The elusive European public

The Schengen Agreement guaranteeing freedom of movement is at risk of being watered down. Any such move would be a lot more controversial if the EU ever found its constituency.

From my perch here in Ireland it is interesting to watch anger at the European Union starting to boil over. Interesting, but not entirely pleasant – and I say this as someone who has many criticisms of the EU.

Commentators dash out diatribes against Europe, and the ECB in particular, on a daily basis. These veritable founts of wisdom were, of course, almost invariably the EU’s biggest cheerleaders in recent years and while this doesn’t render their newfound criticism invalid, it does make them irritating for someone like me who has long wanted a proper debate on the function and composition of the EU. Sadly the only options on offer, at least as far as the press was concerned, were no-kvetching-allowed EUphoria or shrill anti-EU whingeing – neither of which is a particularly appetising dish.

The softer wing of British euroscepticism has long argued that the EU is an illegitimate entity, that when asked in a plebiscite the British public voted for a trade bloc and intra-state co-operation, not a supra-state political entity. On this they are quite correct, but there is a deeper problem for the European project, one that bedevils the intentions of euro-integrationists more than a few sceptical MPs in London or elsewhere.

There is no such thing as an EU public.

The EU is in desperate need of a constituency, but how can it get one? Directly elected MEPs are there to represent the will of the various publics but they famously have little power and often come into conflict with the commissioners, who also represent the will of the people, if indirectly through appointment by national government rather than direct election.

Nationalism is not the ne plus ultra of political thinking and social organisation. Nor, however, is it the necessarily reactionary crypto-fascist conceit that many accuse it of being. The crimes of nationalism are well documented and there is no need for me to rehearse them here, but it is also important to recognise that the growth of a national conscience and belief in national self-determination was what freed people of empire, not well-meaning platitudes about intra-state co-operation – after all, who really wants to co-operate with someone pointing a gun at them?

It may be somewhat saddening that nationalism’s usefulness can’t be confined to the history books as a necessary force of social development in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but we must deal in reality as it is, not how we might like it to be. The will of the people must be respected for it is they who are sovereign and politicians are there to enact their will. Anyone who wishes to challenge the status quo therefore has a duty to make a clear case for their argument. In this I feel the EU is increasingly deficient.

The rise of consciousness creates a meaningful polity, a public that can be addressed and engaged in argumentation. Can anyone say with hand on heart that such a thing actually exists in the EU today?

Europe is self-evidently not a nation, nor is it a state, despite the fears of its most strident critics.

On the other hand, it’s not true that Europe doesn’t exist or is merely a landmass that plays home to a collection of unrelated states. Naturally the people of Europe share a lot. They don’t share a culture as such but do share a lot of cultural characteristics. Besides which, cultures are products of human action and change and evolve with the times. Ideas – and people – have always flowed across European borders and the EU has cemented this process. Certainly Schengen should rightly be viewed as an achievement worthy of trumpeting, giving as it does freedom of movement to the rest of us, rather than just rich elites. (The absence of Britain and, as a result Ireland due to a land border and common travel area is certainly regrettable in my opinion).

But for Europe to ever become truly meaningful to people in any sense other than as a source of irritation or a place to complain to when the national government ignores one’s petitions something else is needed. A public. And a public can’t be created by waving flags or opening outreach offices.

Few have ever argued for a pan-European nationalism (it doesn’t help that one of the few who did was British fascist Oswald Mosley) and it seems unlikely to develop, either on its own or through direct attempts to create one (assuming anyone would ever want to).

But that does not mean that European states cannot co-operate on a very deep level, certainly deeper than that proposed by those who wish to see the EU reduced to the modern equivalent of a "coal and steel community".

Multinational states, or non-nation states if you prefer, exist and have existed in the past with varying degrees of success. Some break-up more or less amicably, such as Czechslovakia, while others such as Yugoslavia have come apart in violent ruptures. Others break-up while staying together: Belgium is reminiscent of nothing so much as a married couple who can no longer stand the sight of each other remain together for some abstract, ill-defined reason. At least one — Switzerland – has survived by taking on a peculiar political composition. Others such as the United States, United Kingdom and Spain, take on a kind of official national character with again, it must be said, varying degrees of success.

As the EU is not a state and few want it to become one, the conflicting forces that have caused problems in the past are not necessarily issues for Europe. But simply pretending there is a single EU wide public waiting to pop into existence or, worse still, entirely ignoring voters and attempting to operate above their heads isn’t going to cut it.

Image by David Simm. Creative Commons licenced.