One well known description of politics is “the art of compromise”. It implies that the parties to a transaction are all willing to give up something for the sake of reaching agreement. Yet most groups (countries, political parties, individuals) assert that there are limits beyond which they will not go. Those limits are presented either in moralistic fashion, as “principles”, or in lesser tones, as “red lines”. Today these limits are very hard to see. Principles have a price. When it is perceived as being too high, then compromise takes over. And the greater the compromise, the more people who have subscribed to the principles lose faith and trust in those who set the principles.
This situation has been developing for a long time. It is already 20 years since the whole top echelon of the European Commission had to resign because of corruption (the Santer presidency). That should have constituted a strong warning sign, a red light that core principles of governance were at threat. Instead, this century has provided massive evidence that what was revealed then was merely the tip of one of the few icebergs which is not melting under climate change. Still earlier in the 1990s, a Head of the European Delegation in Russia had to be transferred because of concern about the propriety of his activities. True, an international effort had begun to try and control corruption (initially with a narrow interpretation of the term, which has later been broadened substantially). Yet that effort was focused as if the places where the principles of good governance were violated were to be found outside the OECD. The findings of the annual Perceptions Index prepared by Transparency International reinforced that focus. Reasoning at the most elementary level should have suggested that the breadth, intensity and sophistication of corruption were likely to be at their maximum in the locations where the action is largely to be found – namely, in the OECD zone.
In the US, the large scale collapse of ethics in government has been apparent since at least the Clinton presidency. Though impeachment did not happen, the reverberations have never died down. Obama made the serious mistake of using the phrase “red lines” in relation to Assad’s behavior in Syria, but failed to carry out his threat. The events of the past days, in which the current US president has made a mockery of the regional tensions, in fact offer the prospect that Assad might recoup a fair chunk of the territory he had previously lost. The EU, and the Heads of some of its Member States, have protested the US action – but Italian soldiers and weapons have been observed fighting alongside the Turkish army. Meanwhile, the US president continues his wild charge to remove all values and principles from the political and social arenas.
It is, however, the behavior and modus operandi of the EU and of its leading Members which is currently under fire. Since it is the regional body that has most relied on “advocacy of principles”, it is also the one that has left itself most vulnerable to criticism. At its origin, the EU offered the promise to citizens of a golden triangle. The three apexes were: peace and security; democracy and the rule of law; improved economic welfare and social justice. For the rest of the world, the EU offered a relatively open environment with a determination to minimize engagements in armed conflict. To preserve the triangle was always going to be a major and constant challenge. Over time, huge changes in the “extra EU” world (including the introduction of new Members to the EU itself) were bound to impose severe pressures. Internally, maintenance of a dynamic balance among the three required a vigilance that, even in the best of circumstances, would be very difficult to attain. Circumstances during the present century have not been kind. But decisions made by the EU and its largest States have strongly contributed to what is now a virtual disintegration of the triangle.
The peace and security dimension outside its frontiers was anyway mostly outside its control, though significant weaknesses with regard to internal preparedness have been laid bare in numerous tragedies (most recently with further violence in Germany). On the economic front, the gravely deficient framework in which the Euro was introduced, backed by exceptional stubbornness with regard to public debt and fiscal policy, has wrecked confidence in economic management. Combined with the ongoing thrust to weaken the economic role of the State, confidence has been badly shaken in the capacity of the EU to make a significant contribution to the countless threats to the well- being of the majority of the population. The pillar of improved welfare and social justice has virtually toppled. Two cases suffice to illustrate the point. Greece has suffered terribly under Lutheran austerity. However, the manipulation of official statistics for years before things came to a head was an open secret. For whatever reasons, and these are still to be clarified, there was tacit acquiescence by the EU, its largest States, and by international financial institutions in this public lie. Likewise, the Italian “crisis” is not one. It is, unfortunately, a condition which has been fully recognized by everyone for at least three decades. Once more, nothing was done – until 2011, when the Italian Prime Minister was forced out of office, not so much to save Italy, but to safeguard foreign finance. The role of the EU’s largest country in this manoeuver is known to all.
The most serious deficiencies, nevertheless, are clearly in the realm of democracy and the rule of law. Here the examples of misconduct are legion. Conflicts of interest for politicians and civil servants (indeed, some people have managed to combine both roles simultaneously) include the post EU career of Barroso, the efforts of Oettinger to launch his public relations firm, to the rejection of Sylvie Goulard’s nomination to be a Commissioner (where the verdict of the EU Parliament, whatever the real motives behind that verdict were, is nevertheless a step in the right direction). At national levels, France is still seeking to carry through the timid moves to limit the number of jobs which politicians can hold, while Italy is investigating and prosecuting literally hundreds of cases where University professors are holding outside jobs and/or running their own enterprises to the detriment of their obligations at the universities. In Germany the impacts of the Volkswagen scandals persist, scandals where the contravention of EU standards was at the heart of the matter.
While the issue of democracy is held to be the very fulcrum of the EU, the signs of “democratic deficit” have been blinking for ages, while “democratic drift” has long been a matter of concern with regard to some Member States. Nobody has ever pretended that representative democracy, whatever form it might take, is anything other than an attempt to provide some reasonable government in a very imperfect world. The recent declaration of the European Parliament regarding totalitarianism was clearly intended as a means to remind people of the plus side of what the EU should stand for. Given, however, that authorities in the major Western European countries are clearly flailing around to grapple with “populism”, the declaration looks more like a knee-jerk reaction than a statement of principle. Unfortunately, what is going on in the largest countries is not giving a clear example of firmness.
A cursory review of how the major Western European members of the EU have behaved towards those of central Europe and the Baltic countries highlights the problems. Their liberation from communist rule was achieved largely through their own efforts. Though this was the third major revolution in Europe in the modern age, it attracted nothing like the widespread interest of the French or Soviet upheavals. The absorption of these countries into the EU was just that – no noticeable effort was made to ask whether “Western Europe” could learn anything from the “new countries”, or indeed whether the EU itself might recalibrate some of its efforts. Instead, the litany of the “acquis communautaires” was recited faithfully to all and sundry (it is easily overlooked that the emphasis on the acquis is in fact an example of Mrs Thatcher’s “TINA” – there is no alternative). The new liberalism in the economic sphere was exported en masse. It did not take much to surmise that this process could lead not only to serious social problems, but also to political configurations that offered merely cosmetic democracy. More important, however, is the fact that in those instances where corrupt regimes have been recently overturned, the changes have come through internal efforts rather than through much help from the EU. This is the case in Slovakia and Romania. As these lines are being written, the future trajectory of Poland is being shaped.
The EU prides itself as a ”norm setter”, an entity that establishes standards that the rest of the world should follow. Nowhere is this more evident than in the negotiation of what are simplistically called “trade and investment agreements” (in fact they refer to an extremely long list of things which are done “behind the borders”). The emphasis is, however, misplaced. What ought to count is what is done in the democratic sphere. Right now, accommodation on the grounds of political expediency, turning a blind eye, have become the norm. The region of the world which sees itself as the great standards manufacturer for the world should beware of promoting double standards at home. Soon enough, the lines will disappear. The incoming Head of the European Commission certainly needs no reminding that her stewardship will more or less correspond to the period, 100 years ago, when Oswald Spengler published “Der Untergang des Abendlandes”. In that work he had prophesied that, from around the year 2000, there would be a trend towards authoritarian (Ceasarian) government in the major Western European countries. The warning signs are flashing.