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But what was the original vision? Does anyone know? I remember it being a "common market" - which doesn't bode well. Was it ever supposed to be more than that?

The whole European Union thing was a gambit by starry-eyed politicians who had succeeded, with the Single European Act, in establishing a complete single market with free movement of capital, goods, services and people.

The starry-eyed politicians came up with Schengen and the Euro and the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Cooperation in Justice and Home Affairs, and voila, the European Economic Community became the "first pillar" of the European Union.

See wikipedia, as usual...

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 9th, 2011 at 02:08:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

"Starry-eyed"? Piffle. Go read history. Almost all of the politicians of the time - at least until the 80s - had personal experience of the horrors and inhumanity of WWII. You perhaps were told what Spain was like before the death of Franco in 75?

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Mon May 9th, 2011 at 02:33:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

The point is that the European Union post-1990 may be described as a bad case of mission creep after the avowed goal was well and truly achieved.

Alternatively, it can be described as a visionary project by the likes of Delors, Kohl, Mitterrand and González, squandered by 20 years of petty nationalistic politicians without a vision.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 9th, 2011 at 05:16:30 AM EST
[ Parent ]

I think you're forgetting the context of the fall of the USSR and of the Warsaw Pact regimes, and German Reunification. What you call "starry-eyed" or "visionary" was far from it: it was an attempt by European leaders coming to the end of their careers and seeing the dangers ahead, to lock European nations (above all Germany) into a tight pact that would conserve what had been constructed. I don't believe Mitterand or Delors, for example, saw the rules laid down then as a final achievement, some wonderful system that would last. They hoped and expected there would be further development, because it was necessary, and because the European project had always managed to move forward like that in the past. But what then happened was that neoliberal economics/politics took over completely and in fact, if anything, forced whatever change there was in the opposite direction. Resulting, above all, in what they feared: Germany dominating Europe and using Central Europe as its economic backyard.

What development of Europe, twenty years ago, would have avoided that, in your view?

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon May 9th, 2011 at 04:35:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Writing sensible rules for the Eurozone in the Maastricht Treaty would have been a major plus.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon May 9th, 2011 at 04:52:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]

What was written was what Germany would sign up to. And I continue to think the "leaders" of the time expected further development re economic governance. They were wrong. But my point is that they were not "visionary" or "starry-eyed" - more likely "worried" would be the word.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Mon May 9th, 2011 at 05:01:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Worried the club med would undermine German stability?

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Mon May 9th, 2011 at 05:57:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

afew:

what they feared: Germany dominating Europe and using Central Europe as its economic backyard.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 09:52:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]

What was written was what Germany would sign up to.

Then the Euro was a bad idea, and Maastricht sans EMU would have been a better treaty.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 09:25:16 AM EST
[ Parent ]

The euro with no further evolution in terms of economic governance has now been shown to have been a bad idea.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 09:55:04 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Or perhaps it was a good idea inadequately implemented, and the problem now is that the political environment has now changed so much in a bad way that demonstrable problems cannot be fixed any longer. A resurgent German nationalism seems to have paralysed the EU. But if there were a coherent alternative majority on the Council, Germany could be outvoted. So perhaps the spinelessness of the rest of Europe is as much to blame.

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 10:12:24 AM EST
[ Parent ]

You cannot build a system that deliberately favours the most powerful player and then expect that it will be reformed to something better in the future. That is, well, "starry-eyed idealism" is a term that comes immediately to mind.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 10:25:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: "... But the Currency is Good" (4.00 / 4)

The same mistake made at Bretton Woods, and for exactly the same reason, failing to solve exactly the same problem.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 10:30:54 AM EST
[ Parent ]

The overwhelming dominance of one player?

It is very difficult for a political process/negotiation to solve that problem unless all the other payers have a united and coherent opposing position. So far the Eurozone crisis has seen a conspicuous lack of solidarity of anyone with or for anyone else. It's every member for themselves at the moment with the majority keeping their heads down and hoping not to have to get involved.

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 10:38:20 AM EST
[ Parent ]

The problem is the macroeconomic instability resulting from the tendency of trade balances to grow more lopsided with time. The solution is the introduction of penalties on net exporters. The difficulty is that, until a crisis hits, there is no incentive to do anything, and after the crisis hits the exporter of last resort has everyone else over a barrel.

See: the US at Bretton Woods, China at the G20, Germany in the Euro.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 11:03:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

If you think Mitterand and Delors were starry-eyed idealists, have a bag of salmiak on me ;)

More than anyone seems to want to recognize in this discussion, the rapid fall of Communism redrew the map of Europe and forced them into an attempt to tighten the bolts on the European superstructure. I don't know to what extent they believed it would really work. Maybe I should try to see if Delors has said anything of late. Mitterand, apparently, is silent.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 10:39:56 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Hmm, time to revisit Reunification - some history rewriting where Jerome downplayed claims that Mitterrand feared reunification, or DoDo's "We'd better take down the wall ourselves".

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 11:05:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]

afew:

My memory from that time is also that Mitterand feared reunification but was resigned to it - and negotiated with Kohl to get stronger European integration, particularly wrt the common currency, as the price of his support.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 11:28:49 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: "... But the Currency is Good" (4.00 / 4)

Maybe the Convergence Criteria and the Growth and Stability Pact were macroeconomic nonsense, and lately the ~~Competitiveness Pact~~ ~~Pact for the Euro~~ Euro-Plus Pact is just ideological shock doctrine.

