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European integration: The enlightenment legacy
History of European Ideas,
Vol. 19. Nos l-3, pp. 207-213, 1994 Copyright@ 1994Elswicr Science Ltd Printedin Great Britain. All rights reserved
Pergamon
019L6599/94
$7.00+0.00
EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: THE ENLIGHTENMENT LEGACY MICHELINE ISHAY*
The end of the Cold War, the onset of a new international harmony, the triumph of liberalism and the obsolecsence of war are being promised by the architects of the idea of European integration. Following in the footsteps of Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, Jacques Delors advocates a single European market which will remove all national barriers to the movement of persons, capital and goods among the 12 states, and will dissipate national particularism and promote European humanitarian ideals of social justice. In the words of his precursors: For civilisation, the unification of Europe has a significance which goes beyond peace and security. Europe stands at the starting point of that progress from which we will all benefit; and Europeans, thanks to their creative spirit, can provide to the development of civilization a contribution as great as that of the past. However, to allow this creative spirit to bloom again, we must bring about union.’ Yet the difficulties of the Maastricht ratification, the development of racism and nationalism, which haunts Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals,
overshadows the spirit of European internationalism. Jean-Marie le Pen’s party of hate is echoed by the xenophobia of the Italian Lombardy League, the National Front in Britain, and the Republican Party of former SS officer Franz Schiinhuber. These ideologies, condemned for their extremism after World War II, are now legitimised by the recent electoral success of right parties. Europe finds itself in a paradoxical situation as it both brandishes the banner of unity and internationalism, and yet cultivates in its garden the seeds of nationalism. The emergence of these contradictory ideological trends are not phenomena inherent to this fin-de-sikcle Europe. Two hundred years ago, Paine and Robespierre imagined that revolutionary France, and later Europe, would become the bastion of republican ideals and free trade. Inspired by Adam Smith, Kant added that the spread of commerce and republican ideals were intertwined and would pave the road to a world federation: Civil freedom can no longer be infringed without disadvantage to all trades and industries, and especially to commerce. . . the citizen is deterred from seeking his personal welfare in any way he chooses which is consistent with the freedom of others, the vitality of business with others and hence the strength of the whole are kept in check.2
*Graduate School of International U.S.A.
Studies, University of Denver, Colorado 80208,
207
208
Micheline
Ishay
Napoleon attempted to concretise these views by developing a Continental system which aimed to unite Europe. He spoke endlessly of the Enlightenment and urged all people to work with him against the medievalism, ignorance, and obscurantism still prevailing in Europe. Yet, as the expansion of French power became increasingly identified with blatant imperialism, the seeds of nationalist revolts began to bear their fruits and gradually eroded the Continental system. Bearing in mind the historial legacy of the Enlightenment and of the early nineteenth century, this paper will examine the dynamics between European internationalist and nationalist ideology developed in Europe after World War II.3 Internationalism is commonly defined as an ideology stressing universal justice and political and economic rights regardless of national or religious origins; nationalism, on the other hand, places primary emphasis on the nation, its culture and particular interests, as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups. The analysis which follows, however, shows that this dichotomy is simplistic. It suggests rather an ‘elective affinity’ between nationalism and internationalism, defined in economic and instrumental terms. This relationship will be assessed by recounting the early development of European integration and nationalism during three historical phases. The first deals with the origins of European unity after the world wars, the second explores the development of political unity throughout the 197Os, while the third examines the contradiction of the union and the development of nationalism after the Cold War period.
