Speaking at the Schloss Bellevue palace in Berlin, President
Joachim Gauck used a televised speech in February 2013 to make the case for
more European integration. At the time, calling for “more Europe” in terms of
shifting still more governmental sovereignty from the state governments to that
of the Union was not a very popular task. Further limiting the power of his
message is the fact that the German presidency is largely ceremonial , unlike
the office of governor in an American state. Nevertheless, Gauck was determined
to put the contemporary condition of the “European project” in favorable
perspective. The most striking—and even effective—aspect of his speech is his
repeated references to “European citizens.” Had he used “Germans” instead, he
would have subtly undercut his own message. The prime minister of the E.U. state of Britain at the time would never have used the term, "European citizens." Nor would he have agreed with the E.U. value of solidarity and especially the ensuing social policy. The American media tended to follow suit, rather than covering the otherness of the other—the European Union as having a societal political value that has been very recessive in the United States. In this regard, I contend, the American media companies let down the American people, who would have stood to benefit from the wider perspective that would have enriched American political debates from the tyranny of the hegemonic value ensconced in American culture: that of the self-sustaining individual ideally in the state of nature, economically speaking. Reporting on the principle of solidarity would have given Americans the acccurate picture of the E.U. as being more than just a trading "bloc." This point in turn could have resulted in Americans coming to the realization that the E.U. is equivalent to the U.S.—both being empire-scale federal systems wherein governmental sovereignty is split.
Acknowledging the fiscal and structural imbalances that gave
rise to the debt crisis in several E.U. states and the problems
entailed in “patching up” the problems by emergency measures, Gauck nonetheless
pointed to non-economic elements of the European project that were also in
crisis. “It is also a crisis of confidence in Europe as a political project.
This is not just a struggle for our currency; we are struggling with an
internal quandary too.”[1] This problem was predicated on the point that the
strengthening of a European identity comes out of a recognition of shared
values, rather than in differentiation from other cultures outside of Europe.
Too often, Europeans have artificially restricted their values to
their particular state. Typically, Europeans would preface a self-referential
remark with, “In my country,” only to describe a custom or value that is by no
means limited to, distinctive in, one particular E.U. state. Even in saying “more
Europe means a European Germany,” Gauck risked falling into this trap, at least
in terms of keeping Europe as secondary. More in line with his thesis would
have been the expression, more Europe means more European. More
European in turn means more of a consciousness of values that European citizens
(and residents) share, whether or not people in Africa, Asia, or America happen
to esteem those values too. So the question facing European citizens is
this: What values do you share?
From an American perspective, the salience of the
value of solidarity held by Europeans would be so obvious, were it made transparent by the American media, because solidarity has been such a recessive value in
the United States. Ironically, World War II was perhaps the last time solidarity in terms
of “we’re all in it together” was explicitly pushed and acknowledged in
America. Even then, the value was more in terms of sacrificing for a common
purpose rather than seeing to it that the most vulnerable among us do not fall
through the cracks in terms of sustenance. In Europe, solidarity has more of
a social welfare quality.
Moreover, whereas Americans have tended to apply human rights only
to the harm caused by tyrants abroad, Europeans have tended naturally to extend to the
value to covering the basic sustenance rights of one’s own fellow citizens as
well. The shift needed for a stronger European identity has included becoming aware
of the duty to apply the value domestically to other
Europeans rather than merely to people in one’s own state, or
“country.” By implication, “European Germans” would feel solidarity with starving “European
Greeks.” This element twas largely missing from the
austerity response of E.U. finance ministers to the debt crisis from 2010 to
2012. So even in the E.U., the principle can succumb to greed and interstate clashes of economic interests. I submit, therefore, that “more Europe” involves not only a stronger
value-fueled-identity, but also more fiscal redistribution at the federal, or
E.U., level. Put another way, Europeans surely have more shared values than
that of austerity. It is a pity that the American media failed to capture this point in reporting on Greek austerity, which more closely resonates with the values dominant in the U.S.
1. Ian
Johnson, “German President
Joachim Gauck Uses Major Speech to Call For “More Europe,”
DW, February 22, 2013.
