Wilhelm Schulz
2024 is a super election year with 64 countries representing 49% of the world’s population. Elections for its Parliament will also be held in the European Union. A companion piece will deal with what tactics we advocate in these. Here will discuss the instability and contradictions the EU is facing today.
Ambition and reality since the 2019
2019 was the last European election and Ursula von der Leyen became the thirteenth President of the Commission. She proclaimed two central goals: firstly, a European Green New Deal and secondly, a common European asylum system. Both have been watered down or postponed due to the political balance of power.
The economic development programme for renewable energy projects and more ecologically sustainable production was recently shelved in view of the energy crisis in resulting from the Ukraine war and the Russian sanctions. The EU Taxonomy Agreement adopted in autumn 2023 defined nuclear power and natural gas as clean energies. Even after the ending of combustion engines in 2035, vehicles with so-called synthetic fuels may continue to be registered. As a result, Frans Timmermans, the Social Democratic EU Commissioner for Climate Action, resigned. He was replaced by Wopke Hoekstra, who had already worked for the oil company Shell and the consulting agency McKinsey. While deputy prime minister of the Netherlands, he questioned the country’s climate targets and subsidised the airline KLM during the pandemic.
Ultimately, the EU, and above all the dominant nation in it, Germany, is massively dependent on a globalised economy with international value chains, embodied in the catchphrase „export world champion“. However, this relationship is particularly precarious when it comes to energy sources, including semiconductors such as chips. The sustainability targets, which also form a massive economic stimulus programme for sections capital, were quickly abandoned. The switch to the single market is therefore hitting the EU harder than other imperialist superpowers. At the same time, it is a key driving force that shaped EU policy during the last legislative period and will most likely characterise the coming one.
Regarding the asylum system: When the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos burned down in September 2020, the Social Democrat Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, famously proclaimed „No more Morias“. Yet the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) has effectively worsened the situation of refugees. Upon arrival, they are to be placed in camps near the border and deemed not to have entered the country, making it easier to deport them directly. This is to be accompanied by so-called third country regulations, which are intended to guarantee local repatriation and handovers. In extreme cases, detention for identity checks would be permitted to last 20 weeks. This development is closely linked to the rise of European right parties and a general shift to the right across the political spectrum. The disputes over Ukraine policy within the EU show that no peace has been reached with the forces from the right challenging the dominant EU policy by tightening asylum law. This points to the fundamental conflict of the EU, namely that it is a confederation of states with different ruling classes and partially conflicting interests.
The development of these two objectives (Green Deal and European asylum regulation) illustrates the EU’s course, its crisis-ridden nature and the direction in which government programmes are moving.
EU – a weakening giant among the great powers
The political disagreements, the economic weakness of its dominant nations and its military position make it clear that the EU is more an actor that is influenced than the other way round. In this sense, it is a driven project. It lacks a unified perspective (strategy). The Lisbon Treaty of 2009 and the introduction of the euro created the largest single market in the world at the time and aimed to standardise it, but at the same time failed to achieve the goal of creating a common block of capital. This perspective still exists today, as a strategic objective, even if it appears increasingly unrealistic. The EU itself has hardly produced any supranational capital and is constantly chafing under this contradiction. In this sense, the crisis of the EU is always also that of the dominant imperialist nations within it. As the largest single market in the world, it represented a kind of backyard for its dominant capitals, but at the same time also faced a contradiction due to their competition with one another. The strategic impasse of German imperialism as a mediator between the two conflicting forces is particularly evident in its crisis.
It is insurmountable due to the political, economic and military dominance of German imperialism in alliance with French imperialism within capitalism, even during an upswing. With the failure of integration into a unified bloc of total capital, the EU is the weakest link among the great powers. The term weakest link in the imperialist chain refers to Lenin and his analysis of the contradictions in the system of the imperialist great powers before the First World War – at that time in relation to Russian tsarism. He developed the category in order to discuss where the possibilities exist for revolutionary politics to challenge and overthow the rulers, because of the failure of their strategies . The EU, and with it German and French imperialism, cannot continue without further economic, political or military setbacks.
This geostrategic impasse can have an explosive effect on class relations at home. The European austerity diktats and Brexit were an expression of this lost power of integration. The increasingly hot wars, the driving inflation and the rise of the new right show that this development is continuing. In order to look at the development of the EU in the context of the decline of the globalisation period, the following section briefly discusses its development in this millennium.
