Europe at the Crossroads: Democracy, Neighbourhoods, Migrations

EUROPE AT THE CROSSROADS: DEMOCRACY, NEIGHBOURHOODS, MIGRATIONS THE VACLAV HAVEL EUROPEAN DIALOGUES 2014–16 Gilles Kepel Ivan Krastev Camino Mortera Martinez Luuk van Middelaar Claus Off e Petr Pithart Jiří Přibáň Mykola Rjabchuk Jacques Rupnik Pavel Seifter Jovan Teokarević Andrew Wilson Catherine Withol de Wenden Jacques Rupnik – Pavel Seifter (eds.) Václav Havel Library Europe at the Crossroads: Democracy, Neighbourhoods, Migrations EUROPE AT THE CROSSROADS: DEMOCRACY, NEIGHBOURHOODS, MIGRATIONS THE VACLAV HAVEL EUROPEAN DIALOGUES 2014–16 Gilles Kepel Ivan Krastev Camino Mortera Martinez Luuk van Middelaar Claus Off e Petr Pithart Jiří Přibáň Mykola Rjabchuk Jacques Rupnik Pavel Seifter Jovan Teokarević Andrew Wilson Catherine Withol de Wenden Jacques Rupnik – Pavel Seifter (eds.) Václav Havel Library The publication of this book was supported by Fondation Zdenek et Michaela Bakala Europe at the Crossroads: democracy, neighbourhoods, migrations Vaclav Havel European Dialogues 2014–16 Text © Gilles Kepel, Ivan Krastev, Camino Mortera Martinez, Luuk van Middelaar, Claus Off e, Petr Pithart, Jiri Priban, Mykola Rjabchuk, Jacques Rupnik, Pavel Seifter, Jovan Teokarević, Andrew Wilson, Catherine Withol de Wenden Editors © Jacques Rupnik, Pavel Seifter Cover, graphic design and typesetting (in News Gothic) © Luděk Kubík /3.dílna/ Published by the Václav Havel Library, a registered charity Ostrovní 13, Prague 1 (www.vaclavhavel-library.org) Technical editor: Pavel Hájek Prague 2018 © Václav Havel Library, 2018 ISBN 978-80-87490-93-8 CONTENTS INTRODUCTION Jacques Rupnik-Pavel Seifter ■ Europe’s Multiple Crisis: Democracy, Neighbourhoods, Migrations (Insights from the Vaclav Havel European Dialogues) 10 1. EUROPE IN CRISIS AND THE RETURN OF POLITICS Petr Pithart ■ European Values and Courage 17 Luuk van Middelaar ■ Embracing the Crisis 27 Claus Off e ■ Europe Entrapped 33 Jiří Přibáň ■ State of Emergency 52 2. EUROPE’S UNFINISHED BUSINESS AND THE RETURN OF GEOPOLITICS Ivan Krastev ■ Putin’s Russia and the West after Maidan 63 Andrew Wilson ■ Seven Deadly Sins: or Seven Reasons why Europe Gets the Russia-Ukraine Crisis Wrong 66 Mykola Rjabchuk ■ The Unfi nished Business of the 1989 East European Revolutions: From Survival to Self-Expression 77 Jovan Teokarević ■ The Balkans - Europe’s Mission Un-Accomplished 87 3. THE LIMITS OF EUROPE: REFUGEES, HUMAN RIGHTS, FRONTIERS Gilles Kepel ■ Europe and its South 105 Catherine Withol de Wenden ■ L’Europe et la crise de l’accueil des réfugiés 110 Camino Mortera-Martinez ■ A Death Foretold 122 Jacques Rupnik ■ Migrants as a Mirror. European Divides and Central European Narratives 125 ANNEX The Authors (CVs) 137 VHED – dialogues and conferences 2014–16 144 Introduction Jacques Rupnik Pavel Seifter EUROPE’S MULTIPLE CRISIS: DEMOCRACY, NEIGHBOURHOODS, MIGRATIONS INSIGHTS FROM THE VACLAV HAVEL EUROPEAN DIALOGUES JACQUES RUPNIK AND PAVEL SEIFTER The basic set of European values – as they have been formed by the eventful spiritual and political history of the continent, and as some of them are now being embraced also in other parts of the world – is, to my mind, clear. It consists of respect for the unique human being, and for humanity’s freedoms, rights and dignity; the principle of solidarity; the rule of law and equality before the law; the protection of minorities of all types; democratic institutions; the separation of legislative, executive and judicial powers; a pluralist political system; respect for private ownership and private enterprise, and market economy; and, a furtherance of civil society. The present shape of these values mirrors also the countless modern European experiences, including the fact that our continent is now becoming an important multicultural crossroads. Václav Havel: Address before Members of the European Parliament, Strasbourg, 16 February 2000 ■ Sixty years after its creation the European Union has been confronted with multiple crises which threaten the very foundations of the European project: an internal crisis mainly related to the euro and more generally to the divisive eff ects of the economic and fi nancial crisis. The European elections of May 2014 revealed the rise of parties or movements which openly reject the pursuit of integration - and this trend has gained momentum since. Although European integration has been studied for decades, European disintegration has become more recently the subject of academic enquiry as well as public debate.1 With a narrowly approved Brexit and a narrowly avoided Grexit, all Europeans, including citizens of new member states, have been confronted with the idea that the European Union should no longer be taken for granted. Exactly this was our initial impetus for launching the European Dialogues in Prague. 