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The development of the European Union as a community-based project of integration with decision-making powers outside the constitutional architecture of the nation-state is the most significant innovation in twentieth-century political organisation. It raises fundamental questions about our understanding of the state, sovereignty, citizenship, democracy, and the relationship between political power and economic forces. Despite its achievements, events at the start of the twenty-first century – including the political, economic, and financial crisis of the Eurozone, as well as Brexit and the rise of populism – pose an existential threat to the EU.
Memory and the future of Europe addresses the crisis of the EU by treating integration as a response to the rupture created by the continent’s experience of total war. It traces Europe’s existing pathologies to the project’s loss of its moral foundations rooted in collective memories of total war. As the generations with personal memories of the two world wars pass away, economic gain has become the EU’s sole raison d’être. If it is to survive its future challenges, the EU will have to create a new historical imaginary that relies not only on the lessons of the past, but also builds on Europe’s ability to protect its citizens by serving as a counterweight against the forces of globalisation. By framing its argument through the critical theory of the Frankfurt School, Memory and the future of Europe will attract readers interested in political and social philosophy, collective memory studies, European studies, international relations, and contemporary politics.
economies, institutions, banking laws, fiscal policies and national cultures. A serene economic future was thought to be much likelier inside the eurozone than outside. This is why countries which struggled to meet the fiscal requirements for entry were nevertheless keen to join. They were prepared to surrender powers which modern states had always used to extricate themselves from economic crises – control of interest rates and the ability to devalue their national currencies in order to boost economic competitiveness. The supervision of the new currency was given to
in the Eurozone. It is difficult to associate this with trade union intent. Spain There is little evidence that unions engaged in conscious competition with European counterparts. Though inter-sectoral negotiators were mindful of international developments, such awareness was vague and did not inspire systematic competition
austerity. Despite this opposition, the SYRIZA-led government managed to come to an initial understanding with its European partners in late February 2015. This understanding caused once again a chain reaction inside SYRIZA, as some of the Left Platform's prominent members heavily criticised the agreement and suggested that the EU's stance clearly suggested that the end of austerity could not be achieved inside the Eurozone. Major pressure was thus applied to the Greek economy, and several serious dilemmas were posed relating to the country's EU membership. The financial
eurozone can be traced to the same underlying ‘conceptual deficit’: a dearth of postnational political thought. A reluctance to transcend the nation-state as a frame of reference has characterised elites as well as European populations – only a minority of key players (the late Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa3, for example) have stated this to be a problem. 98 H A critical theory of European integration Social modernity at the level of the EU was the theme of chapters 1 to 4, a survey of Habermas’s political journalism guiding the theoretical
by the clash of rival economic moralities. Within Germany, there was an impressive united front publicly affirming that fiscal consolidation or belt-tightening was the only remedy for economic competitiveness. Other creditor countries in Northern Europe endorsed such a view. But public opinion in countries across the north Mediterranean, from Portugal to Greece, challenged policies which seemed designed to plunge them into a downward spiral of depression. Many economists, watching how the debt of the eurozone periphery continued to grow in proportion to national
for new ideas and projects. The following section introduces the basic features of the economic crisis that hit the global economy in 2008. The chapter will then go on to examine how the crisis had very particular implications for the European Union. Economies in the Eurozone face particular constraints and demands, and this added to the problems they faced when the global crisis struck. The chapter then examines how the crisis created a challenge for left-wing parties in Europe, setting out the political ideas linked to the economic crisis. The
,5 the cause of the crisis in Greece and in the other peripheral countries was not just fiscal mismanagement: much causal weight must also be ascribed to the fundamental imbalances in competitiveness across the Eurozone. The structural reforms prescribed by the Memorandum were necessary, but they were not sufficient in their own right. The Eurozone, and not just Greece, should have addressed these fundamental challenges. A small country, like Greece, could not deal with it on its own. 189 Greece.indb 189 3/13/2014 1:56:45 PM 190 Part IV: Coalition, PSI and the
Does European integration contribute to, or even accelerate, the erosion of intra-party democracy? This book is about improving our understanding of political parties as democratic organisations in the context of multi-level governance. It analyses the impact of European Union (EU) membership on power dynamics, focusing on the British Labour Party, the French Socialist Party (PS), and the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). The purpose of this book is to investigate who within the three parties determines EU policies and selects EU specialists, such as the candidates for European parliamentary elections and EU spokespersons.
The book utilises a principal-agent framework to investigate the delegation of power inside the three parties across multiple levels and faces. It draws on over 65 original interviews with EU experts from the three national parties and the Party of European Socialists (PES) and an e-mail questionnaire. This book reveals that European policy has largely remained in the hands of the party leadership. Its findings suggest that the party grassroots are interested in EU affairs, but that interest rarely translates into influence, as information asymmetry between the grassroots and the party leadership makes it very difficult for local activists to scrutinise elected politicians and to come up with their own policy proposals. As regards the selection of EU specialists, such as candidates for the European parliamentary elections, this book highlights that the parties’ processes are highly political, often informal, and in some cases, undemocratic.
this second Memorandum by the Greek Parliament and its approval by the Eurogroup; a decision on the recapitalisation of Greek banks; negotiations with lenders and completion of the arrangements for private sector involvement (PSI); and finally parliamentary endorsement of the new Memorandum in other Eurozone nations, as required. Subsequent to the agreement on, and endorsement of, the second Memorandum, further parliamentary and administrative action would have follow in Greece, to foster the required fiscal measures and structural changes mandated in the text. Given