PHASE I: THE ECONOMIC AND INSTRUMENTAL CHARACTER OF EUROPEAN INTERNATIONALISM The twentieth century idea of European unity, like those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was defined in economic and instrumental terms. It emerged in reaction to war and social turmoil. A sequence of events shattered the modern European status quo: World War I, the development of communism, the growth of fascism, World War II, the gradual independence of former European colonies and the nuclear arms race. These occurrences of international magnitude spurred political elites and intellectuals, in the same way that then led seventeenth-century political thinkers such as Hugo Grotius4 and Emerich de VatteL5 to reconsider ways and means to prevent Europe from tearing itself assunder at regular intervals. Government elites by and large sought merely the destruction of totalitarian states, but there was also a formidable body of European intellectuals whose vision transcended this immediate priority. For them the defeat of fascism was only a first step. The collapse of fascism and nazism indeed offered a golden opportunity for Europeans to reconsider the principles upon which future solidarity could take place. To overcome the agonising division of Europe, resistance thinkers directed their intellectual challenge to the perceived cause of the war itself: the nationstate. The idea of the creation of a ‘United States of Europe’ was lucidly expressed by a small nucleus of Italian federalists led by Alterio Spinelli and Ernest0 Rossi in the famous ‘Ventoteno Manifesto.‘6
European Integration: the Enlightenment Legacy
209
Yet, the federalists’ enthusiasm was tarnished by instrumental and national concerns, which were expressed on the political and global level, for foes of the federal solution feared the loss of national sovereignty. Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman represented the compromising position. Like Enlightenment legal theorists, they believed that peace could be achieved by gradually altering the relationship between peoples, by encouraging and formalising mutual and economic exchange. It was thus important, insisted Monnet, ‘[T]o unite men, to solve the problems which divided them, and to persuade them to seek their common interests.‘7 Following Grotius’s guidelines for peace, Monnet proposed to forge functional and economic links between states to temper the occurrences of war. The experience of the European coal and steel community (1951) showed that a policy of mutual economic interests was the best foundation for a new Europe, and led to the ratification of the treaty of Rome in 1957. The European Economic Community (EEC) linked six economies: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. It represented the future pillar of European integration. It focussed upon three central areas: the creation of a customs-free zone, a common external tariff, and a Common Agricultural Policy.8 The treaty of Rome contained a number of additional agreements-an EEC anti-trust policy, development programmes for underdeveloped regions (such as southern Italy), but its main concern was trade and its ethos liberal. The pivotal figures of the new Europe rejected, like seventeenth-century legal theorists such as Grotius and Vattel, the idea of a political supranational body. Such a centralised executive could have hindered free-trade initiatives. One should remember that in the twentieth century, the economic interests of European finance, the position of the nation and capitalism, were far better established than in the seventeenth century. It is therefore not surprising that the treaty of Rome did not challenge the sovereignty of the European nation-state. Following the same evolutionary pattern of late-eighteenth-century European internationalism, the quest for a political association, in addition to an economic union, was more seriously undertaken in the mid-1980s.
PHASE II: THE POLITICAL DIMENSION EUROPEAN INTERNATIONALISM
OF
The economic crisis of the 1970s like the economic depression which took place in pre-revolutionary France and Europe paved the way for the extension of universalist and political concerns. The 197Os, as the 177Os, proved that ‘mutual economic’ interests could divide rather than integrate increasingly unequal EEC members. Budgetary problems and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in particular, presented the European Community as an arena of incessant conflicts between its various members. Britain, for instance, which had joined the EEC along with Denmark and Ireland in 1973, questioned the ‘exaggerated’ bill of its agricultural share, and thereby continuously disrupted the deliberations of the European Commission.9 The Common Market members began to realise the need to create better international coordination of monetary, macroeconomic, industrial and trade
210
Micheline Zshay
policies and to come to terms with increased unemployment. These economic concerns necessitated greater political control, which led to the development in 1979 of the first direct elections to the European Parliament. The Parliament, Commission and European Council had each, deliberately or unwittingly, assisted in that conjunction of developments which served to rekindle interest in the political goal of European Union. However, the 1970s showed the economic union of the European Community to be wholly ineffective in resolving the major problems of the age like chronic unemployment and monetary instability. The Italian foreign minister Colombo and West German foreign minister Genscher initiated a plan to revitalise Europe by means of new political initiatives. The specific nature oftheir plan was to extend and reconcile economic and political cooperation under the aegis of the European council, to highlight Parliament’s participatory and watchdog functions, to reassert majority voting in the council of Ministers, to