European parliament elections have come to an end. These elections, which are the main and essential instrument forged by European member states to bring citizens closer with the EU has played its role to perfection: The average European citizen is not really mobilized for the EU, a system that is difficult to understand unless you have had a couple of relevant courses at the university level, or preferably a MA degree.
Jacques Delors said it when he was the President of the European Commission, at a time when European projects, starting from the completion of the single market to the establishment of a common currency were attracting all the attention of political movements and the average citizen: "You cannot fall in love with the single market." The EU is not beloved, however the stability and wealth it has created during decades made it essential for the functioning of the member states.
This is still the case. Apart from a number of far-right Eurosceptic or openly fascist political parties, no one is seriously considering getting out of the EU. But the average European citizen is decidedly unhappy with the EU. At best, he or she does not feel the need to support the EU by going to vote, at worst the vote cast goes to the anti-European movements.
A number of explanations for this are obvious: The EU economy, based on growth, is not delivering enough since the 2008 crisis. The unemployment rate has risen, the Euro crisis, despite all the positive declarations on the part of the European leaders, is not seen as bygone by a vast majority of the population, which has waited for more employment opportunities in vain since. Perhaps more important, the "enlargement" that was presented to European citizens as an "opportunity" to enlarge the market and therefore its benefits, did not produce any conclusive results due to the fact that incoming countries' economies are too small to trigger any additional growth, when they are not in stagnation themselves.
That is very bad news for Turkey, already largely discouraged by a more and more dysfunctional system of accession negotiations. However, the problem is not there. As I have had the opportunity to explain in previous articles, we are swiftly heading again toward a bipolar world, where European enlargement will be seen for what it truly is: A formidable political integration movement that has stopped efficiently and durably any armed conflict risk in the Balkans and the Eastern European countries, after the tragedy of Yugoslavia.
Whether the EU economies, except Germany and to some degree few other countries, do not deliver enough growth and employment possibilities is not the essential problem: The real issue is that nobody has come up with anything better or remotely more promising than the European integration project. The Eurosceptics find their ideology in the Stone Age, basically advocating autarchy and isolationism for economies whose interpenetration has gone beyond any possible turning point, in a world where globalization remains the key dynamic, despite political strife and enhanced bipolarization.
A better distributive justice is definitely demanded by the voters throughout Europe. The parties which have been advocating austerity policies have lost immense ground, but still keep the majority in the EU. It will be again up to Angela Merkel and Jean-Claude Juncker to correct the political direction of the EU, which does not sound very promising. The EU is going directly toward a full-scale institutional crisis, basically because a system that was designed for six industrialized countries is still being applied to 28 very diverse economies, to no avail. All the initiatives to establish a "Europe à la carte" or incremental membership systems have been torpedoed by the member states. For the time being, no real reform of the system is in the pipeline, and there is virtually no time to delay any further much-needed reforms. Seen from that perspective, Turkey may not be in such a dreadful situation as a candidate country eternally waiting and watching for the EU door to open. There might be a number of different doors in the not-so-distant future.
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