity, including on the level of the federal states. We should not write the US off as a country just because Donald Trump is making calls we cannot identify with.

Constanze, you are currently visiting from Washington. How does the debate look from your perspective?
CONSTANZE STELZENMÜLLER: Managing the fact that now, there are two completely different conversations going on in Washington and in the rest of the country is incredibly challenging for us Europeans. But Sergey is right to say that we Europeans should do better at reaching out to those Americans—in Washington and elsewhere—who continue to believe their country should engage with the world.
We do also need to see that the hardliners in the current US administration believe that globalization and alliances are bad for America. They want America to make its international relationships transactional and based much more on interests than on shared values. This thinking is by no means limited to the president. It exists not just in Washington but in other parts of the US too—and in some quarters in Europe as well, of course.
For those of us who want to defend the model of a non-transactional alliance, of a relationship that is based on an embrace of globalization and a liberal international order, we have to realize that this dark view is more widespread than we like to believe. So we also have to find ways of countering this dark narrative. There are two ways of doing this: by taking on a greater share of the burden ourselves; and by striving to correct the disadvantages globalization has brought to some groups in our societies.

How does this argument look from a Central and Eastern European perspective? When we are talking about the forces on the rise in the US―is that something that we also see in Eastern Europe?
MILAN NIč: Superficially, yes―there’s a less critical view of the Trump administration. But you have to realize that Central and Eastern Europe is no monolith; it doesn’t have a unified view. So there are the Polish and Hungarian governments voicing general agreement with Trump’s approach, and then you have critical voices – from within Poland and Hungary and elsewhere, like Slovakia where we see a more balanced view.
Overall, people do distinguish between Donald Trump on the one hand and the rest of the administration and Congress on the other. Arguments you hear often include: the US presence at NATO’s eastern flank is as strong as ever; the US effort to counter-balance the Russian threat is not lessening; there’s no decrease in the support for Ukraine, although that might be coming. You may call it delusion or denial, but the fact is that there’s a more optimistic view in parts of Central and Eastern Europe regarding the Trump administration. Some State Department appointments have certainly contributed to this – Kurt Volker, who is a very active Special US Representative for Ukraine, and Wess Mitchell, the new Assistant Secretary for Europe. Both are considered “friends of Central Europe,” and not so critical, if you will, toward the current governments in Poland and Hungary.
STELZENMÜLLER: Does it help the Poles or Polish society if the US government refuses to criticize the fact that the PiS government is rewriting the Polish constitution to undermine political pluralism and the independence of parliament and the judiciary?
NIč: It doesn’t help them, but the fact that the US keeps quiet helps the PiS government. It was no coincidence that Jaroslaw Kaczyński, the PiS leader, decided to proceed with the controversial judiciary reform a few days after Trump’s Warsaw speech last July.
At the same time, people in the Polish government were very nervous before Trump’s speech. They realized that they didn’t have any control over its messages, and they worried that Poland could be used as a platform to divide Europeans. They didn’t want that and still don’t. Unlike in Hungary, Poles are predominantly focused on the Russian threat, and they are concerned that if we are divided as Europeans, and Poland splits from Germany and France, it’s not good for Poland.
Hungary is different. Budapest has a different strategy of working at the margins of the EU and NATO and has its own independent relations with Russia and China. That said, there is still some criticism coming from some quarters of the US administration, especially the State Department, concerning illiberal tendencies in Hungary and Poland.
STELZENMÜLLER: That’s true. The State Department rebuked the Orbán government for the anti-Semitic campaign against George Soros and his organization, as well as for the crackdown on NGOs.
NIč: I think Orbán was caught by surprise, he expected a much smoother ride with the Trump administration. That hasn’t been the case so far. None of these illiberal leaders from Central Europe has been welcomed to the White House yet. In contrast, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis met Trump in the Rose Garden.
STELZENMÜLLER: Yes—but let’s get back to Trump’s Warsaw speech for a moment. He stopped just short of comparing the EU to the Soviet Union. He suggested that the West was under threat—not the West of open, liberal, representative, democratic society, but a Christian West of hyper-conservative values. There was a lot of dog whistling in that speech, and not just against the EU, but also against Germany. Trump repeated similar criticism of Europe very recently, in a speech in Pensacola, Florida.
NIč: Nevertheless, for many Europeans, the calculation runs like this: There is Vladimir Putin, and in the short term he is our biggest threat. Thus we need to keep the Americans engaged in NATO and slow down their disengagement for as long as we can. If Trump tells Europe, “Buy more arms and comply with the NATO goal of spending 2 percent of GDP on defense,” Central and Eastern Europeans are more understanding. But some of them are like many Germans who know that they will not get there that fast.
Poland is among the few NATO members that spend more than 2 percent, but Trump’s transactional approach has not really paid off for them lately. Warsaw wanted to purchase Patriot missiles, but now it seems that the sale will not go through. When Trump was in Warsaw, he promised the US would deliver more liquified natural gas to Poland – but again, there are no contracts yet. In other words, the Trump world view isn’t always based on realities.
LAGODINSKY: The question is: by focusing so much on the US president, don’t we invite our publics to start believing that the US is fundamentally different from us, that the election of Donald Trump heralds an irreversible change?
STELZENMÜLLER: I’m not saying that. But there are other people who are using this turbulent and confusing phase to claim that America is abandoning Europe, and that Atlanticism is over. Including in this country.
LAGODINSKY: That’s why when other German Atlanticists and I published the Transatlantic Manifesto back in October 2017, we stressed that Trump is not necessarily representative of the US at large. We called him a president sui generis.
STELZENMÜLLER: I think all three of us are in agreement that America has not changed fundamentally, and that we Europeans still have allies in America, including in Washington. Take the mayors or governors who want to stay in the Paris climate agreement. But there is another school of thinking that genuinely wants to disengage. And I’m saying that we need to work harder to convince that part of America that this is a really bad idea—bad for us and bad for them.

What will remain after Trump, though? The US engagement in the world has changed dramatically since Obama. Do you really think that the US will come back and play its former role again?
LAGODINSKY: No, history doesn’t repeat itself. But there is a good chance that after Trump the US will again be a more active, more internationalist, although maybe not more interventionist. We should not rule it out.

… and as focused on Europe?
LAGODINSKY: I think that despite the demographic change within the US and a changing global landscape, US elites still are interested in Europe, and they are frustrated about Europeans turning away. Obama called for the pivot to Asia, but was still interested in Europe. I have a feeling that in a sense the hasty turn-away from the US by many Germans is not caused by their emancipatory self-understanding, but by their betrayed wish to be loved and taken care of by America. This longing for fatherly love turns into complete rejection of “post-Atlanticist” as soon as reality falls short of their expectations. We need to grow up.

But Europe has lost its “father,” right?
LAGODINSKY: We’ll see – but even if that’s correct, we are still part of the same family. We should not start getting rid of our Western roots and our orientation toward the US just because we aren’t getting the attention we think we deserve. We should not underestimate the risk that our non-Western roots will lead to authoritarianism and populism.

The post “We Are Still Part of the Same Family” appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

Artwork © Arnaud Dechiron

Why was the posted workers directive such a big issue in France’s presidential campaign, and why is it so important for President Macron to make changes here?

Elisabeth Morin-Chartier: I am an MEP and the Committee on Employment and Social Affairs’ rapporteur on the posted workers directive, so my position is a very European position. I can’t just be a French MP and think only of the French position – it’s my job to manage the situation of posted workers, while keeping in mind the internal European market with its guarantee of free movement of services and workers. Of course, I watch what’s going on in France. But I also have to know what’s going on in the Czech Republic and Poland and Ireland and so on. So I have two pairs of glasses: one pair for looking at France and all the other countries from the inside, and another pair for building a united Europe and improving the situation of posted workers.

