Europa según Habermas

Lo que sigue son extractos de una nota sobre una charla de Habermas en el Instituto Goete en París en la que habla sobre la crisis europea.



"I condemn the political parties. Our politicians have long been incapable of aspiring to anything whatsoever other than being re-elected. They have no political substance whatsoever, no convictions."

"Zur Verfassung Europas" ("On Europe's Constitution") is the name of his new book, which is basically a long essay in which he describes how the essence of our democracy has changed under the pressure of the crisis and the frenzy of the markets. Habermas says that power has slipped from the hands of the people and shifted to bodies of questionable democratic legitimacy, such as the European Council. Basically, he suggests, the technocrats have long since staged a quiet coup d'état.

"On July 22, 2011, (German Chancellor) Angela Merkel and (French President) Nicolas Sarkozy agreed to a vague compromise -- which is certainly open to interpretation -- between German economic liberalism and French etatism," he writes. "All signs indicate that they would both like to transform the executive federalism enshrined in the Lisbon Treaty into an intergovernmental supremacy of the European Council that runs contrary to the spirit of the agreement."

Habermas refers to the system that Merkel and Sarkozy have established during the crisis as a "post-democracy." The European Parliament barely has any influence. The European Commission has "an odd, suspended position," without really being responsible for what it does. Most importantly, however, he points to the European Council, which was given a central role in the Lisbon Treaty -- one that Habermas views as an "anomaly." He sees the Council as a "governmental body that engages in politics without being authorized to do so."

At this point, it should be mentioned that Habermas is no malcontent, no pessimist, no prophet of doom -- he's a virtually unshakable optimist, and this is what makes him such a rare phenomenon in Germany.

While the activists of the Occupy movement refuse to formulate even a single clear demand, Habermas spells out precisely why he sees Europe as a project for civilization that must not be allowed to fail, and why the "global community" is not only feasible, but also necessary to reconcile democracy with capitalism. Otherwise, as he puts it, we run the risk of a kind of permanent state of emergency -- otherwise the countries will simply be driven by the markets. "Italy Races to Install Monti" was a headline in last week's Financial Times Europe.

"Sometime after 2008," says Habermas over a glass of white wine after the debate, "I understood that the process of expansion, integration and democratization doesn't automatically move forward of its own accord, that it's reversible, that for the first time in the history of the EU, we are actually experiencing a dismantling of democracy. I didn't think this was possible. We've reached a crossroads."

He rails against "political defeatism" and begins the process of building a positive vision for Europe from the rubble of his analysis. He sketches the nation-state as a place in which the rights of the citizens are best protected, and how this notion could be implemented on a European level.

He says that states have no rights, "only people have rights," and then he takes the final step and brings the peoples of Europe and the citizens of Europe into position -- they are the actual historical actors in his eyes, not the states, not the governments. It is the citizens who, in the current manner that politics are done, have been reduced to spectators.

This is Habermas's main point and what has been missing from the vision of Europe: a formula for what is wrong with the current construction. He doesn't see the EU as a commonwealth of states or as a federation but, rather, as something new. It is a legal construct that the peoples of Europe have agreed upon in concert with the citizens of Europe -- we with ourselves, in other words -- in a dual form and omitting each respective government. This naturally removes Merkel and Sarkozy's power base, but that's what he's aiming for anyway.

There is an alternative, he says, there is another way aside from the creeping shift in power that we are currently witnessing. The media "must" help citizens understand the enormous extent to which the EU influences their lives. The politicians "would" certainly understand the enormous pressure that would fall upon them if Europe failed. The EU "should" be democratized.

"If the European project fails," he says, "then there is the question of how long it will take to reach the status quo again. Remember the German Revolution of 1848: When it failed, it took us 100 years to regain the same level of democracy as before."