Why Europe Should Become a Republic!: A Political Utopia

By Ulrike Guérot

Ulrike Guérot outlines the idea of a radically different Europe: Europe as a Republic. The concept is based on two pillars: Firstly, the principle of political equality for all European citizens and the separation of powers, instead of a non-transparent and technocratic "trilogy" of the existing European institutions. Secondly, strong European regions actively participating in European decision-
making.
One market, one currency, one democracy: Ulrike Guérot presents a passionate plea for the completion of the European project by creating a single European democracy in which the citizens are the sovereign and solidarity across Europe is institutionalized.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Verlag J.H.W. Dietz Nachf.
• Release date: May 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9783801270179

Ulrike Guérot

Ulrike Guérot, born in 1964, is a political scientist, Professor of European Policy and the Study of Democracy at Danube-University Krems (Austria), and Founder of the European Democracy Lab (EuDemLab), Berlin. She has been dealing with the future of European democracy for many years and is an expert on the EU, its institutions and weaknesses. www.eudemlab.org

Book preview

Ulrike Guérot

WHY EUROPE

SHOULD BECOME

A REPUBLIC

A political utopia

Bibliographical information of the German National Library

The German National Library catalogues this publication in the German National Bibliography; detailed bibliographic information can be found on the internet at: http://dnb.dnb.de.

ISBN 978-3-8012-7017-9 (E-Book)

ISBN 978-3-8012-0559-1 (print)

Copyright © 2019

by Verlag J.H.W. Dietz Nachf. GmbH

Dreizehnmorgenweg 24, 53175 Bonn

Translated by Ray Cunningham

Cover design: Flora Frank | Rem Kohlhaas, European Flag

Typesetting: Jens Marquardt, Bonn

E-Book conversion: Zeilenwert GmbH, 2019

All rights reserved

Find us on the internet: www.dietz-verlag.de

This is a fantastical story. In it, the citizens of Europe come together on a basis of political equality to create a European Republic and to leave the nation states behind. The story is so beautiful, and so fantastical, that every reader will immediately want to help make it a reality. And if they and their children are still alive, then in 2045 they will all be living in a decentralised, democratic, socially just European Republic that is showing the way for rest of the world – on the path to a global society of equal citizens!!

#The European Republic is under construction

#newEurope

For my two sons, Felix and Maxime,

and for all my European friends

representing here all the young people in Europe

who dream of a different Europe, and who deserve a better

Europe; and all the older people who believed in the EU

and who today are disappointed beyond measure.

And finally there are the Many.

This refers to all those whom I met in countless discussions

about Europe – live or in TV or radio studios – in recent years.

It was ultimately these discussions with the Many

which made it clear to me that people in Germany

and elsewhere wish for a Europe that is completely different

from what we currently have,

and that there is a reason for writing this book.

Contents

Cover

Title

Copyright

About the book

Dedication

Preface to the English version

Preface

PART I

THE LOSS OF A POLITICAL AESTHETIC

BEFORE WE START:

A quick gallop through the book

CHAPTER 1

The European malaise

CHAPTER 2

Welcome to European post-democracy

CHAPTER 3

The ‘Weimarisation’ of Europe and the problem of the political centre ground

CHAPTER 4

‘Everything is language’, or: European terminology and discourse

CHAPTER 5

The wrong solutions, or: a system running on empty

PART II

UTOPIA

BEFORE WE START:

Utopia as a thought projection

CHAPTER 6

Why a European Republic?

CHAPTER 7

The new political order of the European RePublic: building the first post-national democracy

CHAPTER 8

The new territorial order of the European RePublic: regions, cities & Europe’s Tower of Babel

CHAPTER 9

The new economic order in Europe: digital manufacturing

PART III

CODA

CHAPTER 10

For women only: bulls’ balls and bonnets – European emancipation

CHAPTER 11

#Error404EuropeNotFound#: Europe’s young people – creative, digital, post-party activists

CHAPTER 12

Europe, we’re on our way: the pioneers on the road to a global cosmopolitan society

Closing remarks

APPENDICES

Notes

List of figures

Preface to the English edition

Brexit is just about to happen, in a most uncoordinated and painful way, even while many people in the UK are still hoping for a second referendum or a delay to the departure date in order to avoid the worst. Leaving Europe seems, in the real world of politics, to be almost impossible, so strong are the ties that bind us (or – in the eyes of those who feel that the EU is a monster, and who think that independence is the solution – the strings attached).

