“An interesting idea would be to start up a ‘Cafe d'Europe’: politicians, artists and intellectuals debating with the public in coffeehouses all over Europe", Wolfgang Schüssel at the closing conference. Whatever.
Let's skip that and move right to José Barroso's opening statement.
"Yes, Europe does have problems. We have economic problems, social problems, demographic problems. First of all I think there is a confidence problem."
What is it that makes Barroso say things like that? Fear of tax competition or demolition of the social and protection of labor by the Bolkestein-directive hardly is a "confidence problem". And grounded fear of declining social standards will not go away by accusing European citizens of narrow-mindedness as Barroso does.
Let's face it: a changing world needs changing policies. But nobody is questioning that anyway. So, let's also face the following: Barroso, Schüssel and their politics of paleo-liberalism are so much out of touch with both the European citizens and political needs.
People would not, as Schüssel suggested, support the current paleo-liberal agenda if they just knew enough of it. The Bolkestein-directive shows that as soon as those initiatives get to the knowledge of a wider audience they are confronted with vigorous resitance.
The real and pressing issues - education, research, job growth, integration - are barely tackled by the Commission's and the governments' current agenda, as the huge and embarrassing failure of the Lissabon agenda makes brutally obvious.
With his paleo-liberal agenda, Barroso plays a hazardous game with the most precious and important of Europe's agenda: integration and enlargement. Fear of further social cuts make Europeans cautious and resistant towards both the important admission of Turkey and Eastern-European countries and further integration of European politics, for example in social issues.
The so-called "confidence problem" is in reality a problem of political misrepresentation. There is no legitimization whatsoever for the politics of Barroso, Schüssel and their paleo-liberal sidekicks, neither in democratic terms nor in terms of necessity.
2 comments:
I think you are too harsh on Barroso here. His speech was the best of all the politicians at Sound of Europe (I was there) - his views are coherent, and he's at least trying. Schuessel, Plassnik and others are deeply hypocritical and in some cases just plain wrong. I've written a whole lot about Sound of Europe at my blog here
Sadly, my judgement on Barroso's speech will have to rely on its content, as I didn't have the pleasure of attending Sound of Europe. I am pretty sure you are right that Barroso is coherent in his positions, and that is exactly the problem.
His argument went like this: globalization is a force of nature and the EU has to adapt (and he means "flexicurity", the concept of cutting social security as outlined in the Commissions "Spring report" on the Lisbon strategy). Inflicted pain, namely tax cuts, cuts in social welfare and workers' rights are signs of this needed adaption.
I think his coherent agenda is wrong.
And yes, Schüssel and Plassnik are a real pain.
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