Why is it important to review the directive? Because we don’t have a choice! The bill under review dates from 1996; it’s about 20 years old. What was the EU in 1996? It consisted of fifteen member states with a wage gap of 1:3 , meaning that workers in the richest country earned on average three times as much as in the poorest country. Today Europe has a wage gap of 1:10. The text of the directive under review dates from before EU enlargement. It hasn’t been reviewed since the EU expansion towards the east, and that expansion has widened the minimum wage gap. The minimum wage of a worker in Hungary, Bulgaria, or Romania bears no relation to the minimum wage of a worker in Sweden or France. And this wage gap has fundamentally disrupted the interior market in two ways: some businesses have suffered from the unfair competition between east and west, while others have profited from it.

The second problem is that there has been social dumping among workers. In the revised directive we have a clear goal, set by Jean-Claude Juncker: the same wages for the same work in the same workplaces. That is extremely important. In the new revised directive there will be no second-class workers in Europe.

Why is this issue so prominent in France right now?

Paul-Joachim Kubosch: It’s not a new issue, it’s more than 20 years old – in fact, it’s even older. In the 1990s it took us several years to agree on a first version of the directive, and then we were only 15 countries. Today this already difficult issue has become more complicated by the simple fact that there are more member states and there is a difference in living conditions; the cost and the salaries of the different member states are so far apart from each other that it’s much more difficult than it was 20 years ago. The debate has been nasty and very difficult. The member states have different interests – within the member states you have social partners and special interests, employees and enterprises; there are those who say that what’s happening is unfair competition, while others are fine with subcontracting.

Of course, worker unions find the present situation very unfair. But from the point of view of the Eastern member states, low wages are one of their few advantages. There are many reasons they are not yet competitive in other areas, but one point for them is that they are cheaper. What we see as a solution in France and Germany is a problem for them. This is why this debate was so intense and sometimes polemic.

But it isn’t just a question of rich countries and poor countries; it goes deeper than that. There’s also a specific French aspect.

Morin-Chartier : France was in the middle of the presidential campaign, and what changed is that, contrary to expectations, President Macron put the question of Europe at the center of the presidential debate. There was a real political split between the parties in France – but it reflected a real split in the society. What can be done to make sure that posted workers were treated as fairly as national workers? There was a broad swath of society saying that in times of crisis, jobs should be reserved for the French. We pro-Europeans said: free movement of workers and free movement of services are two of the four founding freedoms of the EU.

The situation has been exacerbated by some unfortunate decisions made by the regional and local MPs, who came up with the “Molière clause.” What is the “Molière clause”? It’s a requirement to speak French on building sites. If you don’t speak French, you can’t come to work. Some have even made a link between this clause and the right to compete in calls for tender. There’s a better way to manage social dumping and unfair competition between companies. What I did in reviewing this directive was to take the other path, which is to build up social equality and fair competition. The question of equality among workers is quite straightforward: a posted worker’s salary should be in line with a national worker’s salary, because that’s where competition starts. That’s a major change; the main feature of the 1996 directive was that posted workers were to have the same minimum wage as national workers. But the minimum wage is no longer the only point of reference. As a result of collective bargaining and social dialogue, there have been improvements to the minimum wage: bonuses, a thirteenth month, a hardship allowance, a risk allowance, a winter allowance etc. Posted workers earning the minimum wage must also have access to the bonuses that come with it. That means that we don’t refer to a minimum wage in the updated directive; we speak of remuneration. Now remuneration is protected: minimum wage plus bonuses and allowances, treated separately. The European Parliament has even specified that the allowances should be brought into line with those of the host country. That means that a meal received by a Hungarian posted worker does not cost the price of a meal in Hungary, but instead the price of a meal in Germany, France, Spain, or Denmark.

Would you think that sort of approach supports the principle of free movement, or would that sort of undercut it?

Kubosch: Well, one issue for the commission is always to avoid making things too complicated – but this issue is complicated even without the European level. Let’s take the situation in Germany: even within a single enterprise you don’t have the same working conditions or the same salary conditions for all the workers. It depends in some cases whether you’re a member of a union, or of which union.

In reality it’s difficult to figure out what the working conditions should be. With whom do you compare Polish workers if you have different conditions in Germany? So this really is a problem, and it’s probably impossible to write a piece of legislation that would deal with this issue completely. The goal of the commission is to find good ideas without making things more complicated or too complicated.

Will the new directive end up limiting migration within the EU?

Kubosch: That could be one of the results. If workers from less developed member states migrate because other states wanted to employ them cheaply, this might lead to less migration. But if private migration is based on unfair conditions, then maybe that’s O.K.

But we think this will not be the case, for the simple reason that we need workers in many states like Germany and France for certain sectors. For instance, you can’t find enough Germans to work in the agricultural sector. We think that migration will continue, because without these workers from other member states, these sectors cannot be sustained.

That’s even true for the UK, which is already having problems finding enough people to pick strawberries. So maybe strawberries will become more expensive?

Kubosch: If the low price was due to unfair working conditions, then maybe they will be more expensive. It’s probably impossible to produce a piece of legislation that will find solutions that are convenient and practical for everybody. Another very important question will be the application of European regulations in the states. Even the old directive was not always applied well in Germany due to the absence of staff and conflicts of interest among public authorities. On the one hand, they wanted to control working conditions – but on the other hand, buildings for public authorities are cheaper if the work force is cheaper. This is a problem that still exists at least in Germany, and maybe in other member states.

If we follow your advice, wouldn’t we need some sort of offer for the eastern European members, a compensation for this change?

Morin-Chartier: When Commissioner Marianne Thyssen first presented this bill, eleven yellow cards were sent to the Commission from eleven countries – ten eastern European countries plus Denmark – opposing the changes made to the directive. But the Commission made clear that it was determined, and we’ve needed to be very determined indeed, because this is the third time we’ve presented the bill; the two preceding reviews were unsuccessful. We’re making progress, though. We now have a bill that strikes a balance between east and west, between employees and businesses.

I’ve been careful to keep things streamlined for businesses. I know businesses from the inside. Businesses need clear guidelines to avoid penalties, so we’ve taken a lot of precautions and gone into a lot of detail. Maybe that makes for a slightly more complicated bill, but at least we know it’s been set down in black and white that the collective agreements apply on a national level, that businesses will be fully informed, and that if they are penalized, they can only be sanctioned on a national level.

It is important to me that Europe isn’t geared toward the lowest bidder. You can always find someone poorer than you to come and work at a lower cost. But you can’t have policies of European cohesion and at the same time completely neglect the social side. I know this is going to raise a few eyebrows at the Commission, but that is the reason we expanded the legal basis of the bill at the European parliamentary level. At the moment, the legal basis of the directive is free movement of services, but we wanted a double legal basis that also takes into account the workers of “social Europe.”

I spend four days a week at the European Parliament. The three remaining days, if I’m not in Paris, I’m in my electoral district. For years I’ve seen that the employment problem – which now spans three generations – has a negative impact. It’s a cause of anxiety in families, young people can’t find their way into the job market, their parents are unemployed, their grandparents worry about the younger generations. This corporate, bureaucratic Europe seems rather far removed from their world. What result does that have? The rise of populism! The rise of anti-Europeans. The economic crisis and the impact it has had on Europe require us to take into account the employment problems. That’s true in France, but it’s also true all over Europe. So yes, I’m in favor of rewriting European social policy and European employment policy, and on that point I am 300 percent behind Jean-Claude Juncker when he says, in his capacity as the president of the European Commission, “What I want is for Europe to have a social triple-A rating.”