But perhaps there is a third option? A totally reformed political Europe that gives the Brexiters back the sovereignty over decision-making that they yearn for, and the Remainers the open, liberal economic space they want to stay in?

‘Why Europe should become a Republic. A political Utopia’ sketches out this third option. It paves the way for a completely new way of thinking about Europe at a time when Europe needs it most and when many are already talking about an entirely new entity. The EU badly needs profound institutional change to reconnect with its citizens.

Forget everything you’ve ever heard about the EU. This book is not about a Brussels bureaucracy, or cucumber regulations, or a European superstate. In the best traditions of Thomas More’s great work ‘Utopia’, it is about applying everything dear to us in our national democracies – the separation of powers, the principle of political equality and the sovereignty of the people – to a political entity called Europe. In short: it takes the best of English political thought – from the Putney Debates to Thomas Hobbes to John Locke – and applies it Europe.

It is about putting the autochthonous regions in England and beyond – Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland – in the driving seat of European decision-making, whilst respecting their cultural differences and identity. And it is about giving Europe back to the people, because the Republic is about them and respecting their interests.

Is this doomed to remain a Utopia? Perhaps not. The German edition of this book became a bestseller, and many political parties have been inspired by the political framing of Europe as a republic, and have integrated the idea into their party programmes. So have many European regions and city councils, and many European citizens. Europe as a republic is precisely about putting citizens back in control of what is happening, and about making Europe democratic by applying the principle of political equality to all citizens, which is the necessary condition for each and every democracy, across Europe.

Does this brief introduction trigger a passion to read on? The European Republic is a smart, tech-savvy, decentralized, sustainable, digitalized, open, tolerant and liberal Europe that pursues the common good, where solidarity is written with a capital S; it is a network of town halls rather than a centralized body, where Europe can evolve into what it always wanted to be: unity in diversity; a place where everybody wants to live! To find it, read on; and then join us on www.eudemlab.org. We are a group that is growing bigger every day, working hard to make that dream of Europe a reality.

If we work on it together, it need not remain a utopia: the European Republic is under construction!

Ulrike Guérot

Preface

‘The Utopians are particularly fond of mental pleasures,

which they consider to be of the highest importance,

and which they associate with virtuous behaviour

and a clear conscience ...

Of course, they believe in enjoying food, drink, and so forth;

but purely in the interests of health, for they don't regard such

things as very pleasant in themselves —

only as ways of resisting the onset of disease.

A sensible person, they say, prefers staying healthy to taking

medicine, and would rather feel well and cheerful

than have people comforting him.’

Thomas More, Utopia

‘No idea is a good one

which does not seem wholly illusory at the outset.’

Albert Einstein

‘Only if that which is can be changed

is that which is not everything’

Theodor W. Adorno

500 years ago, Thomas More published his description of Utopia, the story of a fictional island where peace and social justice prevail. Utopia became a symbol and embodiment of an imaginary social order, and the impulse behind numerous social innovations and the desire to create together a better future. Europe today needs that kind of utopia, because the EU is broken. Europe, however, remains an unfinished task. Within this dialectic lies the opportunity for a different Europe. Whatever happens on the continent of Europe over the next few years, we can neither leave this continent nor cordon it off, and nor do we want to. Exits, walls and borders are not the answer. What is happening before our eyes is the dissolution of the Europe of the founding fathers: the end of ‘the united states of Europe’ based on the concept of the nation state. So we have to come up with a new concept for Europe – and one that delivers a European lifestyle as close as possible (in a kind of ‘post-modern remake’) to that described in the quotation from Thomas More above. We need a shiny new social utopia.¹ And perhaps in today’s Europe we have the wealth and the means necessary, which weren’t available in the past. What is needed is a fundamental re-thinking of Europe on the basis of the so-called MAYA principle used by futurologists: Most Advanced Yet Acceptable!

