Relaunching Europe as a Climate Peace Project
9th of May 2020 – Europe Day 70 years on since the Schuman Declaration. Here is what the founding fathers got wrong and why it is up to us to fix it, for the sake of European democracy.
The European Union is going through an all round health check as it faces a public health crisis of unseen proportions yet in her history. While the novel coronavirus has brought a novel dimension to the long list of crises the EU has been going through over the past decade, elements in this situation echo some of the not-so new elements of each of the previous crises. In fact, being myself from a Member State which only joined the EU in 2007, I don’t seem to remember a time when the EU was not facing a massive crisis and operating from some sort of a rescue, single issue, logic. And yet, this time things are different, the crisis appears to be of all issues: it is a crisis of the public health systems across the EU as well as it is a crisis of the health of our democracies, the poor health of our economic system and a crisis of the unhealthy relationship between the European Commission, its Member States and the citizens of this wonderful political construction.
It is undeniable that this crisis exacerbated the inequalities we are faced with within the European Union, amplified the gender and generation gaps as well as the economic inequalities inside Member States (with 40% of children in Romania having no access to the Internet while also being expected to finish up the school year online). The main equalising factor of equal access to the public space having been erased, citizens left and right are left asking themselves “Where is the European Union in all this”?
70 Years on since the Schuman Declaration, the need for a new Manifesto for the Future of Europe has not been louder or more pressing.
On Europe Day, An Ecological Manifesto for the Future of Europe
Since its onset, the European project has gravitated around the provision of a key public good: peace. In its initial stages, this was about the prevention of war amongst the European nations and provided therefore a vision of peace amongst the states comprising the Coal and Steel Community, which relied on a negative definition of peace: the absence of war. Then came along functional integration which promoted structural peace and provided a range of other public goods, such as equal access to the internal market, a common agricultural policy, freedom of movement for all, a common currency and a growing political project, to what is now a European Union of 28-1 Member States.
While negative peace and structural peace were thoroughly developed with the public good creation being expanded into new policy areas, the step to the most profound form of peace, positive cultural peace has yet to be taken. Nowhere in the original documents envisioning the European Union was there a discussion of the fact that the Europe of the Industrial Revolution, the economic logic of which was built into the Schuman declaration was by definition a Europe at war. A Europe at war with nature, with the climate, with sustainable growth and a Europe at war, without knowing it, with the right of future Europeans to have a stable and predictable climate to live in.
This has been a European Union where the third level of peace, positive peace or cultural peace, based on the integration of the holistic rights of citizens has yet to be advanced, where their health has yet to be prioritised alongside the economic right to pursue wealth, where cultural and educational integration was left lagging behind. Ultimately, this has been a European Union that is plagued by the social inequality it continues to look away from. The novel coronavirus pandemic showed us that relying on open borders alone as the expression of European unity won’t get us very far in times of distress.
These inconsistencies require urgent fixing and talking about institutional design solely or simply focusing on financial assistance is yet another way to dodge the bigger questions and slowly continue to erode the European project by advancing its incoherences. The question is not which institutional set-up for the EU? The question is: What is the goal the EU should seek to advance for and alongside the EU citizens? And while the current pandemic is showing its inconsistencies while the climate emergency is fast tracking our need to step ahead.
Fastforward 70 years since the Schuman Declaration and those future generations are Us, now, here. “What do we want? Climate Justice. When do we want it? Now” shouted the European youth on the streets of Berlin, Brussels and Barcelona, all across the globe on September 29th 2019, the largest yet social movement in European history. And while the European establishment had no choice but to hear, we see its proposed “European Green Deal” to be missing the elements of a “deal” for the citizens, as it promises. The proposal is insufficient for the climate and insufficient for social-environmental equality in Europe, but it is certainly something to build on.
