At the end of the last century, Fritz Scharpf diagnosed the tension at work in the construction of Europe between, on the one hand, the negative integration of dismantling national solidarities to give free rein to economic freedoms; and, on the other, the positive integration of building European solidarities to ensure political legitimacy and social cohesion.
Over the past twenty years, experience has confirmed the validity of this diagnosis. Despite the promise of economic and political convergence, the creation of the euro has, on the contrary, led to divergence and tensions between northern and southern Europe, which the rescue plans imposed by the Troika, in return for a degree of financial solidarity, have fuelled rather than calmed. The enlargement of the Union to include the former Communist countries, which was supposed to mark a genuine political reunification of the continent around the values proclaimed in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, has failed to prevent the election in several of these countries of governments openly hostile to any form of European solidarity in welcoming the political refugees and economic migrants flooding into Europe. The proliferation of opting-outs, which allow certain countries, including Great Britain, to exempt themselves from certain common rules, has not prevented the latter from democratically deciding to secede from the European Union. The promise of "equalization in progress" contained in the Treaty of Rome, then that of a "social Europe" which accompanied the Maastricht Treaty, have not prevented the progressive dismantling of the European social model, whose death notice was proclaimed by Mr. Mario Draghi as soon as he was appointed head of the ECB in 2012.
Faced with the crisis of legitimacy everywhere visible in the European institutions, the Commission attempted, immediately after the referendum deciding on Brexit, to reactivate the idea of a "European core of social rights", before proposing in its "White Paper on the Future of Europe" (March 2017) several scenarios for the future of Europe, ranging from the abandonment of common social standards (scenario 4) to much more advanced cooperation in budgetary, social and fiscal matters (scenario 5).
As previous work at the Collège de France has shown, the neoliberal prophecy of the disappearance of human solidarity in the catallactic order of a globalized Great Society is belied by the facts. Solidarities are not disappearing, but they are shifting, so that the weakening of the social state combined with the lack of European or international social solidarity is giving rise to a return to nationalist, ethnic or religious solidarity. Globalization is also accompanied by the emergence of systemic risks that have considerably strengthened banking, financial and ecological interdependencies.
To approach the scenarios devised by the European Commission in a critical and thoughtful way, it is essential to take into account the diversity of representations of the European crisis in its member states. One of the Union's most obvious weaknesses is that it does not give rise to a European public debate, but rather to a juxtaposition of national debates. After taking stock of the solidarity implemented at European level in a few key areas (such as migration, financial risks, taxation, public services and employment), the colloquium will take stock of national debates on European institutions and assess the relative weight in each country of the return to national solidarity and the call for reinforced European solidarity. Lastly, it would be an opportunity to compare some of the crisis exit projects put forward in certain countries.
Finally, the symposium provided an opportunity for a number of contributors to agree on a joint text on the need for a democratic overhaul of the European Union's institutions. The aim of this text was to launch a discussion on the deep crisis facing the European Union's institutions, and on the means to tackle it. It was published in Germany in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, in France in Le Monde, in Portugal in Il Publico, in Greece in Ta NEA, in Poland in Rzeczpospolita, in Dutch on the Doxaludo blog , in Spain in El País, and in English on the Open Democracy website .