Kubosch : Just to add one thing: why are we always talking about problems in Europe? We haven’t even spoken about those who would gain from this legislation. There are two types of winners: in the East and in the West. In the West there are those enterprises that have been exposed to unfair competition whose situation will improve. Workers in the West will also gain. But there are even more winners in the East, those workers who have been sent to the West for unfair and in some cases really criminal employment. They’ll be the winners because they will leave their homes for jobs with a good salary and fair conditions. What remains is a problem of communication. There are not so many people in the Eastern states opposed to this new piece of legislation; it’s governments, not the workers. Those who were the winners of the old situation – enterprises that earn money by paying people poorly and sending them to the West – will be losers, but those are not people we should protect in Europe. So it’s a question of communication to explain to the public in the Eastern member states that what we are doing is meant to help them.

They don’t see it that way.

Kubosch : We should invest more energy in explaining this. It’s not easy – you need media, you need local and national politicians, parties, governments to spread the information, and they are not always helpful. But you could have partners: workers unions, for instance, are on our side, and they can serve as multipliers.

But it takes energy, and it requires knowledge of each member state, because the networks of communication are different from member state to member state. If you just try to communicate from Brussels, you are not in a position to relate to this sort of local population. Fifteen years ago the Swedish vice president   was already saying we should go more local with our communication, and that remains the best idea for good communication. This directive is one of many examples where communication should address critical comments. We should also explain how the directive is in their favor and their interests. At the end of the day, the fact that we could find a majority in the council shows that, to a certain extent. Communicating and finding friends in member states works, even if there’s still a lot to be done on this directive and for many others.

My last provocative question is: Can Europe afford a social Europe? Or with populism challenging the EU, are we simply forced to?

Morin-Chartier: There can be no such thing as a “social Europe” as long as there are no jobs. And who creates jobs? Businesses! So all we can do at a European level to ensure an active labor market for the 23 million SMEs and SMIs is to create an atmosphere of global competition. The only thing Europe can’t afford is internal competition; what it needs is dynamics of innovation, supported by employment and labor policies whose aim is to introduce fair competition. Europe must go down this path; otherwise it will wither and curl in on itself and die – wither in global competition and curl in on itself in backward-looking nationalism.

I come from the same region as Jean Monnet, one of the founding fathers of Europe. The spirit of Europe is something I feel in my body and in my heart. And it’s something we communicate at a local level using concrete examples. Eighteen months ago I felt a great distance from France when my friends from my own political party drew up the Molière clauses to reject posted workers. But today, more people understand that there is another way to introduce fair competition between businesses.

I’ve gone to great lengths to understand why the countries in Eastern Europe sent those yellow cards to the commission. What those yellow cards were trying to say was: whatever you do in that directive, keep your hands off posted workers.

Today, in the European Parliament, our bill goes further than the council’s; the council’s bill tends to focus on national interests, and the negotiating mandate that I now have for the final phase of the review of this directive is for discussions to bring the bills in line with one another. We got it through the European Parliament with 95 percent of the votes. 95 percent of the votes! It doesn’t often happen, and it means that East and West have found a way of talking to each other – and that’s what Europe is all about, knowing how to talk to each other to move the European project forward.

Kubosch: One or two things on social Europe. First, one mistake that was made in the past was that we promised too much. Some papers by the commission are describing a wonderful image of how a social Europe could look – but at the end of the day, we know this is far from the reality, for the simple reason that the member states’ starting points are very far apart. And by promising it, we create disappointment. We’re reading papers that the commission wrote ten years ago, and some expectations were OK and came out right, but some things reappear and reappear – we’re promising things we know will not arrive, a complete harmonization where the living and working conditions are the same. This is not the reality.

So we should stop over-promising, and should organize a Europe that is just making progress towards bringing conditions closer together. That’s something we can achieve and we did achieve in the past, but over the last few years the economic crisis interrupted the process. But until 2008, the gap between poor and rich member states was shrinking every year. So we should return to that situation where the gap is shrinking. This will mean good social and internal market policy – indeed, in some areas you cannot divide the two: good internal market policy will make the social differences shrink. The member states will still be in different positions for some time, but bringing things closer together is a large improvement for all the member states – for the poor member states, where working conditions are less advanced, but for the rich member states as well.

I was sent as a national expert by the Bavarian Ministry for Social Affairs to Brussels to work for the commission. When my ministry sent me, they said, look: your job is to improve the social situation in other member states. This was in 1989. There were only twelve states at the time, and  as you said the wage gap was one to three. My ministry warned that it would be enormously difficult to downgrade the status quo of our social policies in the rich member states. But this would create such a problem of competition that at the end of the day, we would not be able to keep our system in place. So it’s in the interests of the rich member states to have the others catch up.

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Artwork © Arnaud Dechiron

We’d like to kick off with a recent speech by EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in which he outlined a vision for a European Union of the future. Was there anything in this speech that spoke to you?
Louisa Slavkova: There were quite a few interesting points. However, there was also some wishful thinking when it comes to the role of the non-governmental sector in Europe. The Commission would like to be in a more intense conversation with the NGOs, but this is something we’ve heard before – just like the commission says it would love to be closer to the citizens, which on a structural level isn’t really happening.
You could argue that national politicians are the ones who have to start a dialogue with citizens about the future of Europe, or members of the European parliament should be having these conversations when they go back home. But while these conversations do happen, they happen in a very small circle, so that basically the nature and substance of the EU still remain quite far away from citizens, at least in Bulgaria.

How should Europe engage with its population and implement reforms? Is this top-down, or bottom-up? How can we have a process that is more transparent and more democratic?
Daniel Kruse: Well, with our Open State collective we are holding what we call “innovation camps,” which offer one model for engagement. These are rather long-term events where we try to dig deep into issues and find new ideas. We just held one on politics, which we called the Open State of Politics. It was five days in a wild former botanical theme park in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a, and we invited 20 political innovators from across the EU. We tried to make them break with their daily routine a little bit and encourage introspection.

This is slightly different than what Mr. Juncker outlined yesterday. From what you’re saying, your approach sounds more like a disruption than what is usually being done. Could you give an example of what was being discussed there?
Kruse: This camp invited “democracy innovators” who act outside of the parliamentary system and offer new approaches to politics. There were people from Liquid Democracy, people who have just founded a new party in Germany – Demokratie in Bewegung (“Democracy in Motion”) – people from the ZEIT Online project “#D17” who traveled around the country to meet and connect with people in rural areas. It was a highly diverse group, and we looked for something that they all shared, that all these different people cherished. We’re just having our first evaluation meeting today, so it’s very fresh.
But the question is how these innovators have an impact, or how these innovations become policies, at least in the mid- to long-term.

Did you come up with any ideas about to how to bring the EU closer to its citizens?
Kruse: There’s a couple of things. For example, we heard the story of a very active online hate commentator. When a journalist finally met him and interviewed him, he found out that this guy had kids, two cars, was voting for the Greens – he was a very settled employee in an IT company, and yet he felt completely left out by what happens in the EU. He can vote every four years for his own national government, but he has no influence at all on the EU level and doesn’t know what’s happening.

