Risks and opportunities in the next European elections.
Democratic regimes have many faults, and in times of crisis they become well visible. During the years of the current crisis we have witnessed a dramatic increase of insecurity, mass unemployment, inequality and impoverishment. However, compared to authoritarian regimes democracy has an enviable privilege: when the elections are held, the citizens can vote and freely express their views on the governments’ policies.
And this is the opportunity that comes now with the next European elections. In the years of crisis the policies of the Eurozone have been, without a shadow of a doubt, a bankruptcy. The policies pursued with obsessive stubbornness by the Berlin –Brussels axis not only haven’t offset the effects of the crisis, but have greatly exacerbated its social consequences.
The austerity was implemented – it was said - to tackle the problems of public finance and set up the basis for the return to a normal growth. The results have been catastrophic. With the exception of Germany, which holds the levers of the euro’s policy, we have witnessed a huge increase in sovereign debt and an explosion of mass unemployment.
When, in the fall of 2008 , the crisis erupted in the United States and Europe, Greece had a debt to around 110 percent of GDP; today, after the devastating measures imposed by the troika (IMF, ECB and EU), it stands at 175 percent . Spain had a debt level below 40 percent , the lowest among the major eurozone countries , lower than German; it is now more than doubled reaching 93 percent of GDP.
At the same time, in Greece as well as and in Spain, unemployment has exceeded a quarter of the workforce, a level that had not been seen since the Great Depression of the Thirties. Two examples which are not the only ones, but perhaps the most significant of the failure of the austerity, defined by J.Stiglitz in a recent interview a “criminal" policy.
But even the critics of the austerity are likely to be incomplete and misleading, if you do not look to the other side of the coin: the politics of so-called structural reforms. These are, indeed, the real strategic objective and the long-term policy of the neoliberal ideology that dominates Brussels: that is, the final deregulation of the labor market, retrenchment of the welfare state and privatization. The Spanish case is indicative. Everybody would say that austerity has had a devastating effect on the Spanish economy and society. Instead, according to Berlin and Brussels, Spain is an example of success and a model to be followed. The reason for this paradox lies in the government's structural reform performed by Mr. Rajoy: free reduction of wages and, freedom of firing, as well as cutting pensions and unemployment benefits.
Austerity has cost to Italy the loss of 9 percent of GDP, the increase in public debt up to 135 percent, the doubling of unemployment from just over 6 to 13 percent. But when Mario Monti was nominated Prime Minister at the end of 2011, he said that Italy had to do its "homework "beginning with the implementation of the heaviest and reckless pension reform ever applied in Europe. And, today, Matteo Renzi, the new head of government, presents himself in Brussels as a leader able to implement the reforms that his predecessors have hesitated to put in place: that is, a market labor reform that institutionalizes precariousness, making the term-contracts as de facto the new working paradigm.
Austerity and structural reforms are intertwined. However, between the two faces of the coin, there is a fundamental difference. Austerity may be imposed by the European Commission with the political support of Berlin. But structural reforms need to be carried out along with the decisive agreement and the complicity of national governments and leading capitalist groups. In this respect the vote of May 25 will reflect a judgment on European policies as well as on the following national policies.
The crisis was born in the United States and, in the opinion of many progressive economists, it has not still been resolved. But in America, the greatest responsibility can be reasonably attributed to the Republican Party. The deep difference is that in America the Republicans are in opposition and, as a majority in one branch of the Congress, operate to obstruct the administration's policy (see the block of the initiative of Obama to increase by 40 percent the legal hourly minimum wage, taking it from 7.25 to 10.10 dollars), while within the eurozone the reactionary policy of the Republicans is directly performed by the eurozone’s authorities.
In any case, the next vote for the election of the European Parliament is not on the alternative: “leave or stay in the Euro”. This is the version of the “leap in the dark”, deliberately alarmist, promoted by the governments and the mainstream media. The elections involve the perpetuation or, possibly, the overthrow of the disastrous combination of austerity - structural reforms imposed by Berlin–Brussels "consensus”. From this point of view, as Italy is concerned, the platform of " Other Europe ", the list headed by Alexis Tsipras , the Greek candidate for President of the European Commission by the European Left Party, is in itself the most clear, unequivocal and consistent claim for a radical overhaul of the eurozone’s policy. In this sense an alternative to the populist appeal of Beppe Grillo’s “Five Star movement”, as well as to the subaltern policy of Mr. Renzi’s government.
Forecasts indicate, at European level, a strong rise of Euroskeptic parties. This outcome may change the structure of the European Parliament, but not enough to change the fundamental policies of the eurozone. Paradoxically, the more likely countermove to neutralize the electoral result could be the creation of a "Grand Alliance " between the two main parties at European level (the Socialist and the Popular ones) on the example of German “Grand coalition”, bound to the continuity with the current eurozone’s policy.
But this scenario is conditioned by an unknown factor. The unknown is mainly in the election results of France and Italy. These are two of the three major countries which, along with Germany, founded the European Union and the eurozone. If Italy and France will result in, as the current polls predict, a majority vote against the policy of the Berlin -Brussels, the very basis of the European scenario will be shaken.
It will not be a vote against the European Union, nor a vote for an automatic abandonment of the euro. This is not the actual issue of majority of the so-called euroskeptic vote. But it would represent a clear rejection of the current eurozone’s policy. The governments of Mr. Hollande and Mr.Renzi should be forced to put on the table a new setup of the eurozone’s politics.
The European elections never had such an opportunity to produce a significant change in the European politics. There is now an extraordinary opportunity to be seized. Perhaps the last opportunity to save the European Union from the risk of being overwhelmed by the sinking of the euro.