Our European Future: Charting a Progressive Course in the World

Maria João Rodrigues, François Balate, Maria João Rodrigues, François Balate

• Publisher: London Publishing Partnership
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781913019341
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The world is facing many great challenges: from pandemics to climate change, and from increasing inequality to the issues surrounding digitalization. In a new and rapidly changing global landscape, Europe must look for solutions to these difficulties to follow up on its impressive decades-long process of integration. Europe has the capacity to chart a progressive course in the world. Our European Future offers solutions to rethink our socioeconomic model in the glare of the environmental and digital transformations; to redefine Europe's role in the world to contribute to renewed multilateralism; to strengthen investment in public goods; and finally, to re-invent our democratic contract. The book brings together the insights of renowned experts from across Europe, and it should prove a handy guide for any progressive thinker, policymaker or activist, and for any citizen who would like to take part in the necessary democratic debate about our future. This book, edited by Maria João Rodrigues with the collaboration of François Balate, is a first contribution from the Foundation for European Progressives Studies to the Conference on the Future of Europe and beyond.

Part I

Rebuilding the European Economic and Social Model for Ecological, Digital and Post-Covid Challenges

Synthesis of the debate*

By Jean-François Lebrun

‘If you don’t take change by the hand, it will take you by the throat.’ This quote from Winston Churchill, the same man who said in 1940 that he had ‘nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat’, could be taken as our introduction.

At least three major drivers of change – climate, digitization and the ageing of Europe’s population – can already be seen to be upon us. For decades there have been warnings about the impact these changes will have on our working and living environments, and it is now eminently clear that these transformations cannot be avoided. Global warming is beginning to make its effects felt; digitization, in which we are not one of the key players, has already become part of our lives; and the ageing of our populations is already well underway.

We must now manage their impacts, and particularly their effects on employment, working conditions and living conditions. These transformations will change our society profoundly. We must start to think about the socioeconomic model we want for tomorrow. It is possible that the instruments available to us will lead us to a more inclusive society – one that is able to turn the challenges we face into opportunities.

But are we able to act, today, to prepare ourselves for the changes that are to come? There is no shortage of available examples to illustrate the extent to which most human beings tend to resist change. Usually, we only change when our backs are against the wall – when our survival is at stake. All change has implications. But change brings gains as well as losses. We are generally very averse to risk even though Homo sapiens are capable of adapting. However, this capacity to adapt and to be resilient is not distributed equally. In this respect, socioeconomic conditions play an important role – something that the Covid-19 crisis has clearly shown us every day for the past year.

In addition to this risk aversion, there is a second element that holds us back: complexity. Our societies are becoming increasingly complex. This complexity takes many forms: multicultural populations, a diversity of sociocultural systems (think of social protection models), a breakdown of the wage model, growing heterogeneity, interdependence and interdisciplinarity.

And at the European level, and within the framework of the existing treaties, the number of member states makes decision making complex. But time is against us. The longer we wait, the less we adapt and the greater the social challenges will be, the more difficult they will be to correct, encouraging the emergence of simplistic, populist, ‘short-termist’ and individualistic responses. However, the consequences will play out in a globalized economic environment over the long term and will require structural adaptations of our economies and our lifestyles.

As the current transformations also bring opportunities, it is essential that the policies that are implemented allow us to enhance these opportunties. We need a vision and we need fresh perspectives. This vision must enable us to envisage a more orderly world in which the need for security is decreased, thereby allowing us to express our other need: freedom.

What are the main driving factors and social implications of these transformations?

The green transformation

The green transformation is closely linked to global warming, but it also includes other impacts on nature. It involves energy, various sources of pollution, waste and loss of diversity. Environmental change will profoundly alter our consumption and production habits. A more virtuous dynamic towards our planet has become indispensable. It is all the more necessary as it is not yet too late to try to limit the current warming.

Some sectors will be more affected than others by the necessary green transition. The biggest winners will be the electricity production and construction sectors. By contrast, a contraction is expected in sectors linked to fossil fuels. Furthermore, some sectors – such as steel, cement and chemicals – will have to undergo transformation as part of the transition to a low-carbon economy. Agriculture will be faced with some positive changes, notably in relation to consumer demand and environmental requirements, but also some negative ones, such as crop displacement, yields that are more variable and greater price volatility. The EU will remain dependent on a range of agricultural imports. It will need to ensure that it supports adaptation to climate change in other parts of the world.

