EU could ‘disintegrate’ further, President Higgins warns

The EU is now "unequivocally, at a point of crisis" and might well "continue to disintegrate," President Michael D Higgins has said.

“The very antithesis to social Europe” was represented by the dominant view of the Barroso EU Commission which ended its term in 2014, he said. It was why “collective discussions, actions, mobilisations, matter now more than ever.”

Without such discussions which rise above "aggressive nationalist claims and a narrow understanding of national interests, Europe will, I am afraid, continue to disintegrate," he said.

What was needed as former EU Commission president Jacques Delors put it, was "to 'Rekindle the ideal, breathe life and soul into it, that is the essential imperative if we genuinely seek to give shape to the Europe that we so dearly wish for'," Mr Higgins said.

"We have so much work to do to ensure that our European Union comes again to represent, in the eyes of its citizens, a model of balance between market, society, and the environment, rather than a mere vehicle for the extension of free trade," the President said.

“We have so much work to do to make of Europe, in the eyes of the wider world, a model of solidarity - a shared space of human dignity for Europeans, but also for the persecuted and the displaced who are seeking our help, rather than a space of cynicism where moral aspirations are flung out for rhetorical flourish while economic ‘realities’ asserted to be ‘inevitable’ are advanced to contradict both human rights treaties and aspirations.

“I convince myself to have trust in the capacity for rebirth and renewal of Europeans,” he said.

President Higgins was addressing the conference of independent think-tank TASC/FEPS (Foundation for European Progressive Studies) at Croke Park in Dublin on Friday morning.

Speaking to The Irish Times later he said that in the EU "there has been a failure to change the institutions to develop an appropriate connection with its citizens." What was put in place at its foundation "had been changed fundamentally by a number of the treaties."

An example was the Lisbon Treaty, which "sought to achieve a balance between cohesion and competitiveness. Post-Lisbon the balance swung heavily towards competitiveness," he said. Monetary union "was rushed" and this meant having a Central Bank with insufficient structures to operate even "in a minimal way in terms of balancing social, economic and political realities," he said.

When the external shock of 2008 hit it had just the one instrument at the time of “keeping inflation below two per cent” which was “imposed on a set of countries that already had issues in relation to gaps in cohesion.”

While very much in favour of recovering “the moment of Europe.....the concept of social Europe ”, the question remained “how do you get sustainable growth across the EU? The tragedy is that the capacity to do that exists but the institutional architecture is preventing it,” he said.

There was not “any real reason why funding couldn’t be released that would give you an immense number of jobs in forms of sustainable technology.” This was because “we’re stuck with ideological objections in relation to bonds and so forth,” he said.

“Europe cannot really go on as it is now, but it is important that people be in Europe and that people be fighting for the new models and that people be offering constructive suggestions.”

All he was doing was “responding to what I sense is the view in the European street and the view in the European academies,” he said.