Will Donald Trump’s reelection be the prod the European Union (EU) needs to start getting its act together? Can the twenty-seven-nation bloc articulate a common industrial policy that protects workers and average citizens from the perils of globalization — and the lure of the far right?
There are reasons to be skeptical, not least given the political troubles in the EU ’s biggest member states. In Germany, the governing coalition headed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz finally collapsed this Wednesday, the day after the US vote. The last straw was a long-developing dispute over deficit spending, which pitted Scholz against his neoliberal-hawk finance minister Christian Lindner, who opposed any talk of a moratorium on the “fiscal brake” embedded in the country’s constitution. Snap elections now expected for early 2025 seem primed to favor the conservative Christian Democrats and the further right Alternative for Germany — both zealously committed to the German dogma of austerity. Things are hardly looking much rosier over in France. Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s minority government is today embroiled in a budget fight, maneuvering a cost-cutting and investment-sparse 2025 finance package through a hung parliament.
Such instability in the EU’s two main pillars seems sure to aggravate the pessimism that has been overtaking Europe’s power elite in recent months. “My concern is not that we will suddenly find ourselves poor and subservient to others,” Mario Draghi insisted, in a September 17 speech to the EU’s parliament in Strasbourg. “We still have many strengths in Europe.” Yet for the former president of the European Central Bank (ECB), presenting the conclusions of a report on Europe’s political economy, the end game…
Auteur: Harrison Stetler