Without a negative feedback mechanism for limiting the growth of internal trade imbalances, and with arbitrary constraints on fiscal policy and an ideological prohibition of "printing money" the thing was primed for a blow-up. We're actually unfortunate that the global financial crisis started with the subprime crisis and acted as a trigger for the Eurozone crisis, allowing people to pretend that all was well with the Eurozone had it not been for contagion from across the Atlantic.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 10:26:55 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Uh, didn't Germany write it?

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 09:46:10 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Uh, did it?

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 09:53:37 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Didn't the German Finance Ministry design the Euro convergence criteria under Theo Weigel, and then later the Stability and Growth Pact?

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 10:07:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]

They certainly had a lot of input (not particularly starry-eyed or visionary, btw), accepted by partners who wanted to tie them in. The expectation was that - as had happened before - there would be further moves towards "greater union" in terms of economic governance because everyone, the Germans included, would simply be forced into them by circumstances. But Germany stood by monetarism and moved towards mercantilism, and the whole continent got converted to marketista theology which prevented either right or left governments from reacting to that.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 10:24:53 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Why did Germany "need to be tied in", and why into a monetary union?

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 10:29:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]

To mitigate German hegemony...

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 10:39:03 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Then a monetary union is exactly the wrong tool.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 11:05:07 AM EST
[ Parent ]

I think that people fail to understand that historic context is fundamental in all this mess.

Our grand-fathers had direct contact with the horrors of WWII, fascism and stalinism. That shapes a certain kind of individual.

Their mistake (and, it seems to me, the mistake of some here) was to forget that their descendants would be born in a completely (better) different world. Thus, a different kind of individual.

An individual breed in good times cannot easily foresee that it is shaping a path back to horror because (s)he does not know how such horror feels like.

I think a leader of the WWII generation would NEVER allow the current crisis to be shaped with a narrative of "nation versus nation" or "rich nations vs poor nations" or <put your national variant here>.

Sometimes the argument here seems to amount to "if we had the proper leaders, this would be alright". This is naive at best: (i) In a democracy we are bound to have, over time, leaders of different persuasions, it is not always the "old fashioned, historically sensitive, social democrat"; sometimes you get the "banker owned, ideology obsessed, short-sighted neo-liberal", this is NORMAL in a democracy. and (ii) we are having the generational leaders that know little about horrors.

This is why I think that the "European Dream" is turning into a "bloody nightmare": We Europeans designed (with good intention) a system that is too tight-coupled (think Portuguese bailout in the hands of Finnish parliament). We are too connected without sharing nothing resembling a "national identity". This is bound to be problematic in a time of crisis.

A more cautious approach would have serve us much better. It might not have been the utopia of a "united Europe", but would have avoided the problems that are coming (because they have not really started yet).

by cagatacos on Mon May 9th, 2011 at 08:17:22 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Given that there were about 20 years between the end of WWI and the beginning of WWII, it's possible that Europe's Founders had a sense of urgency and that they believed that a "cautious" approach would not have worked.

On the other hand, the whole thing started with a very limited and, indeed, "cautious" European Coal and Steel Community. The single market itself was already "mission creep". The "Founders" set a ball rolling and hoped that further integration would be inevitable.

Economics is politics by other means

by Carrie (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Mon May 9th, 2011 at 09:06:46 AM EST
[ Parent ]

The actual first attempt was of building a true common defence policy, which was truly ambitious and didn't happen as a result...

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

by linca (antonin POINT lucas AROBASE gmail.com) on Mon May 9th, 2011 at 10:41:24 AM EST
[ Parent ]

I wonder if the degree to which the wealthy arrange to skew the system in their favor depends in part on how close you get to social collapse. Massive banking failures in the USA in 1893 led to the federal reserve. Socialism the result of the great depression. European union after ww2. And conversely, 40 years of prosperity leads to a "let them eat cake" economic policy.

I hope this is not the case, because I would rather not have to cope with the social disruption it implies...

by asdf on Mon May 9th, 2011 at 08:43:05 PM EST
[ Parent ]

I wonder if the degree to which the wealthy arrange to skew the system in their favor depends in part on how close you get to social collapse.

There is a relationship, but I think it is the reverse. The wealthy have to be protected from their basest instincts which are to skew the system so strongly to their interests that it is forced into collapse. They collectively seem incapable of accepting this, though many wealthy individuals do understand the relationship. The only satisfaction that gives is that those who understand the situation are better positioned to benefit from the collapse than those who deny the possibility or project the causes onto others.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."

by ARGeezer (ARGeezer a in a circle eurotrib daught com) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 01:17:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Conversely, the vast majority of people also display little interest or engagement in politics so long as they are materially ok and sometimes care little for those who are not ok and who they then perceive as being a threat to their material security on a win:lose basis. It can be very hard to organise the disadvantaged even in support of their own vital interests, and even harder to organise support from those who feel they themselves are relatively ok.

For the wealthy engaging in politics can be a hobby or a pastime, a means of upward mobility, a career, or an insurance policy against "bad people" getting into power. Often they are wealthy because they have played the game well in their own interests.

So the general observation, that major political innovations come in response to catastrophic social failures holds true for both reasons - the dispossessed become more engaged and recognise their common interests in changing the system and the wealthy lose their grip in the social upheaval that follows.

Of course the trick, in a functioning democracy, is to provide mechanisms for ongoing non-violent change which reduce the risk of catastrophic failures and mass upheavals.

Index of Frank's Diaries

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot male dotty communists) on Tue May 10th, 2011 at 05:56:33 AM EST
[ Parent ]