Special Edition 2019
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SPECIAL EDITION 2019 8 Doughnut Economics for a Thriving 21st century Kate Raworth on daring to dream and designing economics to regenerate life and community, to thrive rather than to grow. Interview by Tine Hens. Europe’s Tomorrows Five contributions, mixing analysis with fiction, on the future of Europe in 2049. Rui Tavares on reclaiming democratic rights and liberties. Ulrike Guérot and Edouard Gaudot on feminist foreign policy under the European Republic. Christophe Degryse on organised labour in an age of automation and climate change. Luuk van Middelaar on 10 years of crisis and where Europe is headed now politics is back. Jamie Kendrick on tax evasion and economic policymaking beyond statistics. 14 50 Connecting Eurasia: Europe a China in the 21st Century Clémence Lizé presents "Schuman goes to China", the cooperation on green tech, urban planning and big data that shaped the geopolitics 38 of 2049. 61 A Walk Planting the on Europe's Seeds of Wild Side Tomorrow’s Sam Gregory- Agriculture Manning looks at Frédérique Hupin the past, present gets her hands and future of dirty reporting rewilding, making on the Belgian the case for farmers adopting restoring natural agroecology, wonder to both the sustainable country and city. techniques that let nature do the work. Futures Foretold Aude Massiot tells the two stories of Souria's Trading life up to the Places Unconditional year 2049. One Isabelle Durant built around on the paradigm Freedom the struggle shift that awaits, 2049 to contain a common- Jorge Pinto climate change. sense approach and Eduardo One a witness to rebalancing Viana's comic on to planetary the troubled European basic collapse structures of income and and missed international what it meant opportunities. trade in the for one family 46 global economy. among millions. 58 68 78 What to Wear? Why Fast Fashion Is Costing the Earth Silja Kudel reports on textiles and the clothing industry's future in a circular economy. Nettle- fibre jumpers and literal fishnet 92 stockings, your A Future new look for a of Fair and sustainable 2049. Democratic European Central Banking Romaric Godin, Eurozone expert, envisions how a new monetary policy – changing the way we pay, save, tax and spend – could fix the contradictions pulling Europe apart. Earth, Wind and Solar Energy Global The editorial Means team brings you Dominique infographics on Méda reinvents the potential the institutions of renewable of the liberal energy in 2049, global order. while Daniel Fly through a Scholten explores 30-year rescue of the power social rights and strugglesits roll- the environment out will bring. from the ravages of unbridled 100 globalisation. 90 104 Europe’s Mobility Is About to Be Rewritten Yoann Le Petit 134 and Jens Rebooting Müller navigate Humanity: breakthrough Blueprints technologies, for 2049 environmental challenges and Rosi Bradiotti, their implications philospher, reflects for transport, on technology, uncovering the inequality and role of cities the politics of life as laboratories itself in a world for change. of artificial meat 114 and surveillance To 2049 capitalism. and Beyond: Interview by a Future History Laurent Standaert. of the Internet Jennifer Baker chronicles the next 30 years in cyberspace: reinventing privacy online, Digital Donor Cards and where next for the EU after GDPR. Fighting Fast the Backlash: Forward Feminist & LGBTQI+ Srećko Horvat Futures recalls German Annabelle Dawson poet and gathers 10 voices looking playwright forward to a Europe in Bertold Brecht to 2049 where the gendered remind humanity structures of power and of the untold violence have crumbled horrors that in the face of feminism, inaction leads to. awareness and equality. 112 122 DESTINATION EUROPE EDITBY LAURENT STANDAERT, EDITORINCHIEF Poland. Lublin railway station. 9:30 am. 12 October 2049. Lena has travelled overnight aboard the TransEuropa. She loves this train. Sleeper cars, restaurants, meeting rooms, games rooms for kids, views of the countryside – all for an affordable price. It’s her rst trip as a Member of the European Parliament. Travel on intra-union parliamentary business is by train, the hyperloop being reserved for crises only. With fellow MEPs, Lena is part of a tripartite commission on reforming education systems and digital learning in rural areas of the European Union. The choice of Lublin was a no-brainer: a green and hyper-connected mid-sized city, gateway to new members Belarus and Ukraine. The city also lies in the heart of the eastern Polish countryside, a poor region for years a source of cheap migrant labour which left generations of children behind. A Belgian-Polish pianist active in anti-racism and local politics, Lena had agreed to run for ofce on a trans-European citizens’ list. Since their introduction in 2034, transnational lists of parties or citizens set the terms of European elections. Dividing her time between playing the piano and practicing law in the social sector, Lena was able to rely on the European unconditional income to embark on this adventure. Her