EU: A ‘Bureaucratic Consortium’, ‘Vehicle For German Interests or Simply a Tired-Out Project?

The EU Studies lexicon needs to be amended. Generations of students and textbook writers wasted their time to think about the true nature of the EU. President Trump just made sure that this is business of the past: The EU is a bureaucratic consortium. Period. Whoever had a grant from the EU, and even more true, whoever had to suffer through a routine audit of the EU learned that TRUMP IS RIGHT: The EU is a bureaucratic unit. Bureaucratic in the sense that they act kafkaesk, by means of principle acting without any sense of context and slavishly following bleak paragraphs. Letters count, content is irrelevant, context is meaningless. When the EU is confronted with the proposition that it is a huge bureaucracy, the response is that actually the size of the bureaucracy in Brussels is very small, compared to nation-state levels. This is a very correct argument: The EU’s administrative expenses account for under 6% of the total EU budget, with salaries accounting for around half of that 6% (see EU Commission). The proposition that the EU is bureaucratic does not question this fact. It is bureaucratic not by the numbers off civil servants but in the way it works – slowly, on its own pace and without ideas about the future. How else could one explain why so far the EU is in no meaningful way prepared to deal with the seismic shift in global politics? Why is the Juncker-Commission so helpless when it comes to strategies? Why is the Commission so out of fantasy when it comes to voters?

The other day, President Trump uttered that the EU is nothing else than a vehicle for Germany interests. Then he came up defining the EU as a consortium. Latter is usually defined as an an ‘agreement, combination, or group (as of companies) formed to undertake an enterprise beyond the resources of any one member’ (Merriam-Webster). So, obviously the EU can’t be both. Defining it as a consortium is pretty close to the way political scientists think about the EU. Latter, however, would add that the distinct feature of the EU is the voluntary delegation of sovereignty from the nation-staste to the supranational institutions. This is usually not a defining element of a consortium, at least not in the way economists define a consortium. And yet, Trump shows instinct as indeed the EU seems to lose exactly its distinct feature. Rather than dealing in politically meaningful ways with the transfer of sovereignty from member states to the EU, the EU is preoccupied to return powers to the nation-states, see CETA, and to become a shell for fights between nation-states who want to follow-through with their national preferences.

It seems to be high time that the EU, as a start, stands and fights for its basic values, and all of them are based on human rights and democratic rights. To let it happen that governments like the ones in Poland and Hungary, to name only two, in systematic ways violate those principles without getting punished speaks in disfavour of the EU. That the EU accepts that Germany follows through with an economic policy that is only guided by national interests makes the EU to a unfair organization that provokes statements like the one from Trump that it is only a vehicle for german interests. Voters in Greece and in other countries of there European South may see this actually exactly the same way. That the EU accepts to give up its previously global leadership role in climate politics and overall in environmental policies – think Dieselgate and the influence of car lobbies – is a historical mistake, even though it may minimize internal conflicts about the distribution of adjustment costs.

Some commentators make the case that the Trump Presidency opens a window of opportunity for the EU to regain lost territory. This window exists, indeed. Unfortunately, the EU is extremely bad prepared to make use of the opportunity. The lack of vision and the destruction of a truly European narrative has started before the Juncker tenure but since has even got worse. Renewal probably will not come from within. The incentives for business as usual are too attractive that civil servants, not to speak from the political representatives sent by the members states, would be interested to engage in truly forward-looking policies. Managing the status quo is much too much appreciated by the institution, and risk aversion the attitude of the day. Who would have though that sixty years ago?