Re: <nettime> England leaves Europe

[Felix Stalder <felix@openflows.com>]

On 2016-06-25 22:38, Brian Holmes wrote:
> What's really crucial - and maybe this is what you're getting at,
> Michael - is how do younger people analyze this disastrous situation? Do
> they fall back on the capitalist reflex embodied by Hillary Clinton that
> says, push through the recession to another growth wave that will solve
> all the problems? Or do they create a genuine response to the current
> situation?
> 
> I'm over fifty, so I would rather put it this way: Can we cut across all
> the identity divides, interest groups and zip-code blocks to constitute
> a majority around a viable logic of development? The answer so far is
> clearly no. But it's really the only thing worth working on.


Besides all the bad things that come to mind with Brexit there might
be an opening to a real rethinking of Europe as political projects now
that the ideal of a European Super-state, an ever closer union, is
fading. Good riddance, as far as I can see.

But what would that rethinking of Europe entail? It seems clear
that the most interesting ideas come from people thinking about the
metropolitian/regional level. Not just the rebel cities of Spain.

One of most interesting voices here is that of political scientist
Ulrike Guérot, who has been advocating for a European Republic.

Below is an excerpt of a recent talk of her, summarizing some of
her ideas. It's worth reading the whole, since she has a strong
gender-analysis in there as well.

Felix

--------


Ulrike Guérot
Europe as a republic. The story of Europe in the twenty-first century

The system currently known as the European Union is the embodiment of
post-democracy, says Ulrike Guérot. The solution: to turn Europe on its
head. For the Europe of tomorrow is a European Republic, the embodiment
of a transnational community.

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2015-07-10-guerot-en.htm

<.....>

Europe as a Republic and the principle of political equality
----------------------------------

National borders come and go, basically they are a man-made artefact of
history, a fiction, whereas regions are authentic reality and Heimat to
people.[13] It is important in this context to remember that until
around 1880, Europe was much more borderless than today and you could
travel from Paris to St. Petersburg without a passport.

We have been deconstructing borders again: the Schengen zone and the
euro currency are examples of today's efforts to break down borders in
Europe. Yet it seems that we don't want to abandon other, much more
important national borders, which we hold against Europe, when it comes
to administrations, social or tax issues, and which prevent the
emergence – and emancipation – of a true European political entity.

Allow me to give you some examples of where the national Leviathan still
brings Europe to its knees. The first being the location of major
industry clusters in Europe. If you map these, it is not difficult to
see that they are not organized "nationally".[14] Though there are
transnational industry clusters, there is above all a great inequality
between the centre and the periphery in Europe; and a great inequality
between urban and rural areas. This is the case all over the EU and even
within Germany. And that says it all, really: we are still designing our
EU policies along the national borders that left the scene quite some
time ago in industry and supply chains.

For example, a German car is not German at all: it has leather seats
from Italy, tyres from France or screws from Slovenia, but it still ends
up being included in Germany's export statistics. Thus, national
economies such as Slovenia's are largely dependent on the German supply
chain and in this sense are no longer autonomous national economies.[15]

This is, again, my main point: we measure on a national level things
that can no longer be measured on a national level, things like
productivity, exports, etc. It makes little sense to measure export
statistics on a national basis within a currency zone: we don't measure
differences in exports between the German states of Hessen and
Schleswig-Holstein, for instance.

What's more, we are allowing member states to compete with one another.
Instead of seeing Europe as one big pooled economy with one account for
all nations, we place states – and by extension their citizens – in
competition with one another: we are operating within a supply chain
with unequal social standards, unequal taxation, unequal wages and
unequal social rights. In the past few years, Germany in particular has
in effect damaged other economies by deliberately keeping wages low.[16]
In essence, the current EU offers equality for markets or companies, but
not for citizens. This should and even must be inversed eventually: each
and every political entity must secure political equality for its entire
people; whereas companies are out there to compete. That is their role,
but citizens are not there to compete against each other through tax or
social regimes. States are not enablers for companies, but should
protect citizens. This is their original role.