1 Ivan Krastev, After, Europe, 2017,drawing on several conferences at the Institut für die Wissenschaften von den Menschen in Vienna comparing the unraveling of the EU to the break-up of the USSR, of Yugoslavia and of the Habsburg Empire. Jan Zielonka, Is Europe Doomed ?, Oxford, Polity Press, 2014.,. The historian David Engels even sugests a parallel with the demise of Rome in Le Declin. La crise de l’Union europénne et la chute de la République romaine, Paris, 2014. A special issue of Aspen Europe, entiteld « Breakup of Europe » (n 1, 2014). On EU’s declining international infl uence cf. Richard Youngs, Europe’s Decline and Fall : the struggle against global irrelevance, Profi le Books, 2010 ; François Heisbourg, La fi n du rêve européen, Paris, Stock, 2013 ; This trend should be contrasted with the « Europhoria » that prevailed at the time of EU’s Eastern enlargement : Jeremy Rifkin, The European Dream, how Europe’s vision of the future is quietly eclipsing the American dream (2004) or Mark Leonard, Why Europe Will Run the XXIst century (2005). 10 For the last two decades two issues have dominated the European agenda: the launch of the euro (deepening) and the Eastern enlargement of the EU (widening). The latter had been largely been considered a success in overcoming of the post-war East-West divide. The for- mer has over the last decade revealed its fl aws and opened up another divide inside the EU, between North and South. Both aspects are relevant to understanding the EU’s capacity to respond to the external crisis it faces: the simultaneous implosion of its Eastern and Southern neighbours. The Ukrainian ‘Euromaidan’ crisis and the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 as well as the emergence of “Islamic State” (ISIS) in the aftermath of the Arab Spring have caught the EU unawares. Both have shattered the EU’s Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) and confronted Europe with new security issues as well as an unprecedented migration wave. The starting point of the Vaclav Havel European Dialogues, was that the interdependence of our fates as Europeans in the context of the above-mentioned crisis was not just a matter for states and EU institutions but also for all citizens living within the Union. Hence the proposal to meet annually in Prague, under the auspices of the Vaclav Havel Library, to discuss with lead- ing European voices on the subject, our present predicament, the interaction of the internal and external crisis, and the ways in which they transform our national and European politics. Three main related themes regarding the crises, their interpretations and our capacity to respond were addressed in successive conferences of the Vaclav Havel European Dialogues between 2014 and 2016: European democracy in times of crisis, the implosion of the EU’s neighbourhoods and the related security issues and fi nally migrations and its impact on our politics. 1. DEMOCRACY, THE FINANCIAL CRISIS AND THE NORTH-SOUTH DIVIDE: ■ What is the scope for democratic politics and what is the meaning of sovereignty in the age of globalization and of a shared European currency? When the biggest international fi nancial bubble since the Great Depression of the 1930 burst in 2008 it exposed the sys- temic failure of the euro but also a number of national failures. The divide between North and South, creditors and debtors has been exposed. The case of Greece became paradigmatic: a government (led by Syriza) was elected on the rejection of the Eurozone austerity plan, a vote confi rmed by referendum, yet the plan was still implemented. Independently of the merits or fl aws of the proposed plan, the question of democratic legitimacy was exposed. And that is certainly one of the factors fuelling the populist rhetoric against the EU. Both ‘Grexit’, the possible expulsion of Greece from the Eurozone, and ’Brexit’, the actual British secession from the EU, revealed two opposite sides of the issue of ‘democratic sovereignty’. Europe is in the simultaneous grip of two confl icting and increasingly dysfunctional 11 systems: one, an un-political technocratic, consensual system built to avoid political confl ict, the other a system of national member-states with political confl ict built in. The European contribution to post-1989 democratization of its periphery was known as ‘EU enlargement’. It was a catalyst for a change of governance and the stabilization of East-Central Europe. The key leverage was conditionality: introducing norms of democratic governance as conditions for economic and political integration. It worked in the EU accession process (the EU version of ‘democracy promotion’), but can it be eff ective in the post-accession phase when the institutions of the rule of law are challenged in some Central European countries? And can this be replicated in the Balkans or in the EU’s neighborhoods where issues of statehood and state-building dominate the political agenda? Can issues related to ethnic or religious confl ict, state-capacity and governance be addressed through opening markets, assistance programmes and more open borders? The post-war Balkans suggest that a reconfi gured policy of EU integration may work. But the further east and south the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) moves the more it is confronted with state failure and the violent return of power politics.

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