So let’s imagine we were able to run a coarse comb over the continent of Europe. The national borders would simply catch in the teeth of the comb; those thick, annoying strands would be pulled away. The citizens of the European regions and cities would create a brand new Europe: decentralised, regional, post-national, parliamentary, democratic, sustainable and socially just. A political and institutional system that would enable just the kind of society Thomas More once dreamed of – a society in which modern forms of mental pleasure, virtuous behaviour and health were regarded as central shared aims. The post-national European democracy outlined here would be a network of European regions and cities under the protective roof of a European Republic in which all European citizens would be politically equal. This utopia describes a Copernican Revolution in Europe,² in which the United States of Europe becomes the European Republic.

This utopia also includes some reflections on what a political community on the continent of Europe might look like. It goes without saying that these reflections remain at the level of abstract sketches. My purpose is to develop a conceptual framework for a coherent project of European integration beyond the nation state and in line with Europe’s shared intellectual and cultural heritage. Our task is to revitalise this common heritage and to bring it forward into the post-modern era.

I choose the term ‘republic’ advisedly. It is the oldest term in the history of political thought for the foundation of a political community. The republic is the quintessence of our common European intellectual heritage. It is from this term that I derive the concept of a democratic Europe which is based on two principles: the political equality of its citizens and the networked, transnational, European character of its governance. The utopia of a European Republic entails the institutional, territorial and economic re-ordering of Europe in the interests of the common good – that is, the res publica.

The utopia described here is not a rigid construct. It is understood as something relational, something in process, and something transitive; that is, as an ongoing form of interdependent, networked, developmental thinking. We have no need for yet another story of European federalisation or centralisation; rather, the aim of this book is to capture here, in its diverse wholeness, the idea that the essence of Europe is without borders. The aim is a granular and collaborative model of Europe accessible for the Many – not a grand historical or institutional project for the few; the topology of a holistic European entity, which remains to be created in all its details, contingencies and modalities by the Many themselves. This approach is in accordance with the many theories of ‘co-leadership’, ‘co-creation’, ‘creative innovation’ and ‘cognitive networks’, with ‘swarm intelligence’ and with ‘central place theory’, all of which express the idea of connectivity and proceed from the assumption that innovation can only arise out of the connectedness and collaboration of many individuals.³

I divide the ‘Many’ into five social groups and tendencies, and I hope that my utopia will be especially relevant to these five. The number five is special in many respects. Depending on how they are classified, Europe is one of five continents. Plato’s geometry identifies five shapes or ‘solids’. Aristotle distinguishes five senses; in Christian tradition, Jesus suffered five wounds during the Crucifixion; Islam is based on five pillars. There are five elements in the Tao tradition. The first five books of the Hebrew Bible are known as the Pentateuch, and the fifth, Deuteronomy, is sometimes known as the Book of Love; and five is held to be the number of the Goddess of Love, Venus. The number five seems to encompass and unify all the elements, including Love. And that is what we need for Europe today!

But who are the ‘Many’, the five social groups and tendencies who make up my – illustrative, and by no means exclusive – target audience, with whom I hope the utopia of a European Republic will resonate, and who then might possibly help to bring it about? They are, first and foremost, the European citizens of today’s European regions and cities – whether settled, nomadic or hypermobile – who constitute the social basis for the European Republic. They represent European civic and civil society and the principle of decentralisation, and thus all the new and modern concepts of sustainability, electromobility, distributed generation, new spatial planning, sustainable agriculture, Slow Food, and so on. Chapters 7 and 8, on the new political and territorial order for Europe, are for them. Secondly, all those who are involved in thinking about the new economy, about cooperatives, the post-growth society, basic income or new forms of the commons. Chapter 9, about a new economic order for Europe – something that is necessarily implied by the reference to the common good inherent in the concept of a republic – is for them. Third, the young people of Europe, for whom we need to create plenty of new space in Europe (Chapter 11). Fourth, with a conspiratorial wink: women. Because the Europe of tomorrow will also, and above all, be a girl thing – won’t it? (Chapter 10) Fifth, finally, the experts and professors in constitutional law, because in Chapter 6 I try to examine the concept of the republic and to set it apart from the neoliberalism which prevails today, an attempt which should be of interest to specialists in the history of European constitutional law. My use of the term ‘we’ throughout is intended inclusively, to represent the Many who I hope will enjoy this book.

These five, therefore – the regions and their people, the post-growthists, the young people of Europe, the women and the constitutionalists – represent all those who could now set to work and create the European Republic as a historical subject. For this utopia – as I have said already – is not something already finished, but only an idea. The ‘Many’ have to join in and work on it. The ‘Many’ are all of us. Because as sovereign citizens – if we ever actually become truly sovereign – at any given moment we hold the future of the continent of Europe, and of its role in the world, in our own hands.

PART I

The Loss of a Political Aesthetic

‘Imagine there’s no countries – it isn’t hard to do.’

John Lennon

BEFORE WE START:

A quick gallop through the book

Welcome to the European Republic! This book is an attempt to rediscover, in a political utopia, the beauty of the European project, which in recent years has been betrayed and lost. Beginning with Plato, Aristotle and Cicero, the republic and other key concepts of political philosophy were first conceived of in Europe. Europe is the continent which has produced the most significant and sophisticated essays and other writings about the state and statehood, and about how societies and human coexistence should be organised. However, ever since it congealed into a system of nation states, this continent has lost its way, and now finds itself in a permanent European crisis in which all that matters is power, the market, and money. Not only the so-called Eurozone crisis in itself, but also the way it has been handled, are testament to the moral and cultural bankruptcy of over 300 years of European political and cultural history. So the attempt to rediscover a European political aesthetic is comparable to restoring an old painting – stripping away layer after layer of colour to reveal the original work which philistines subsequently painted over. In the collective cultural memory of the continent, Europe is always whole – a single body. She was dismembered in the course of the development of the nation state in the early modern period.⁴ But in terms of cultural history and philosophy, Europe has always been whole and without borders.⁵

In Part I, the aim is to demonstrate how the design of the EU fails to satisfy fundamental democratic requirements, and why it consequently cannot function properly, and never will. The way the EU is currently constituted cannot lead to the democratic unification of Europe, its hoped-for epiphany. The blueprint was wrong. The nation states – insofar as it was something they ever wanted – have never crossed the Rubicon to a political Europe, and they are now actively blocking the path to a transnational European democracy.

Map of Europe, 1589.

They have therefore outlived their usefulness as actors in the project of European integration. The old EU, its legitimacy founded on a grand narrative of peace, could only be perceived as fulfilling its purpose so long as it was not required, under the rigidly frozen geostrategic conditions of the Cold War and a comparatively stable global economy, to meet any actual political challenges. But that period ended with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 at the latest. The currency union, imposed on the European states without any form of democratic underpinning, has forfeited any claims the old EU might have had to be furthering the democratic integration of Europe.

The current crises, which seem to pile up on top of each other – the Eurozone crisis, Grexit, Brexit, refugees – are thus only the cyclical symptoms of deep-lying structural faults which have their origins in the way the EU is constituted. The EU is therefore incapable of overcoming them. These structural problems are also the root cause of the political phenomena of populism and nationalism. In this way, the EU is itself the progenitor of the political crisis in which we find ourselves, and is increasingly the problem and not the solution. Its slow death began some time ago and has now started to be noticed by the public. Part II sets out a radical utopia, in preparation for the moment when history will once again release and set free the essence of the European project. For – whatever becomes of the EU – Europe will go on. The re-ordering of the continent of Europe must of necessity be both political and democratic. For that reason, it must respect the general principles of the political equality of all European citizens and the separation of powers. In addition, it has to re-connect what has become an inflated and tendentious interpretation of liberalism to the notion of the common good. What is being proposed here is therefore not more EU reforms, more integration, but a European democracy which observes fundamental democratic principles and adopts them as the basis for a political and institutional re-ordering of the continent with the idea of the community at its core.

It follows that this utopia means conceiving of Europe as a republic, because a republic is what the restorers will find Europe to be when they have scratched away the nation states (which, paradoxically perhaps, almost all defined themselves as republics when they were founded; almost every single time a new political entity has been created in Europe it has been a republic). We should now apply this cultural-historical insight to the epiphany of the European idea itself.