include security priorities, to strengthen the Presidency and to create a small independent secretariat that would facilitate the political cooperation procedure. lo The competitive edge of Japan and the United States furthered the necessity ideal of for the renaissance of a stronger Europe. I1 The eighteenth-century unifying Europe politically and institutionally was reactivated in 1985 by Jacques Delors’ 1992 European Single Market Project. The 1992 European Union proposal attempted to ally labour activists and financiers in order to solve the urgent economic problems faced by the future European members. ‘This large market’, indicated Delors, backed by the British Tory and Vice-president of the Commission Lord Cockfield, ‘is of great concern to every citizen of Europe. It is revolutionary, but it will be achieved both because it is absolutely necessary and because it carries with it the goal of a united and strong Europe.‘12 In 1985, Jacques Delors proposed, in the spirit of the 1789 Deciaration of the Rights of Man, a plan to reconcile social and economic justice. His programme aimed to develop solidarity between prosperous and deprived regions, to promote scientific and technological cooperation, to further environmental harmony and collaboration, and to resolve long-term unemployment.13 Such a call is reminiscent of I’Abbit de Sieyes’s appeal to Third Estate unity against aristocratic privileges and mercantilist rivalries. I4 Like the major protagonists of the Third Estate, the endorsers of 1992 have decided to join the union for divergent reasons; unlike the revolutionary thinkers of pre-capitalist Europe, the champions of 1992 are more aware of the conflict of interests preceding the union. Financiers are seeing the future of Europe as an open arena for new capitalist ventures and opportunities. German investors, for instance, aspire to conquer new economic assets, while the German government would benefit by consolidating its power within a wider European territory. French finance hopes to gain an edge while the German government is still preoccupied with its own unification. The Spanish believe that a new economic integration will facilitate their modernisation process. The British are split and still diffident regarding their immediate gains.15 In brief, each state member aspires to redesign new strategies on a larger territorial scale. On the other hand, labour movements hope, with the implementation of the European Single Act, to make political alliances and gain further strength in order to develop a common social agenda in the Europe of 1992. In order to get
European Integration: the Enlightenment Legacy
211
the agreement of the trade unions to the removal of barriers that were protecting the jobs of their members, the Single Act considered from the outset that a commitment to a social dimension of the programme was needed. The Social Charter of 1989 laid down the guiding principles of the ‘social space.’ It mentions the need to improve several areas: the health and safety of the workforce, the free movement of labour, education and training, sex equality, harmonisation of minimum wages and social security, consultation of workers in the decisionmaking of companies, and the development of a ‘social dialogue’ between EC trade unions and employer’s associations.‘6 Additional efforts to integrate social, political and economic concerns were shattered during the recent Maastricht conference. Like the 1791 French constitution, the curtailed Maastricht treaty underlined the contradictory aspirations of various social groups. For the European world of finance, the development of a strong supranational political power would strengthen the political leverage of labour parties, which would in turn hamper the deployment of free-trade stratagems. The rejection of the social charter by Britain may illustrate such a fear. For labour activists, however, an integration based mainly on free-trade regulations would provide carte blanche to capital investment. Thus understood, the 1992 Maastricht project, if ratified as drafted, may worsen economic disparities instead of integrating its members equally. The flow of capital investments to low-income Southern Europe-for example Greece, Portugal and Spain-could weaken the state’s potential capacity to control labour-related problems with foreign firms. On the global level, would western Europe, like the French Patrie, succeed in becoming a free-trade model for other eastern nations to emulate? Or are the coercive potentials of European states’ apparatus necessary to either erect fences against foreign competition or to integrate eastern European countries? The eighteenth-century idea that the progress of peace and republicanism coevals with the development of free trade is a vision still entertained by many at Brussels and by many governments of the ‘free world.’ However, in this late twentieth century, which is shaped by transnational economies, only a strong and large political apparatus of Europe-wide dimensions can protect European firms against the competitiveness of foreign multinationals. Thus, the oscillation between free trade and state intervention policy does not only persist, but is becoming even more significant throughout the centuries. The proper way to achieve integration on a wider European level has not been solved yet. The 1992 project is of course not set in the same revolutionary context as 1789; and yet the Jacobins’ preoccupation with spreading the ‘wars for liberty’ throughout the old dynasties of Europe is not so remote from the minds of the European deputies. The paralysis of European foreign policy regarding the Yugoslavian civil war expresses this strategic dilemma. The prolonged nationalist conflicts in Yugoslavia and elsewhere appear to be the symptomatic consequences of the unsettled tension between the political and economic dimension of the European union.
