Umberto Eco on why Europe matters

[JDubliner]

The EU has four key institutions - Commission, Council, Parliament and Court of Justice. There are checks and balances between them. The entire project is answerable to national governments who have conferred certain competencies on the EU through the Treaties. The pejorative 'democratic deficit' utterly ignores the democratic deficits inherent in nation states - just think of Blair going to Iraq without the support of the British people etc. Nation states are not perfect either but were they to grossly undermine our fundamental rights supranational and intergovernmental institutions like the EU would step in. In other words, the EU adds another layer of accountability, ensuring states don't become tyrannies. The EU institutions are in turn answerable to the member states.

In this connection, think of Hungary - the EU is concerned about the erosion of civil liberties there, the people are marching in the street and the government has little residual democratic mandate - only about 20% support - the EU can help uphold the rights of the individual when the nation state fails to do so. Here's a few benefits of EU membership:

1. Free movement of goods, services, capital and people - you can live and work in another member state freely, you will be eligible for all the advantages enjoyed by nationals of that state. For example, I can go to Germany and study, I pay the same fees as a German Student (500 per term), I am eligible for government grants etc. for higher education there, I will have health care etc. - the advantages of free movement cannot be understated. We all take it for granted now.

2. Employment law - all our employment laws, including equal pay for equal work, fair treatment of part-time workers, redundancy payments, protection on the insolvency of an employer, nondiscrimination etc. all come from the EU. We take these laws for granted but they are vital.


3. The economy - Ireland would still be a backwater if it were not for the EU. Even if we are suffering now, the problem with the world economy began in the US and in London. Reckless financial trading. The good news is that we are not in it alone and all the EU countries are pulling together to resolve the crises. It will mean changes to the European monetary union, these will ensure the EU economy can withstand competition from established and emerging markets - US, China, India etc. etc. Ireland has secured a protocol to the Lisbon treaty that allows us to keep our low corporate tax rate. This means we have the benefit of being in the EU's 500 million people market whilst having an attractive tax rate for FDI. Ireland's boom may have cooled but we are still one of the wealthiest nations in the world.

4.Countries wishing to join the EU must ensure that they have good democratic institutions, less corruption, protection of human rights, civil liberties etc. in other words, the normative power of the EU ensures the advancement of civil liberties in states in countries which are not even EU members.

5. Collectively the 500 million strong market attracts and can sustain greater industry than the countries alone, we are more prosperous together. There hasn't been a war among EU Member States in 70 years. Before that we fought for more than 2000.

6. There are many examples of how EU membership benefits ordinary citizens, here's a few smaller ones:

a. Diplomatic and consular protection - in trouble in a country without an Irish embassy - you can go to the embassy of any EU member state.
b. Educational qualifications - after the Bologna process universities began to use a credit system - it means that your educational qualifications are more readily transferable across 27 countries than they might otherwise be. This allows you to work and travel.
c. Erasmus - students can spend a year in another university, learn a language etc. without paying fees.
d. European Commission funding - the EU can pool resources, providing massive research grants for scientific research and training, without which we could not compete with the technological advancement of other superpower states like the US, this could precipitant a brain drain and hurt our industries.

I'm just getting you started...think, read and research before you dismiss the EU.

[Mitsui2]

It's become axiomatic at this stage that if a Euroweenie said it, it is therefore somewhere on the scale from deliberately obfuscatory to downright mendacious malignancy - or in the vernacular: a dirty big stinking lie.

They seem pathologically incapable of honesty. You would wonder just what it is they are so desperate to conceal with untruths.

I'm not sure exactly what a Euroweenie is, but unless it means "highly respected European writer" then I sort of doubt that Umberto Eco qualifies as one.

[Diawlbach]

I'll venture to suggest that residents and citizens of various Balkan countries might disagree with you there?
The EU was utterly unable to prevent wholesale genocide, rapine, ethnic cleansing and open warfare in the heart of Europe between 1991 and 1995, 140,000 deaths, countless displaced persons and economic devastation.

But, would a more politically integrated Europe have done any better? Who knows?

(P.S. Great thread, statsman!!!)

None of which were actually in the EU at the time.

And yet, could integrate other, equally ethnically divided countries without a problem. The problems arose in those countries who went for the split-up before engaging with the EU model; but not in those that engaged with the EU model before the split-up (such as Czechoslovakia and, arguably, Slovenia).

