The European Union’s recent efforts to preserve its common currency have been successful in bringing the eurozone back from the precipice of collapse. However, in order to achieve the goal of preserving the monetary union, governments have had to adopt unpopular policies and abandon the political platforms on which they were elected. Consequently, there is popular dissatisfaction between European states and toward the EU as an institution. Creditor states like Germany are home to polities that are frustrated with minimal growth and regard debtor states as an unacceptable burden. Conversely, debtor states are faced with widespread protest and civil unrest which targets not only the domestic government, but also the role of core European governments in the imposition of severe austerity. Ultimately, the EU is faced with a crisis of confidence, and there is little to suggest that simply preserving a common currency will provide a solution.
By Jose Ignacio Torreblanca
Saving the euro required two things: a clear political decision that would put an end to the speculation about its future; and a financial mechanism that would make such a promise credible. In 2012, after several years of doubts, clumsiness, and mistakes, Europe's leaders did both things: on the one hand, German Chancellor Angela Merkel accepted the idea of moving toward banking union; and on the other, European Central Bank (ECB) President Mario Draghi was allowed to buy as much debt accumulated by member states as necessary to save the euro. These two decisions prevented the euro from slipping off the cliff edge, returning it to a stability it hadn't known for a few years.
The euro's strength, albeit temporary, explains why the shock waves from last week's elections in Italy were relatively benign. We should not forget the impact of the outcome of Greek Prime Minister Yorgos Papandreou's decision in October 2011 to call a referendum on the austerity measures being imposed on Greece by the troika of the EU, the ECB and the IMF: this sent some of the measures of market uncertainty monitored by financial analysts to levels higher than those that followed the attacks of September 11 in the United States. Nor should we forget the Greek elections of June 2012, when the likelihood of a win by the Syriza left-wing coalition was seen as a financial Armageddon. Italy may currently be chaotic, but the euro is holding on, at least for the moment.
The outcome of the elections in Italy, as with the temporary improvement of the euro, is also a reflection of Europe's political fragility, and points to a crisis of legitimacy that looks to be the pattern for forthcoming elections throughout the bloc. Surveys carried out by the EU's Eurobarometer quarterly opinion poll clearly show to what degree confidence in the European Union has fallen.
In countries like Spain, "net" trust in the EU (a measure calculated by subtracting the percentage of those who have trust from those who do not) was 42 points in 2007 (65 percent trusted, and 23 percent didn't). Today, the figure is 52 points, with 72 percent having no trust in the EU, and just 20 percent continuing to trust it. A spectacular fall.
This massive drop in trust requires us to think seriously about the future of the EU, particularly in a country like Spain, which has always been pro-Europe. But on the basis of the graph showing that this lack of trust is to be found throughout the euro zone, we all need to be thinking about the future. In Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus, the EU is regarded with the same degree of mistrust as in Spain. Importantly, this increase in mistrust is to be found not just in debtor countries, but also in creditor nations, or those in a better financial situation, such as Germany, Austria, France, the Netherlands and Finland. In other words, lack of trust in the EU is not a question of some countries versus others. As things stand, everybody seems to be losing, and nobody winning.
We are facing an unprecedented crisis of confidence. A political system cannot make all of the people happy all of the time. Government is about choices, about assigning priorities, taking painful decisions, benefitting some at the expense of others. Legitimacy means that a government's decisions are accepted by the electorate even when they may not be to their benefit in the short term. This acceptance may be based on a feeling of belonging to a wider group, on considerations of justice and equality, or on agreement with and acceptance of the procedures that led to these decisions being adopted.
In Europe, where collective identity, shared values and democratic procedures are still being formed, legitimacy has largely been won through economic growth: the more our economies have grown, the more support there has been for European integration. This means that our capacity to believe in the system, by being almost exclusively based on economic growth, is weak, and tends to evaporate at times of crisis.
This is exactly what is happening at the present. On the one hand, the austerity programs may be successful in terms of reducing public deficits (although not debt), they do not produce growth or employment, as a result of which they do not win the support of the electorate required for them to continue to be implemented. What makes things worse is that as governments are forced to systematically break their electoral promises and to govern on the basis of policies that do not reflect their traditional political outlook, they also contribute to undermining the legitimacy of our democracies. As we have seen in countries bailed out by the EU, political systems are being degraded (Spain and Portugal), or are falling apart, as in Greece or Italy.
As for the creditor countries, where there is also no growth, the widespread feeling is that the countries of the periphery are a drag on their economy, absorbing their ever-scarcer resources and pulling them down.
It is under these conditions of disaffection and mistrust that the EU must now press ahead with political and economic integration. The euro has been saved, but it will not survive in the long run without a banking union that includes crisis resolution mechanisms and guarantees of deposits throughout the euro zone. Nor will integration happen without proper funding, debt sharing and much better coordination of economic policies.
But these are decisions that require exactly what Europe currently lacks: trust in the EU.
For Europe to function, people in the north, the south, in both the creditor and debtor nations, must be prepared to give European institutions the right financial instruments; and at the same time, governments must be seen to be efficient and legitimate. That said, if German taxpayers are to support Spanish savers, and a Spanish saver's money is to support deposits in Greece or Portugal, we need levels of trust in Europe that are currently sorely lacking.
In June 2014, just over a year from now, Europeans will go to the polls. If by then trust has not been re-instilled in the EU, we could be in for a nasty surprise. Saving the euro was essential, but the euro is simply a means, not an end in itself: the end is the EU's people, and a euro without them doesn't amount to much.
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