A brief history of European decline
At a special summit in Lisbon in 2000, the European Union proclaimed that Europe would become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world by 2010. The project itself can be understood as a historic compromise between the parties of European Social Democracy and the mainstream conservative European People’s Parties (EPP), the dominant bourgeois parties in most countries. Today, in 2024, there is hardly any talk of a social Europe, and no one even talks about an emerging economic area anymore.
The special summit proved to be a swan song for evenminimal social concessions to the European working class, a break with the social democratic, Keynesian economic programme. In social democracy, this was made socially acceptable at the time by so-called „new centre“ policies, such as Schröder’s Hartz laws. Even the guiding slogan of the European Green Deal cannot be understood here as a resumption of this, but above all as an economic stimulus programme for sections of capital.
At the same time, the special summit had much more in mind. First and foremost, an EU constitution. This goal failed in 2005 due to referendums in the Netherlands and France. To circumvent these, a so-called treaty was introduced instead of a constitution. The attempt to create a pan-European capital, including a unified foreign policy, was resumed with the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, but to date. has failed in its implementation This process is one aspect of the legitimisation crisis in which the EU finds itself today.
This compromise finally fizzled out in the EU austerity dictates between 2012 and 2015 but also had consequences for German export capital and its domestic market. Although the latter continued to dominate, it was undermined by the austerity policy of the so-called black zero (fiscal surplus) of the European Stability Mechanism(ESM) and European System of Financial Supervision (ESFS) and led to the sell-off and bankruptcy of large parts of the public sector. The single currency union is creating a special, uneven and combined crisis development in the eurozone in the form of a shifting of the burden of the crisis onto the backs of workers and southern European economies.
The ‚historic compromise’ of Social Europe fell victim to neoliberalism, as did the strengthening of the larger capitals in the face of the 2007/08 financial crisis. The crisis policy exacerbated the social divide, but also the divide between the European nations: by passing on the costs of the crisis to parts of southern Europe, above all Greece, which was squeezed with draconian austerity measures. A crisis policy that still weighs heavily on the eurozone and the EU today. The massive increase in refugee movements to Europe as a result of the spread of war and crisis, the racist chauvinism towards the „lazy Greeks“ and a loss of trust in the EU institutions erupted in a wave of anti-Muslim racism, particularly against refugees, and a democratic crisis in the EU, which was particularly challenged by nationalist and populist ideologies. Voices among those in power and the petty bourgeoisie, frightened of social decline, have become increasingly organised since then, bringing this internal contradiction to a head. It also shows that the EU is far from becoming a united nation state, but primarily a special economic zone of competing national and individual capitals. The class struggles in Greece were exemplary in their pan-European character. The defeat of the Greek labour movement, brought about by Syriza’s betrayal of its base by capitulating to the European austerity regime, broke the confidence in reformist politics far beyond the borders of Greece and could and from which revolutionary forces were unable to profit.
At the same time, the EU remained geopolitically and militarily weak in comparison to other imperialist superpowers such as China, the USA and Russia. In this sense, its Ukraine policy is both an expression of this weakness and a possible turning point for it. Any diplomatic project by France and Germany, above all the Minsk Agreement, failed sooner or later, undermined by Russia, most recently with the invasion of 24 February 2022. As the US diplomat Victoria Nuland said to the US ambassador, during the Maidan crisis in Kiev in 2014: „Fuck the EU“. Germany lost a strategic economic partner in Russia, as a result of the war in Ukraine and the economic sanction. However, the role of the EU members in this, above all Poland and the Baltic states, cannot be reduced to populist politics. Due to the EU’s lack of military autonomy, they have contributed more significantly to the stabilisation of NATO and act more or less as junior partners of US imperialism in the EU. At the same time, they advocate a hotter war policy towards Russia and oppose the rapid integration of Ukraine into the EU, as they fear the migration of investments there due to the lower costs of labour there. For the European imperialists, on the other hand, it means both an expansion of the internal market and an investment field for the export of capital, which wants to be productively utilised in reconstruction and EU integration. Accordingly, the semi-colonies of Eastern Europe are to be deprived of their right of veto in the European Council in return for the concession of EU subsidies and the free movement of labour, in order to make the EU more capable of making decisions in the interests of its dominant nations. It is obvious that these goals cannot be realised without further discord. In recent years, Poland and Hungary have repeatedly been suitable examples of this tension.