212
PHASE
Micheline
Ishay
III: NATIONALISM AND THE BETRAYAL OF EUROPEAN INTERNATIONALISM-CONCLUDING REMARKS
The contemporary spirit of liberal internationalism, which entertains the Jacobin promises of equality and universality, recedes with the recent advance of racism and nationalism. There is still a huge disparity in rights granted to the ethnic minorities in the Europe of the 12; just as there was a huge discrepancy of rights granted to the various nationalities of Napoleon’s Continental system. Regardless of the problems involving citizenship for some ethnic minorities, the main issue in contemporary Europe is racism. Legislation may indeed grant rights and citizenship, but these ethnic groups still need to confront the emergence of the extreme right, which denounces their presence in the ‘fatherland’ as the principal cause of unemployment. In Germany, racism is found in the ghettoisation of its gastarbeiters minority, in France it is present in the racist killings of Africans, in England in the constant struggle between black youth and the police. Racist events have been exalted by extreme groups, such as the National Front in Britain and France, or the Movimento Sociale Italiano. The racial tension will persist and even escalate with the growth of an economically and politically disenfranchised population.” On the global level, the question of the champions of 1992 remains: can the breakdown of communist regimes in eastern Europe provide an opening for European disarmament, and prepare the political ground for peace? Will the European community develop a foreign policy with the aim of becoming a springboard towards the possible integration of a fragmented Eastern Bloc? It seems, despite the early enthusiastic acclamations for a free and peaceful world, which would emanate from Europe, that the intensified rivalries between the three capitalist superpowers, Japan, the U.S.A. and Europe will set back the economy of the eastern countries, let alone the Third World, and sharpen nationalist resentment. The need for European investment to rebuild the infrastructure of the eastern European countries may activate a situation of economic dependence. A full economic absorption into capitalist Europe is more and more a fait accompli. Yet once absorbed into Europe. the eastern countries will be reduced to the role of junior partners. By relinquishing their economic control and thereby by weakening their political leverage, they may have to face up to a climate of persisting inflation, uncontrollable unemployment and low income, that would lead to rising inequality and social conflicts. A European union defined in Maastricht by instrumental and economic opportunity may exacerbate prevailing inequality and thereby nationalist feelings. The Enlightenment contradictions of liberal internationalism have not yet been resolved. 1992 endeavoured to institutionalise the internationalist aspirations of 1789. The proposal of the Single Act raised hopes, but seems neither to lead to social equality nor to the human rights principles championed by its founders. The nature of the Maastricht treaty, which will most likely be endorsed by all European members, has left the field open for financial operations outside the jurisdiction of any governmental apparatus. A climate of uregulated labour and ethnic discrimination is already clouding the European horizon. A European unity which links individuals and nations instrumentally
European
Integration:
the Enlightenment
Legacy
213
according to the principle of laissez-faire, creates an idelogical vacuum which threatens to be filled by nationalist resentments. The explosion of nationalist sentiments in our nuclear age may adrumbrate a nightmarish future, perhaps worse than those experienced in our past European nationalist history. The need to articulate an alternative form of collective identity, premised on universal equality and transcending the particularism of liberal internationalism has been posed. The challenge has still to be overcome. Micheline Denver
Ishay
University
NOTES 1. Jean Monnet ‘Textes Choisis’, in Actes du Collogue OrganisP par la Commission des Communautt% Europt!ennes h l’occasion du centennaire de la Naissance de JeanMonnet (Luxembourg: Office des Publications Officielles des CommunautCs Europkennes, 1988), p. 143. 2. I. Kant ‘Idea for a Universal History’, in Kant’s Political Writings, edited by Hans Reiss and translated by H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, rep. 1983), p. 50. 3. For a further explanation of Internationalism and Nationalism at its early stage, see Micheline Ishay, Internationalism and its Betrayal (Minnesto: Minnesota University Press, 1994). 4. Hugo Grotius The Law of War and Peace, translated by Louise R. Loomis, with an introduction by P. E. Corbett (New York: published by W. J. Black for the Classics Club, 1949). 5. Emerich de Vattel, The Laws of Nations (Dublin: L. White, 1972). 6. W. Lipgens, A History of European Integration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). 7. Jean Monnet, Memoirs (New York: Doubleday, 1978), p. 221. 8. George Ross, ‘Confronting the New Europe’, New Left Review (January/February 1992), No. 191, p. 50. 9. Ibid., p. 54. 10. Michael Burgess, Federation and European Union, Political Ideas, Influence and Strategies in the European Community 1992-1987 (London/New York: Routledge, 1989), pp. 125-131. 11. Paolo Cecchini, Michel Catinat and Alexis Jacquemin The European Challenge 1992, The Benefits of a Single Market (England: Wildwood House, 1988), p. 89. 12. Ibid, p. xi. 13. Jacques Delors, in Monnet (1978), op. cit., pp. 124-125. 14. Emanuel Joseph Sieyes, Qu’est-ce que Ie Tiers Etat, edited critically by Roberto Zapperi (Geneva: Droz, 1976). 15. Ross, op. cit., p. 65. 16. George Stephen, Politics and Policy in the European Community (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 203-217. 17. U. Santamaria, ‘Blacks, Immigrants, and Racism in Western Europe Today’, New Political Science (Fall/Winter 1989), Introduction.