The novel Coronavirus hit different countries at different rates, showing us that some populations in Europe carry a heavier percentage of respiratory illnesses than others, as a result of exposure to environmental air pollution, often produced across the border of their Member State. Europe’s public health issues span beyond the ill equipped health care systems (a product of inequality and poor economic planning to reduce costs to a minimum irrespective of the importance to wellbeing) to relying on global production chains which were not able to cope in times of disruption of global trade.
Europe’s public health issue is one of differentiated economic opportunities (or massive economic inequality), differentiated access to clean air and differentiated tolls and treatment of workers across the space of the Union. Differentiated access to health facilities ultimately comes down to unequal rights to life, as does differentiated air quality. This is creating a bitter sentiment across Europeans, if economic gain can be put above the right to life and differentiated resilience to a health crisis seems appears to be based on the environmental conditions across the different regions (even within the same country).
In that sense, the EU is not at peace yet and neither are the people of Europe or the EU’s Member States. Ultimately, one’s right to pollute should stop where another’s right to health and to a clean environment starts. However, so far the latter has not been made a right in the European Union while the former was barely questioned. Addressing this problematic relationship has got to be the priority in a new European construction or the European construction might need to accept its short-termism as its own destiny.
The European Union as a Climate Democracy
The Future of Europe is either that of a climate democracy, putting health, environment and citizens first, or it will simply be decided upon by natural forces.
A climate democracy is an ecosystemic approach to managing the European competing political, economic and social interests at a time when it is clearer and clearer that the old linear economic model on which the EU is built on is collapsing and citizens are feeling more and more that 21st century relevant public services are not ready for them yet (be it school or health systems supplied in Europe). This form or organization would seek to promote key elements of an ecosystemic approach: local resilience, equilibrium between consumption and available resources, health of individuals and communities, circularity models of production, etc.
Looking at the state of our Union in May 2020, A new 28-1 European Union is clearly begging to be built, one in which the linear model of a faulty economic logic, a model rather unnatural in its wastefulness of resources, disconnected from all other models of the natural systems in which it unfolds, is changed around, putting health of environment and of citizens and society at its core. Returning to its original purpose of the promotion of the highest public good, that of peace, which enables access to all other public goods, the European Union needs to actively promote an agenda of positive peace creation with its climate and its citizens. In doing so, the key question around intra-generational inequality across the Union space is finally able to be addressed.
This has to be the starting point simply because nature and the environment are the primordial public goods and the basis of what is to be shared by the different people on the European Continent. The young generations of today are not met with the prospect of a peaceful future by a European Union going from short-term emergency to another, overlooking the big pending threat of climate change.
The European Green Deal was meant to be a combination of a New Deal for Europe and a Green Deal, making it a Green focused reorientation of the financial rationale driving the EU. The New Deal in the US, on which the European Green Deal builds, introduced social security to the Americans and it focused on immediate measures. Our European Social Security is still in the making, we do not yet have a minimum basic income across this space or a unified pensions scheme. Following the 2008/2009 financial crisis, the EU institutions could have been busy at work introducing economic security for its citizens after banks were bailed out. The European Green Deal could have introduced an Environmental Security System or a Climate Social Security system and some immediate measures of support (i.e. carbon dividends to citizens).
The EU Green Deal should have made the economic pledges to bring a guarantee to European Youth (those below 35) of a clean environment and a stable climate for their future while safeguarding the future of pension funds currently still tied to fossil fuel investment funds (and therefore about to collapse). The stable climate is a prerequisite for economic stability in the future, in Europe and beyond. In a world where children are striking from school because they are too concerned about a total collapse of the planetary system, the idea of job creation without climate guarantees creation seems to be ironic. As does the obsession with providing education that is disconnected from the pressing needs of our times.
So could we dream of a European Union which aims to guarantee the right to clean energy and clean jobs for the future? Of one based on the right to a stable and predictable climate, a right to clean air and water and most importantly, a right to health linked to the above? A European Union that is a climate democracy and one where education reflects the interests of young people in 2020, instead of those ideas of older generations from decades ago? Educational systems across Europe are becoming obsolete and in a climate democracy they would need to be able to adjust in accordance with the changing times and the very loud asks of their key audience: the pupils, students, the youth.