So we essentially have exchanged market competition for citizen
competition, because we allowed tax and wage shopping within the EU for
companies. Further, while Germany is allegedly paying for everything in
Europe, according to the distorted public discourse, the numbers tell a
very different story: Germany has contributed largely to macroeconomic
imbalances of the Eurozone through "beggar-thy-neighbour" policies and
wage dumping; has made huge profits from the single European market,[17]
the euro and even the eurocrisis, including almost 30 billion euros
through negative interest rates on its government bonds, for
example.[18] But the German model isn't working for the rest of
Europe![19] Not to mention the fact that Germany's dominant role within
the European economic governance system doesn't work.

And finally, it is not even working for Germany, as even if Germany as a
country "cashed" all these statistical gains from single market and the
euro in, these gains would not be distributed evenly among German
citizens (let alone Eurozone citizens), which explains why ordinary
German taxpayers feel "overstretched" today as regards showing
solidarity with Greece: it simply isn't the case that all Germans have
benefited from the euro, far from it.[20]

As a result of this nationalistic approach to EU politics, we are in
effect perverting the protective function the state serves for its
citizens: EU member states now find themselves in a race-to-the-bottom
contest. I am reminded of that old advertisement with the Duracell
Bunny: Germany is currently the bunny with the most powerful battery,
but at the cost of its neighbouring countries.

Political entities should in fact guarantee equal rights for their
citizens, a point I'll come back to later. They have responsibility for
the care of their citizens rather than for the state of their markets.
However in the EU system we have exactly the opposite: the EU states pit
their citizens in competition against each other to guarantee the best
possible conditions for their own industries: this would not be possible
within a national democracy. Civil and social rights vary from country
to country in Europe, particularly within the eurozone. It is these
differences in civil and social rights, which stand in the way of a
political entity called Europe. Europe thus needs an emancipatory movement!

The flawed structure of European governance still driven by national
borders where it shouldn't be can be applied to nearly all policy areas
of the EU and they often block good policy results for European
citizens. Take, second example, the European energy market. In recent
years, sustainable energy has been incentivized through subsidies, which
vary from country to country; energy grids, however, are still regulated
on a national level.[21] What about the energy union? If Portugal has a
surplus of sustainably generated energy, this electricity cannot be fed
into the French network, for example, because French energy companies
lobby behind the French position in the council. By now Germany has
learnt that its famous Energiewende, the transition towards renewable
energy, can only work if it has a European dimension – but the decision
to launch the Energiewende was made unilaterally by Germany.

Example number three: the planned capital markets union. The plan is to
mobilize private money and hedge funds for investments. In the European
Commission's Green Paper, all kinds of incentives are planned to make
investing in, say, small and medium-sized businesses appealing to
investors, through tax breaks for instance – but this would of course
vary from country to country: hence, a capital union based on nationally
varying tax incentives is a contradictio in adjecto. The real problem
for investment in transnational industry clusters in border regions is
national insolvency rights, because the investor does not know which law
would apply. Instead of tackling this problem upfront, harmonizing or
developing a common insolvency right, the EU flees into a formal
rhetoric of structural reforms and credit crunch: the EU is actually
very smart in not talking about the Elephant in the room.

Example number four: digital Europe. We all know – and this has now even
been shown in studies by Deutsche Bank – that poor broadband provision
is a decisive impediment to growth in rural areas. That's why we now
have the concept of a "digital union" which even a German European
commissioner is trying hard to promote. However, the financing and
infrastructure of this venture remain largely in the hands of national
governments, which often don't have the money. The great networks of the
past century, like telecommunications, electricity, etc., which were the
foundations of growth in that century, were developed by means of state
monopolies, however.[22] Today, instead, we want these networks to be
either market driven or consumer driven forces. The problem is: today's
rural areas are deserted. There are no markets and no consumers out
there. This is also why Europe's current buzzword for everything –
"structural reforms" – is largely meaningless: where there is nothing,
there is nothing to reform.

By contrast, the EU – because it is not a "state" – is not allowed to
use its "own money", let alone loans, in order to provide these rural
areas with suitable infrastructure. Yet, the market itself will not
deliver: building broadband networks in Amrum or in Ardeche is not worth
the hassle. And so we are failing on both accounts; we are not providing
a European Internet on a global scale according to EU rules, nor are we
supporting these rural areas. This seems to be the model for many EU
politicians.