Vol. 19. Nos l-3, pp. 207-213, 1994 Copyright@ 1994Elswicr Science Ltd Printedin Great Britain. All rights reserved
Pergamon
019L6599/94
$7.00+0.00
EUROPEAN INTEGRATION: THE ENLIGHTENMENT LEGACY MICHELINE ISHAY*
The end of the Cold War, the onset of a new international harmony, the triumph of liberalism and the obsolecsence of war are being promised by the architects of the idea of European integration. Following in the footsteps of Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, Jacques Delors advocates a single European market which will remove all national barriers to the movement of persons, capital and goods among the 12 states, and will dissipate national particularism and promote European humanitarian ideals of social justice. In the words of his precursors: For civilisation, the unification of Europe has a significance which goes beyond peace and security. Europe stands at the starting point of that progress from which we will all benefit; and Europeans, thanks to their creative spirit, can provide to the development of civilization a contribution as great as that of the past. However, to allow this creative spirit to bloom again, we must bring about union.’ Yet the difficulties of the Maastricht ratification, the development of racism and nationalism, which haunts Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals,
overshadows the spirit of European internationalism. Jean-Marie le Pen’s party of hate is echoed by the xenophobia of the Italian Lombardy League, the National Front in Britain, and the Republican Party of former SS officer Franz Schiinhuber. These ideologies, condemned for their extremism after World War II, are now legitimised by the recent electoral success of right parties. Europe finds itself in a paradoxical situation as it both brandishes the banner of unity and internationalism, and yet cultivates in its garden the seeds of nationalism. The emergence of these contradictory ideological trends are not phenomena inherent to this fin-de-sikcle Europe. Two hundred years ago, Paine and Robespierre imagined that revolutionary France, and later Europe, would become the bastion of republican ideals and free trade. Inspired by Adam Smith, Kant added that the spread of commerce and republican ideals were intertwined and would pave the road to a world federation: Civil freedom can no longer be infringed without disadvantage to all trades and industries, and especially to commerce. . . the citizen is deterred from seeking his personal welfare in any way he chooses which is consistent with the freedom of others, the vitality of business with others and hence the strength of the whole are kept in check.2
*Graduate School of International U.S.A.
Studies, University of Denver, Colorado 80208,
207
208
Micheline
Ishay
Napoleon attempted to concretise these views by developing a Continental system which aimed to unite Europe. He spoke endlessly of the Enlightenment and urged all people to work with him against the medievalism, ignorance, and obscurantism still prevailing in Europe. Yet, as the expansion of French power became increasingly identified with blatant imperialism, the seeds of nationalist revolts began to bear their fruits and gradually eroded the Continental system. Bearing in mind the historial legacy of the Enlightenment and of the early nineteenth century, this paper will examine the dynamics between European internationalist and nationalist ideology developed in Europe after World War II.3 Internationalism is commonly defined as an ideology stressing universal justice and political and economic rights regardless of national or religious origins; nationalism, on the other hand, places primary emphasis on the nation, its culture and particular interests, as opposed to those of other nations or supranational groups. The analysis which follows, however, shows that this dichotomy is simplistic. It suggests rather an ‘elective affinity’ between nationalism and internationalism, defined in economic and instrumental terms. This relationship will be assessed by recounting the early development of European integration and nationalism during three historical phases. The first deals with the origins of European unity after the world wars, the second explores the development of political unity throughout the 197Os, while the third examines the contradiction of the union and the development of nationalism after the Cold War period.
