Europa im Trancezustand

Die institutionelle Krise infolge des Scheiterns des irischen Referendums über den Vertrag von Lissabon habe Europa „langweilig und unattraktiv“ gemacht, sagt der Leiter des Zentrums für Liberale Strategien in Sofia, Ivan Krastev, in einem Kommentar für Open Democracy vom 25. Juni 2008.

Krastev argues that the EU’s latest crisis is „unreal and disturbing“ because in theory the negative vote in Ireland should have dealt a „fatal blow“ to reforming the EU and the outcome should have been a two-speed or „paralysed Europe“. However, what is happening instead is that everyone is simply waiting for the Irish to be forced to vote ‚yes‘, he believes. 

„The result is that the referendum outcome is surrounded by a sense of pervasive unreality,“ he states. 

Krastev criticises the duplicity of European leaders, as a day before the vote they were arguing that a negative vote would be the death of the Lisbon Treaty, whereas the day after, they argued that nothing had in fact changed and „the treaty’s ratification should continue“. 

He thus calls EU leaders‘ common strategy for dealing with crises „evasion by trivialisation“. An example of this, he continues, was the Brussels Summit of 19-20 June 2008, where the reaction was „consistent with the default attitude that the EU never has political problems – it only has communication problems“. 

According to Krastev, Brussels has two explanations for the ’no‘ vote in the Irish referendum: Irish leaders failed to communicate the necessity of the treaty and the public should never have been asked to vote in the first place. 

Krastev says it is inevitable that the public will react negatively if EU leaders „are ready to ignore the sense of crisis and disappointment expressed by the voters“. He argues that it is not Euro-scepticism that is on the rise but rather that Euro-enthusiasm has disappeared. If there were referenda in all of the EU’s member states, at least half of them would have rejected the Lisbon Treaty, predicts Krastev. 

He then makes a comparison between the EU and the US, where many „Americans are convinced that their political system is broken“. Krastev finds that the energy created by Barack Obama in the USA is missing in Europe. „The very strength of the European project – its focus on piecemeal engineering and institutional reforms – can also become its key weakness,“ he says. 

Krastev believes Europe is slipping back to becoming the „old world“. Today’s world is shaped by „visionary authoritarian leaders“ or by „powerful grassroots democratic movements,“ but Europe does not have either. 

He derides the fact that Europe’s leaders can translate a ’no‘ vote into a future ‚yes‘ vote and claims the continent may become a „victim of the major contemporary global transformation“. Europe is edging away from becoming a model for the rest of the world to follow because of its postmodernity, post-nationalism and secularism, claims Krastev. 

He concludes by declaring that the EU’s default strategy of dealing with a crisis through „evasion by trivialisation“ is the wrong way forward. Thus, the future of the EU depends not on finding „workable compromise“ but will be determined „by its success in finding new social, political and intellectual energy“.