European Citizenship and Social Integration in the European Union

Jürgen Gerhards, Holger Lengfeld

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317563778
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Since 2008, the European Union has been affected by one of the most severe crises in the history of Europe. This book builds on the work of Jürgen Habermas to answer the key question: is Europe strong enough to overcome the recent crisis? Arguing that recovery can only take place if the citizens of Europe regard themselves as members of a socially integrated European society, this volume sets out three conditions for successful European social integration:

• European citizens mutually respect each other as equals, accepting that all EU citizens should have equal economic, political and social rights.
• Those citizens objecting to the idea of European equality should not constitute a minority with potential for mobilisation that could impede the ongoing process of European social integration.
• Europeans act upon their equality beliefs in everyday practice – without differentiating between nationals and EU migrants.

Based on a survey carried out in Germany, Spain, Poland and Turkey, the authors argue that the requirements for a socially integrated Europe are largely in place already. Their findings allow for optimism regarding the future of the EU, as the cultural foundations for a democratisation of Europe are laid.

This volume develops a theoretical framework of a socially integrated European community, and will be useful for students and scholars of sociology, citizenship studies, social policy, political science and European studies.

1 The European Union's crisis and its impact on the social integration of Europe

DOI: 10.4324/9781315735375-1

Since 2008, the European Union has been affected by one of the most severe crises in the history of Europe. The member states Greece, Poland, Italy, Ireland and Cyprus are still highly indebted today. Furthermore, the Spanish banks faced liquidity problems and had to receive financial aid from the EU. The economic growth rates of these states still remain quite low, suggesting that deleverage in the near future without financial aid from outside is unlikely. More than a few observers expect that some of the loans cannot be repaid. Private banks were unwilling, or only on condition of very high risk surcharges, to assume bonds. In order to prevent the looming insolvency of the crisis-stricken countries in the eurozone, the EU decided to initiate bailout programmes for the indebted countries. In spring 2010, the European Central Bank (ECB), several financially strong member states and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to offer bailout funds worth billions of euros to Greece, and later Ireland and Portugal. The ‘European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism’ (EFSM), the ‘European Financial Stability Facility’ (EFSF), and successively, the permanent ‘European Stability Mechanism’ (ESM) were established for the payment of comprehensive intra-European loans.¹ The ESM comprises a capital stock of 700 billion euros and a total credit volume of 500 billion euros. At the same time, the ECB bought government loans which were taken by the nearly insolvent countries and had lost their value. The Spanish banking crisis was fought against by making available 100 billion euros for the financial recovery of the Spanish national banking system. In the meantime, Spain has exited the bailout programme (EFSF or ESM), the same as Ireland and Portugal. However, observers do not expect an end to the usage of such mechanisms for the stabilisation of other countries in crisis.

Even if many observers criticise these measures as insufficient or too conservative, they demonstrate another step towards a more deeply integrated EU. This occurs in two ways: the affluent eurozone countries provide tremendous financial resources to support the highly indebted countries, be it (1) directly in the form of loans or (2) indirectly in the form of indemnity bonds. Such financial resources are eventually raised through taxes on the citizens of the donor countries, and they basically inure to the benefit of the citizens of the indebted countries. In this sense, the various stability mechanisms represent a previously unknown intra-European redistribution of resources, and with that an expression of solidarity between different EU countries. The ‘no bailout’ clause that was a fundamental part of the European economic and monetary union until today, and which made it illegal for the EU as well as for all member states to assume responsibility for the debts of other countries, was de facto overturned with these recent financial measures.