The concept of the republic is multi-faceted and organic. It has grown from within a number of different traditions, and it encompasses three fundamental principles which represent the preconditions for any foundational political project: civic equality, or equality before the law; political equality, or equal voting rights, coupled with a representative parliamentary democracy; and finally, an explicit commitment to the common good, the res publica. The republic is thus defined in normative terms. In essence, the concept of the republic is the link between the two fundamental values of liberty and equality; in it, these two are bound together and interconnected. This applies also to everyone who is a member of the republic, a member of the republican ‘fraternity’. The legacy of the French Revolution of 1789 is equality beyond – or regardless of – class. In the European Revolution of the 21st century, the principle of equality must be extended to encompass equality beyond the nation.

Following the description of the origin and development of the concept of the republic in the second Part, the consummation of the European Republic is then outlined over three chapters. This means the political, territorial and economic re-ordering of Europe, which entails the conceptual combination and practical realisation of a number of current megatrends – localisation, civic emancipation, sustainability, post-capitalism, the post-growth society, the commons, the rejuvenated cooperative movement, decentralisation, gender equality – and their implementation across Europe. What would a new European project that was able to successfully enact these megatrends look like? It would involve the social design of a different Europe: a transnational European democracy, a new institutional edifice for Europe, a spatial reordering, and, finally, a proper and appropriate application of the economic principles of liberalism on which the current internal market philosophy of the EU is based. This Europe will be something woven together out of regions and cities that think globally. It will have left the nation state behind; it will be a European polity in the form of a non-hierarchical, horizontal, decentralised network of regions and cities under the common roof of a republic – not a centralist federation or union of states. This Europe will be an intellectual and political trailblazer for the new relationship between the local and the global beyond the nation.

Part III begins with a brief excursion into art history. The subject is the myth of Europe (or Europa), and it is written with a conspiratorial wink to my sisters – because of course Europa is a woman. The reason why it is important for the coming European project to bear this fact in mind is explained there. After that, we cast a glance at the young people of Europe, who have long begun creating, from the bottom up, a radically democratic Europe of a kind that Brussels could not conceive of in its wildest dreams. Finally, we set out briefly why, if it does eventually prove possible to establish the European Republic, this European project of a deep post-national democracy should be seen as the blueprint for a global citizens’ republic – which is something we need to build before planet Earth is finally destroyed. Or before more intelligent beings⁶ are obliged to show us the way!

* * *

CHAPTER 1

The European Malaise

‘Not enough Europe, not enough Union.’

Jean-Claude Juncker

Anyone who talks to the citizens of Europe these days, from Helsinki to Athens, from Prague to Rome, from Budapest to Warsaw, hears two things: a deep dissatisfaction with the EU, and a deep desire for Europe. Somehow, people have a shared cultural memory of Europe, and within it is the idea that we all belong together. To most people it is clear that the European nation states have no hope of making it on their own in a globalised world. The majority of all EU citizens, around two-thirds, still supports the idea of Europe. These people don’t want to lose Europe. Many of them are deeply worried right now that the European project could fail. More than that, they are scared. But they no longer trust the EU. Over the last few years, this loss of trust has amounted to about 20 per cent on average across Europe. The EU has forfeited the trust of most of its citizens. Only about 30 per cent of the German, French and British populations – that is, of the three largest EU member states – still support the project of a ‘united states of Europe’.

Yes to Europe, no to the EU. That’s the general feeling. What they want is a different Europe. But this other Europe is not here yet; it has to be invented – a democratic and social Europe. A Europe of citizens, not of banks. A Europe of workers, not of businesses. A Europe that acts in concert in the world. A humane Europe, and not one that shuts itself off behind barriers. A Europe that defends its values rather than trampling all over them. This Europe doesn’t exist.

