Germany’s leading eurosceptic party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), received 7 percent of the vote in their country and will be sending 7 MEPs to the European Parliament. While AfD opposes the euro currency and would like that Germany reintroduces Deutsche Mark, it has been claiming that it does not oppose the European Union as such.
Today we bring you an exclusive interview with Nigel Farage that was made by two of our authors – Jakub Janda and Ondřej Šlechta – during Mr Farage’s working visit to Prague on 16 June. As a magazine that supports a sovereign and federal Europe, our editorial team does not agree with a ‘Europe of sovereign nations,’ the idea that Mr Farage very elequently and vigorously defends, although we are in full agreement with him when it comes to criticising Europe as a technocratic and dull project that has fundamental flaws when it comes to democratic oversight. Nothwithstanding our individual views, it cannot be denied that Mr Farage is the only EU politician, who is famous all around Europe. He rightly criticised Hermann van Rompuy’s dubious mandate and equally well points out that the stream of summits is beneficial to no one, but to ‘too big to fail’ European banks, which are beneficiaries of the constant flow of taxpayers’ money. For that, his speeches on YouTube are rewarded with such high viewing rates that many other European politician could dream of. We therefore think that we should give him voice on our ‘federal pages’ and grant you the opportunity to consider his ideas.
The official poll results speak clear: with 39.2 % of the votes and 207 seats in the 460 seat Sejm (lower house of the Polish Parliament), liberal conservative Civic Platform (PO) of incumbent PM Donald Tusk is a clear winner of last Sunday’s (9 October) general elections. Second with 29.9 % came the national conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) of former PM Jaroslav Kaczynski. Since pro-European credentials of Mr Tusk are well known, this is a timely moment to consider the significance of this result for Europe as a whole. Will the government’s re-election bring any changes to its positive policies to the Union and its integration? And why the euroscepticism of PiS and its European counterparts has to fail in the long duration?
Civic Platform is likely to form a coalition government with its current partner, centrist Polish People’s Party (PSL), which came out fourth in the polls (8.9 %), placing itself behind Palikot’s Movement (10 %). This would give the coalition a slight majority of 235 votes in Sejm and allow smooth continuation of their present policies including those of the Polish Presidency of . Mr Tusk may face quite stringent coalition demands from PSL’s leader and Minister of the Economy Waldemar Pawlak, whose party represents agrarian interests of the country. Polish media suggest that there will be probably only minor disputes over domestic policy issues and coalition talks will mostly involve haggling about the division of ministerial positions. Europe will be off agenda as PM Tusk and Mr Pawlak share the same supportive attitude towards European integration and on several occasions stated that they stand for ‘a strong Europe [that is] economically and socially integrated’. In a speech to the European Economic and Social Committee’s plenary in July, Mr Pawlak thus argued that Europe can only profit from further integration and economy of scale and gave further backing to a tighter integration of industrial policy. This well complements Mr Tusk’s own reputation as an advocate of the community method in EU affairs, who does tend to miss an opportunity to denounce ‘a new wave of euroscepticism’ in the Union.
With some hindsight, the domination of the Polish political scene by pro-European Civic Platform is a fascinating turn of events from the time when Poland was still led by the eurosceptic Kaczynski brothers. (The late Lech Kaczynski was the President of Poland from 2005 until his death in 2010, while his identical twin Jaroslaw Kaczynski served as PM from July 2006 to November 2007.) Many commentators, several of Polish origin, argued back then that the Kaczynskis only reflect the country’s ‘deep-seated nationalism’ and ‘suspicions of old enemies like Germany and Russia’. The Law and Justice party, which is still presided by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, perhaps supports Polish membership in the EU, but only on the grounds that it serves Poland’s national interests. It hardly needs to be repeated that if every country approached the Union expecting that it will fulfil its national demands, there would be little reason for trying to build a Union of common interests in the first place.
In this regard it is even less surprising that PiS has always been staunchly Atlanticist, sharing this stance with other European nationalist and republican parties (e.g. Front National, Geert Wilder’s Party for Freedom, Czech Civic Democrats, the British Conservatives). The United States and Transatlantic partnership are in these parties’ line of thought regarded as some sort of ‘saving grace’ that will assure European defence without having to resort to the ‘inconvenience’ of sharing sovereignty with Europe. Surely, even if the US were not troubled by the need to implement its own defence budget cuts, just like any other nation state they are primarily interested in their own defence and strategic interests, and the concern over their allies’ security including Poland’s is only of the second-order importance. Similarly, if the eurosceptic Atlanticists prefer to secure defence in a military alliance rather than under the auspices of a European federation, it is unclear why to prefer NATO to a defence pact with their culturally and geopolitically closer European neighbours. Be it under the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy, OSCE or by supporting some other kind of European defence cooperation. It becomes clear that nationalists like the Kaczynskis pursue only an idealised, national spectre of sovereignty, rather than its true content, which lies in the fact that a given polity possesses a tangible and not just legal control over the full range of its domestic affairs: in finance, culture just as in defence.
