You Cannot Integrate Everything

George Schöpflin on the Dilemmas of Diversity

The process of European integration has created new forms of political power on a supranational level. The resultant institutions are either accused of concentrating too much power, or they face the opposite criticism, that they are not powerful enough to represent Europe as a unified entity.

I agree that there is a kind of dual power in Europe. The European Union has brought into being a form of autonomous institutional power. This power is independent of the nation-states and to a certain degree, sometimes to a considerable degree, detached from the citizens and hence- I don't want to exaggerate this- free-floating. This is the basis of all the talk about democratic deficit. Power is being exercised over the citizens of Europe, who have no democratic control over that power, because control is only obtained through the European Parliament, through the European Court in Luxembourg and, of course, through the member states.
Now, ironically, the member states constitute a major obstacle. The citizens try to influence either the way in which the European project is constructed or how it is actually administered, but the member states themselves have their own interests, their own perspectives, their own discourses, and so inevitably, the pressure from citizens gets diffused as it is conveyed by the member states. It doesn't really get through to the European level because it is the member states' interests which actually get through. So what you have is this very awkward construct, with a contest for power between the European Union and the member states. Nobody likes to talk about this. But we all, I think, recognise that the European Union has been given autonomous powers. And whatever power the European Union may have, it has received that power from the member states. So any further integration is conditional upon the agreement of the member states. Of course, we know that people and states don't like to give away power.
What makes the European Union unique is that its power didn't result from a contest, but from the political will of the member states at the time of its foundation in the 1950s. There was a strong sense that there should never be another war between France and Germany, that European nations should prosper in peace and democracy. This wish is a very solid and worthwhile foundation. Two things stand in the way, unfortunately. One is that these discourses or narratives of Europe are pretty much exhausted. For us in Central Europe, the ideas of peace and democracy may retain some resonance, but if you are French or German or Italian and under 35 you take these things for granted. And secondly, there is no agreement on whether further integration is beneficial for the citizens of Europe, or whether we have now reached, if you like, the natural limit of integration. Now, that's not my position. I think that further integration is both desirable and inevitable.

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How can the traditional diversity of Europe be maintained among homogenising tendencies like these? Or should it be maintained at all? What is the role and future of multiculturalism in Europe? 

There are strategic areas where a high degree of European integration is desirable, but I think it is important to bear in mind that Europe is an extraordinarily difficult place to comprehend, with something in the order of thirty-five high cultures confined to a space that is very small in global terms. Think about the quite astonishing variety that one encounters on a putative journey between Lisbon and Helsinki. It seems to me that you shouldn't regulate this diversity. To some degree, each culture tries to establish a cultural monopoly for itself. Whether one likes it or not, this tendency seems to be universal. Still, at this level it is important to recognise that we have things in common. From the outside, the differences don't seem so big. I've always found that outside Europe I have much more in common with Europeans, however different they are from me, than I do with, say, Americans, with whom I sort of share a language. At the end of the day I do think that there is a kind of Europeanness; it's quite hard to define, although I could take a stab at it by talking about shared European narratives- forms of European discourse. These are pretty thin in the political realm but much stronger in the cultural realm. It seems to me that you can talk about a shared cultural space even in trivial matters such as fashions. Fashions are really extraordinary. Think about fashions in Budapest fifteen years ago and compare them with fashions now. We've adopted Western- Western is perhaps too homogenizing a term- a particular form of Italian, German, and to some degree Austrian, fashions and created something which is a) Hungarian and b) European. Our dress doesn't differ very much from the standard European dress code. Look at any of the women's magazines, whether they are in Hungarian or German or French or English or Latvian or Finnish- they are almost the same. If you go around Europe, most people, certainly those below a certain age, have little problem communicating with each other, given that the people who go round speak some kind of English. English as a second language is a different language. It's international English but we talk about much the same things. Young people listen to the same pop music, they all watch the same football, they all watch the Eurovision song contest. At this cultural level there is a family resemblance. Certainly the possibility of communicating at this level is much stronger now than it was fifty years ago.

How is this specifically European unity-in-diversity mirrored on the administrative level? 