The betrayal of the European ideal by the nation states is almost physically painful. The betrayal of human rights, first drowned in the Mediterranean, then trampled into the mud of the Balkan route. The most recent of the ongoing and fast-moving developments in the refugee crisis could not be taken into account in this manuscript, which was completed at the end of January. So I would just like to add here, following the EU Council meeting of 7 March 2016, that the unseemly haggling being carried out on the backs of the refugees, and against the backdrop of the humanitarian crisis in Idomeni in Greece (Germany and Europe cosying up to Turkey, the de facto agreement to support Greece financially while transforming it into a kind of European Lebanon – anything, so long as the refugees are no longer allowed to reach the Balkan route), can only be described as deplorable. The betrayal of the promise of a political union, suffocated in the endless hot air emitted by the Brussels technocrats. The betrayal of the idea of a Europe without borders, now impaled on fences. The betrayal of the idea of overcoming nationalism and populism, both of which have come back with a vengeance. The betrayal of the dream of a social Europe, of a converging European economy as foreseen in the Maastricht Treaty, swept aside by the neoliberal Single Market. The betrayal of the next generation, and the one to follow, who have been burdened, via the socialisation of bank debt, with the costs of a scandalous, shameless binge on the financial markets. The betrayal of the savers, whose savings and life insurance policies are being eaten away by low interest rates. In recent years, the EU has created many losers and only a few winners – but very big winners.

As a result, few things are as fragile as the European narrative today. 50 years of European integration now seem like a thin veil which is being torn back to reveal a historical abyss threatening to swallow up Europe once again. An EU incapable of reform, almost apathetic, now produces only endless and growing crisis. Clearly the EU, with its multiple integration projects, has lost its way. First, the Single Market project; then, Economic and Monetary Union. Lately there has been a concerted but fruitless effort to bring about a Common Foreign and Security Policy. Yet it is clear that the EU has managed to lose the very thing needed to inspire popular enthusiasm for the project of a common Europe: the essence of politics.

The death of political Europe can be sketched out in a few sentences. The Maastricht idea of an ever-closer union had fizzled out already by the end of the 1990s. The Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) has not worked. The emancipation of Europe from the USA has not succeeded: what remained of it was buried in the confusion wrought by the American war on Iraq in 2003, where the slogan of ‘united we stand’ succeeded only in uniting the eastern Europeans against the German-French tandem. From that point on, a deep division has split the EU in two. As was often said in the 1990s, enlargement and deepening could not be undertaken in parallel. Maastricht and Amsterdam, Nice and Laeken are all European place names and treaties which today hardly a single student knows. In all of them, the EU worked feverishly on a reform agenda which grew ever more complex, and which produced ever less political union, so that in the end the modest achievement of the establishment of the post of European ombudsman by the European Parliament was celebrated as a victory for European democracy.

The opening of negotiations with Turkey in October 2003 is almost impossible to understand from today’s perspective, and in hindsight can only be explained by American pressure on Europe during the Iraq war. The EU simply wasn’t up to it – France especially, which in May 2005 voted in a referendum against the European constitutional treaty, which made it easier for the Netherlands subsequently to do the same. The German-French relationship, which had already long ceased to be the intimate partnership it had once been, was unable to survive the shock. What was left of the constitutional treaty was cobbled together with some difficulty in 2007 into the Lisbon Treaty, a textual monstrosity and a cardinal political error which from that point on served to thwart the EU’s further progress and capacity for action. It is possible today to look back and recall – with irony or with cynicism, according to personal preference – that at that time Poland was fighting hard for the acceptance of a complex mathematical formula for the weighting of votes in the European Council, and to wonder why it was not possible to acknowledge the absurdity of it all at the time. The Lisbon Treaty emphasised the greater role being played by the European Parliament, yet failed to accord it full parliamentary rights or even to question the grotesque fact that the European Parliament is elected via national candidates’ lists.

From that point on, the power of the European Council grew. It was a turning point. In 2010, the ‘European community method’ was ‘re-coded’ in the mouth of the German Chancellor into the ‘Union method’.⁷. Political Europe, if it ever existed, is long dead; it died well before the public became aware of the slow, agonising demise of the EU now under way. France has been sulking in a corner for at least ten years now, and this has left Europe to the Germans. But they had a football fairytale to celebrate in 2006, followed by Lena’s victory at the Eurovision Song Contest; then they became the ‘land of