But in addition to the poetic (in)justice, there was also an element of humor to the story. In its swift answer to the question whether the parrot really was dead, a Monty Pythonesque European Commission delivered a resounding No, its president, Jose Manuel Barroso, simply stating that “the treaty is alive” and that “the European Commission believes that the remaining ratifications should continue to take their course” (quoted in Vucheva 2008). In so doing, President Barroso, not the Irish No voters, was actually contravening both the letter and spirit of one of the EU’s most basic principles, namely, that all new treaties have to be taken unanimously by all member states. Faced with an Irish electorate of selfish and intolerant ungratefuls, however, such contravention seemed like a price worth paying; or, more likely, there was not even a conception of such a price in the first place. Today, rather, the stakes in the European project seem too high to make room for much level-headed reflection and dialogue on the part of the EU leadership, let alone any serious explication of what those stakes are that seemingly cannot afford the least bit of popular hesitation as to the EU’s allegedly benign influence on people’s livelihoods and future prospects. After all, and as expressed with utter clarity for many years now, the EU claims as its first priority the service of the European citizens. Yet if the EU truly wants a relationship with citizens, and not merely with subjects, few would argue that such a relationship could rest solely on the latter’s obligations to the former—since that would be in radical breach of everything smacking of a modern conception of citizenship. Instead, such a relationship would necessarily also have to be built on a conception of citizens as possessors of rights whereby they could gain a stake in the EU project. In the Irish referendum, as on so many other occasions when the EU project stands at the direct mercy of popular scrutiny, the majority of voters were not approached as citizens of the European Union. In other words, they were not seen as worthy of a stake.
Outlining the Historical Background
This book aims to describe and analyse the current nexus of citizenship and the EU project, recognizing, however, that such an analysis could not go very far unless it proceeds from a historical perspective. Before we spell out our more specific aims, and before we delve any further into the current problematic, let us therefore take a moment here to preview some of the historical antecedents of the contemporary predicament.
To begin with, it is important to remember that although the project of European integration was launched already in the 1950s, it would wait until the 1970s before the matters of popular legitimacy and participation were to enter the integration equation in any noticeable fashion. Cast in the still prevalent social democratic mold at the time, these matters, as we discuss in Chapter 2, were to form part of various initiatives pushing for greater European Community authority and involvement in the 1970s economic crisis management. For such Community involvement to be legitimate and effective, it was argued, it had to proceed in tandem with the launch of a “European citizenship” scheme, establishing a direct link of substantial social rights and policy influence between member-state citizens and the Community level. However, falling prey to the so-called Eurosclerosis (or Euro-pessimism) hitting the Community in the mid-1970s, which stalled much of the progress on European integration up until the early 1980s, these initiatives would basically all come to naught. Yet, what had been shown with some force was that many Community policy makers had become convinced that if European integration was to go forward it had to be able to enthuse the general public and so find a mobilizing argument outside the realm purely concerned with market integration.
After the initiatives in the 1970s it would take until the mid- and late 1980s before the time proved ripe again for the question of “European citizenship” to gain a foothold on the Community agenda. Unlike in the 1970s, however, this time the efforts to boost the Community’s popular legitimacy were neither of a primarily social democratic bent, nor were they principally initiated in order to pave the way for integration steps not yet taken. Rather, they were launched so as to bestow retroactive popular legitimacy onto giant integration steps that had already been taken, without prior consultation with the member-state citizens. These giant steps of European integration of course refer to the Single Market project, launched in 1985, and to the new treaty that underwrote it: the Single European Act (SEA, ratified in 1987), which made up the first sizeable revision of the Community’s founding treaties. As we shall discuss at some length in Chapter 3, the neoliberal-inspired Single Market—with its attempts to subject ever greater areas of social life to the commodifying logic of the market and the principle of free movement—was to induce significant social and political transformations in the member states. Igniting a development whereby more and more policy areas and future challenges to the member states started to take on a “European dimension”—in everything from social welfare and macroeconomy to third-country migration and asylum policy—these transformations continue to cast their shadow on today’s developments. Suffice it to say, too, that the vexed question of the EU’s “democratic deficit” derives its origin from the changes brought about by the Single Market and the SEA. To be sure, the architects of the Single Market and the SEA were well aware of the consequential impact of their creations. In addition, many of these same architects, the most important among them being the president of the European Commission himself, Jacques Delors, were also aware of these creations’ potentially adverse effects, particularly for the Community’s laborers.
It is therefore no coincidence that the Single Market transformations were to walk hand in hand with a concerted effort to rally member-state citizens around the reborn European integration. This effort can be broken down into roughly four subsets of initiatives. First, there was the launch of the extensive campaign to foster a popular sense of “European identity,” broadcast under such headings as “People’s Europe” and “Citizens’ Europe,” urging member nationals to embrace and unite around their common European cultural values and civilizational heritage. As part of this, Brussels worked hard to both introduce new and revive old Community symbols, as seen in the promotion of an EU anthem, a flag, a Europe Day and a new EU passport design. Second, citizens were to be made aware of the new opportunities presented by the Single Market’s open internal borders (free movement) and deregulated markets, highlighting the benefits to be reaped by European entrepreneurs, professionals, students, consumers, and tourists. In addition, and third, Europeans were promised the creation of a “social Europe,” working so as to counterbalance any socially unfavorable effects that might result from the new “market making” Europe. Fourth, and finally, popular legitimacy for the Single Market transformations was also sought via Brussels and member-state governments’ firm assurance that the new Europe of open internal borders by no means was to imply an increase in immigration from non-member countries, or that international crime was to be allowed to take advantage of the abolition of internal border controls. In this sense, the budding European citizenship fashioned itself as a security bulwark protecting citizens against a number of perceived new threats, among which “illegal” immigration and “bogus” asylum seeking increasingly were being placed on the same footing as international crime and drug trafficking, even terrorism.1 This also meant that from now on the EU’s politics of citizenship was to be indissolubly bound up with the EU’s politics of third-country migration.
As the EU entered the 1990s and the period for the launching of