The problem with European integration is that it has not occurred to a sufficient degree outside the political sphere. I think it is fair to say that most people only have a vague idea, "Oh, yes, it's those people in Brussels." Brussels has become a kind of symbolic anti-capital where all sorts of terrible things go on and regulations are passed in the face of which we are helpless. The regulations, however, are almost always agreed on by the Council of Ministers, in which each and every member state is represented with a right of veto.
When the European Union elaborates a directive, it uses the special language of the EU. Why is that important? A directive is a framework law issued in Brussels. The details concerning its implementation are filled in by the local bureaucracies of the member states. If a state over-regulates (meaning that it expands the framework law consisting of, say, a hundred articles to maybe fifteen hundred), then it basically gets a free ride, because it can pass regulations without accountability to its citizens. The divergences among different EU countries are quite remarkable. What is crucial for the citizens is that there are regulations in the EU that are unchallengeable or very difficult to challenge. Still, very often they are challenged, not by the European Union but by the member states.
I can give you a concrete example of this. Very recently there was some kind of a health regulation calling for the replacement of organ pipes containing lead. And the British press made a huge song and dance about this. "Here is the wretched EU, doing it again. Why can't we be free to do what we want?" Now the only thing the British press didn't look at was that Britain was the only country where this problem arose. It was the Health and Safety Executive in Britain which said, "Let's get rid of the organ pipes with lead because they are a health hazard." The whole thing had nothing to do with the EU; it had its origins in Brussels but was the doing of a member state.
What I've argued in a working paper I wrote recently was that in order for the citizens of Europe to become acquainted with the EU, there must be a stronger European Union presence in all of the member states. The European Union- whether it's the Commission, the Parliament or the Court of Justice- should be able to scrutinise the way in which EU legislation is actually being put into practice. This is something that citizens can engage in, not just national governments and administrations. This would allow the EU to become more accountable to the citizens and to acquire more of a reality. And clearly, there is going to be some local variation. Since heating problems are going to be different in Sicily and Lappland, you can't have a one-size-fits-all solution. I think Hungary is in some ways an extreme case, because at the time of enlargement, Hungarians were so introverted politically that they were barely aware that the outside world exists. Unfortunately, that's still the case, but there are special, local reasons for that. I think it was actually a good thing that the Hungarian government did not always take the stance on certain items of EU legislation that the citizens of Hungary wanted. In some cases the government simply had to say, "I'm sorry, there's no argument, it's EU legislation, you can't touch it". Still, I believe that the EU should do something about this and allow citizens' views on the local implementation of EU directives to be heard. Of course, if we try to follow this route, the member states will most likely hate it because it clearly means a derogation of their own power.
And this leads us to the problem of the Constitutional Treaty. There are those who say: no more grand projects, Europe is fine as it is. I think that the European Union does need the inspiration that it gains from grand projects. The Constitution is important in that it provides a powerful focus for Europe. Technically, the Constitution reinforces the dual legitimation of the European Union, which means that the legitimacy of the European Union derives from the member states and the individual citizens. In principle, each and every European citizen could have an influence on the institutions of the European Union, and if there is a serious conflict with their own member state, they can have recourse to dual legitimation as an instrumental challenge- what citizens of the nation-states are already doing. And we all know that some of the nation-states have systems which are democratic, but they may not be entirely consistent in their respect for democracy. I think that when political parties in these states pursue policies that really are at variance with fairly universally accepted democratic criteria, there comes a point when even Europe has to listen. European integration is, among other things, a way of ensuring that democratic standards are maintained.

Do you think that the tendency towards unification and homogenisation might prevail over diversity, resulting in a Europe that is a world power like the US or China? 

