Tag Archives: Europa

The globalist. A route for the 21st century

I have the honor of having been invited to teach (if that’s the right word) at this year’s Salzburg Global Seminar.

This turns out to have been founded in 1947 by Clemens Heller, a Harvard student native of Salzburg, together with two American colleagues. The idea was to

create at least one small center in which young Europeans from all countries, and of all political convictions, could meet for a month in concrete work under favorable living conditions, and to lay the foundation for a possible permanent center of intellectual discussion in Europe.

This discussion was urgent. Europe lay in ruins. Austria itself, like Germany, was occupied by the Allied troops, and dismembered into four zones: the American, British, French and Soviet Zone. It was not at all clear what path Europe would take. Recent history showed that World Wars could and did ride on each other’s wake – only twenty years of increasingly tense “peace” had separated World War I from World War II. It was becoming clear that Western and Central Europeans were no longer the masters of their own destiny. The Soviet Union and the United States both wanted to shape Europe’s future. Europeans, demoralized and exhausted, could hardly stop them.

But there was one thing they could do. They could use whatever little space was afforded by the competition between the two superpowers to pull together, forge a common vision for the Old Continent, and build the capacity to implement it. This was the Salzburg Seminar’s mission: “a Marshall Plan of the mind”, the ability to imagine a different future as a critical element of recovery. This plan was targeted at young people, with the potential to become leaders in postwar Europe and America.

The mission succeeded. Intellectual stimuli were off the scale: Margaret Mead and Wassily Leontief were among the teachers of the 1947 seminar. Over the decades, as Europe grew more peaceful, integrated, and prosperous, the Seminar shifted from a Euro-American focus to a global one. It is now one of several world-class leadership programs.

We find ourselves at a juncture where places like the Salzburg Global Seminar might look like yesterday’s news. We are informed that nationalism, nativism, exceptionalism, de-humanising of political adversaries, even racism – all concepts that Clemens Heller might have thought buried in the rubble of Third Reich – are back. We are told the “perceptions” of our fellow citizens are as important, and as capable of shaping our world, than the facts of science. The narrative of supremacy by bloodright is powerful (padroni a casa nostra, “lords of our own house”, is the slogan of Italian xenophobic party Lega Nord. It is nonsensical in so many ways that I don’t want to even start breaking it down, but it does work). And a scapegoat is always handy in politics. So, this is the new normal, or at least part of it.

I will not stand for this. It is, simply, nonsense. We have huge problems to solve: safeguard the global environment before the Anthropocene wipes out the last tigers and blackens the coral reefs. Rejuvenate our democracies. Build decent capacity in government (don’t get me started). Steer global population down towards a long-term sustainable level. Figure out a way to live in a world with no “jobs”, and engineer a symbiosis with AIs. Preserve, extend and cherish the glorious tapestry of Earth’s cultures.

The task at hand is enormous. We need everyone, every last person who wants to be a full participant and accepts to contribute to humanity’s adventure on this blue planet, our home.  People, almost all of them, are willing to step in as full participants, and work, and love, and learn from each other. So, with the obvious individual exceptions, I want nation states, border guards, police, clergy, TV anchormen and any bloody idiot that thinks they can make them feel unwelcome to stay out of their way. Inclusion, abolition of borders, freedom of trade and movement are better for everyone. You’d think Europeans, of all people, would know this. Clemens Heller did.

And so do I. I am a globalist. I want to build webs of friendship and love and business partnerships, and I want these webs to span the globe. I want to build global knowledge, to spread far and wide. This is our birthright as humans: contribute to the future of the species, and the planet it inhabits. It is a global goal, and needs a global scope. I vow to oppose any political movement that seeks to prevent well-intentioned people from everywhere to work together towards this goal.

In Europe, this means supporting more, deeper, more irreversible integration; and welcome any transfer of sovereignty from States to the European Union, as long as it can be shown to be beneficial to European citizens, especially the least privileged. It also means supporting welcoming new members into the Union. I vow to do those things, too.

Today, the Salzburg Global Seminar is right where I want to be.

Gambling with our souls: why Brexit and the EU’s deal with Turkey are bad ideas.

In collaboration with Anthony Zacharzewski – Translated and reposted from CheFuturo

European leaders have a deal with the Turkish government. It works like this: Syrian refugees cannot go on from Greece into other EU countries. We are sending them back to Turkey instead. For each one we send back, we pick another from Turkish camps and admit her to Europe. Turkey gets a revamping of its EU accession talks, easier visas for Turks coming into Europe, and money. But what does Europe get in return?

Not much, it seems. Policy experts think the one-for-one scheme is unworkable. The Greek state, understaffed after years of austerity, does not have the capacity to deliver it. Aid agencies think it is “inhumane“. The UNHCR questions the credibility of the safeguards intended to protect vulnerable asylum seekers. European diplomats expect the deal to be brought before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Traffickers will likely see an increase in their grim business.