What’s it like in Bulgaria, Louisa? Is there also this feeling of being completely detached from what the EU does?
Slavkova: Well, you have to keep in mind that our country is still considered one of the new member states, so the whole narrative about why we are part of the EU is kind of in its first generation. The older generation, the one that was part of the conversation in the nineties about which direction we wanted to take – not East, but rather West – and that we wanted to become part of NATO and the EU, they know why they’re part of the Union, more or less. And when you travel around the country, you see these big signs all over the place that tell you “This project is supported by the cohesion fund” or “That project is supported by the structural fund,” so on that level the EU is visually present.
On top of that, a lot of people realize that the region in which we live is quite challenging, and one of the main sources of investment actually comes from various EU funds. So there is a very strong positive attitude.
On the other hand, we just had a democracy camp for young people in the South. When they speak about their future vision for democracy in this country, the EU does not come up. That is quite interesting, because this is the generation that was born way after 1989, and for them the EU is a given. For them, free travel and all the other added values of membership are a given. I was a student in Germany and had to renew my visa every three months, but for them that’s ancient history.
Engaging them in a conversation about the European Union when they actually don’t feel that they need to is quite a challenge.

Kruse: A main issue is that the EU was defined in its beginnings as an economic partnership, and was then elaborated by politicians and in contracts and in structures. There was less talk about soft issues, like the cultures of the EU and exchanges among people – real-world meetings of people so you really get to know your fellow Europeans. So we’re left with just this national identity, and really don’t know what the others are like.
People are only now starting to work on that. Threats like populism and the refugee crisis demand that we stick together, and unfortunately people are pointing fingers instead. Martin Schulz, the SPD’s candidate in the recent German elections, emphasized this, saying that we need to distribute this pressure on the shoulders of the many in the EU, rather than allow some countries to say we cannot take any more refugees. Only now is the EU defining itself, in response to pressure from the outside.
I think one of the main reasons that voters in rural areas voted for right-wing parties is because they lack the positive experiences of Europe – of traveling, of studying abroad, of meeting people. Maybe they’ve occasionally spent holidays in Italy, but that’s not really getting to know what it means to be European. Personally, I only really figured out how much I loved being European when I did a trip through Latin America; I felt it was very different, and I realized I actually like being European. It’s really only in opposition to other things that you get to know your identity.

You’ve both looked at civic participation with the government and the EU, albeit on different levels. Daniel, you co-founded reCampaign, which started as a side event to re:publica and now is one of Europe’s most important meetings on digitalized society; Louisa, you co-founded the Sofia Platform. Is there a way that governments can connect with these new ways in which citizens are using the internet?
Kruse: I’m always in favor of sectors talking to each other and learning from each other instead of seeing themselves as completely separate. If you look at the last re:publica conference, there was a big booth and a big publication from the German Ministry of Labor on “Work 4.0.” They had a huge brochure, and presented an alternative idea to basic income. The impetus to do that came from the digital side, where everyone was talking about basic income; the ministry’s initiative was a reaction to that.
Obviously there are bridges between the two camps, and politics can benefit from working with the digital community, including the world of start-ups, agile working, and non-hierarchical participation. Sometimes in the internet bubble people are really ahead of the curve. They’re thinking about building up alternative everyday lives where they circumvent failed state policies, where they have their own decision models, where it’s mostly about solidarity and not paying taxes to anywhere. That’s two steps ahead of where politics is.
I think that the people who visited our camp, who all have great potential, intentionally avoid the classic political system because they aim to be more radical and bolder, or work on their own smaller communities. They don’t really want to operate on a national or EU level anymore because it’s so far away and so hard to change.

Speaking of European identity, you said that you felt the most European when you were traveling abroad. How can the internet be something that promotes European identity – or do we need to do that offline?
Kruse: Tough question! It really depends on what is digital and what is the internet, that’s really a huge space. Even all these digital people eventually do conferences and offline meetings.

Juncker touched on the idea of transnational MEPs, meaning you’d be able to vote not just for a Bulgarian or a German MEP, but for someone from another member state. Is this something that has an appeal?
Slavkova: Sure. This all has to do with the basic question: how close is the EU to the European citizenry, and how much do they understand the impact that the EU has on their daily life? So it all boils down to education.
I know this sounds like a cliché, but if people do not know how the EU impacts their life, there is very little incentive to go and vote for members of parliament from your own national context, let alone for someone from a different country. It’s like Daniel said: there is a notion of travel and the so-called Easyjet or ERASMUS generation, those who have the experience of having been real EU citizens. They were born here, studied there, then had a job maybe somewhere else. Maybe they would be the target group of a transnational list, or even a new party. I know that there is currently a new party in the making called Vox which is kind of based on that idea.
However, while I admire the great optimism of Juncker, I don’t think we’re done with the reflection phase. A lot of politicians think that because we didn’t choose a far-right government in the Netherlands, or a far-right president in Austria, or Le Pen in France, that we’re basically done with that. But the underlying dynamics of what we now call “populism” and citizens’ disenchantment with politics have been there for a while. People were protesting before they voted for populists.
It’s too early to immediately think of solutions. I would rather we had time to reflect and include the citizens in this conversation to see if they are really tired of hearing the same things from both left and right and not getting any of the results they wanted. And they should feel empowered to become part of the discussion. I think it’s too early to talk about pan-European lists for the EUP.

Couldn’t it be that the EU doesn’t take this chance to really get moving, maybe next time round populists will win in other countries?
Slavkova: Basically, democracies really fail when they want too little of their citizens. That’s both a subjective and an objective observation from my work. I really think that it’s the right time to engage in a conversation with citizens. And I know that this is not easy because I’m doing it! But it has to be done.

Who would organize or spur these processes?
Slavkova: In terms of the EU funds for the non-governmental sector, there is hardly any support for democracy programs within its borders. As an organization that does democracy support and works for the sake of democracy consolidation, there is no way for me to get support from the EU unless I twist the organization to fit the criteria.
This is a problem. For way too long we’ve thought that democracy is consolidated in the EU member states, both old and new. That’s always been the narrative – once you gain access to the club, you’re a democracy. But as we’ve seen over the past few years, this is not the case. And if there’s no support for this type of work, especially in the non-governmental sector, what are we supposed to do? I know there are trendy topics, different digital tools and instruments and ways to enrich democracy through that, but we can’t all do the same thing; if refugees are now the topic of the day, we can’t all start doing this. There is a need to get in touch with people, to talk to them on a very basic, local level.

You’re talking about the role the EU can play in local education – what responsibility do national governments have to contribute to that?
Slavkova: I think as big a responsibility, if not bigger. If you make a division of labor, maybe the EU should focus on engaging people in a conversation about the EU itself, whereas national capitals can engage with their citizens both on that topic and the role of the member states in the EU, and also why democracy is best.

Is democracy so safely anchored in Germany and maybe other western European nations that we don’t have that problem?
Slavkova: Oh, I think that we have problems everywhere. If we did not, we wouldn’t have parties like the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), for instance, or Le Pen, or others. As I was saying, the fact that Macron won in France does not mean that the underlying dynamics that made people vote for Le Pen are gone.
And it’s also wrong to think about these things in the old schemes of rural vs. urban, or well-educated vs. uneducated, or blue-collar vs. white-collar. You see this among the voters of the AfD; they’re not only in Eastern Germany, as we had originally thought, but they’re also in Western Germany, in rather wealthy regions. That’s what I was saying; I admire the job of Juncker, but when you listen to him saying, “It’s been enough reflection, it’s time for action,” I don’t think there’s been enough reflection at all. I can’t advocate enough for conversations with the citizens.

Kruse: I’m still thinking about the question three questions before, about transnational voting. On a structural level I would say “Of course,” because it seems that the EU decisions impact every citizen, on the national level as well. So on the one hand, sure, people should be able to vote more directly on transnational MEPs.
But the underlying problem is that politics is about distributing your power to people you barely know. I always find it a bit weird that when an election is coming up and local candidates pop up on the streets, and I hardly known any of them, and I wonder why I’m not in touch with these people the rest of the year. Why don’t they do marketing? Why do I know everything about Merkel, who I never reach and can never influence, and hardly anything about these local guys?
So on the one hand it’s important that we see these international talking heads and have the chance to vote for them, but I think a lot of opportunity lies in more local politics and being proactive about that, giving people back a sense of influence. Influencing their neighborhood, their small towns, or their districts in larger cities like Berlin, where I’m living. That’s under the radar I think.