Europe is a major player in terms of trade and conflict resolution. The question is whether a European superstate with an imperial or superpower status will emerge. And this question remains open because European integration is completely consensual, without any coercive elements. This is the heart of the whole European project, what we do we do by common consent. This makes European politics very boring. There is no drama. We sit behind closed doors and have long discussions which appear to be a waste of time to outsiders. But it also means that we have developed what is commonly referred to as "soft power", power exercised without coercion, through long and complex engagement with one another. Now I recognise that there are certain situations in which this sort of engagement doesn't work. But there is in Europe a very deep-seated commitment to nonviolence, which is the legacy of two world wars. With the exception of the British, and to some extent the French, no European army is really worthy of the name. In terms of manpower as well as technology, we are far behind the United States, simply because we don't spend enough money to keep pace with them. I suppose there is a hypothetical scenario that Russia could invade Europe, but frankly, I don't believe it. We're quite safe from direct military invasion, or so we think. So any European superpower that might emerge is going to be very different from the United States, Russia or China. Admittedly, this kind of soft power does not work in some parts of the world. It didn't work during the Balkan wars, for instance, which Europe did not do very much to stop. But I actually believe that if Europe had intervened, using its soft power between 1988 and 1990, or its hard power later on, the bloodshed might have been stopped.
You can see why I'm not particularly worried about the European superstate behaving like an empire. This is also why it is difficult for others, like the Americans, to understand what Europe is about. We don't do things in the way in which Chinese, Russians and Americans think they should be done. I think the Japanese understand us better, with a similarly awful experience of the Second World War behind them. The last thing they want is to use their military power. Economic leverage is something else- that's what they use, and we use it too. One thing is clear: the political supremacy that Europe enjoyed for so many centuries is over. To some extent, our destiny is going to be decided by others. There are, of course, positive ways in which other parts of the world affect us. Still, what Europe has done on other continents under the heading of colonisation is now being reversed, with an increasing influence upon who we are and who we will be. In this postcolonial world, we must shape an identity for ourselves that integrates certain elements and excludes others. At this early stage of the process, we still cannot decide what we want, and need to elaborate the standards that allow us to say that something is beautiful, but perhaps not really our sort of thing, or that it is ugly or uninteresting and hence should not be integrated. We surely cannot integrate everything. If we tried to do so, the resultant transformations would be so thoroughgoing as to make us entirely estranged from ourselves. One of the new long-term tasks facing Europe, therefore, is the formation of a novel kind of power of judgment, to be exercised in the domains of ethics, aesthetics and culture.

How do you see the representation of European power relations, from within, as an MEP sitting in Strasbourg and Brussels? 

Well, the problem is this: the entire European Parliament is directly elected within a space of about four days. Because the European Parliament doesn't, in the eyes of the voters, appear to have the same kind of significance as their own national parliaments, voter turnout is pretty low. I think the lowest was in Slovakia- it was only 17 per cent. Hungary with 38 per cent was somewhere in the middle. The best was Malta, where it was about 90 per cent, but there is a very good reason for that, which is that the Maltese population is about 400,000 and I think that voters make up 250,000- 270,000. So each vote counts. Which does suggest to me that the solution may be to break up every country into little units of about a 100,000 so that people feel that power is theirs. But I'm afraid that isn't going to happen. And maybe it's a good thing. What we have right now, at any rate, is a parliament with a good deal of power but not that much legitimacy. How effective is the Parliament? Reasonably effective. I think that many of the legislative reports which come out of the Commission are improved by parliamentary scrutiny.

How do you see the role of nations and national minorities in Europe?

Basically- and this goes back to my first answer- nations are a reality in Europe. I think that the relationship between a high culture and a political nation is both direct and indirect, but at least one function of the state is the political articulation and protection of a cultural collectivity which we will call a nation. What we have in Europe is a group of very particular types of nation-states which are fairly alike. And they are fairly alike because, in order to gain recognition to protect their existence, they had to develop their own national identity in such a way that it would be recognised. A few nation-states that came into being in the eighteenth century and which had roots in pre-existing political entities- France, Britain, England, the Netherlands, Denmark and maybe Sweden- actually exercise quite a lot of cultural power. The emergence of modern democracy meant that it became necessary for people who were governed and taxed together to actually understand each other, to share discourses, so that they could have a say in how they were to be governed and taxed. This sense of commonality, of a shared enterprise, is what we call a nation. As this system developed, fantastic energies were released by the concept of the nation-state, as shown by Napoleon's conquests. These energies were unleashed by the idea of the citoyen, the French individual citizen- at that time a man rather than a woman- who actively participated in the political affairs of his country and was ready to fight for it as a soldier. And these energies had enormous political consequences. Latecomers to this process- Hungary obviously being one of them - were bound to find that they were overwhelmed in terms of political, economic and military power. This gave rise to the fear that we, whoever "we" may be as a cultural collectivity, might disappear. The question that latecomers face is this: how do we generate the same energy when we lack the political framework? We don't have a state of our own. At best, we have the memory or the relics of a state. This has been a particularly acute problem in Central Europe. It is much easier to fill the existing framework of a state in Portugal or in Spain. Germany is a very special case. There was a recognition that there was an entity called Germany, but what did that actually mean with such an enormous political diversity? Italy was even more special. In any case, by the twentieth century, a very particular notion of the nation-state emerged, implying a particular national history, a national literature, a national music and a national culture. There is only one European country where there is no opera house: Ireland, where they have been arguing about building one but haven't done so yet. The Estonian National Opera House was built by public subscription in 1913. By then the Estonians existed as a nation, but as a state absolutely not. If you aspire to gain recognition as an autonomous cultural collectivity, you need to do all the right things- you create a national literature, you write historical novels, epic poems and so on. This is very European: we do history backwards. In fact, it turns out that this is what Europe is about. It's completely contingent on the need to create the kind of culture which others would recognise as European. And I think it does have a political aim as well as an aesthetic and social one.

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What do you think about the victimhood discourses so widespread in our region, especially its Hungarian version? 

In terms of identity construction, one of the most astonishing developments of the 1980s and 1990s was the consolidation of victimhood discourses. If you have it accepted by others that you are a victim, you immediately seize control of the high moral ground. At that point, you can essentialise your position and can even screen out other, competing identities. There is some propensity on the part of many Central Europeans to say, "We have shed our blood to defend Europe; we should be recognised as victims of history," etc. But there is no point in saying in London that I've come from a country which has resisted the barbarian hordes for centuries, because the Brits will say, "Who gives a damn?" Some of us in the European Parliament stress the need for unified European history if we want to have some form of European unity. This means that Western Europeans need to acquaint themselves more closely with the devastating experience of Communism in the former Eastern Bloc, but it also means that citizens of countries that joined the EU recently should learn about figures like Jean Monnet or Robert Schuman. There are gaps on both sides which need to be filled. Victimhood discourses, I think, are the wrong way to go about it, since they lock you into the past. It is, of course, not easy to formulate a positive vision of European identity. But it is my conviction that we should try to sidestep the attraction of victimhood discourses and instead aim for a two-tiered identity, one that allows us to have our Hungarian or Czech or Slovak identity as well as a European identity parallel with it. I actually believe that the two complement one another in such a way as to offer a viable alternative to the seductions of victimhood. There is, in fact, a good model here, a community that has accomplished what I have in mind. The Irish lived in the midst of terrible oppression for hundreds of years; they lived through the devastating potato famine and the subsequent mass emigration of the 1840s and after. Even in the 1960s and 70s, that's what Irishness was mainly about. Today it isn't. Today Irishness is about being a successful European country. It has worked very well. I should add that I'm not convinced that victimhood is as important in Hungary nowadays as it was ten, twenty or thirty years ago. It is still there to some extent, but much less so. We seem to have problems other than historical victimhood. Oh, by the way, having said that, I would still like to have the Turks apologise for defeating us at the Battle of Mohács.  

 

 

The Hungarian version of the above interview was conducted by Orsolya Gergely, who teaches Sociology at the Sapientia University in Csíkszereda (Miercurea-Ciuc). It appeared in the April 2006 issue of Korunk, a monthly published in Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár). The English version was made for The Hungarian Quarterly by Gábor Buzási, who teaches Hebrew and Classical Greek at the Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Piliscsaba. George Schöpflin is Jean Monnet Professor of Political Science at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies of London University and Director of the Centre for the Study of Nationalism in Europe. He is a member of the European Parliament for FIDESZ- Hungarian Civic Union.