In this way, regional differences end up becoming set in stone,
especially those between urban and rural areas, as a result of national
policies – and these differences will come home to roost politically.
Today's social crisis is a crisis between urban centres and rural areas;
but above all it is populism that is eroding Europe's growth. All over
Europe, it is for the most part in rural areas that support for populist
movements is becoming a problem. As a result of this rural social crisis
we now have a European electoral crisis. One only has to map support in
France for the National Front to see immediately that it is particularly
high in rural areas with high rates of unemployment. The correlation is
as good as one to one: the map showing unemployment is nearly identical
to that showing the FN vote.

Let's take a look at Great Britain: the northern – and rural – areas in
particular tend to vote UKIP. The little industry that remains is,
however, especially dependent on the European single market (not in
absolute, but in relative terms). In other words: a UKIP vote would
particularly damage these deindustrialized regions in the north of
England – the very regions where voters opt for UKIP.[23] This largely
rural social crisis we have today is waiting to happen on a European
scale tomorrow!

Do national strategies help us get to grips with this problem? I'm
afraid they don't. We have to consider urban and rural areas together
once more: the social crisis currently happening in the rural areas is
the populist, and therefore Europe-wide, crisis of tomorrow. These
regions all over Europe should be supported by the state, above all in
terms of infrastructure.

As I mentioned, structural reforms – the current buzzword for many EU
politicians – are not going to help here. Of the six billion euros set
aside to tackle youth unemployment, only 25 million have been used,
because these rural regions have no infrastructure, no small and
medium-sized businesses, and therefore no work for young people. We are
destroying the rural way of life, instead of building more decentralized
lifestyles. Either we leave these regions devastated and we basically
"feed" these regions on a European scale through fiscal redistribution
from urban/industrial regions to rural, in which case they could become
our resort for leisure; or we rebuild the regions. This is our choice,
not nationally contoured policies within the Eurozone.

What we need to do in Europe is two things: engage in the protective
function of the state for its citizens, by ensuring that all European
citizens can basically and permanently count on one thing: the principle
of political equality! This is the European roof of res publice europae
according to that map of 1537. Below that roof, we need to rebuild
vibrant and largely autonomous regions, to reconstruct what Pierre
Rosanvallon, the great French sociologist, once called "social bodies".[24]

By the way, this would respond to Europe's other detectable megatrend,
which is about towns and metropolitan areas that want to be more
independent. These towns, along with the rural regions, can be places
under the new dress of Europe, a modern twenty-first-century dress that
is all about a "Network Europe 21". This Europe is flat, electro-mobile,
it uses local energy resources, it lives in a shared economy and the
Internet of things – and in doing so, once more becomes a global
avant-garde, pre-designing the future dualistic global-local governance
the world needs in lieu of nation-states.[25] This Europe would also be
slow-food and climate friendly, reactivating regional agricultural
memories instead of participating in large-scale European agricultural
policies, which has the perverse effects we know, here and in Africa
(and which, among many other reasons and factors, is also one reason for
the hunger and refugee problem of this continent).

And lastly this concept would be compatible with the megatrend – or
renaissance – of both republican and genossenschaftliches thinking,[26]
that is to say cooperative thinking, which emerged in the early
twentieth century and which was by the way essentially created and
sustained through "cooperative banks" (Caissa d'Espagna in Spain, Crédit
Agricole in France, the Raiffeisenbanken und Sparkassen in Austria and
Germany). This school of thought was everywhere the backbone of local
industries. I do not need to point out that current EU policies, with
reference to the banking union for example, are diametrically opposed to
this school of thought, and make for good politics and structures where
big banks are concerned, but not for Sparkassen; meanwhile complaint
about a credit crunch in rural areas abound.

So the Europe of the future should have two things: a common legal roof
that offers all its citizens political equality; and autonomous regions
and metropolitan areas. This does not mean levelling down everybody.
When I'm talking about the principle of political equality, I mean three
things:

– equal voting rights
– equality in the taxation of citizens (income tax, property tax)
– equal access to social rights

The French revolution brought equality for all European citizens beyond
classes. Today, Europe's – peaceful! - revolution of minds must assure
equality beyond nation-states.