So I take it you agree with Louisa, basically – this is a time for more reflection, not actually the time for rushing ahead.
Kruse: Yeah; that fits the process of our camp. There are lots of new pro-European “democracy startups,” meetings, round tables, and such, so everyone’s talking about it. The threat has made many more people talk about the EU and its future. But it’s maybe not the best thing to immediately leap into action, anxiety, stress, and panic. Now that we have this “democratic buffer” with Macron in France, instead of Le Pen, we might take some time to deepen the dialogue and really figure out how to get better at this participation process, and what politics really means to us.
Slavkova: Yes! Nothing better than consensus.

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© Artwork: Arnaud Dechiron

Welcome! The EU-Turkey agreement reached last year helped stem the flow of refugees arriving in Europe through Greece. Now, however, attention is shifting to Italy, where people – both refugees and economic migrants – are still arriving in unsustainable numbers, straining local and European capacities. What should be done to address this new crisis?
Gerald Knaus: It’s a great pleasure to be here to talk about the issue with people from think tanks, as well as members of parliament. I know Italy has a lot of experience in dealing with the issue, and it’s very good at implementing what politicians decide when it comes to reception permissions and implementing new ideas of asylum. The key problem in a lot of debates of practical policy issues is that they become overly ideological rather than practical. Of course, ideology and laws matter – but we run into problems if we can’t implement what we discuss.
A few numbers regarding this EU-Turkey agreement might be helpful. For the five months this year up to May, fewer than fifty people per day came from Turkey to Greece. If this trend continues, this year will see the fewest people going from Turkey to Greece in the past ten years. And it will also mean that this year will have the lowest number of people drowning. There are many things to criticize, but it’s still a big accomplishment. The outlying year of 2015 had more than 880,000 people arriving from Turkey; this year it dropped to 18,000.
Italy also has strong fluctuations, but there’s been a steady rise from high levels in 2014. This year will be a record year. Last year it had 181,000, and the first months of this year have already seen more people than the two previous years. So we have now a completely reversed situation: a sharp decline in the Aegean and big rise in the central Mediterranean.
Every day, twelve people drown in the central Mediterranean, and this trend is continuing. In contrast, the 434 deaths in 2016 in the Aegean were almost all within the first three months before the Turkey deal. People have to be saved from drowning at sea and be brought to Italy.
There also different groups coming to Greece and Italy. In Italy there are almost no Syrians, but rather Africans, the vast majority West Africans. This is interesting, because the recognition rates for Africans are very low. Most of them are not refugees. There are some refugees from Nigeria and Congo, but they are not the ones who come to Italy. The vast majority of them do not get protection – the recognition rate is between 1 to 3 percent.
The problem is that even when they’re rejected, they never return. Once they’re in Europe, they will stay for years regardless of what happens in their application procedure. This is not a problem for Italy only, but also for many other European countries including France and Germany, the Baltic countries, and Sweden. Sweden had 180,000 people arrive in 2015.
In order to return people quickly we need two things: we need fast and accurate asylum recognition and application procedures, and we need the countries’ willingness to take people back. This leads to what we call Day X for return. And this was the secret of the Turkey agreement. The Turkish parties came to Chancellor Merkel and promised to take care of everyone who arrived in Greece after March 18, 2016. Those who arrived before, Germany would take. That’s the key point. We should not underestimate the fact that the financial crisis, poverty, and the extreme challenge of taking in so many refugees created uncertainty and fear. Of course, some politicians take advantage of these feelings and if we try to explain this passion, I’m not sure it is passion for Brexit or for these politics themselves – I think it is a more instinctive reaction to the fear they feel, to the easy promises they’re hearing. It is a movement against a system that does not seem to function as it once did; it cannot fulfill the promises it has made. And we should also talk about why the existing system – at least in the Western world – does not function for people anymore.
Andreas Nick: I agree, the EU-Turkey deal has been successful. It rests on three pillars: better border protection, financial support for Turkey, and legal assistance for Syrians upon reception. A lot of these mechanisms also translate to other situations. Going to countries of origin to forge agreements is very important.
There are three key elements: The first is to differentiate between asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants who come in search of better economic opportunities. The fact that so many asylum seekers remain in Europe is an enormous pull factor for many others who come despite the horrible dangers of such a undertaking. That should be ended, for humanitarian reasons. The second element is good decision making for migrants that have arrived. The third element is incentive structures for all relevant countries, on a national as well as regional basis. A strong message should be sent that if you’re returned after applying for asylum, you’re not eligible to apply as an “economic migrant” to any other EU country.
There are many differences between Turkey and Italy. Refugees from the Syrian civil war just want to get away from the war and usually intend to return. Therefore, we have to deal with a temporary phenomenon. When it comes to migrants from Africa via the Mediterranean we have to deal with a long-term issue that cannot be solved within a short period of time.
The long-term rescue missions in the Mediterranean need to be combined with quick decision-making once people arrive, along with working with governments of their countries of origin. If the message is that once you make it to Sicily or Malta you are safe to stay, the problem will never be solved.

Nadan, you’ve had quite a lot of experience with how Italy deals with this issue. Can a distinction be made between refugees and migrants?
Nadan Petrovic: Theoretically there are refugees as defined in the Geneva Convention. And there are economic migrants. But now the situation is more complicated as we have encountered unforeseen situations. For example, we’ve had unaccompanied minors from Somalia being sent by the government, which is a very unique phenomenon. The government knows that they will not be rejected, so these young boys and girls go on an often month-long journey across the desert until often after encountering horrible violence they finally arrive in Europe. What are we to do with a group like that?
As different as the nationalities of the migrants are, these states share common characteristics: They are all inherently unstable. Some of them are failed states, like Libya; some of them are precarious states; and some of them are very authoritarian states like Egypt. And most of them have very weak or opaque government structures. In terms of speaking with countries of origin for example, Libya – who do you talk to? The question is how to strengthen the structures of those states to make sure people can be sent back to them. With the Turkey deal, nothing changed in Syria – the causes have not been addressed. But Turkey can take back people. Can we see this in Africa?
Knaus: I think it’s very important to recognize that the number of people who arrived over the past four or five years is exceptionally high. This is because the route has been developed, and there are hundreds of millions of euros being earned. And if you look at Nigeria, most migrants come from southern Nigeria, from peaceful cities – and most of them are women who are trafficked to Italy as prostitutes with huge profits for the traffickers.
We can thus recognize 1 percent of these migrants. If people are arriving in an orderly way and know where they are, the situation will be better. But now, people are dying on the way in the desert, at sea, and they arrive without any status. Then they stay for years, exploitable underground. In Italy there’s a campaign now to regularize the 500,000 people that are already in the country who will not leave but have no status. Politically, regularizing them is the only rational thing to do.

