Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

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

Why Macron’s ‘Third Way’ Is EU’s Best Option

John Lloyd 19th September 2018

John Lloyd

John Lloyd

The largest question in democratic politics in Europe is: who’s in charge?

The issue was illuminated in the latest standoff in the European Parliament, where the body voted on Wednesday to sanction Hungary for its illiberal policies. And in Sweden, where the far-right did well enough in last Sunday’s election to ensure that its borders are tightened. And in Britain, where a preliminary accord on Brexit now seems nearer.

The ideals of a more united European Union demand clarity. A decision has to be made on whether or not a European federation, erasing sovereignty in participating nations, is desired, and by whom.

It had seemed easy before our times. Treaties – of Augsburg in 1555 and of Westphalia in 1648, arrived at after years of carnage – groped towards a principle that nation states were the natural order of international relations. The treaties didn’t stop wars or dismantle all empires, nor did they usher in an era of religious tolerance. But they meant that countries which could claim the allegiance of citizens within defined borders were the basic unit of power.

Who was in charge? Clearly the ruler – increasingly, as time went by, put in place by the will of the people. The older states, like Britain and France, were experienced in this. The newer creations, as Germany and Italy in the latter half of the 19th century, strove to catch up. In the 20th century, anti-imperialist momentum, promoted most of all by the United States, rolled on and created many new nations. Nation-statism became the prevailing world order.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

Federal option

But the greater carnage of World War Two and Nazism impelled a few thinkers and activists in devastated Europe to see nationalism not as a prophylactic against war, but as a prime cause of it. Economic interdependence and slow but steady integration of governments would take the place of the “balance of power” among states which had so clearly failed.

Power would no longer be precariously balanced, but unified in one pacific entity: a federal Europe, dedicated to peace, with contiguous nations joining on condition they observed the rules of the club: cooperation, democracy, equality, freedom of speech, the market and the press and respect for civil society. The values of Western liberalism, incarnate in a new kind of governing power – which had renounced the old kind of power.

However, a club has rules, borders which cannot be breached. Hungary, a member since 2004, was this week judged to have crossed them. A report by a Green Party member of the European Parliament from the Netherlands, Judith Sargentini, found that the Hungarian administration, led by the increasingly authoritarian Viktor Orban, had comprehensively violated the independence of the judiciary, the press and the academy, and had become massively corrupt. As a result, the parliament voted – for the first time in its history – to sanction Hungary by depriving it of voting rights in the EU’s Council of Ministers.

Orban, denouncing the move as one cooked up before the debate, was wholly defiant, saying that Hungary “will not accede to this blackmail.” It was, he said, an attack on the Hungarian state and people by countries that had allowed floods of migrants to enter Europe, and were trying to force Hungary to do the same.

The Orban confrontation dramatizes the issue: does a limited democratic association like the EU have the power to override an elected government like his own? Orban has excoriated the EU’s liberalism, above all its migrant policy, since his election in 2010. This year, with a strengthened mandate in the April election, and with the spreading support of patriotic-populist parties – in power in Poland and Italy, and gaining traction most recently in Sweden – he feels more and more able to voice a challenge to the EU.

Orban sees himself as upholding true Christian values, bearing the flame of a militant Christianity gone flabby in West European hands, and indifferent to, even encouraging of, an invasion of Europe by mainly Muslim immigrants. He will continue, and confidently – since the parliament’s vote to censure must be approved by the leaders of the 28 member states (including a still-Brexiting Britain), and there he has allies, above all in Poland and Italy, who can vote to veto it.

Screen Shot 2018 09 18 at 09.12.40 e1537254850371

The Hungarian standoff has illuminated, cruelly but necessarily, the issue of authority.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

Macron’s question

The question is also one put before the Union by Emmanuel Macron, the leader most clearly opposed to the nationalist-populists. In pressing for a more robust advance to closer European integration, only the French president has put the issue squarely: who’s for federation? And who isn’t?

Macron’s fellow leaders had voted for a euro currency which was as much a mechanism for greater integration as a new means of exchange, agreeing to “ever closer Union” – while at the same time recoiling from a more strongly integrated banking and financial order which, the German governing center-right parties and the northern nations fear, would mean more irresponsibility from the southern countries.

Orban counts on these divisions. He sees the present strengthening of the nationalists, understands the reluctance of the Union to do more than make declarations, and meanwhile bides his time.

Macron, who has forced the pace and the need for a decision, has, however, also provided a third way between integration and the exit chosen by the United Kingdom. He has proposed a Europe of concentric circles, with an integrating core and increasingly weak adhesion to the Union in those states locating themselves in the spaces further from the center.

This is the way that should be taken: one which accommodates those countries that see the Union as an embryo state, and those which see it as a free trade arrangement with better inter-state cooperation on selected issues. Were it adopted, it would liberate the EU from its self-created dilemma – how to get the Union closer where many of the members wish to remain at a distance. They wish to do so because they wish to retain national sovereignty – as, it seems, the people who vote for them do. The nation state makes clear who is in charge; the European Union has deferred the issue to a future ideal state.

Orban grasps that one large truth, and has erected his semi-authoritarian rule upon it. Meanwhile, the Brits have chosen. The Hungarians, Poles and Italians have moved into the hostile camp. Others wish to remain ambiguous. But the time for ambiguity is running out.

First published as a Reuters Commentary and reproduced with the author’s permission.

John Lloyd

John Lloyd is a contributing editor to the Financial Times, where he has been Labour Editor, Industrial Editor, East European Editor, and Moscow Bureau Chief.

You are here: Home / Politics / Why Macron’s ‘Third Way’ Is EU’s Best Option

Most Popular Posts

Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic
Orbán,Hungary,Russia,Putin,sanctions,European Union,EU,European Parliament,commission,funds,funding Time to confront Europe’s rogue state—HungaryStephen Pogány

Most Recent Posts

reality check,EU foreign policy,Russia Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—a reality check for the EUHeidi Mauer, Richard Whitman and Nicholas Wright
permanent EU investment fund,Recovery and Resilience Facility,public investment,RRF Towards a permanent EU investment fundPhilipp Heimberger and Andreas Lichtenberger
sustainability,SDGs,Finland Embedding sustainability in a government programmeJohanna Juselius
social dialogue,social partners Social dialogue must be at the heart of Europe’s futureClaes-Mikael Ståhl
Jacinda Ardern,women,leadership,New Zealand What it means when Jacinda Ardern calls timePeter Davis

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The EU recovery strategy: a blueprint for a more Social Europe or a house of cards?

This new ETUI paper explores the European Union recovery strategy, with a focus on its potentially transformative aspects vis-à-vis European integration and its implications for the social dimension of the EU’s socio-economic governance. In particular, it reflects on whether the agreed measures provide sufficient safeguards against the spectre of austerity and whether these constitute steps away from treating social and labour policies as mere ‘variables’ of economic growth.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The winter issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The sequence of recent catastrophes has thrust new words into our vocabulary—'polycrisis', for example, even 'permacrisis'. These challenges have multiple origins, reinforce each other and cannot be tackled individually. But could they also be opportunities for the EU?

This issue offers compelling analyses on the European health union, multilateralism and international co-operation, the state of the union, political alternatives to the narrative imposed by the right and much more!


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD 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