Chances are the scheme won’t work. And if it did, it might make things worse. Not just for those who crossed desert and sea to get stuck in Greece. For Europeans too. Economists have long done the maths and shown that migrants are net contributors to European welfare states (survey). Migrants are on average younger, more educated and more entrepreneurial than natives. For all their disadvantages, Syrians managed to start 415 companies in Turkey in the first two months of 2016. Without migrants, our aging population would soon be unable to support itself (source). Immigration is good for growth, which is why business leaders want more of it.

So, EU leaders have locked themselves in an unworkable deal and a humanitarian disaster. In so doing, they also crippled their own economies. What’s going on here?

The easy answer is: politics. With twenty years of steady growth suddenly brought to a stop and in many places put into reverse, Europe has spawned populist parties – often ethnic nationalists, always anti-government and anti-EU. They target the disgruntled, those who have lost out from the new high-education, high-skill jobs market. The populists draw on resentment, but offer no real change – just the simple, clear and wrong solution to each country’s problems: stop the migrants!

Economic crisis has brought these parties to prominence, but economic growth tomorrow would not cause them to wither, because they draw their real strength from a deeper problem: we have allowed ourselves to forget what Europe is about.

Europe was never about standards – though they support innovation and growth, and give consumers and business confidence. Standards are just a tool to develop the European single market. And the single market itself is just a machine designed to prevent war.

Europe is about peace. Peace initiatives have happened before, but the European Union is self-reinforcing. Over the decades, EU institutions have enabled, and we the people have built, a dense web of relationships. First it was international trade; then education (Erasmus, anyone?); then business partnerships; then thousands and thousands friendships and marriages. War has become unviable, unthinkable.

This was never meant to stop at our borders. Peace and prosperity through trade is also our foreign policy. Countries at our borders like that, so they want in. And we obliged, letting more and more countries in. We wisely invested in the less developed ones, using European funds to upgrade their infrastructure. They rewarded us by blooming into prosperous countries, with solid middle classes eager to buy German cars, Italian design, British financial services. Ireland, then Spain, then Estonia, then Romania.

The caravan still rolls on, beyond Europe’s present borders. The Balkans were at war only twenty years ago. Now they are at peace, and getting prosperous. They like us there, and we like them back. We are good neighbours. We fund highways, libraries and public buildings at a fraction of what a military presence would cost. We have prestige and influence. We can navigate the region speaking English, German, Italian. We can pay in euro everywhere. All countries are getting in the accession queue.

Everybody aspires to be us, because peace, upholding human rights and free trade work. Gun-toting nationalistic empires don’t. Ask the Ukrainians: they could be part of the last old school empire in Europe, Vladimir Putin’s Eurasian Economic Union. But they appear not to want to. When their president signed a treaty with Russia in 2014, they staged a revolution, kicked him out of the country and organised citizen militias to fight pro-Russia paramilitaries in the East.

It’s not just Serbians and Ukrainians. It’s Syrians, Tunisians, Eritreans. Whatever their countries do, people aspire to being a part of our project. This is what Europe is all about; this is our legacy. We are the only polity in the world to have renounced violence and uphold mutual understanding as the way forward. Even at these times of crisis, we are a beacon of hope for humanity.

And that brings us to Brexit. Those uncomfortable Europeans, the British, are going to be asked on 23 June whether they want to stay in the EU or not, and the answer is far from certain. As with those trade links, those Erasmus studies, those romances, Brexit reaches into every part of Europe – all the more effectively because it is taking place in Europe’s most-spoken language.

Much of the debate has been awful, from both sides. The supporters of Britain’s place in the EU seem to have no arguments beyond money, jobs and finance – important, but not enough to make the case for Europe’s wider ambitions and possibilities. Reassurances of the Remain campaign today close off any future development of the UK’s relationship with the EU. Their argument is “vote for Europe, because our Europe has no Schengen, lots of opt-outs, and absolutely no Euro”.

On the other side, the Eurosceptic press are dominated by anti-immigrant populism, and a desire to go back to some imagined time of national unity, monoculture and full employment. Mainstream politicians on the Leave side cannot acknowledge that medium sized nation states have no power in the modern world, so they have have had to construct unrealistic futures, where Britain prospers by slashing regulation, or by creating free trade deals with its former empire, or just by getting those Europeans to do what the Brits say.

This is an attempt – who knows how successful? – to rationalise around an emotional reaction – a love for Parliament, for British democracy, the ‘thousand years of British history’ which a former Labour leader thought the EEC would put to an end. Sovereignty, democracy and national power are slippery concepts. The dry world of European summits and compromises might be more effective power but it is not more romantic power.

The default of the Brussels bubble is to believe that Europe will get there in the end. In mid-euro-crisis, a European politician said “we all know what we have to do, we just don’t know how to get re-elected once we’ve done it”. As time has passed, that politician is President of the Commission, governments around the continent have changed – but the Euro remains. Maybe in five years the migration crisis and Brexit will be in the same place – not solved but not quite so present, a memory of a panic.

Maybe not. There is a saying that companies go bankrupt at first slowly, then all at once. Look around Europe and the signs are there that the structures are weakening, the institutions becoming hollowed out, as they are with national politics.