A new relationship with nature will also bring many opportunities, including (but not limited to) the use of renewable energy and improved energy efficiency, the development of biomimicry and green chemistry, and the management and recycling of our waste (a major source of raw materials for tomorrow). The implementation of policies that support these new developments will have positive repercussions both for our planet – which is, after all, the only place where we can live, and will remain so for a long time – and for our health and well-being.

Patterns of both production and consumption will be affected by the green transition. Short circuits, the circular economy, zero waste and renting instead of buying are just a few of the many examples of new modes of consumption. Often stimulated by collaborative platforms, these new modes could become increasingly important.

This transformation will therefore have an impact on employment, both in quantitative and in qualitative terms. In the future, there will certainly be jobs that can be described as green, but above all there will be a ‘greening’ of a large number of jobs. Our ability to provide workers with new skills will be decisive in reducing the negative effects and promoting the positive ones. One does not spontaneously become an installer of thermal panels or a specialist in thermal insulation.

In the social sphere, care must be taken to minimize the effects of the green transition. In this respect, the fight against energy insecurity and for affordable, high-quality food for all will be elements that should not be neglected. Indeed, it is the most vulnerable who will be confronted with the greatest consequences of the green transition. It is important to pay attention to the effects of the green transition on social inequalities.

It will be necessary to ensure that the burden of the green transition is shared fairly between individuals, groups, sectors and regions. Some regions are better prepared than others. Social protection and solidarity mechanisms between regions will have to be put in place to respond to the impacts of this transformation.

Sustainability must be a guiding principle for all our future policies. But the focus should be on an overall strategy for sustainability and welfare improvement rather than on separate policies in individual areas.

It will be useful to continue the work of moving beyond using growth in gross domestic product (GDP) as the major indicator of a country’s success. People’s well-being and cohesion, as well as their ecological footprint, will have to be included in policy evaluations.

The digital transformation

The digital transformation may be more complex than the green one, as it will spread across all sectors. It is a multistage process that started more than forty years ago, with the key stages including the development of the first personal computers, the dawn of the internet (first with Web 1.0, where information went from the professional to the individual, and then with Web 2.0, which was characterized by social networks and the production of information by the individual), the development of smartphones, industrial robots and now artificial intelligence (AI), and the era of blockchain and Big Data. Data is becoming a commodity. Networking has become the norm.

We are in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The Third Industrial Revolution relied on electronics and information technology to automate production. The Fourth Industrial Revolution – the digital revolution – is characterized by a fusion of the physical, digital and biological spheres.

This revolution is developing at an exponential rather than linear rate, and it will radically change the way we produce, consume, work and approach life in society. All sectors will be affected in one way or another. For example, digitization will affect mobility (autonomous cars), retail (via e-commerce), health (AI-assisted remote medical consultations), housing (introduction of home automation), and our interactions with public services (via electronic counters) and with things (via the Internet of Things).

This will affect a huge number of jobs. While there will be ‘digital jobs’, there will also be a ‘digitization’ of (almost) all jobs. As with the green transformation, we are witnessing and will continue to witness creation–destruction cycles of activities linked in particular to automation.

Furthermore, by allowing teleworking (or ‘remote working’, the adoption of which has been accelerated by Covid-19), digitization can create increased competition between highly skilled workers at the global level. Digitization is also a breeding ground for the development of platforms that, without supervision, encourage the development of precarious jobs.

The digital divide must be tackled. Everyone must have access, tools and sufficient knowledge to be able to benefit from digitization. Once again, it will be necessary to ensure cohesion within the EU, as not all regions are equally well equipped to deal with digitization and the need for qualified human capital that it brings with it. Nor are all companies equipped to take part in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

But digitization is also a challenge for the whole of the EU. Large companies, mostly American ones, now dominate the international scene and are more and more central to our daily activities. Taxing the profits of large foreign digital platforms is necessary, but it is not enough, because we are excluded from production. The EU is dependent; it is a digital colony. The development of AI, given its future importance, cannot be left to America and China, our great global competitors. We must have a central role in tomorrow’s technology, and we need to support European companies in the field, both large and small. An ‘industrial’ policy in this area is needed: a long-term strategy requiring cooperation, public and private funding, appropriate infrastructure, research and, above all, a sufficient quantity and quality of human capital.

The Internet of Things (part of Web 3.0, which focuses on the interaction between humans and their environment) is one of the major areas of work for the future. The EU should no...