While the struggle for the redivision of the world calls into question the EU’s previous strategic orientation in terms of foreign policy, the strengthening of right-wing populism at home poses a challenge to the established programme of German imperialism and – to a lesser extent – French imperialism. It is in this context that the increasingly influential role of German imperialism in the battle for Ukraine and its policy of war preparations at home, can be understood: as the reaction of an imperialist superpower whose central project threatens to fail, partly because it is incapable of turning its goals into a pan-European strategy. This is the most serious crisis of the European Union since its existence and that of its predecessor organisations, the EEC and the EC.
The reorganisation of the European single market
The coronavirus pandemic and the vaccination nationalism of the time, i.e. the globally unequal distribution of available vaccines, already provided a blueprint for the reorganisation of the European economy. Infrastructures were set up in Europe and among its own political bloc partners and rival vaccines, such as those from Russia and China, were not authorised. We are now hearing more frequent debates about drug shortages and the renationalisation of production facilities (keyword: medicines for children). One development driven by the sanctions is the shift in energy imports away from Russia towards the US and the Gulf states. The most recent example is the joint venture semiconductor factories together with US and Chinese companies. The EU is thus driven by a reorganisation of the world market. Germany had benefited twice from the monetary union in globalisation: on the one hand from a single European market free of customs barriers, and on the other from a weaker currency than the German mark, which promised export advantages.
Member states – from sidings to fast lanes
The war on European soil logically intensifies the confrontation between the blocs. As a result, Ukraine and Moldova became EU accession candidates last year. Accordingly, the Western Balkan states (Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina), some of which have been candidates for accession for over 18 years, took a back seat. The project of economic integration, which was primarily pursued under Merkel, has been reduced to their use as a reservoir of cheap, unregulated labour. Labour visas, such as for the Western Balkans, allow the EU to regulate them in a more capital-compliant manner than the Schengen Agreement. In return, the states are supposed to fight migration and subordinate themselves militarily. The NATO accessions of Montenegro (2017) and North Macedonia (2020) are emblematic of this. In this sense, the accession plans represent more of a bloc strategy with them as the periphery than a strengthening of the EU project as originally conceived.
The working class and labour movement
How are the organisations of the European working class facing up to these challenges? According to the forecasts, only the party alliances to the right of the European People’s Parties appear to be gaining votes in the European elections. Ultimately, the European social democracies (tend to represent a wing that wants to integrate the pro-European sections of the bourgeoisie. For example, the S&D group is focussing on reforming the EU institutions in order to prevent blocking vetoes. Together, they want to oppose the EU critics in the East, while the European Left (EL) wants to return to a social Europe without raising the question of which class interests are opposed to this.
How this can be achieved even if the United European Left/Nordic Green left (GUE/NGL) Group within the European Parliament, were to achieve an electoral breakthrough (unlikely), is something it is keeping quiet about. In Germany, a populist party has emerged from the Left Party in the form of the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, which proposes an alternative direction for German capital that is also orientated towards the perspective of a “Europe of fatherlands”. Behind this supposed flight from undemocratic EU institutions, however justified the criticism may be, lies subordination to the ruling class in the nation state as a way out. All these parties are thus failing to formulate an alternative to the programme of imperialist unification or national isolation, and in doing so are exacerbating the EU’s contradictions.
Among the forces competing in the EU elections, the European Left is the one that is most likely to express the need of the exploited and oppressed for a perspective against the current course on a larger scale. However, the EL offers a perspective that is programmatically orientated towards the social and political transformation of society, including the EU as it basically is. According to the founding manifesto of 2004, they wanted to give the EU a different content. In short, all of these formations are in favour of transforming the EU, a project that already has undemocratic pitfalls built into its constitution. It is
- Undemocratic: Large policy areas cannot be influenced by elections, even in a civic sense, and the EU Parliament is the weakest body compared to the EU Commission and the Council of Europe.
- Neoliberal: Historically, its structure may have been a compromise that also included social concessions, but driven by the crisis, there is no room for manoeuvre as the single market is little more than the backyard of German export capital.
- Militaristic: At the latest in view of massive armament, the EU, mediated via NATO, is threatening to become more involved as a coordinated military project on the world’s battlefields.
This makes it clear to us that the Europe of capital cannot be reformed. We oppose the capitalist European Union with the slogan of the United Socialist States of Europe.