Political situation in the European Union is on the stake. Recent problems with flow of migrants and number of recent terror attacks inflame far-right parties to gain power in some countries of the EU. Rise of far-right forces is directed to jeopardize European liberal values.
Reinhard Heinisch is Professor of Austrian Politics in Comparative European Perspective and Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Salzburg, Austria. His main area of work includes comparative populism, populist incumbency, as well as research on corporatism under conditions of integration and internationalization. Austrian political expert gave exclusive interview to Eurasia Diary regarding current political events in the European Union.
Eurasia Diary: In your opinion, what are main challenges facing European Union?
Reinhard Heinisch: Several important policies and arrangements of the EU are fair weather polices that do not do well in a crisis – the Euro and its architecture is the best example, it is too hard and too expensive for the weaker economies and too cheap for the more productive the economies. Also interest rates in the weaker economy are relatively too low inducing poor investments while they are too high for the strong economies. The solution would be to complement the fiscal union with a political union either through mutual bail out agreements or centralized budget policies that target underperforming regions and countries with investments, subsidies etc. In short, to fix the problems you need either more Europe (shifting more power from the member states to Brussels) OR less Europe (to make it a lot more flexible). Both solutions are politically problematic: right now nobody wants Brussels to have more power (populations are more nationalist) but if even more powers were devolved to the member states, the EU would become globally even less effective and weaker – so no good solution to the principal problem. Differently put, what is necessary to make Europe more effective is politically impossible/unpopular thus muddling through will continue.
Eurasia Diary: What kind of measures the European Union has to implement in order to solve such problems?
Reinhard Heinisch: It will continue on a muddling through strategy finding lowest common denominator solutions – this will be a applied to the refugee policy where we expect to see compromise between the hard line positions of the East Europeans (keep them all out, no distribution of refuges across Europe) and the German stance that favors are more rational but centralized refugee/immigration regime.
In the Euro area, I expect the current reforms to continue; the various stabilization mechanisms and bail out mechanisms have at least stopped the bleeding and have been politically priced in, so why change anything. Since all depends on the outcome of the French and German election in 2017, don’t expect anything new until these are settled.
Eurasia Diary: Serious problems of Terrorism, immigration, as well as recent Trump’s victory invigorate far-right parties to assume power in some European countries. Could you predict that the rise of far-right forces will jeopardize the future of the European Union?
Reinhard Heinisch: Absolutely, but not all countries are equal in this sense, the three most important nations in this context are France, Germany, and the Netherlands. In France and NL there are far-right populist politicians that are likely to run strong and have announced to call for their countries to leave the EU. France is of such central importance that EU could not exist in its current form without it. If Mariene LePen were to the French press. elections, this would be cataclysmic for the EU. Her chances are slim but we thought this also about Trump. If Merkel loses, Germany would move to right and probably become less “European” and the far right AfD is likely to do well but Germany won’t have a government that will call for Germany to leave the EU. So it will be more moderate in any event. National League are an important player and sort of economically and politically between the UK and Germany, so the far right will do well and NEXIT is on the table but I don’t take this to be a realistic scenario.
Eurasia Diary: Do you believe inviolability of democracy and peace in Europe?
Reinhard Heinisch: If you are asking do I think that democracy and peace are guaranteed and permanent in Europe, then I would say no – if we had a dramatic turn for the worse in economic conditions, then revolutions and authoritarian governments etc. are clearly possible. Then there is the question what part of Europe, we are talking about: democracy is arguably more entrenched in Switzerland than in Greece or Poland, we have seen a sliding to more illiberal and authoritarians styles of governments in Hungary and Poland. This could happen in other countries as well if populists gain power. We also have to qualify what we mean by “democracy” – if we mean by the latter majoritarianism then some form of democracy is likely to be continue no matter what, if we mean liberal democracy (free press, protection of minorities) then I am more concerned.
By Yunis Abdullayev