There is little doubt that the adopted measures follow the same principle which Georg Vobruba (2003, 2007) described as self-serving assistance in the context of the EU's enlargement policies: in order to protect their own national economies, the affluent European core countries protect the peripheral countries (see also Streeck, 2013). The fact that self-interest plays an important role in the willingness to help the economically struggling countries and their citizens does not necessarily mean these are not acts of solidarity. Assisting others out of self-interest is also a form of solidarity (see Mau, 2008; Lengfeld, Schmidt & Häuberer, 2013) and represents presumably the most important one in the European context. The affluent EU countries consent to assist the other EU countries with their deficits, for which they otherwise have no direct responsibility to pay. The financial magnitude of the supporting measures is exceptional here, and this enforces inter-national solidarity in a historically unprecedented way. We only know redistributions of such magnitude in the form of intra-solidarity within nation states, for example equalisation payments in Germany and the financial transfers from West to East Germany since reunification in 1990.

In a second respect, the EU fiscal policy triggered by the European debt crisis leads to a further intensification and consolidation of the process of European integration. Loans and indemnity bonds issued by the EU are tied to certain requirements for the indebted countries, such as changes to their economic policies, reducing government debts and restoring their credit-worthiness. With this, policy areas which previously were under national sovereignty of the member states are now brought under EU control. For instance, such a shift in competences began with the acquisition of economic data. Eurostat, the EU's statistical office, now has the authority to control the data on economic development in the member states, because the information provided by the single member states is occasionally incorrect or asymmetrically measured. Furthermore, the payments of credit tranches from a bailout package to an indebted member state like Greece are coupled with a plethora of economic measures: increasing taxes (e.g. wealth tax, VAT) and privatisations of state property to increase state revenues; reductions of government expenditures by decreasing the public sector work force; increasing working hours for civil servants; and cutting social and welfare spending, the military budget and subsidies. With the implementation of such measures the EU has started to intervene in the sovereignty of the loan-borrowing countries, and now regulates policy areas which previously were under exclusive national government control.

But there is more. Such measures, which were also adopted in light of the dynamics of the crisis, are last-minute or ‘ad-hoc’ measures of the transfer of sovereignty. Voices are becoming louder, calling for an institutionalised, permanent relocation of competencies via a coordinated European economic policy and a European economic government. Moreover, donor countries are less and less willing to agree to more financial transfers without having the right to intervene in and co-decide the economic policies of the debtor countries. In November 2011 the European Parliament issued strict requirements for the budgets of the member states and simultaneously defined sanctions that become effective if rules are broken. In January 2012, 25 out of the then 27 EU countries (except for the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic) signed the European Fiscal Compact. In doing so, the countries committed to integrate a debt brake in their national constitutions or their national jurisdictions. Additionally, with the implementation of a unified mechanism of banking supervision, the banks are now subject to the central control of the ECB.

Lastly, the debt crisis fosters the emergence of a European society in a third, equally unintentional aspect by promoting the movement of workers. The banking and currency crises were followed by an employment crisis that especially struck the Southern European states. The unemployment rates rose dramatically in these countries, in Spain to more than 26% between 2009 and 2013 and in Greece the rate tripled from 9 to 27%. Particularly alarming is the level of youth unemployment in these countries. For instance, in Spain and Greece more than every second young adult aged between 15 and 24 years is looking for work (Eurostat, 2014). One consequence of this employment crisis in the southern member states is that more people than ever before are leaving their countries. Admittedly, not much recent data are available, but it seems that especially the younger and better skilled work force has already left their Southern European home countries, or are planning to immigrate (Bräuninger & Majowski, 2011; Holland & Paluchowski, 2013). A report by the European Commission shows that between 2007 and 2014 the rate of Spanish emigrants nearly doubled, increasing from 224,000 up to 403,000 citizens (European Commission, 2012, p. 33), and at the same time immigration into the country has substantially decreased. However, the majority does not migrate to another EU country, but leaves the EU altogether. Only about 3% of the Spanish emigrants went to Germany, while by contrast 8% migrated to Morocco or Romania, respectively. Persons who had previously immigrated to Spain now leave the country to return to their home countries (ibid., also see Bertoli, Brücker & Fernández-Huertas Moraga, 2013; Bräuninger & Majowski, 2011).