In a world where US military expenditure in 2010 was $698 billion and China’s $114 billion, even countries with a long warfare tradition such as Poland cannot gather enough of funding to counter the newest, high-tech security challenges. (For comparison, Poland’s military expenditure in 2010 were $10.8 billion, whereas collectively, the EU-27 spent $270.6 billion in 2009, which is only about 39 % of the US’s expenditure.) It is often striking that the same political parties who idolise national sovereignty favour increasingly greater liberalisation of transborder movements of commerce and finance – in other words, they stand for economic globalisation, which in turn functions as the principal bearer of global consumerist ‘culture’. Since financial markets with its rating agencies and speculators do not respect any legally defined national boundaries, the rhetoric of national sovereignty serves only to disguise the real division of powers, which has waned from the control of national politicians long time ago. If the restoration of impenetrable national borders remains an unfeasible dream of politicians like Mr Kaczynski, it is possible to imagine that globalisation might be made to take a different form that would be more favourable to the specificities of various national cultures and that would curb down the power of global capital so as to give back to the people political control over their economies and societies. The EU can be an agent of such reassertion of popular sovereignty, but arguably, so far it has been rather the foremost European ambassador of neoliberalism and global financial interests.
PM Tusk and his old-new government coalition perhaps do not offer such alternative to the EU’s current ‘globalist’ form. Yet, they rightly perceive that in the long term, European integration is the only possible remedy for social and economic problems that Europe currently undergoes. Civic Platform’s second success might well sparkle debates on the issues of integration and national sovereignty in other Central and Eastern European countries. It is to be hoped that these discussions will be lead in a creative form, giving space to different models the integrated Europe might take. Most importantly, they cannot forget to highlight that for those who oppose the destruction of national identities that proceeds under the steady march of globalisation, a European union is a part of the solution, and not necessarily a problem.
While the ongoing financial crisis slowly destroys the dream of Jean Monnet, the chief architect of the European Coal and Steal Community (i.e. the predecessor of the European Union), more and more European leaders and parties turn to populism rather than pragmatism when talking about the future of the Union. In this regard, clearly Hungary’s PM, Viktor Orban and the UK Conservatives are among the ones to watch.
The United Kingdom, to put it mildly, was never a keen proponent of the European Union. This is even more true when one talks about the UK Conservatives. (A funny fact though is that the country joined the European Community under a conservative PM, Edward Heath.) But since then the British right has been trying its upmost to force the UK’s departure from an Ever Closer Union. Of course, it is obvious that their efforts were not successful. However, it would be foolish to say that their ideas and beliefs did not resonate with the British public; because, quite frankly, they did very much! To take just one notable example, last week The Daily Telegraph published Mark Pritchard’s (conservative backbencher) intriguing article on the EU, showing euroscepticism at its best.
In it, Mr Pritchard derives two important conclusions: 1) the UK should leave the European Union because it effectively occupies Britain and thus destroys its national sovereignity; and 2) the EU forces British tax payers to finance debt-riden Greece and other Mediterranean member states. Mr Pritchard thinks that his explanation and conclusions are credible but in my view, they are not. I am not saying that he is wrong in everything what he says. For example, I can surely support the UK conservatives when they say that the EU is running a huge democratic deficit and because of this, clearly, it is sometimes out of touch with the problems of its citizens. But to say that the EU is occupying the UK and that British tax payers are handing out money to lazy Greeks is simply not true. First, the UK is not financing Greece because it is not included in the European Financial Stability Facility. Second, it is not loosing its sovereignty because of the EU, it only looses it because it voluntarily joined the Union back in the 1970s.
It is also worth noting that many well known anti-EU MPs (like Daniel Hannan) are saying that UK exports to EU member states can be replaced by exports to booming emerging markets. In fact, this particular explanation is false as well because EU exports cannot be substituted with emerging market exports: just consider that the UK’s trade volume with Ireland alone is bigger than with the BRIC countries combined. Notwithstanding that, it seems to me that British politicians will never be sympatethic to the EU, even if the facts (all of them) would lie on the EU’s side. Quite interestingly, however, a ComRes/BBC2 poll published in the latest issue of Total Politics, a British current affairs magazine, found that 55 per cent of the UK public supports the countries membership in the EU. Ooops.
Now let us turn our attention to Hungary and Viktor Orban. Formerly a liberal leaning politician, now turned conservative, Mr Orban is one of the key bashers of the EU on its Eastern borders. Hungary’s PM was not always like this as his anti-EU rethoric only emerged during his period in opposition (between 2002-2010); before that, he was a champion of EU / NATO membership. Of course, one can say that politics is not for the faint-hearted. But I believe, most of todays problems on the EU’s side is largely caused by a helpless European political class, painfully short of politicians who are willing to act, and willing to tell the truth to their citizens. In this regard, Mr Orban is no exception because he is trying, like many of his counterparts, to blame all the problems of his country on the EU and the previous (Socialist) government. In the latter case, he is quite right. But in the former, he is wrong. Firstly, because Hungary’s existing economic and political agony is also caused by the mismanagement of the current cabinet (i.e. they do not have a clue how to solve the previous government’s fault or if they do, they are hiding it from the public eye). And secondly, because putting the blame on the EU only makes Hungary look bad as everybody knows that we, not Brussels screwed it. So one can only ask EU leaders for less populism and more pragmatism, because without it, they may well destroy a peaceful future that Jean Monnet tried to build for us all.