There hasn't been a way west of the Oder since 1945. That's the longest period of peace since the Pax Romana; possibly longer, I think. Two countries that were coming out of fascist dictatorships have been integrated; the post-Warsaw Pact countries, too. Europe has quietly engaged in its own Marshall Plan all the way to the borders of the Ukraine, and you can now travel from Brest to the Belarus border, from the Arctic Circle to fifty miles from Tunisia, all without having to suffer border checks. Those are simply mind-boggling achievements, that have become so commonplace we don't even think about them any more.

[Diawlbach]

A master in disingenuity.


What law making powers does the British unelected head of state possess?

What law making powers does the unelected (but appointed by the elected President and approved by the elected congress) US Supreme court possess?




Let me answer that for you.

None, zero, zilch nadda.

Look up the prerogative powers of the Crown in the UK (which are assumed by the PM of the day, btw). And I suggest you also consider why, if SCOTUS is so powerless, that Roe v. Wade or Brown v. Board of Education so exercise political debate there.

[Cato]

Good find by the OP. It's always a pleasure to read something from Eco. He is a genius (albeit not infallible).

[sondagefaux]

Emmm... Certainly, in the case SCOTUS, yes, they do. And yes, there are those checks and balances - which, btw, is in origin an American phrase originating from the interaction of the executive, Congress and SCOTUS. And yes, there is recourse by way of changing the US Constitution. It's an entirely valid comparison. And that's ever before you get into prerogative powers of the Crown in the UK.

Let's not forget the House of Lords.

The EU institutions are as follows:

European Council - heads of state and/or government, members of their country's national parliaments or directly elected

Council of Ministers - various ministers, members of their country's national parliaments

European Parliament - MEPs - elected by electorates of member states

European Commission - nominated by member state governments, approved or rejected by European Parliament

European Court of Justice - judges chosen by governments of member states, one judge per member state

European Central Bank - Executive Board is nominated by member state heads of state and/or government, Governing Council composed of members of Executive Board and Governors of national central banks (chosen by national governments/parliaments)

Court of Auditors -nominated by member state governments, one member per member state

All EU institutions and law are founded on its treaties, which are approved or rejected by each member state in accordance with its constitutional requirements.

[Diawlbach]

Good shout on the Lords.

[Mitsui2]

A master in disingenuity.

a) Do you mean disingenuousness?

b) if so, are you referring to Eco or statsman?

c) in either case, do you have evidence to advance in support of this extravagant claim or are you just basing it on the little bit of the interview that statsman happened to cite?

(btw, I should maybe point out that, if you're referring to Eco, calling one of Europe's acknowledged great writers "a master of disingenuousness" is, all things considered, a compliment - which I gather wasn't what you intended)

[an modh coinniolach]

The Third Secret of Fatima, of course.

It's a shame all you tinfoil hat types don't read Eco's latest novel. Mind you, you'd probably think it was history, not fiction.

The Third Secret of Fatima, of course.

It's a shame all you tinfoil hat types don't read Eco's latest novel. Mind you, you'd probably think it was history, not fiction.

But can one agree with Eco that Europe is a good idea, without agreeing that the current institutions of the EU are appropriate?

He identifies culture and the market as unifying factors, but also implicitly notes that Europe has failed to capture the popular political imagination. So if you return to the original sense in which Benedict Anderson used the phrase Imagined Community Europe has not become a popularly imagined community to challenge people's allegiance to the nation state. It might be argued that at least part of the problem in that regard is a democratic deficit that runs alongside the absence of symbolic that Eco himself describes in the article.

I guess what I'm saying is at the moment we're left with neither one thing or the other- not a Europe of nations, not a national Europe but an odd bureaucratic melange from which there is a general public disconnect. Apart from anything else, I suspect that this also gives licence to national politicians to speak out of both sides of their mouth, paying lip-service to a European ideal while at the same time implicitly blaming the problems they face on Europe.

For what it's worth, it seems to me, that the conditions to create a European nation are not present at the moment. For all the unity in European culture that Eco might point to there is a popular commitment throughout most of Europe to the nation state. We can argue about whether that commitment is primordial or modern, but ultimately it doesn't matter, because it is pretty well established now and it's not going anywhere in a hurry (witness any thread on here about the 'national question').

[statsman]

Good find by the OP. It's always a pleasure to read something from Eco. He is a genius (albeit not infallible).

Being fallible is part of that indefinable weave of circumstances and characteristics that make any great writer great; infallibility is the province of small minds.