In Germany, for example, where I come from, living conditions vary
greatly between Munich in the south and Rügen in the north or the
Saarland in the west, but, despite this, all citizens have the exact
same vote in Bundestag elections, they are subject to the same tax
liabilities and they have the same access to social rights. The rates of
local trade taxes and corporation taxes vary and ensure a balance
between regions. This could also work in Europe. We are therefore not
talking about the levelling out of different regions, and we are not
talking about social egalitarianism; we are talking the principle of
political equality, without which a lasting political entity is
unimaginable. Imagining this for Europe today seems inconceivable. But
it was also inconceivable for the German territories in the German
Confederation in 1868: "A uniform German social insurance system – my
God, never!" was the protest at the time.

And then Bismarck came along. And it worked. Nobody can predict what
will be conceivable or achievable on a European level in the long term.
On the contrary, this is not an entirely utopian fantasy – deliberations
e.g. over the introduction of shared European unemployment insurance
began in Brussels some time ago.[27] Or to put it another way, one might
also claim that without the basic principle of political equality we
ultimately cannot forge a lasting political entity in Europe, starting
with the eurozone. Perhaps it is then high time that we really try to
understand this state of affairs!

The good news is that the vast majority of European citizens have long
since accepted the principle of political equality. According to a
sociological study, the concept of political equality – with an emphasis
on social benefits – has long been accepted by around two-thirds of
European citizens.[28] In this respect, the general population seems to
be in advance of the political elites, which currently seem to be trying
hard to respond to populist pressure: it is a shame, then, that no
political party in Europe has so far adopted the explicit goal of
political equality. In other words: today, it is not citizens but
national elites who are the problem in Europe, because they lack courage
and political will!

In addition, the generational dynamics of the European discussion is
astounding. In essence, mostly old white men are not capable of even
imagining the Europe in which Europe's youngsters are already living.
What are we offering the younger generation, who are already living in a
Europe that Brussels currently doesn't want to officially create?

When a young woman has been working in England for the last three years,
has German citizenship and is still with her Danish boyfriend who she
met while studying at university in the Netherlands, then this has long
been normality. And both of them have managed to adapt well to this
life. Then their desire to have a child becomes reality. After deciding
to leave England and briefly considering moving to Germany to be with
her family, they both elect to move to Denmark and raise their child
there together. So far, so romantic. But have you thought about the
questions this raises in terms of social benefits? After long
discussions with the authorities, it finally turned out that the woman
had lost all her entitlements to social benefits in England, which she
had gained from paying into the English system, at the point when she
registered as unemployed in Germany. She would have had to have been
employed and subject to social insurance contributions for at least
three days in Germany to be eligible to have her rights to benefits
transferred. This in itself is absurd. But as an expectant mother of
German nationality she also has no rights to German social security
benefits while living in Denmark, and she would only be able to claim
Danish benefits if she had been paying into the Danish social security
system for at least 13 weeks before giving birth. Surely this isn't what
we want? And so I say again, what are we offering this younger
generation already living in a Europe that we apparently don't want to
create?


A regional and republican Europe: decentralized, and with a different
kind of transnational European parliamentarism
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How might the euro-union look if we went ahead and transformed it into a
European Republic, constituted by regions and metropolitan areas? What
building blocks might we zoom in on? I'll attempt to take you on a
speedy tour through the eurozone, which could become the Euro-Union and
then a European Republic. Incidentally, I have addressed this topic in
greater detail in the "Manifesto for the Foundation of a European
Republic" which I published together with the Austrian writer Robert
Menasse in 2013 – and which has just been reprinted in the catalogue of
Kunsthaus Zurich, which is currently running an exhibition on Europe.[29]

To begin with, we must recognise that sovereignty is held not by the
states but by the European citizens as a whole. The perceived lack of a
European demos, which is often reiterated in current debates (think of
the German Federal Constitutional Court, for example), turns out to be
false. If we could deconstruct the term "sovereignty" and rediscover
sovereignty as an individual concept,[30] we would realize that we are
in fact citizens in a double sense – we are both citizens of the EU and
citizens of our individual states. We would also, I hope, realize that
the authority of these states is based entirely on a sovereignty that we
ourselves had previously delegated to these states. On this basis, we
could conceive of a new kind of European polity. In other words: even if
the UK as a country exits the EU, Scots – and all other British citizens
– remain as individual citizens of the EU.