Andreas, even with some kind of Marshall Plan to develop the countries of origin, people will come anyway. Don’t we have to communicate to their countries of origin – as well into some of Europe’s more conservative parties, including your own – that we need to have a proper immigration law? That we need to take people in, in an orderly way, in order to get irregular migration under control?
Nick: I do think these things are interrelated. Both to communicate to a broader electorate and also to make it vertically possible to negotiate. Creating a very strong disincentive for people to come to Europe, for example, is a consensus among both the center left and center right.
Knaus: Just one more point on the importance of having a controled process: If you want to be politically successful, looking at Sweden and Germany, you need to really help refugees. There are massive networks of NGOs, civil society organizations, and help organizations, and you need to mobilize them. What people will not accept is a sense of loss of control. And loss of control means you do not know who is coming in. If one in a million commits an act of terror, people suddenly think the others could do it too.
Another point is that it’s not really fair. So Italy will need to reduce crime and also educate people about the need to accept migrants. Europe will have to stand up for resettlement. I’ve had three years of debate all around Europe about this. If we want to create an open Europe that accepts refugees as well as economic migrants, we must have control of our borders. And the only way to do so, and amazingly it’s lacking today, is to take countries we need to cooperate with seriously, and think in terms of their interests. In the case of Turkey, it sees that it can benefit from the deal: It can get financial support, and will need fewer border controls because the flow of people will decrease.
This discussion is never public. We talk about financial aid and legal access, but never in specifics. We need to work on a single-page statement with the same format with Senegal and other African countries, which has four commitments: First, that we [the African countries] take back our citizens and help take back our citizens from day X. Second, the EU commits for the next five years to take 10,000 or 15,000 refugees from Nigeria and 10,000 people from Senegal every year. Third, we provide support in those countries to help refugees, and fourth, we do receptions through UNHCR. Everybody can see if each side has done its part and lived up to its commitments.
If we keep having incomprehensible conferences and compacts and summits, this situation will continue and people will keep drowning.

You’re talking about a pretty dramatic shift in attitudes here: no more summits, no more thousand-page-agreements, etc. In a situation like this where we want to keep migration, how likely is it that the EU can consolidate in a straightforward way – or is it more likely that we will see a coalition of the willing? 
Nick: Looking at the debate over the past few years, we see there are many differences among countries. But we have also seen cooperation, for example, in the development fund. If the crisis in Italy continues, it will reach a different dimension. This is not only German policy and Merkel’s migration policy. Right now is the time for countries to cooperate to strengthen the single market and jointly manage the common border. This is a crisis that can affect our common economic success and welfare. If we get that message across, hopefully we can better solve the problem.

Nadan, do you want to comment on this? What should be done to help those countries that need to change?
Petrovic: My impression, at least from my experiences in Italy, is that political elites are not very clear who is who. But I want to explain very clearly that refugees also have full rights. There’s a need to separate different kinds of migrants. When states have the capacity to decide whether or not they need migrants, most of them decide that they do need them. But the reality is that they don’t want to say it clearly, and now people are coming in without invitation. I want to insist that a well-functioning migration policy is better than a refugee policy. In the Italian example, there is a temporary permission status for migrants from Bosnia, Kosovo, or Moldova. They have temporary permission to stay, and then have the opportunity to turn that into work permission or asylum status. Very few of them apply for asylum because they’re okay with temporary permission and labor status. For a long while, we’ve underestimated the problem.

As did the rest of Europe.
Petrovic: Yes, for sure. But compared with other countries on the southern border such as Malta and Greece, Italy is a strange case.
I’ll tell you a personal story. When I was an adviser to the department of migration ten years ago, there was a possibility of reallocation proceedings within the European Refugee Fund. I asked them ten years ago, why shouldn’t we propose sending people from Italy elsewhere? They said that we’re Italy, a small country, sixty million people, how can we let the EU take some of our refugees? And now we’re asking for this.
The EU has given numerous rules on this issue, but its policy cannot be improved because one rule is more important than the others – the Dublin rule. All the other successes that have been achieved, the steps toward standardization, have not benefited us that much because the Dublin rule is more important than any other.

But how do you propose we skip Dublin and alleviate the situation for countries such as Italy?
Knaus: It all seems very complicated, but it’s actually very simple. In theory, everyone should apply for asylum when they cross the border. But in practice, for more than twenty years, it has never worked. Just last year, Germany requested tens of thousands of people be sent to other countries because it’s not a border country, so of course they entered from elsewhere, and Germany ended up sending 4,000 people over 2016 to other EU member states. Tens of thousands of asylum seekers, in comparison, have remained in Germany with their status unknown. It makes no sense. Germany only sent 4,000 people to other countries, but it received 20,000 from Sweden and other countries. So Germany didn’t benefit at all. But Italy didn’t benefit or pay a cost either. Italy received 2,000 people over the last year, and it also sent 2,000 people to other countries. So the net is zero.
But these are real people waiting. Civil servants are creating files. We have this bureaucratic monster which serves no purpose at all. So here is the problem. The governments cannot get up and say to the public that our system never worked, we could not afford it, we do nothing. We need to do something.
This is why I think the only way to get a system to work is to be honest. We do not know how to move around such large numbers of people between Italy and Switzerland, Sweden and Hungary, and between Europe and Nigeria. We need to minimize the movement of people as much as possible. The asylum application should be Europeanized. What Italy needs to do is to be able to present a proposal. What Italians need to say to the Germans, essentially, is that we want to have an asylum processing procedure in Italy as fast as the Dutch do. The Dutch resolved and closed cases in six weeks. And those cases have a high degree of quality because they have high quality legal aid, high quality translators, and decent country reports. Of course, Italians shouldn’t do this alone. So the ministers in Italy want this project in Sicily, agreements with Nigeria to take people back, European support for reception and asylum – and the vision is to replace Southern country borders with European borders. Relocation from there and return from there. It requires a lot of work, but it’s the only option – we need more Amsterdam in Sicily.
Today there is a debate about governance reform in Brussels. For the past two years it has been a complete disaster because nothing has been solved. And in the autumn, people will say the reform isn’t working and we are helpless.

Do you see a few countries taking the lead, or is it more of an EU cooperation?
Knaus: One thing is clear: The Turkey deal would never have come through if it had waited for the EU 28. It was essentially a coalition of the willing that consisted of two countries: the Netherlands and Germany. Now we need a few more countries: Italy, Germany, Sweden, and perhaps France – this crew, if they can negotiate together with Nigeria, if they can present this plan together of replacing Dublin. Germany make take the lead – but Italy still has to propose it.

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Artwork: Arnaud Dechiron

Welcome to you both. When we look back at the Brexit campaign, it seems that the “leave” camp in the United Kingdom didn’t necessarily have the more rational arguments, but they had passion on their side. Do you think this applies to the whole of Europe, and if so, how do you get people more passionate about Europe?
Stelios Voulgaris: It’s a very complex phenomenon. We should not underestimate the fact that the financial crisis, poverty, and the extreme challenge of taking in so many refugees created uncertainty and fear. Of course, some politicians take advantage of these feelings and if we try to explain this passion, I’m not sure it is the passion for Brexit or for these politics itself – I think it is a more instinctive reaction to the fear they feel, to the easy promises they’re hearing. It is a movement against a system that does not seem to function as it once did; it cannot fulfill the promises it has given. And we should also talk about why the existing system – at least in the Western world – does not function anymore for people.

Could it also simply be that the fearmongers are louder, their voices drown out the others?
Sébastien Vannier: I think it depends on how you look at the question. I do not completely agree with you when you say there is no passion on the pro-European side. There is passion, as we see in Germany with the new candidate from the Social Democrats, Martin Schulz. He is Mr. Europe, he is pro-Europe, and we saw a lot of passion now when he announced his candidacy. It is the same with Emmanuel Macron in France; there is also a movement behind him and I think we can use the term passion when it comes to his pro-European message. Last example: the recent “Pulse of Europe” demonstrations show that those willing to defend European values are now turning to the streets to show their engagement. But it is true that in a political campaign, it is much easier to score with anti-Europe arguments. Europe is very complex; the EU has positive and negative aspects, and it is always very difficult to generate passion for it. The real problem is that there is little dialogue between the two sides. Both are living in what we call filter bubbles. Pro-European people work, discuss, and live among themselves, and the anti-European side does the same.

Isn’t it also the fact that the anti-Europeans, the populists, are so much better in using new forms of communication? And would you copy their strategies in a way, would that help get around the problem of all of us living in filter bubbles, as you called them? How do you overcome this Catch-22?
Vannier: I think it is too easy to say anti-European populists – it is far more complex. There are valid criticisms of Europe. Many people on both sides are critical of Europe. I am critical of Europe too, but I don’t think I’m a populist because of it.

But you don’t want to leave the EU, do you?
Vannier: No. And it is important to be allowed to say: No, I don’t want to leave the EU, but yes, there are some aspects that have to be changed.

To be clear, we don’t mean to say that the EU should never be criticized. When we talk about populists, maybe it’s better to say those who would rather like to see the EU fall apart, or at least a strong re-nationalization. These people are very sophisticated in creating filter bubbles. How can you break through them? How can you communicate into these bubbles?
Voulgaris: Studying or trying to understand the populist methods is very important and, as Sébastien said, the bubbles on both sides have not allowed themselves to really understand one another yet. In Greece the anti-European movement has been politically expressed through extreme parties. I had the chance to live for a few years in a refugee neighborhood in Athens where the far-right Golden Dawn was actually very active. So I had the chance to witness up close and personal what they are doing, to learn their methodologies. I think some of the things they are doing are remarkable: Golden Dawn organizes in a very local, very decentralized way, with local offices everywhere. They understand local needs. They have an excellent mapping system of who needs what and how they can offer it in order to network on a very small-scale base. There are aspects of their methodology that I admire and I wish the existing political system could also employ such tactics. I understand why people, at least in my neighborhood, felt that this party was closer to their needs and was present when they needed help. Secondly, though I obviously don’t agree at all with the content of their propaganda, the way they speak is clear. People understand their message, even though you might not agree with it. Still, their official policies are not very clear: Populists usually talk about destroying something but often do not offer a real alternative for policy-making or what the system should be the next day.
Vannier: I think that last point is very interesting – it is always easier to say, “Everything is bad and what the government before me did was bad and all of what Europe is doing is bad,” but they have no realistic program to replace it. That is how the populists work, and of course it is easier to be destructive than constructive. You asked the question: Should we adopt the populists’ methods? It’s a very hard time for journalists to defend their position, and what we are trying to do is guarantee quality of information. It’s the first answer that we can deliver as journalists.

But returning to the million-dollar question: How do you burst the filter bubble? How do you get beyond your usual readers? How do you leave your own comfort zone and get into territory where you really have to argue and make your point?
Vannier: My answer is still: quality of information and to go out and report firsthand. I hope that people are attracted to and excited by quality of information. And what we are trying to do at cafebabel.com is, we try to understand and explain the lives of young Europeans in every country from Belarus to Spain, from Serbia to Ireland. I think, I hope, it is interesting for everyone, even beyond our own filter bubbles. Over the last few years there has been a gap between institutions and the daily lives of Europeans, and we hope we can reach everyone again by focusing on the latter.

Mr. Voulgaris, you have experience dealing with very different groups in Greece, so how do you reach out to them?
Voulgaris: In Greece, as you all know well, the existing social, financial, and public systems have collapsed completely, and that has created a huge gap that spurred people to participate in different ways. The people who go for the populist messages are still people who leave their houses to be active, hoping to somehow have a social impact, even if I don’t agree with their orientation. At the same time there is also a vibrant civic society in Athens. People are very much motivated to do something; they have the need to participate in things. I think we should try to create more spaces and platforms for people’s participation and collaboration. There should be a way that people can bring their input into policy-making. They want to feel that they have an impact in social life and if the official mechanisms could offer more possibilities for people actually to collaborate, create new solutions, and come up with new methodologies, people would feel they are actually participating in shaping society. If people feel they are heard by their community, their government, the EU, they don’t need to seek more extreme solutions to take their fate, the fate of their family, their city, and their country into their own hands.

And what needs to be done to engage young Europeans better?
Vannier: Young people are getting engaged, but not in the political system – they are not voting for the traditional political parties anymore, as we see in France. I think it’s a question of trust in both sides. I spoke with a lot of friends in France and Germany who don’t trust the political system anymore. In Germany, you could say that there is no point in voting anymore as you will end up with the same grand coalition [of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats]. The issue of democratic engagement is an interesting question, and just to blame them for not voting is not the right answer. In France it’s the same, even if Emmanuel Macron styles himself as a newcomer and outsider. We have a lot of young people who won’t have voted. Maybe we have to rethink how we go about political engagement.
Voulgaris: My observation is that younger people have the need to participate more actively. Older people are used to voting as a means to participate in the system, but younger people need to be involved in the everyday implementing of policy, shaping policy. And media and technology allow us to create a more energetic and active participation. Young people are ready to participate – it is not enough for them to go vote every four or five years.

But “older people” have also been very politically engaged, gone out onto the streets, demonstrated against nuclear re-armament. And we don’t see too many young people doing that these days…
Vannier: Well, there were some demonstrations in France last year called Nuit debout to protest labor reforms, and there were a lot of young people out there, trying to find new solutions for the system. I think we see in France why people don’t trust traditional politics anymore – take what happened with the scandal around presidential candidate François Fillon. There were many people who decided not to vote or, even more problematically, to vote for Front National. Some of the political elites in France still do not understand that things have to change now. The question of course is how do we change it.

Which role does social media have in this? How can it influence political communication in our societies and how can it be influenced from the outside? Or do we need to venture out more and get in direct contact with the people?
Voulgaris: I was just thinking of those reality TV shows where people get to choose which singer they want, and you have a very clear question and a very easy way for people to just grab their phones and vote, and they feel they have an impact on what is happening. The example is very simple but in Greece, there is a lot of will to participate. People want to be involved, even in something that simple. And technology and media actually give us fantastic solutions. Younger people are very much used to using this. If we think about it, the methods of participation in our countries have essentially not changed over the last fifty, even hundred years – technology is still not really part of helping and supporting people’s participation.

Referenda are often equated with direct participation, but people then often cast their votes with other motives in mind than addressing the questions. Should we still have more referenda – on smaller questions that make a difference in people’s daily lives?
Voulgaris: I’m from a country that has a lot of experience with referenda. It’s not a very complete form of participation. The way the question is phrased and the reasons behind it are always decided at the top. A real referendum for me is a vote where you get people to participate to create the question and then to decide on an answer. Formulating questions in a very specific way, especially in crucial and tense moments, isn’t a way to get people to participate in policy-making. I believe it is a way to manipulate people.
Vannier: Social media offers tools, but in itself is not the solution. It’s a tool that we can use very well, and we can abuse it, too. But it’s just a tool. I think it’s very important to get back out on the ground and see politics as something from the bottom up and not from Paris or from Berlin. I completely agree with Stelios on the matter of referenda, too, because you can also abuse a referendum. I don’t want a choice between “Yes” and “Yes.” I want an open question, but, very importantly too, I want an open democratic process.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – May/June 2017 issue.

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Let’s start with the central question: What does European solidarity mean to you, Mr.  Taverne?
JOOST TAVERNE: The word brings to mind first and foremost helping each other, banding together in extraordinary circumstances. Luckily we don’t witness natural disasters or failed harvests here in Europe very often; we tend instead to see the basic, common occurrences that call for helping one another.

