The Europe I love (no more?)

I always saw in a United Europe an antidote against the dark ghosts which prevailed before the second world war, an era during which aggrieved and aggressive nations were lured by the ideologies of grandeur and hate, rooted in Europe’s dark history of pogroms, witch hunts, stark inequalities and persecutions.

It was this Europe of autocrats in various guises, that the post-war visionaries wanted to consign to the dustbin of history.

Yet the idea of a United Europe remained in many ways an idea. Surely Europe does offer a framework of social and environmental legislation.  It is also a guarantee of basic human rights. Can you imagine any European country remaining in the Union if it reintroduces the death penalty or legalises waterboarding?

But nonetheless, the European institutions practiced a different kind of waterboarding to subdue the Greek insurrection against the imposition of a sickness disguised as therapy during the debt crisis.

And what is happening at the borders of Fortress Europe amounts to nothing short of a collective capital punishment. For by not providing legal access to refugees fleeing wars, Europe is losing its heart.

During the past months the heart of Europe was buried twice, in Athens and in the Keleti train station of Budapest. In the meantime the ghosts of the past have been unleashed with a vengeance.

Those expecting Europe to be saved by a bankrupt technocracy which lacks any motivation except that of deregulating markets and imposing poverty, are the worse enemies of the European project.

So are those ready to lift the shutters of the fortress in the face of tragedy but are so ready to look back again as soon as the emergency is over. So are those who defend their piratical tax regimes which effectively deny Europe of the money it needs to create a universal European welfare state.

Accepting refugees in a world which only offers risks and precariousness for a large chunk of its citizens simply strengthens the far right’s appeal. What we need is a harmonised citizenship income scheme subsided by a harmonised fiscal system which is open to all those contributing to Europe’s wealth through their work. 

Moreover, refugees are to be included in the social fabric and not treated as a disposable reserve army of labour whose role is that of depressing wages and working conditions while remaining vulnerable to persecution and eviction.    

The European project can only be saved by a civic movement which starts in the streets, the schools, the universities, the football stadiums and every day life, a movement united by basic values of democracy, solidarity and social justice. 

Banners of “refugees welcome” in football stadiums are signs that this is possible. It is a slogan which defies a fortress mentality which risks making Europe smaller and smaller as different nation states start preferring to build their own fortress. 

The alternative to an open and united Europe is more likely to be a patch work of closed authoritarian regimes modelling themselves on Russia and others who may be more open to the global economy but possibly just as authoritarian by modelling themselves on Dubai and Singapore.   

What is clear at this stage is that the Europe born from the ashes of the Second World War exists no more.   In the absence of a revolution from below, we may soon find ourselves re-living the 1920s and 1930s.