But let's begin with the eurozone, which is the most homogenous area in
economic terms and which most urgently requires that the common currency
is embedded within a common European democracy. The eurozone, the
nucleus of the European Republic, is currently made up of 19 countries,
but many nations, such as Poland, could soon join the euro. A newly
designed European parliamentary system might then be possible for the
eurozone. By that I don't mean higher rates of participation[31] or even
a democracy by plebiscite, but rather a democratic system that satisfies
Montesquieu's principle of the separation of powers: a Europe-wide
legislature with control over a European executive. A Eurozone
Parliament elected via equal suffrage – one person, one vote – would be
equipped with full legislative rights. Democracy as we know it!

To this end Jürgen Habermas is developing a conceptual thought
experiment on "double sovereignty"[32] in which constitutive power
consists of the totality of all EU citizens, on the one hand, and the
European nations, on the other. This amounts to raising EU citizens to a
position of equal sovereignty to the European nation-states. Democracy
and nation-states would be decoupled to the extent that European
citizens would, as citizens of the EU, be partly sovereign on their own.
They would thus enter into an equal and heterarchic relationship with
the sovereign nation-states in the constitution of the European community.

The European Parliament would have to be able to introduce bills, in
other words it would have full rights to initiate legislation, and it
would also have to receive budgetary powers. Therefore the "orderly
legislative procedure" that requires the approval of both chambers of
parliament would have to be extended to all political areas. This would
mean that the European Council – the assembly of heads of state and
government which until now has only enjoyed a semi-constitutive status –
would have to be incorporated into a Council of Ministers that had been
expanded into a second chamber of parliament. And finally the Commission
would have to assume the functions of a government that is equally
responsible towards the Council and Parliament.[33]

But over time, one could push this even further, insofar as Network
Europe 21 has two layers: a European republican roof and independent
regions/towns. Europe could also take the US system as a model: next to
a pro rata European parliament, there would stand a European congress
composed of two senators per region or metropolitan area, with each
region/metropolitan area having a governor. This would be compatible
with the direct election of a European president, which is not a utopia
notion, but already features in many party programmes of European
parties today – and which would constitute an in-depth identity building
exercise for European citizens in the twenty-first century.

The Europe that we are picturing is thus no longer organized on a
national level. It is decentralized, but interconnected – digitally,
through information and communications technology, transport and
electricity. It has at its disposal an infrastructure that is uniformly
developed and promoted by the EU. Rural regions will develop "social
nodes" again and be able to close the gap with urban growth regions and
no longer be neglected. Formerly desolate rural regions will be replaced
by rural infrastructure and local or regional economies relying on local
energy as well as on local banks. Regions and towns will become the
spinal cord in a nervous system of new, decentralized growth policies
and regional clusters of industry. This new network works in support of
other European development goals, such as: decentralized energy
production, the use of electric-powered vehicles on a regional level,
sustainable rural development, and regional agricultural structures.
Network Europe 21's new decentralized structure, which will link up
rural areas with a network of cities, will no longer necessarily have to
be organized on a national level; regions and cities will be brought
together by means of a transnational democracy and on a common legal
ground, that of the European Republic.

In this Europe, regions as well as cities will be under the large
umbrella of a European Republic representing Europe on the international
stage (in terms of foreign policy, the environment, trade, cyber, etc.),
which will serve to hold the European entity together from the inside,
guaranteeing equal public and social rights for its citizens: equal
voting rights, equal taxation, and portable social rights (meaning
European health care and European unemployment assurance). The necessary
buffers and competition between regions will arise through the use of
regional taxes.

As a result, individual nation-states will not necessarily be the
constitutional pillars of the "Europe 21st" century project any more –
instead, the Network European 21 project will be region-based, allowing
regions to remain united yet largely autonomous. This feeds back into
the current regional movements, which are already staging protests
against the power of the nation-state, as in Scotland or Catalonia for
example. This would be a win-win situation for Europe: the ability to
act externally as a single entity in the international arena while
achieving closeness to its citizens on the inside.

Conclusion
------------

The words of Albert Einstein seem appropriate here: "No idea is a good
idea unless it first appears to be completely illusory." In other words,
the right to a utopian ideal is a human right: "Because that which
exists is not all there is, that which exists can change",[34] as
Theodor Adorno once said. Now more than ever, it is our responsibility
to change Europe. For Europe has not run out of options, societal
processes can always change and be shaped by citizens.