Mr. Guerrieri, do you have the same understanding of European solidarity?
PAOLO GUERRIERI: Yes, I think it’s a concept that is very much related to what we call a European public good or European collective action. Solidarity means nothing more than trying to recognize the existence of a kind of public good or collective action, and then figuring out how to coordinate joint action. Solidarity is very important, but it should be very much related to responsibility. Those two concepts should be combined when we refer to things like common defense, the problem of security, and climate change.

But doesn’t solidarity mean different things to different people? If you look at the refugee crisis, at first it was a problem of southern nations like Italy and Greece, but then refugees started coming to Germany. And all of a sudden Berlin discovered solidarity might mean something else. Isn’t it a difficult concept to define?
GUERRIERI: Solidarity is a word that has a very strong feel-good factor. The moment you use it, it’s hard to be against it. I think solidarity is not a continuous phenomenon. It arises in particularly difficult situations. And yes, solidarity means something different to different people at different points, that’s completely true. I also feel that it’s sometimes misused as a way to either get something done or to convince people that what is being done is correct.

Do you mean that we should be careful with using it?
GUERRIERI: Yes, we should be careful, especially because EU and European integration is such a sensitive and important initiative. I never believed that integration should take place solely at the European level. My idea, and the idea of many others, was one of multilevel governance. In other words, you have some things you should deal with on the European level, other issues should be dealt with on the national level, and others still at the local level.
It’s really important to be very selective with what should be done on the European level. If you take immigration, for example, I think it’s really clear that when we created the Schengen space, we established the importance of having free movement of goods and people. Unfortunately, we stopped halfway – we created border-free movement, but we forgot the instruments to manage and govern a free common space. From my point of view, the common border should have some kind of shared management, in terms of common coast guards that should help national guards deal with borders. Immigration is a classic case where you have multilevel, national, and even local responsibilities.

Are you satisfied with the amount of solidarity Italy has received during the refugee crisis?
GUERRIERI: No, I don’t think we did it right. As a European country and even a Schengen member country, we somehow looked at immigration as a classic national or local issue. We created this very important common good – the Schengen common space – but we forgot to build the rest of the infrastructure. There was a recent decision to create a common border guard that could help very much to enforce national control, but the Dublin asylum principle is completely obsolete in terms of what is needed. We can’t say that it’s up to the country where people first land. That is essentially denying that it is a shared problem.
TAVERNE: Paolo, this is really well put. However, in my view solidarity is in some ways the complement to responsibility. There is so much more to say on immigration, but I see solidarity as almost like insurance: You have your own responsibility as an individual or as a country to do whatever is expected of you or what you agreed to. There can be circumstances that aren’t manageable for that individual or organization or country, and that’s the moment when others step in, where solidarity may help. But solidarity shouldn’t take away that basic responsibility.
If we look at the current situation, sometimes I see the sentiment that “now it’s our turn, we have a right to solidarity.” Solidarity is given; there is no right to it. The moment that the ones who need solidarity behave in a way that makes it difficult for those who have to show solidarity, the balance tips. That leads to a lack of solidarity in the end, and that doesn’t help anyone.

Would you subscribe to the notion that stronger nations, in particular a big, strong, and economically healthy country like Germany, should be particularly generous with Europe?
GUERRIERI: No, I try to look at it from a more abstract point of view. If Germany decides to act generously, it’s Germany’s choice. You can win the lottery and people, your friends and family, may expect that you pay the next round at the bar, but you don’t have to. Of course, Germany might feel obligated to do something extra, but the country in need shouldn’t behave in a way that keeps Germany from being generous. Those in need should behave in such way that allows others to show solidarity.

What about the Netherlands – the Dutch are contributing a sizeable amount to the EU, especially in relation to the country’s size.
TAVERNE: Yes, definitely. We are net contributors to the EU and in effect also to the euro. In 2006 when the eurocrisis started, people in the Netherlands saw images of Greek people on the evening news burning the ministry of whatever to the ground because they were protesting raising the retirement age from 55 to 57, whereas we just raised it to 67. Dutch people were always told that we give a lot to the European Union and the euro but it’s all worth it. But we were watching TV thinking: “What the heck. We work our backsides off and now they’re acting in a way that makes it difficult for us to show solidarity.”
That happens within the Netherlands, too. We have a very strong welfare system and social benefits, but at the moment it’s obvious that too many people abuse it. People who contribute to maintain the system will automatically lose motivation to continue doing so. And again, the basis for solidarity will be eroded and the system as a whole will suffer.
GUERRIERI: If I could add something on the problems of euro area governance: Solidarity could be considered a sort of collective insurance. It’s a guarantee that if something serious happens, there’s some kind of common insurance. An insurance guarantee is a public good that is very useful for anybody, but the risk is that people behave like free riders. In other words, because there is this guarantee, because there are these collective insurances, they act irresponsibly. That means that others are going to pay for their irresponsible behavior.
You end up in a cul-de-sac. Countries on one side say we are ready to subscribe to this insurance plan but we don’t trust the other members because they could exploit it. First they have to show responsibility and only afterwards we will provide insurance. On the other side, the countries that need that insurance, they claim that they need the guarantee to prove responsibility.
Take the banking union in Europe, which was a very important agreement. There is no monetary union without a banking union based upon individual member responsibility – otherwise it doesn’t work. But we created an incomplete banking union, without a common deposit guarantee. Why? Because countries like Germany don’t want to subscribe. They insist that everyone has to show responsibility in terms of the banking system first – that’s what they ask of Italy, Greece, and others. So, we have no banking union. And if some serious financial crisis happens again, member countries are going to be left alone once again.
I think Italy should do more in terms of reducing risks in its banking system. On the other hand, Germany should recognize that without a common guaranteed deposit, there is no banking union. We have to find a compromise; this is very important. Germany thinks that it’s safe, but I think that’s an illusion. Because if something happens, the lack of insurance in the banking union is going to affect even a strong country like Germany.
TAVERNE: I agree with most of what Paolo said. He called it a cul-de-sac, but it is perhaps more like a Catch-22. His analysis and insurance metaphor with free rider behavior is completely true, but I’d like to add that if you have travel insurance and you claim it a few times too many, you run the risk of losing your policy. Every insurance company has terms and conditions allowing them to kick you out at any point, and that’s not what you want. If you have insurance with the goal of not having to use it, only if everything goes wrong and only if you experience misfortune, that is when the policy kicks in.
But at this point, solidarity has morphed into a sort of right. I agree with Paolo: You never know when you need solidarity. You might be up and running, thinking you are strong as a country, but you don’t know what the future holds. Ultimately, everyone has to be careful with solidarity, because one day you might need it yourself, and you want to make sure other countries show solidarity at that point as well.

Do you both believe there is a way out of this Catch-22?
TAVERNE: I am very pessimistic. I think at some point events will take over. We have already seen this with Brexit. We have general elections in March of this year in the Netherlands, too. Some of the major political events that we have witnessed recently have everything to do with the fact that we as politicians are not able to come to measures that can break the mold, and other forces will take over. Ultimately, something will be done about it, but it will not be in a guided, measured way.
GUERRIERI: I was also pessimistic. I thought that the usual response on the European level was to postpone, to find an easy non-solution. But I think something happened in terms of our security – not only the election of Trump, not only the “America first” phenomenon, but also China first and India first. I think this is going to change the landscape for European countries. This could be a threat, but it could also be an opportunity. It could push European countries to take a stance. In my view, we are increasingly going to face very different external governmental contexts, strong nationalistic movements, and I think this could be also an opportunity. We shouldn’t forget that every time there was a major crisis of late, the EU exhibited a very unexpected response. So, I think it’s an open-ended scenario.

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