In November last year Pope Francis delivered a speech to the European parliament that caught many off guard. Though Francis introduced his words as “a message of hope and encouragement to all the citizens of Europe” the headlines and those listening were more taken with an unexpectedly critical description of Europe as a “‘grandmother’, no longer fertile and vibrant.”
The far-left party Syriza, which after winning Greece’s general election is to lead a coalition with the centre-right Greek Independents, has just delivered the same message loud and clear. Syriza's leader Alexis Tsipras has said the EU-imposed austerity programme "destroys our common European future" and has pledged to restore "dignity back to the people". If the EU does not respond, it will bring a crisis down on its head that is much more severe than the Eurozone crash of 2008. Europe emerged from that crash scarred but with a full complement of member states. Indeed since then it has added a 28th member (Croatia, in 2013).
But this coming crisis could be far more debilitating to the European project because it runs the risk of pulling the whole edifice apart from the inside.
The EU was relatively well placed to fix the last crisis because it was, at its root, a technical and economic one. One thing the EU really does well is to provide economic and technical answers to problems. What it has not done well for a long time is provide answers on philosophical and symbolic issues.
Syriza has been hailed as an anti-austerity party, and so it is, but crucially its critique of austerity runs much deeper than the technical aspects and is more powerfully concerned with the issue of dignity and legitimacy.
Just as Pope Francis warned in December, Syriza now criticises the EU for stripping away the dignity of Greek workers for the sake of economic success for other countries. If there is true solidarity and commitments to citizens, Syriza asks, why are Greek people suffering – with no end in sight – so that Germans can be a little more comfortable?
This issue is far more concerning than simply causing a dip in the value of the Euro. It points to a fundamental issue at the heart of the European project – a widening gap between technocratic and bureaucratic good management and the idealism and values of a union which inspire solidarity even in lean economic times. As Pope Francis put it in his address: “To our dismay we see technical and economic questions dominating political debate, to the detriment of genuine concern for human beings.”
What is lacking amid all the technical expertise is any answer to that central philosophical question – “what is the EU for?” If it can make a case as the body that can defend the common good, fight to restore dignity to the lives of its citizens and be a powerful moral actor while avoiding being an aloof, harmful and crushing bureaucratic behemoth then it may yet have a chance. It had better heed the warnings fast though, or the UK could race Greece to be first out the door. If that happens, expect others to follow, because that would mean the EU had already failed to persuade members of its raison d’être.
Ben Ryan is a researcher at the think-tank Theos
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The EU project - binding together European peoples to avoid continent-wide warfare has been subverted by the triumph of professional, interest-group lobbying. The parliament will not 'democratise' the EU, because it too has become a self-serving interest group. The EU is amoral and, at times, immoral. Ben Ryan is right to pose these fundamental questions.