PHASE I: THE ECONOMIC AND INSTRUMENTAL CHARACTER OF EUROPEAN INTERNATIONALISM The twentieth century idea of European unity, like those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, was defined in economic and instrumental terms. It emerged in reaction to war and social turmoil. A sequence of events shattered the modern European status quo: World War I, the development of communism, the growth of fascism, World War II, the gradual independence of former European colonies and the nuclear arms race. These occurrences of international magnitude spurred political elites and intellectuals, in the same way that then led seventeenth-century political thinkers such as Hugo Grotius4 and Emerich de VatteL5 to reconsider ways and means to prevent Europe from tearing itself assunder at regular intervals. Government elites by and large sought merely the destruction of totalitarian states, but there was also a formidable body of European intellectuals whose vision transcended this immediate priority. For them the defeat of fascism was only a first step. The collapse of fascism and nazism indeed offered a golden opportunity for Europeans to reconsider the principles upon which future solidarity could take place. To overcome the agonising division of Europe, resistance thinkers directed their intellectual challenge to the perceived cause of the war itself: the nationstate. The idea of the creation of a ‘United States of Europe’ was lucidly expressed by a small nucleus of Italian federalists led by Alterio Spinelli and Ernest0 Rossi in the famous ‘Ventoteno Manifesto.‘6
European Integration: the Enlightenment Legacy
209
Yet, the federalists’ enthusiasm was tarnished by instrumental and national concerns, which were expressed on the political and global level, for foes of the federal solution feared the loss of national sovereignty. Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman represented the compromising position. Like Enlightenment legal theorists, they believed that peace could be achieved by gradually altering the relationship between peoples, by encouraging and formalising mutual and economic exchange. It was thus important, insisted Monnet, ‘[T]o unite men, to solve the problems which divided them, and to persuade them to seek their common interests.‘7 Following Grotius’s guidelines for peace, Monnet proposed to forge functional and economic links between states to temper the occurrences of war. The experience of the European coal and steel community (1951) showed that a policy of mutual economic interests was the best foundation for a new Europe, and led to the ratification of the treaty of Rome in 1957. The European Economic Community (EEC) linked six economies: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. It represented the future pillar of European integration. It focussed upon three central areas: the creation of a customs-free zone, a common external tariff, and a Common Agricultural Policy.8 The treaty of Rome contained a number of additional agreements-an EEC anti-trust policy, development programmes for underdeveloped regions (such as southern Italy), but its main concern was trade and its ethos liberal. The pivotal figures of the new Europe rejected, like seventeenth-century legal theorists such as Grotius and Vattel, the idea of a political supranational body. Such a centralised executive could have hindered free-trade initiatives. One should remember that in the twentieth century, the economic interests of European finance, the position of the nation and capitalism, were far better established than in the seventeenth century. It is therefore not surprising that the treaty of Rome did not challenge the sovereignty of the European nation-state. Following the same evolutionary pattern of late-eighteenth-century European internationalism, the quest for a political association, in addition to an economic union, was more seriously undertaken in the mid-1980s.
PHASE II: THE POLITICAL DIMENSION EUROPEAN INTERNATIONALISM
OF
The economic crisis of the 1970s like the economic depression which took place in pre-revolutionary France and Europe paved the way for the extension of universalist and political concerns. The 197Os, as the 177Os, proved that ‘mutual economic’ interests could divide rather than integrate increasingly unequal EEC members. Budgetary problems and the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) in particular, presented the European Community as an arena of incessant conflicts between its various members. Britain, for instance, which had joined the EEC along with Denmark and Ireland in 1973, questioned the ‘exaggerated’ bill of its agricultural share, and thereby continuously disrupted the deliberations of the European Commission.9 The Common Market members began to realise the need to create better international coordination of monetary, macroeconomic, industrial and trade
210
Micheline Zshay
policies and to come to terms with increased unemployment. These economic concerns necessitated greater political control, which led to the development in 1979 of the first direct elections to the European Parliament. The Parliament, Commission and European Council had each, deliberately or unwittingly, assisted in that conjunction of developments which served to rekindle interest in the political goal of European Union. However, the 1970s showed the economic union of the European Community to be wholly ineffective in resolving the major problems of the age like chronic unemployment and monetary instability. The Italian foreign minister Colombo and West German foreign minister Genscher initiated a plan to revitalise Europe by means of new political initiatives. The specific nature oftheir plan was to extend and reconcile economic and political cooperation under the aegis of the European council, to highlight Parliament’s participatory and watchdog functions, to reassert majority voting in the council of