campaign centred on three main themes: education, inclusion, and digital freedom. And it is education – or rather learning – that will be the focus of her political endeavour in the European Parliament. The crises of the 2020s 5 had called into question traditional education systems that were both RIALunequal and obsessed with national language and history. Through a child-centred approach with a European outlook, education programmes have certainly evolved, but much remains to be done. Lena has tasked herself with using the mandate to promote alternative educational methods designed to emancipate children and develop practical and traditional knowledge – seizing the opportunities of digital learning while guarding against its risks. Education rather than competition; transition rather than accumulation. Arriving at her hotel, Lena logs on to Sharing4EU to borrow a bike to ride over to Motycz, a village an hour outside Lublin. With the afternoon off, she’ll meet with teachers, visit her great grandmother’s grave, and go for a country walk. “It’s funny,” she says to herself as she pedals, “apart from greener farming, the absence of smog, and gradual repopulation, not much has changed around here!” Standing beside the grave, it strikes Lena that none of this was a given 10-15 years ago. Born in 2016, she grew up in the 2020s when the European Union was rocked by existential political crisis. Nativist and socioeconomic populists increasingly tended towards authoritarianism. Through success in national elections, they rose within the European institutions. This was a brown decade of fascistic politics, part of a wider global trend, a response to the excesses of the ordoliberal and unequal Europe of earlier years. But beneath the surface, European solidarity was being rebuilt in cities. From Stockholm to Riace, cities broke with national agendas by welcoming, integrating, and training refugees and migrants, fighting climate change, and transforming lifestyles for the better. Although the broken promises of the national populists became ever more apparent, it wasn’t until 2027 that the shocking video capturing the torture and murder of Yara, a Syrian refugee living in Gdańsk and famous creator of the open-source European alternative to Facebook, jolted consciences and led to change. JOURNAL EUROPEAN GREEN Throughout the 2030s, a new generation set foot in the political arena. Erasmus students and apprentices of the 1990s and 2000s – children of EDITcultural exchange, socially aware and broad minded across the Union –, they were the face of a Europe that emerged from the gloom to renew European integration. And the people were with them. During the dark years, socio-environmental movements and feminists continued to nourish another Europe. The green movements, adopting a glocal and ecosystemic approach, saw the European project as a space in which to fundamentally change the way we produce, consume, and live together. The #MeToo movement culminated in 2029 with an unprecedented wave of rejection of an outdated patriarchal-conservative and dogmatic politics. These actors brought the debate forward on the politics of time, digitisation, migration, inequality, and humankind’s cohabitation with nature and animals. The Europe of 2049 is far from perfect. But the dialectic between the national and the European has been rebalanced to place citizens at the heart of democracy. The European Council is headed by a female-male co-presidency approved by the European Parliament. The 2033 Treaty of Tallinn not only marked a return to the international stage with a post-national and pacist foreign policy, it saw the ‘unionising’ (in a new sense of the term that would enter the dictionary in 2035) of social and economic competences, which laid the foundations of the European unconditional income, the European healthcare card, and an overhauled industrial and monetary policy. As a result, while not completely obsolete, the Stability and Growth Pact and the nation state are no longer central obsessions of political and democratic life. Rights and democratic life have made great leaps forward in the digital era. Cyberattacks and digital electoral interference are now under control. Today, the Union is an undisputed leader in digital rights and data protection. ‘Portable rights’ guarantee the same fundamental rights to all residents in the Union, wherever they are and towards all levels of power. Everybody can participate or vote online either directly through the citizens’ assembly or indirectly through trans-European lists. RIALThe public sphere has become transnational: instant translation into various languages, trans-European newspapers, funds to support investigative journalism. As she daydreams around the streets of Lublin, Lena thinks about how far Poland has come since the turn of the century. Stubbornly wedded to a suicidal climate policy and riddled with identitarian tensions, it would have to wait until 2025 to see change. Nevertheless, the young representative is keenly aware that the future lies, and will always lie, in ghting the adherents of closed society and corruption.