At the same time, in the affluent and less crisis-stricken countries the share of immigrants has increased strikingly. According to a report published by the OECD, Germany has become the second most popular destination country between 2007 and 2014, behind the USA (OECD, 2014). According to the migration report issued by the German government (2009–2012), for instance, about 9,000 people migrated from Spain to Germany in the year 2009, in 2010 there were about 10,000, in 2011 there were 16,000 and in 2012 as many as 23,000. Also, the number of people from Greece nearly quadrupled from 2009 to 2012 (Bundesamt für Migration und Flüchtlinge, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012). Eurobarometer surveys from 2011 show that between one-quarter and one-third of all adolescents and young adults living in one of the Southern European countries deeply affected by crisis could imagine working in another country for extended periods of time. At the same time, the increase of job seekers who have registered with the European Job Mobility Portal EURES to find an occupation in another EU country exceeds 100% between 2010 and 2012 (European Commission, 2012, pp. 31–40). Looking at all indicators we see that they point in the same direction. The European crisis has unintendedly fostered intra-European mobility and the populations of the 28 member states have become more heterogeneous, thus one of the integration targets of the ‘Four Freedoms’ is promoted. In this vein, the fiscal crisis in some eurozone countries and the crisis-triggered intra-European migration movements paradoxically led to greater consolidation of European integration.

Due to the crisis, the European institutions have, all in all, been strengthened and become more powerful to the detriment of national institutions; at the same time, the mutual responsibility between the states has increased. In this book we describe this general process as European system integration. From the perspective of functionalist theories of integration, this unintentional effect of more consolidation has been dubbed ‘spill over’, and is not a new phenomenon in the history of the EU (see Haas, 1958). The crucial point is that with the increase of European system integration a conflict intensifies which we will label the divergence between system and social integration. It is indeed very surprising that one factor hardly seems to play a role in the process of the current European crisis management: the opinions and attitudes of the European citizens. Citizens’ impacts on the decision-making process is minimal, despite these decisions being made over billions of euros that, in the worst case, will be transferred from some countries of the EU to others, and that eventually must be paid with their own productive capacities (i.e. taxes). Likewise, they were not consulted or included in the decisions regarding austerity measures (i.e. reductions in what their governments provide). The citizens of the member states are only indirectly involved in the decision-making processes via the national governments they have elected and the members of the European Parliament (which played a rather insignificant role during the crisis). The problem of the limited impact of the citizens on EU decisions is well known and has been discussed as the ‘democratic deficit of the EU’. However, the more decisions are made in Brussels rather than in the nation states, and the more important (i.e. concerning more resources) the political decisions on the EU level are, the more the democratic deficit is aggravated. Both conditions seem to apply to the European crisis. The question is whether the citizens of the affluent EU countries would consent to financial transfers worth billions if they were asked. Do people from the indebted countries find it acceptable that their national economic, labour market and social policies are no longer directed by the national governments they elected, but instead from Brussels? And do they consent to the fact that the freedom of movement for workers, which until now has scarcely been used, could possibly lead to large intra-European migration movements?

Behind these concrete questions regarding European citizens’ attitudes on social, political and economic happenings, and policies of crisis management and their unintentional consequences, lie fundamental problems of the integration of Europe. Problems such as the support or rejection of financial transfer payments from one European country to another, the further shift of decision-making competences from the nation states to the European level and the acceptance of increasing migration processes all allude to a central precondition for the overall integration of Europe: do the citizens conceive of themselves as members of a socially integrated European unity and thus as equals, or do they prefer a nation state particularism which does not know a transnational, European community but only national communit...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table Of Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• 1 The European Union’s crisis and its impact on the social integration of Europe
• 2 System integration and social integration in Europe: the theoretical framework
• 3 Europe of market citizens
• 4 Political citizenship
• 5 Social citizenship
• 6 The future of the European Union
• Appendix: dataset and variables
• Index