Economic recovery can and must start from a right to health and a right to clean air for all in the EU so that the resilience of citizens in the face of similar viruses as was the novel coronavirus is promoted. This will require a speedy phasing out of all fossil fuel based forms of energy by 2025. In order to achieve that, an investment plan based on a higher carbon price than the current one will be required, the revenues of which could be reinvested towards supporting individuals throughout the transition, through carbon dividends.
Currently the EU carbon markets raise revenues, which when distributed per capita per MS, create yet another depiction of inequality across the Union.
Citizens need to be directly connected to the CO2 conversation in redistributive ways, because while the profits of the industrial revolution logic Europe have reached some, the costs have been spread much wider across the society. Carbon dividends won’t solve this but will help support individuals and communities in the transition as well as democratise access to climate tools.
A focus on education fit for the 21st century should be pursued at Union level, with a view to making the jobs required in the climate transition available already within the next 2 years. A climate democracy builds on rights and responsibilities, the right to clean air and the responsibility of Member States to support individuals to recycle their waste are intertwined. A climate democracy gives citizens and civil society their due role at the decision-making table in the EU. This can be achieved in several ways, including by giving more power to institutions like the European Economic and Social Committee but not without a clear change in its mandate for it to be the EEESC – including a new E for Environmental in its title (The European Environmental Economic Social Committee).
Alternatively, 3-5 year rotating civil society advisory councils from across the EU, inputting directly to decision-making could be a solution. There is no denying that it is Europe’s own citizens that operate and work as the respiratory system of this construction, bringing in breaths of fresh ideas . Cutting and isolating citizens’ voices which could happen if the Commission Future of Europe conference for citizens’ involvement continues to be postponed much further will only make asphyxiate the European project.
We further need a Common Social-Environmental-Economic Policy, a broadening of the discussion on EU citizenship being connected to health rights such as a right to clean air and a thoroughly well designed Environmental Social Security Guarantee, meant to alter the politics of inequality across the EU. The changes required are not just about another institutional design or about Treaty change. In fact, I doubt we have time to invest in that as the climate emergency is pending upon our doors and by the time the post-corona economic downturn will have been fully overcome, we will be looking at a filled up carbon budget, beyond the agreements of the Paris Agreement possibly. There is no real traction or appetite across the populations of the EU for a 2 years long top-level political discussion for european studies graduates on whether or not to integrate certain institutions and disintegrate others.
We are now in a EU28-1 and this rings a second emergency: the EU is at danger of losing even more of its appeal to more than just the British. The simple invitation of Greta Thunberg to meet the EU leaders was not sufficient, in her own words, because ovations don’t make up for climate action. We need real actions that show the EU is ready to pursue its continued defence and creation of two increasingly linked public goods: peace and climate justice.
The European economic model has had an active role to play in creating the globalised world we are now living in. By not having priced negative externalities for centuries now while extending supply chains all across the world, the delayed climate burden was shifted on to generations which had nothing to do in the making of this initial European dream and its impact on the world. We can not have a Europe at war with the right of future generations to have a stable future on this planet.
The European Union is a peace project and the world’s largest market: by changing its economic model now it can lead the way to a cleaner, more locally supplied world, with a smaller carbon footprint. No, Europe is not responsible for just 10% of the world’s emissions as you will hear some say, our carbon footprint is much bigger by the imports of higher carbon intensive goods from abroad, which are cheaper because neither labour nor environmental resources and conservation are priced correctly.
The EU has to become a fair force in the world, by a promotion of fairness of trade with respect to the environment and to the societies it affects. This is my European dream and I suspect I am not alone in it. It might also be the last European dream and that not by choice, but by necessity. It really is now or never, the time for the EU to become what it should have strived to be from the beginning: a social-environmental climate democracy.