Ministers, to include security priorities, to strengthen the Presidency and to create a small independent secretariat that would facilitate the political cooperation procedure. lo The competitive edge of Japan and the United States furthered the necessity ideal of for the renaissance of a stronger Europe. I1 The eighteenth-century unifying Europe politically and institutionally was reactivated in 1985 by Jacques Delors’ 1992 European Single Market Project. The 1992 European Union proposal attempted to ally labour activists and financiers in order to solve the urgent economic problems faced by the future European members. ‘This large market’, indicated Delors, backed by the British Tory and Vice-president of the Commission Lord Cockfield, ‘is of great concern to every citizen of Europe. It is revolutionary, but it will be achieved both because it is absolutely necessary and because it carries with it the goal of a united and strong Europe.‘12 In 1985, Jacques Delors proposed, in the spirit of the 1789 Deciaration of the Rights of Man, a plan to reconcile social and economic justice. His programme aimed to develop solidarity between prosperous and deprived regions, to promote scientific and technological cooperation, to further environmental harmony and collaboration, and to resolve long-term unemployment.13 Such a call is reminiscent of I’Abbit de Sieyes’s appeal to Third Estate unity against aristocratic privileges and mercantilist rivalries. I4 Like the major protagonists of the Third Estate, the endorsers of 1992 have decided to join the union for divergent reasons; unlike the revolutionary thinkers of pre-capitalist Europe, the champions of 1992 are more aware of the conflict of interests preceding the union. Financiers are seeing the future of Europe as an open arena for new capitalist ventures and opportunities. German investors, for instance, aspire to conquer new economic assets, while the German government would benefit by consolidating its power within a wider European territory. French finance hopes to gain an edge while the German government is still preoccupied with its own unification. The Spanish believe that a new economic integration will facilitate their modernisation process. The British are split and still diffident regarding their immediate gains.15 In brief, each state member aspires to redesign new strategies on a larger territorial scale. On the other hand, labour movements hope, with the implementation of the European Single Act, to make political alliances and gain further strength in order to develop a common social agenda in the Europe of 1992. In order to get
European Integration: the Enlightenment Legacy
211
the agreement of the trade unions to the removal of barriers that were protecting the jobs of their members, the Single Act considered from the outset that a commitment to a social dimension of the programme was needed. The Social Charter of 1989 laid down the guiding principles of the ‘social space.’ It mentions the need to improve several areas: the health and safety of the workforce, the free movement of labour, education and training, sex equality, harmonisation of minimum wages and social security, consultation of workers in the decisionmaking of companies, and the development of a ‘social dialogue’ between EC trade unions and employer’s associations.‘6 Additional efforts to integrate social, political and economic concerns were shattered during the recent Maastricht conference. Like the 1791 French constitution, the curtailed Maastricht treaty underlined the contradictory aspirations of various social groups. For the European world of finance, the development of a strong supranational political power would strengthen the political leverage of labour parties, which would in turn hamper the deployment of free-trade stratagems. The rejection of the social charter by Britain may illustrate such a fear. For labour activists, however, an integration based mainly on free-trade regulations would provide carte blanche to capital investment. Thus understood, the 1992 Maastricht project, if ratified as drafted, may worsen economic disparities instead of integrating its members equally. The flow of capital investments to low-income Southern Europe-for example Greece, Portugal and Spain-could weaken the state’s potential capacity to control labour-related problems with foreign firms. On the global level, would western Europe, like the French Patrie, succeed in becoming a free-trade model for other eastern nations to emulate? Or are the coercive potentials of European states’ apparatus necessary to either erect fences against foreign competition or to integrate eastern European countries? The eighteenth-century idea that the progress of peace and republicanism coevals with the development of free trade is a vision still entertained by many at Brussels and by many governments of the ‘free world.’ However, in this late twentieth century, which is shaped by transnational economies, only a strong and large political apparatus of Europe-wide dimensions can protect European firms against the competitiveness of foreign multinationals. Thus, the oscillation between free trade and state intervention policy does not only persist, but is becoming even more significant throughout the centuries. The proper way to achieve integration on a wider European level has not been solved yet. The 1992 project is of course not set in the same revolutionary context as 1789; and yet the Jacobins’ preoccupation with spreading the ‘wars for liberty’ throughout the old dynasties of Europe is not so remote from the minds of the European deputies. The paralysis of European foreign policy regarding the Yugoslavian civil war expresses this strategic dilemma. The prolonged nationalist conflicts in Yugoslavia and elsewhere appear to be the symptomatic consequences of the unsettled tension between the political and economic dimension of the European union.
212
PHASE
Micheline
Ishay
III: NATIONALISM AND THE BETRAYAL OF EUROPEAN INTERNATIONALISM-CONCLUDING REMARKS
The contemporary spirit of liberal internationalism, which entertains the Jacobin promises of equality and universality, recedes with the recent advance of racism and nationalism. There is still a huge disparity in rights granted to the ethnic minorities in the Europe of the 12; just as there was a huge discrepancy of rights granted to the various nationalities of Napoleon’s Continental system. Regardless of the problems involving citizenship for some ethnic minorities, the main issue in contemporary Europe is racism. Legislation may indeed grant rights and citizenship, but these ethnic groups still need to confront the emergence of the extreme right, which denounces their presence in the ‘fatherland’ as the principal cause of unemployment. In Germany, racism is found in the ghettoisation of its gastarbeiters minority, in France it is present in the racist killings of Africans, in England in the constant struggle between black youth and the police. Racist events have been exalted by extreme groups, such as the National Front in Britain and France, or the Movimento Sociale Italiano. The racial tension will persist and even escalate with the growth of an economically and politically disenfranchised population.” On the global level, the question of the champions of 1992 remains: can the breakdown of communist regimes in eastern Europe provide an opening for European disarmament, and prepare the political ground for peace? Will the European community develop a foreign policy with the aim of becoming a springboard towards the possible integration of a fragmented Eastern Bloc? It seems, despite the early enthusiastic acclamations for a free and peaceful world, which would emanate from Europe, that the intensified rivalries between the three capitalist superpowers, Japan, the U.S.A. and Europe will set back the economy of the eastern countries, let alone the Third World, and sharpen nationalist resentment. The need for European investment to rebuild the infrastructure of the eastern European countries may activate a situation of economic dependence. A full economic absorption into capitalist Europe is more and more a fait accompli. Yet once absorbed into Europe. the eastern countries will be reduced to the role of junior partners. By relinquishing their economic control and thereby by weakening their political leverage, they may have to face up to a climate of persisting inflation, uncontrollable unemployment and low income, that would lead to rising inequality and social conflicts. A European union defined in Maastricht by instrumental and economic opportunity may exacerbate prevailing inequality and thereby nationalist feelings. The Enlightenment contradictions of liberal internationalism have not yet been resolved. 1992 endeavoured to institutionalise the internationalist aspirations of 1789. The proposal of the Single Act raised hopes, but seems neither to lead to social equality nor to the human rights principles championed by its founders. The nature of the Maastricht treaty, which will most likely be endorsed by all European members, has left the field open for financial operations outside the jurisdiction of any governmental apparatus. A climate of uregulated labour and ethnic discrimination is already clouding the European horizon. A European unity which links individuals and nations instrumentally
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according to the principle of laissez-faire, creates an idelogical vacuum which threatens to be filled by nationalist resentments. The explosion of nationalist sentiments in our nuclear age may adrumbrate a nightmarish future, perhaps worse than those experienced in our past European nationalist history. The need to articulate an alternative form of collective identity, premised on universal equality and transcending the particularism of liberal internationalism has been posed. The challenge has still to be overcome. Micheline Denver
Ishay
University
NOTES 1. Jean Monnet ‘Textes Choisis’, in Actes du Collogue OrganisP par la Commission des Communautt% Europt!ennes h l’occasion du centennaire de la Naissance de JeanMonnet (Luxembourg: Office des Publications Officielles des CommunautCs Europkennes, 1988), p. 143. 2. I. Kant ‘Idea for a Universal History’, in Kant’s Political Writings, edited by Hans Reiss and translated by H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, rep. 1983), p. 50. 3. For a further explanation of Internationalism and Nationalism at its early stage, see Micheline Ishay, Internationalism and its Betrayal (Minnesto: Minnesota University Press, 1994). 4. Hugo Grotius The Law of War and Peace, translated by Louise R. Loomis, with an introduction by P. E. Corbett (New York: published by W. J. Black for the Classics Club, 1949). 5. Emerich de Vattel, The Laws of Nations (Dublin: L. White, 1972). 6. W. Lipgens, A History of European Integration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). 7. Jean Monnet, Memoirs (New York: Doubleday, 1978), p. 221. 8. George Ross, ‘Confronting the New Europe’, New Left Review (January/February 1992), No. 191, p. 50. 9. Ibid., p. 54. 10. Michael Burgess, Federation and European Union, Political Ideas, Influence and Strategies in the European Community 1992-1987 (London/New York: Routledge, 1989), pp. 125-131. 11. Paolo Cecchini, Michel Catinat and Alexis Jacquemin The European Challenge 1992, The Benefits of a Single Market (England: Wildwood House, 1988), p. 89. 12. Ibid, p. xi. 13. Jacques Delors, in Monnet (1978), op. cit., pp. 124-125. 14. Emanuel Joseph Sieyes, Qu’est-ce que Ie Tiers Etat, edited critically by Roberto Zapperi (Geneva: Droz, 1976). 15. Ross, op. cit., p. 65. 16. George Stephen, Politics and Policy in the European Community (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 203-217. 17. U. Santamaria, ‘Blacks, Immigrants, and Racism in Western Europe Today’, New Political Science (Fall/Winter 1989), Introduction.