Twelve Stars

No Brakes

Today’s European Union emerged out of the unexpected fusion of Western social democracy and Eastern democratic insurgency, May ’68 and Prague Spring, the New Left and the Velvet Revolutions. Yet in its original form, the Eurostate was never intended to be anything more than the executive committee of Europe’s central bankers. During the 1990s, Europe’s Big Money – high-flying Eurobankers, market-obsessed neoliberals and corporate elites – wanted to clone Wall Street’s rip-off capitalism, concentrating profits in the hands of a tiny wealthy elite while savaging public services and trashing real wages.

They had every advantage you could think of: cash flow, connections, and a high-powered ad campaign. But a funny thing happened on the way to the United States of Europe: ordinary hard-working EU citizens started to wake up and ask embarrassing questions – little details like, who benefits from the new Europe, and who doesn’t? Why should pinstriped CEOs and financial fundamentalists sitting in expensive glass skyscrapers benefit from the new Europe, while the people who make Europe work – the line workers, engineers, programmers and scientists who build world-class products at STMicro, Daimler and Nokia, the teachers, janitors and electricians who deliver top-notch services, and the construction workers, teamsters and telecom personnel who operate the finest civil infrastructure in the world – get shut out in the cold?

The result was one of the most astounding political upsets of the 20^th century, as the people of Europe mobilized to defeat Maastricht monetarism. In 1995, the French railworkers went out on strike against neoliberal austerity. By 1996, protests had spread to Germany. By 1998, a wave of anti-neoliberal movements organized some of the biggest demonstrations in Europe since the 1960s. In the process, the people Europe transformed the Eurostate of the central bankers into the world’s first multinational democracy. To borrow a metaphor from Hideaki Anno’s magnificent TV series, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Euro-Evangelion has arrived to do battle against the planet-wrecking Angels of Neoliberalism.

I. The Ice Age of Neoliberalism

In the early 1990s, Europe had to cope with two self-inflicted wounds. Eastern Europe was besotted by what Boris Kagarlitsky famously called “market Stalinism” (the criminal looting of the state by free market zealouts, who sold off public property to crooked elites and blamed the resulting economic disasters on Communism), while Western Europe was in the thrall of dogmatic monetarists, who imposed crushingly high real interest rates on economies already suffering from a recession. The result was stagnation in the West and economic collapse in the East. By the mid-1990s, though, public patience snapped in both sectors of Europe, almost simultaneously. Eastern European voters dumped neoliberal governments and began to re-regulate and reconstruct their economies, with the help of the European Union. At the same time, Western Europe decided that the time had come for a truly European set of economic policies. Eleven countries (later expanded to twelve) decided to replace their national currencies with a new currency, the euro.

Media

Kieslowski, White (Eastern Europe and marketization)

Caro & Jeunet Delicatessen (1991)

Heiner Mueller (various speeches and essays)

Texts

Maastricht monetarism: high real interest rates, monetary convergence

Kagarlitsky on market Stalinism and the Ice Age of neoliberalism in Eastern Europe

French rail strikes: Festival of the streets, ATTAC, IG Metall

Silicon Europa: Fusion of the Central European Fire Lizards and the Nordic Ice Lizards

Green parties (web materials)

Snapshot: Pierre Bourdieu, Eurosociologist

Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance

II. The Republic of Nokia

The might of the European Union rests not on neoliberal dogmas but on its skilled workforce, mighty unions, social democratic traditions and world-class industrial base. The EU was also the beneficiary of vast amounts of public spending, and a wealth of public banks, credit cooperatives and production networks. Interestingly, the EU’s unique developmental path overdetermined its political evolution, to the point that many of the EU’s structural features are being reproduced in its newest member countries (the so-called accession process). Finland and Nokia are especially relevant examples of how and why the EU caught up with the US.

Media

Kieslowski, Blue (acquis communautaire)

Tykwer, Run Lola Run

Caro & Jeunet City of Lost Children (1995) Rise of the Eurothriller

Texts

EIB: powering the semi-periphery

EUREKA and the EU chip industry

European Central Bank: Maastricht monetarism melts, the Great Bailout begins

Eastern Europe: from the acquis communautaire to the politics of accession

The Republic of Nokia: 3G and i-modo

Snapshot: Why GSM stomped CDMA, or, the Qualcomm bubble and the Gildered Age of Mad King George

III. Euro-Evangelion

Since the accession of ten more countries in 2004, the EU has become a bona fide superpower. More countries are preparing to join: Croatia, Bulgaria, Romania, and even Turkey are waiting in the wings. By the end of 2006, the EU will have its own constitution, army, currency and social legislation, and its future borders will eventually stretch all the way from Ireland to Iraq.

Media

Kieslowski, Red (Euro-solidarity)

Croteam’s Serious Sam: Croatia and fantasms of accession

Remedy, Max Payne

Jeunet Amelie (2001)

Texts

The Children of Euro: Keitai communism and Indymedia EU

Birth of a superpower: accession 2004 and Turkey’s candidacy

Multiculturalism in Europe: unity in diversity

Airbus 380: Blowing Past Boeing

Beethoven’s Ninth: unity in diversity

EU Newsletter: writing a 21^st century Constitution

Snapshot: Romano Prodi