But in that romantic love of the Brexiters, there is an answer to the problem of European politics, and not just in Britain. We have to make Europe something that can be believed in again – not with an emotional allegiance, but as a shared project of construction, based on those principles of freedom, openness and democracy.

You can’t do that by decreeing a European nationalism, commanding a tear in the eye as Ode to Joy plays. Some people feel that now, more may feel it in the future, but it can’t be invented. Instead the connections and the networks of Europe should be celebrated as success not denigrated as failure.

If we fail to do that, what else can we Europeans do? Well, we could follow the lead of the Brexit camp, and focus on being just 28 more nation states. Doable, maybe. But we would be second-rate nation states. Too small. Too old. Too petty. Plagued by low growth, high debt, an ever more aging population, and populist, rancorous politics. A backwater in the coming Asian century.

A peaceful continent for us all to roam freely is our gift the world, what makes us unique. Politicians in the UK and elsewhere, when they talk of breaking this down, or restricting its scope, might gain some short-term consensus and media visibility. But they are gambling with our souls.

Photo: Malachy Browne: murales at The Jungle, a semi-official refugee camp in Calais (France)

Meritocracy is scary

A few weeks ago, a Swedish man called Borzoo Tavakoli published an article in the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter. The article takes the form of a letter from Tavakoli himself to Kent Ekeroth, a politician described as belonging to the inner circle of the Sweden Democrats Party (Wikipedia). Tavakoli was born in Iran and migrated to Sweden in 1988 as a political refugee. Ekeroth is a notorious xenophobe and Islamophobe; in fact, xenophobia seems to be the main political platform of the Swedish Democrats.

Tavakoli has a simple message to convey: “I, a hard-working, law-abiding, economically successful migrant, make much greater a contribution than you, some dubious politician. My record as a taxpayer is immaculate, while you are under investigation by the Tax Authority. I never attacked people, whereas you and your party colleagues chased people around wielding iron rods (!) in Stockholm in 2010. I never belittled women, whereas you have been known to physically attack a woman and call her “a whore” in 2010. I never had to leave my assignment, whereas a scandal forced you out of Parliament in 2012. I fought for democracy in Iran, and did six years in prison rather than give up on my convictions, whereas you, according to the news, have a habit of lying, and therefore qualify as a coward that does not stand up for his actions. Ah, and I, through my hard work and intellectual qualities, have risen from line worker to high executive in a large company. And my son is a genius. He just won the first prize in the Swedish young scientists competition. Sweden is much better off having citizens like me than citizens like you. I deserve to be Swedish more than you do.”

Many of my friends reacted very positively to this article. This, they argue, surely shows that xenophobia is counterproductive! Indeed, it is hard not to sympathize with this hard-working activist for democracy turned successful businessman, making the most of the chance offered to him by Sweden’s generous policy of welcoming refugees – and all the more grateful for it. My friends – the younger ones, especially – tend to embrace meritocracy as a positive value: people should rise in society according to what they contribute to it. And why wouldn’t they? It’s simple. It’s fair. It’s by no means limited to Sweden: my fellow Italians, divided on everything, seem all to be united by a common contempt of their undeserving ruling class. I am sure you can think of meritocratic undercurrents surfacing in your own country.

But you have to wonder: where does meritocracy lead us? The converse of rewarding positive contribution has to be not rewarding those who don’t contribute enough, or at all. If people don’t pull enough weight, they should be pushed down the social ladder. Someone like Ekeroth, wielding iron rods and foul-mouthing ladies in the streets of Stockholm, has no business being in parliament. He should be moved over to some menial job, under the thumb of a supervisor that prevents him uttering racist and sexist remarks that could offend bystanders. Right?

We can probably all agree that a xenophobic politician is as close to a pure deadweight as it gets. But then, Tavakoli also makes a greater contribution than, say, law-abiding people who are also long-term unemployed. Or dumb. Or lazy. Hell, he makes a greater contribution than me, or you – unless you are a really successful, impressive person. Any sensible country, given the choice, would much rather welcome as a citizen him than 99% of its own citizens.

So, you see: as an ideology, meritocracy is too scary to stick. It promises fairness and social mobility, but at the cost of being, forever, on your toes, in a world where someone will always be better and faster than you, no matter how good you are. Nobody wants meritocracy – not for themselves, at least. European young people say they want it, but what they mean is that they are stuck in a meritocratic fringe of society, shut out of the secure jobs where you are not really expected to jump through too many hoops. They think – rightly – that they would be better off if by some miracle all positions became contendible, because they are better educated and harder working than their elders. So they call for more meritocracy as outsiders, but once they get into the system they will instantly start to maneuver to secure their positions. It’s only human.

By contrast, Ekeroth and his merry gang of European nationalists and xenophobe have an ideology that says: born here? You’re good – you’re good regardless of what you do or don’t contribute. Don’t worry, we’ll take it on those others instead. Takavoli may be smarter and braver, but Ekeroth’s got a much better political product to sell. So, I have to disagree with my Swedish friends here: I don’t think meritocratic arguments are going to be of much help in contrasting the growth of xenophobia in European societies. We’ll need to find something else.