The Summit in Brussels: explaining why this budget is bad for Europe and why it is actually all happening

ANITA SĘK

15 years ago Polish professor Jan Zielonka (Oxford University) defined the reasons for what he called the ‘Euro-paralysis’

“This budget is good for Poland, but bad for Europe”, commented Polish MEP Jacek Saryusz-Wolski on tvn24.pl. Indeed, Poland is estimated to receive about 4.5 bln EUR more than in the previous MFF 2007-2013. Nevertheless, the whole budget will be firstly smaller than the previous one, and every entrepreneur knows that even if you comfortably stay in place and do not move forward, you lose, because you are not developing. Secondly, bearing in mind that 95% of the Union’s expenses flies back to the member states, the argument of decreasing EU’s budget in order to reduce member’ deficits by creating the European one equalling to more than 50 bln EUR does not make for me any sense.  

Here is the state of the budget headings under the draft presented this morning by Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council  (by European Voice):

Total size: €960bn in commitments. Going into the budget summit in November, the proposal was €972bn. Actual payments will be €908.4bn.

Heading 1a: “Competitiveness for growth and jobs”: Overall figure is €125.7bn. It was €152.5bn in November.

Heading 1b: “Economic, social and territorial cohesion” (Cohesion Policy): The figure is now €324.7bn. It was €320.

Heading 2: “Sustainable growth: Natural resources”, including agriculture, fisheries, rural development. Was €373.5bn, now €372.2bn.

Heading 3: “Security and citizenship”, including immigration policy, health, consumer protection, and youth programmes: Was €16.7bn, now €15.7bn.
Heading 4 – “Global Europe”, including foreign policy, development aid): Was €60.7bn, now €58.8bn.

Heading 5: “Administration”: Cut from €62.63bn to €61.63bn. Also, staff cuts of 5% over five years, change to pensions, solidarity level of 6%. Some figures for specific projects and items of particular interest to individual countries:

Rebates:

UK: no change in the mechanism (specific figure not given).
Denmark: €130m per year. No rebate previously.
Netherlands: was €1.15bn, now €650m.
Sweden: was €325m, now €160m.

Infrastructure and research projects: Galileo, global satellite-based navigation system: Was €6.6bn, now €6.3bn.
Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) monitoring system: Was €4.9bn, now €3.8bn.
ITER, nuclear research project: €2.7bn, the figure it was before.

As this draft presents, the biggest victim of the cuts are the jobs and growth: almost 27 bln EUR of difference (!), including the ‘Connecting Europe Facility’ (investments in transport and energy), slashed from to 41.2 to 29.3 bln EUR. The savings will also pick innovations, research, education and external action, leaving the agriculture and cohesion fund almost untouched.

How it happened that such a certainly not enough ambitious for these difficult times deal has been agreed today? To explain this, let us use the explanations as proposed by Zielonka.

The first reason is rooted in the old concept of international relations called ‘power politics’. It seems that the EU leaders missed a moment of a commencing financial and institutional crisis, and not reacted properly to it by introducing preventive mechanisms, being too convinced about the exceptionality of the peaceful and wealthy integration success of the post-modern polity/supranational Union. At the same time, the member state politicians, afraid of the growing dissatisfaction in society, turned back to the Westphalian system. By pointing the finger at Brussels for the whole crisis, and playing on nationalistic moods, they are aiming to regain their domestic power. Yes, today we are witnessing a return to ‘realpolitik’. Zielonka called such a phenomenon: ‘hegemonic atavism’. 

The second explanation: of ‘divergent traditions and conflicting interests’, is inseparably interlinked with the previous one. Just like Catalonia is raising questions about the proportion of funds that it is paying to the Spanish budget, so are all the big net-payers in the EU reluctant, as it is on their shoulders that the burdens are stacked. And just like in national policies there are convergences versus divergences, interest clashes and often confusing visions of Europe. Therefore, it must be at the European level, where the clash between national versus European interests is the most visible. It must be then bitterly stated that after 60 years of the integration process, a European identity that is able to appeal to European solidarity has not been built. 

Thirdly, Zielonka believed that the EU and its member states have ‘lost [a] paradigm’ and fell into a ‘conceptual confusion’. It seems that since then, they have not regained a direction. The ambiguous challenges, risks and threats, as well as competing rationalities are still prevailing bith in Brussels and the member states’ capitals. On days like this one today, everyone doubts in all of the European integration theories and concepts which state that we are better off together.

‘The crisis of modern democracy’, exemplified by Zielonka as the crisis of representation and of democratic culture, is the fourth relevant point. The falling belief of European societies in European integration should make the politicians and elites aware of just how fragile the EU-consensus really is. It should also open their eyes on how far they are from regular citizens, who do not understand the functioning and benefits arising from an ever-closing community. Lack of knowledge and ignorance are the perfect ground for seeds of populism, which are fed by fear and can grow into  dangerous and irrational nationalistic attitudes and decisions. This only proves how weak our democratic cultures are.

As a final point, Zielonka mentiones the problem of ‘weak institutions’. In my opinion, these are not solely the excesivelly bureaucratic and, literally and metaphorically, labyrinth-like EU institutions. These are also member states’ administrations which are deprived of their ambitions and a general shortage of responsible and visionary leadership. If European citizenship and identity existed, such individual leaders on a European scale would not be necessary. Moreover we would not be reading in the media that a ‘big battle’ is taking place right now in Brussels, or that we shall ‘cross fingers’ for our fighters, as the Polish prime minister tweeted before his departure to Belgium.

Well, ’the battle’ is not over yet. The President of the European Parliament, which needs to give its consent on the agreed deal, already stated that the budget as it is now is unacceptable for Europeans…

See also:

• K. Gruner, Europę czeka czas zmian – perspektywa finansowa na lata 2014-2020
• B. Marcinkowska, Poland as the future EU Net Contributor and a mental hospital for the extreme European federalists – what President Komorowski said to the European students at College of Europe
• A. Sęk, Pięć powodów, by wciąż wierzyć w Europę