Now perhaps you're asking yourselves: but how do we get from A to B?
That is a valid question. And in fact, right now it looks like we won't
be getting from A to B, and a European Republic will certainly not be
voted in over the EU negotiating table. This is a question that cannot
be answered here. Nevertheless we can and must allow ourselves to think
about the future as we would like to see it. We can allow ourselves, for
the first time, to develop a clear vision of the kind of political
entity we would like to create in Europe; indeed, it is even our duty to
develop a convincing narrative for Europe – and then to hope that, if it
becomes popular, it will gain some political weight.

The idea of Europe conceived by people like Richard Coudenhoven-Kalergi
or Aristide Briand in the 1920s did not really become a reality until
the 1950s; even the currency union took 30 years to get from the Werner
Plan to the euro: sometimes good things take time and even a historical
catalyst; and the organization of a European democracy is naturally a
complex and difficult issue. We will certainly need half a century to
work on it. But it is good to have a compass: without a clear goal,
Europe and the EU will continue to go round in circles, as it is
currently doing!

The Network Europe 21, a European Republic composed by a network of
regions and towns is not real but it is imaginable. The concept of the
Republic has been the fundamental principle of political order in the
European history of ideas since Plato. It is compatible with all
European political traditions and languages, from Poland to Italy. The
notion of a Republic speaks to us emotionally, as it point to the public
good. The next step is thus merely a matter of raising awareness of the
fact that, as vocal, emancipated European citizens, we hold the new
political order in our hands at all times, for we are sovereign!

Is this easy? By no means! How can we achieve a joint bureaucracy and
protect minorities from small territories – such as the citizens of
Malta, who would hardly be represented in the European Parliament any
more? Is it possible to ensure this level of political arbitrage between
very different regions and towns? And what about the financial
tug-of-war between the centre and the periphery? And how should we go
about balancing out social preferences? Is there such as thing as a
European public sphere? What should we do about language? Can we make it
work via the use of technology? European parliamentary sessions held via
I-Translate - can we imagine that? Speeches from Brussels being
broadcast live on national TV in that country's language? Academics are
still quite sceptical in this respect.[35] However, a multilingual
democracy does seem to work in India, which is poor and has a high rate
of illiteracy, so why should Europe not be able to have a multilingual
democracy? Nothing is easy. But deconstructing the euro and unravelling
Europe isn't simple either. And we do not want to live in the monster.
Indeed, we are left with no alternative but to build a European
democracy: Yes we can. If we want, we can!

Conversely, we have to imagine the kind of world which we are sliding
into, the people who will be governing us if Marine Le Pen ends up
leading France, and Jobbik leading Hungary; if the populists are allowed
to continue stirring up trouble and idiocy reigns supreme. And then,
after the neo-liberal revolution, a surveillance revolution might come,
driven by fear and praising a misleading concept of security. It is time
to remember that Karl Popper was concerned about open societies and its
enemies. A world in which we once again become one another's enemies,
divided along national lines – and moreover become so preoccupied with
our own problems that we forget that the world outside continues to
turn, faster and faster – a world in which, in the not too distant
future, we may no longer play such a prominent role: we do only make up
seven per cent of the world's population. What else should we really be
doing, than investing all of our energies into finally creating a
European political entity that works?

Those of you who may have just now begun to take an interest in Europe,
those of you who have just begun to grasp that the issue of Europe is
your issue too, everyone's issue, the one sentence to remember from here
on is this: unless we want to abandon our continent to political
neglect, we need to re-build Europe, to turn it from upside down and
make it fit for the twenty first century.

We need to (re-)build it based on the principle of the political
equality of all European citizens! The enforcement of the principle of
political equality is therefore what we are calling for today. This is
the emancipatory movement Europe must take on. This is Europe's task for
the twenty first century, a step forward to shaping Network Europe 21.

We do not need to do this all now. But we need to do a first step to
escape the vicious circle we are in. The first step is to put our aim on
paper as a claim. The first presentation of Europe as a map dates, I
mentioned it earlier, from 1537. In 2037, this map will be 500 years
old. This leaves us some 30 years to fix a republican Network Europe 21
and to orient Europe towards a common future for all European citizens
on a different basis from what we have today.

