Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Why Brussels Needs To Read Karl Polanyi

Kurt Huebner 28th November 2014

Kurt Huebner, Karl Polanyi

Kurt Huebner

The project of European integration is going to run into walls. In political terms, it has become evident that its active as well as its passive support is decreasing. To some degree this loss in faith is tied to the social implications of years of austerity policies that were imposed to many nation-states in the EU. Persistently high rates of unemployment and a reduction of real household incomes are no reasons to be supportive of a project that is widely seen as elite-driven as well as mainly in the interest of export-sectors.

Electorates in relatively better-off member states, on tbe other side, are no longer willing to act as guarantors of crisis-ridden neighbors. Moreover, and at least as relevant, is the rise of political parties and movements across Europe that see the return to the nation state as a recipe for all kinds of problems, also for the ones that are not in any way tied to the EU. In economic terms, the project of European Integration is facing a long-run period of stagnation or at least of very low economic growth. Neither Brussels nor the member states seem to be prepared to work against such a path or to be prepared for dealing with the underlying forces of shifty towards a low growth path. The investment initiative of the Juncker Commission can, at best, be a drop in an empty bucket. In terms of legitimacy, European Integration has lost a lot of its appeal, and this is not only reflected in decreasing participation rates in European elections but more so in the emerging new form of economic governance that contradicts basic rules of democratic self-control by potentially taking away significant political sovereignty in the budget process.

Dealing with all those issues is a Herculean task. One of the necessary but insufficient conditions to move the project of European Integration onto a forward-looking, socially inclusive and economically balanced path is a change in the dominating political-economic discourse, and consequently in the policy course. Over the last ten to fifteen years or so, the European Commission and its key directorates has been filled with commissioners as well as an administrative strata who use the Brussels playing field for a rather simplistic version of market orthodoxy. One of the caves of unfettered liberalism is DG Trade where in the last few years Karel De Gucht followed an already well-established liberalisation project that forgot all about the many potentially damaging interplays between financial markets and social inclusion on the one side and openness for goods and services on the other. DG Trade set the pace for a political discourse in which more openness and more market access is seen as the most critical motor for efficiency gains and growth.

The new Juncker Commission (© European Union, 2014)

The new Juncker Commission (© European Union, 2014)

This discourse willingly forgets everything about the historical and not so historical lessons that well-functioning markets need deep embeddedness as has been famously shown by Karl Polanyi in his Great Transformation. Not too long ago a US-American pair of Europeanists argued that the EU would have entered a phase of re-embedding markets, mainly due to the actions of the European Court of Justice. Nothing could be more wrong. The financial crisis of 2008 and then the crises of Eurozone economies actually revived the liberalisation orthodoxy in the Commission, and in particular DG Trade accelerated its policy offensive. To be clear: even though all empirical simulations of currently negotiated trade and investment agreements only hint to overall small direct GDP gains it still can pay off to come up with international agreements like TTIP or CETA and the like. Those bilateral agreements provide the opportunity to structure and re-organise global trade and investment flows in a first-best manner.

Truly European-inspired trade and investment agreements need Polanyian embedding that does much more then only asking for the non-violation of basic ILO standards as well as the acceptance of similarly general environmental rules. Bringing Polanyi back into town needs a substantive vision of a global economy that needs institutional safeguards in order to avoid crisis and unequal distribution of benefits and costs. Such agreements need to be designed in order to become trendsetters in organising and moderating global flows of goods and services as well as various forms of capital and also labour in a way that satisfies all criteria for a socially, economically as well as environmentally sustainable growth path.

Let’s be realistic. The new Commission is on a different path that only pays lip service to embedding, if at all. Bringing back Polanyi to Brussels is an uphill battle but it is worth it.

Kurt Huebner

Kurt Huebner is Professor of European Studies and the Jean Monnet Chair at the Institute for European Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada.

You are here: Home / Politics / Why Brussels Needs To Read Karl Polanyi

Most Popular Posts

Russia,information war Russia is winning the information warAiste Merfeldaite
Nanterre,police Nanterre and the suburbs: the lid comes offJoseph Downing
Russia,nuclear Russia’s dangerous nuclear consensusAna Palacio
Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto

Most Recent Posts

Vienna,social housing Vienna social-housing model—celebrated but misusedGabu Heindl
social democracy,nation-state Social democracy versus the nativist rightJan Zielonka
chemical,European Union Which comes first—Big Toxics’ profits or health?Vicky Cann
Russia,journalists,Ukraine,target Ukraine: journalists in Russia’s sightsKelly Bjorkland and Simon Smith
European Union,enlargement,Balkans EU enlargement—back to the futureEmilija Tudzarovska

Other Social Europe Publications

strategic autonomy Strategic autonomy
Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 scaled 1 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound Talks: housing

In this episode of the Eurofound Talks podcast, Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound’s senior research manager, Hans Dubois, about the issues that feed into housing insecurity in Europe and the actions that need to be taken to address them. Together, they analyse findings from Eurofound’s recent Unaffordable and inadequate housing in Europe report, which presents data from Eurofound’s Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey, European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and input from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents on various indicators of housing security and living conditions.


LISTEN HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine by FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to the importance of biodiversity, not only as a good in itself but also for the very existence of humankind. We need a paradigm change in the mostly utilitarian relation humans have with nature.

In this issue, we also look at the hazards of unregulated artificial intelligence, explore the shortcomings of the EU's approach to migration and asylum management, and analyse the social downside of the EU's current ethnically-focused Roma policy.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI European Collective Bargaining Report 2022 / 2023

With real wages falling by 4 per cent in 2022, workers in the European Union suffered an unprecedented loss in purchasing power. The reason for this was the rapid increase in consumer prices, behind which nominal wage growth fell significantly. Meanwhile, inflation is no longer driven by energy import prices, but by domestic factors. The increased profit margins of companies are a major reason for persistent inflation. In this difficult environment, trade unions are faced with the challenge of securing real wages—and companies have the responsibility of making their contribution to returning to the path of political stability by reducing excess profits.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The future of remote work

The 12 chapters collected in this volume provide a multidisciplinary perspective on the impact and the future trajectories of remote work, from the nexus between the location from where work is performed and how it is performed to how remote locations may affect the way work is managed and organised, as well as the applicability of existing legislation. Additional questions concern remote work’s environmental and social impact and the rapidly changing nature of the relationship between work and life.


AVAILABLE HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube