How to interpret the results of fresh elections to the EU? What does all this mean for the EU's green and global agenda? Are we dealing with a right turn? And is the EU a global player? Leszek Jażdżewski (Foundation of Liberte!) talks with Pat Cox, erstwhile president of the European Parliament, presently European Coordinator of the Scandinavian-Mediterranean Core Network Corridor 10 T (transport), Leader of the Mission for Assessment of Needs and Implementation for Parliamentary improvement for the European Parliament and the ultimate Council (Kijów, Ukraine), president of the Jean Monnet Foundation for Europe and president of the Advisory Committee on Nomination at the European Investment Bank.
Leszek Jażdżewski (LJ): How should we interpret from the EU position the sum of 27 separate national elections late held across Europe? What does this truly mean for the European Union?
Pat Cox (PC): It is actual that 27 separate elections are held. For respective decades in the elections to the European Parliament, it has frequently been hard to talk about Europe, as 27 elections are actually a mid-term vote on the popularity (or deficiency of it) of current governments. It's politics. They so focus alternatively on local issues, and applicable issues cannot at this point be strategical issues that could form the European Union programme.
Nevertheless, the election consequence this time is significant. Moving to the right – widely commented and observed – should be placed in the appropriate context. If you sum up all the voters of the far right, they represent little than 25% of the elected Members of the European Parliament. Although I do not want to diminish the meaning of this result, on the another hand, this means that do not constitute 75% of MEPs. We request to look at this phenomenon from the right perspective.
Furthermore, the elections continued the gradual erosion of the broad centre of European policy. Especially severe impacts occurred in the Renew Group due to results (mainly but not exclusively in France) and in the Greens (generally throughout Europe, but in peculiar in the light of very problematic results in Germany). force on the centre is now taking place in subsequent elections, and the growth of the others through the fragmentation of political parties is evident.
The second crucial trend that we can observe if I go back to my time in Parliament (1989–2004) is the fact that the far-right parties were at that time more on the margin, which sometimes led to ostracisation and isolation. For example, I remember Chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel of OVP in Austria, who introduced Jörg Heider as a number partner to the government in the early 1990s. During this time, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder persuaded the European Council not to let Austria to vote in the Council for a fewer months, which was, of course, definitively withdrawn due to the fact that it was ultravires. However, this has changed, as the Austrian Freedom organization (FPO) is now the largest organization in Austria from the point of view of the European elections, thus shifting from margin to mainstream. This is the second dimension.
The 3rd dimension is that far-right parties will now, of course, appoint Commissioners in many areas, participate in the European Council's deliberations and have more support in the European Parliament. Therefore, their representatives will spread to the full European system. As a result, the sum of these parts will surely have a greater impact from within, not just a marginal impact from the outside.
Finally, erstwhile it comes to political dynamics, erstwhile we see that the political organization is successful (as Greens were 5 years ago – not only at EU level but besides in many associate States), it is usually the centre parties that "borrow" their means of action. This means that they can now borrow any of the key slogans and policy points of any far-right parties to thus effort to halt the improvement of the far-right and keep their own position.
LJ: What are the key issues that the fresh European Parliament will gotta address?
PC: We will most likely witness the construction of the chemistry of “agreement and opposition” on the rule of dealing with the problems in question 1 by one. The thought that 1 common interest will emerge, which will fit all available scenarios and legislative and political proposals, would most likely be somewhat exotic.
Overall, there will be much more negotiations over time on circumstantial issues. A key associate of the European Parliament in the fresh European Parliament will be a associate of the EPP, while a key associate of the European Parliament has been a associate of the ALDE or Renew Europe for many years - or any of the different names we have given ourselves as liberal Democrats in the last fewer years.
In the past, we were crucial due to the fact that most of the pendulum revolved around us – whether in terms of economy, environment, civilian liberties or another issues. I think that the key MEP will now be the EPP representative, which means that the majority and the pendulum can push a small more to the right – but not necessarily always or entirely – to then re-examine another issues where another coalitions meet.
However, in order to be elected and approved, during the September political speech Ursula von der Leyen will gotta mobilise any centralist majority, which in most cases can be relied upon erstwhile reliable partners are needed.
As far as individual approaches are concerned, as the majority of these shuttles are constructed, they may be subject to a somewhat greater variation in this direction or that direction. It is surely to be expected that the utmost right, whose main problem utilized to rise populist concerns is to make fear of immigration, will possibly be the most crucial point of their attack.
I was very pleased erstwhile the European Court of Justice imposed a fine of EUR 200 million on Hungary for non-respect of asylum policy in the EU, and it was added that a million euro per day would be added for further infringements. Orban reacted furiously to this decision, but it shows – and this is crucial to anyone who believes in liberal democracy – the absolute importance of integrity, division of power and objectivity of the regulation of law.
Orban may be akin to many another populists with a large majority in parliament – if he has it, he may be able to influence the independency of courts in his country. However, it cannot control the European Court of Justice. And this is an crucial bastion of our democracy.
As far as the Green Deal is concerned, I yet know 1 thing: although climate change policies can change with electoral cycles, the physics of climate change never changes. This physics is simple and clear – the more we bring greenhouse gases into the atmosphere on a global scale, the more we increase the layer of insulation around the Earth. It's like warming the attic to make it warm at home.
Of course, you don't request to be a physicist to realize how it works. But physics doesn't change. And if we observe the increase in global warming, we know that utmost weather phenomena will have more strength and frequency – whether utmost heat, frost, drought, floods, fires and so on. We know that due to the fact that unfortunately, we already live with it. And this phenomenon will not pass away.
Ultimately, the common good requires us to keep a strong doctrine and politics like the Green Deal. And if there are ways to better advance this idea, it's no problem for me. However, if people decide to decision distant from these arrangements, we will pay a very advanced social, economic, environmental and biodiversity-related price without doing what we know is right.
LJ: Is there any another doctrine and approach to combating climate change that the EU could focus more not only on national emissions but besides on global emissions? It seems highly hard to ‘sell’ Green Deal in its current shape.
PC: Let's start with where the Green Deal is now. It has enabled the European Union, which is logical, to prosecute the simplification of greenhouse gas emissions, even with sustained primary economical growth. This is simply a very crucial accomplishment that we should not give up. This approach has given the European Union large regional credibility as a multipolar player in the multipolar planet of COP negotiations.
If we, the authors of the leading solutions, renounce it, it will reduce our ability to exert force on others in a global multipolar context. Therefore, abandoning what we want to do and turning around or questioning the successes we have already achieved would reduce our function in global negotiations.
Now that we have moved to an global level, there have been many complex issues on the economical front, on the disputed multilateralism, on the unlimited relationship with Vladimir Putin, and on the introduction of a Trojan horse to Europe – including through Putin's friends specified as Viktor Orban. It's all happening, and we request to be vigilant. However, I hope that there are certain "global public goods" (such as climate change) for which we will find wisdom, as well as institutional, political and diplomatic capacity to make these global public goods go beyond emerging economical protectionism and the fresh dimensions of the Cold War. due to the fact that if everything is sucked under the weight of a fresh Cold War into this kind of vortex, then we will lose the ability to exert a mobilizing global influence that goes beyond the logic of the Cold War or the logic of economical protectionism – that is why we request global public goods.
The second "global public goods" area is the issue of controlling the pandemic and the 3rd is simply a atomic threat. erstwhile I examine the challenge of biodiversity, all these issues matter. Then, as we can see, we have a large deal of sensitivity, which is being politically exploited in terms of the level of immigration and the treatment of asylum seekers and what to do with them, either on land in the EU itself or at sea in 3rd countries.
The full debate is inactive going on, but it is clear from the UN forecasts (of course with very large margins of fluctuations, from low to high) that the impact of climate change on humanity itself is so immense that climate change will be the main origin of migration in the coming decades, beyond wars.
When it comes to where migrants come from, these are places where you simply cannot live anymore – due to the fact that agriculture has died, or the temperature level is unbearable. Although it is not known where these people are going, any of them will effort to scope places like Europe or the United States. Median estimates for the mid-century indicate that the number of climate refugees can scope as many as 250 million. This goes so far beyond all the migration flows we have experienced so far that I am not certain that we have given our attention to this problem at all.
If you look at the Geneva Conventions many decades ago, the word "climate refugees" does not exist. This means that climate refugees under global law are not recognised at all. Similarly, erstwhile it comes to what I call "global public goods", the crucial question should be how to deal with specified issues globally.
My desire for a certain level of transcendence for any public goods is very strong. If we look at the excellent study of the Munich safety Conference this year, if I bring them to 1 expression, we can conclude that we are presently surviving in a multipolar world, but in conditions of highly contested multilateralism. In another words, many people reject our post-war multilateral institutions – China and the BRICS countries are increasingly questioning the foundations of these issues. There is now a disputed and multilateral multilateralism and the European Union will gotta deal with it in a little multipolar planet than the 1 we have known in the past.
For example, we could see this in the case of the planet Trade Organisation (WTO) – the western hypothesis was to adopt China in 2001, which was to bring freedom and democracy to China, and the Western prosperity due to the fact that we were to gain the chance to get cheaper goods and so on. However, it turned out that it did not bring democracy or freedom in the Western sense to China, and little than 2 decades later, Bill Clinton, who spoke about this in his last message about the state of the Union in the early 1990s. Later, in January 2017, Donald Trump described the results of this decision as an American slaughter. What is important, between these 2 interpretations – 1 constituting a black imagination of American slaughter, workers' displacement and deindustrialisation, and the another talking about the hope of democracy and freedom in China, we see a immense gap.
Clearly, specified a advanced hazard has not paid off in terms of the democratisation of China. China is now a increasing rival, which, of course, is seen as their key rival. Meanwhile, Europe is in a very hard region in this multipolar space, due to the fact that we have traditionally relied on the safety guarantees that the United States gives.
Traditionally in the past, we have created organisations specified as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the planet Trade Organisation (WTO), with all their alleged guarantees mutually beneficial to their operators, including the United States and Europe. And the greater the gap in relations with the US (if Donald Trump returns to the office of President), the more Europe will have difficulty positioning in the global Chinese-American space.
I hope that we will be able to proceed the rational commitment of the US to European safety guarantees. However, they will not be cost-free in the areas of the European margin of manoeuvre or another issues that the United States wants to put on the agenda of American-Chinese competition. This is why interior uncertainty is related to the policy we discussed earlier, but uncertainty besides exists outside. We are faced with much more complex, much more greyer spheres and much more request for smart negotiations within the European Union and between the EU and the outside world. The skills needed to meet this challenge require much more strategical reasoning in Europe.
If the European Union is to mean something to us (as individuals, but besides communities) as an crucial player in our interests, then we must learn how to play in this fresh world. 1 of the key examples is the Global South: non-Western, But all global The South is not Anti-Western. We must begin to be wise about making friends in places that are not like the West. And that leads to a series of questions.
Will we proceed to insist on our labour marketplace and environmental values erstwhile we enter into transactions? How about a trade favor? I do not know how Europe will take the way in all this. However, the fact is that the external, multipolar environment will be a much more hard space in the future than it utilized to be. In these more hard spaces, we request more reasoning and a clearer strategy. Now you should wait and see if it happens. I hope that this will happen, both at the level of capacity building and the leadership of the European Union.
This podcast was produced by the European Liberal Forum in collaboration with the Movieno Liberal Social and the Liberté Foundation!, with the financial support of the European Parliament. Neither the European Parliament nor the European Liberal Forum are liable for the content of the podcast nor for any way of utilizing it.
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Dr. Olga Łabendowicz translated from English
Read English at 4liberty.eu
