The contagious creed of austerity has spread through its airways. The interests of capital and global corporations have come to take precedence over those of citizens. Despite more wealth than ever before, the disparities across the continent have fostered exploitation and insecurity.
Given that the European socialist and communist parties failed so spectacularly even where they were very strong, the prospects are a bit remote now.
The article also links to a piece by T Garton-Ash on European values which I must have missed first time around. The values concerned are those of : 'liberal democracy, pluralism, the rule of law and free speech.'. As usual, these are spelled out only by contrasting them with values Garton-Ash disapproves of, as represented by the ruling parties in Hungary and Poland.
There is a marvellous confused passage:
I am confident Britain will remain a liberal democracy even if it leaves the EU; Hungary and Poland, by contrast, will remain members of the EU but are ceasing to be liberal democracies. In the very countries where, three decades ago, the causes of freedom and Europe advanced so magnificently arm in arm, these causes are now being prised apart by skilful, anti-liberal populists exploiting a longstanding disconnect between the Europe of values and the Europe of money.
So 'Europe' is not a reason for liberal democracy, not even a guarantor of it, but the two coincide in particular conjunctures like the circumstances of 30 years ago (globalisation and the 'end of ideology'?). 'Europe's values' seem a bit contingent or opportunistic as a result. They also seem to be uneasily combined with massive inequality, as in the 'disconnect' in the last sentence. None of this is discussed of course.
There is instead a typical Guardian jibe at one of their favourite hate figures -- B Johnson:
“My policy on cake,” Johnson famously says, “is pro having it and pro eating it.”... Viktor Orbán’s nationalist populist Hungarian government, by contrast, is triumphantly practising the Johnson doctrine. It receives more European Union cake per capita than any other member state while mustering nationalist support by biting the Brussels hand that feeds it. Boris Johnzsönhelyi would be a happy trooper on the Danube...a crucial part of east-central European Johnsonism is using EU funds for political patronage, rewarding supportive media owners and other cronies, as well as more straightforward pocket-lining.
Heaven forbid this sort of thing should go on in liberal democracies! All this is reminiscent of the early Remain campaigns stressing the subsidies for infrastructure that the benevolent EU were spending in the UK, rather cruelly exposed by the campaign and the slogan on the bus. Euroneuros have never understood that it is not primarily a matter of abstract amounts of money anyway.
Garton-Ash argues for more EC responses to Hungarian and Polish populism and thinks the current responses are ineffective. It seems this tolerant liberal wants EU funding made contingent on political reform. As in Greece and Italy?
When I make this argument to friends in these centre-right parties, they say: “Oh, but it’s still better to have Orbán inside because we can influence him there.” And so they go on nursing the classic illusions of appeasement, playing chess against a kickboxer...We don’t have time for this any more. The matter is urgent. If Poland follows the Hungarian path, much of east-central Europe will have succumbed to creeping authoritarianism – and all of this will have happened inside the European Union.
This sits rather oddly with the main piece urging socialist unity against EU liberalism, of course. Is socialism compatible with these European values? If a right-wing populism can thwart the EU, can a left-wing one? If the EU punishes right-wing populism will it also penalise a left-wing version?
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