Viva the European Republic! The European Republic is under construction!


-------------------------

[13] Menasse, Reden wir
[14] Cf. Dimitris Ballas, Danny Dorling and Benjamin Hennig, The Social
Atlas of Europe, Policy Press, 2014
[15] Zoltàn Pogátsa, "Hungary: From star transition student to
backsliding member state", Journal of Contemporary European Research 5,
no. 4 (2009): 597
[16] Many articles on this topic can be found at
www.nachdenkseiten.de/?p=15990#h08, see esp. those by Harald Schumann of
Der Tagesspiegel
[17] A McKinsey Study from 2012 calculates that the gain of ten years of
euro-making between 2002-2012 amounts to an aggregated gain of 300
billions, out of which 160 billions went to Germany.
[18] For detailed figures see Siegried Schieder, "Zwischen
Führungsanspruch und Wirklichkeit: Deutschlands Rolle in der Eurozone",
Leviathan 3 (2014): 363-97.
[19] For more on which see publications by Christian Odentahl here:
www.cer.org.uk/personnel/christian-odendahl; for a French perspective,
see Guillaume Duval's book Made in Germany: Le mythe du model allemand,
Seuil, 2014; and, for an Italian perspective, Angelo Bolaffi, Il cuoro
tedesco, Donzelli, 2013.
[20] Schieder, "Zwischen Führungsanspruch und Wirklichkeit"
[21] Deutsche Bank Research, "Progress needs broadband: Private
investment requires more government stimuli", 27 august 2014
[22] For this reason the DGP is recommending a Marshall Plan for Europe:
www.dgb.de/themen/++co++985b632e-407e-11e2-b652-00188b4dc422
[23] For the rural-urban divide in the UK, see:
www.cer.org.uk/publications/archive/policy-brief/2015/disunited-kingdom-why-%E2%80%98brexit%E2%80%99-endangers-britain%E2%80%99s-poorer-reg
[24] Pierre Rosanvallon, The Society of Equals, Harvard University
Press, 2012
[25] Jeremy Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of
Things, the Collaborative Commons, and the Eclipse of Capitalism,
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014
[26] Menasse, Reden wir
[27] Sebastian Dullien, "Eine Arbeitslosenversicherung für die
Eurozone", SWP-Studien 1 (February 2008); the last Social Affairs
Commissioner Andor Lásló introduced plans for European unemployment
insurance:
www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/eu-kommissar-andor-fordert-europaeische-arbeitslosenversicherung-a-974964.html
[28] Jürgen Gerhards and Volker Lengfels, European Citizenship and
Social Integration in the European Union, Taylor & Francis Ltd., 2015;
on this topic, see also Martin Heidenreich, Krise der europäischen
Vergesellschaftung, Springer, 2014.
[29] Ulrike Guérot and Robert Menasse, "Manifest für die Begründung
einer Europäischen Republik", 23 March 2013, Die Presse,
diepresse.com/home/presseamsonntag/1379843/Manifest-fur-die-Begrundung-einer-Europaeischen-Republik;
see also Kunsthaus Zurich, Europe – The Future of the Past,
www.kunsthaus.ch/en/exhibitions/
[30] Cf. the writings of Jean Bodin (Les six livres de la République,
1576) and of the Austrian jurist Hans Kelsen (1881-1973)
[31] "Form follows function": formal participation does not make a
democracy. I develop this argument here: "Was ist heute Demokratie?", 12
June 2015,
[32] In Leviathan 42, no. 4 (2014)
[33] These reforms, incidentally, were also recently presented by the
so-called Spinelli Group with regard to a new EU constitution. They
would bring the eurozone's democracy closer to Montesquieu's principle
of the separation of powers, an idea also considered, incidentally, by
the Westerwelle Report on the future of the EU from September 2012 and
even earlier in the Schäuble-Lamers paper on "Kerneuropa" (core Europe)
from 1994.
[34] Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, 1966
[35] Scharpf, Fritz, "Das Dilemma der supranationalen Demokratie", in
Leviathan 1/2015; Höpner, Martin "Der Integrationistische Fehlschluss",
in Leviathan 1/2015; and Streeck, Buying Time.







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