Agarin, Timofey

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When asking, ‘if there is justice deficitin Europe?’ we should query the powerof Member StatesTimofey Agarin 2015-06-18T08:44:02Europe’s Justice Deficit? throws up sets of questions to consider not only in legalstudies but also across the board of social sciences, including my own sub-disciplineof political studies. For over two and a half decades, since the demise of communismin the East of Europe, the proliferating social science literature has been concernedwith issues that are relevant across very distinct societies, nations and nation-states,but which all share a deep unease about the hard-to-foresee impact of Europeanintegration on the people on the ground. Contributors to this volume offer a potentreminder to students of society and politics about the original incentive for theEuropean integration project: a concern for justice for all Europeans.Between the covers of the book we find some stimulating zooming-in on the issuesof justice and justification in the European project. These do more than just invitestudents of politics to engage with the practical implications of European integrationat the time when policy opt-outs and revision of states’ commitments to the EU arehigh on the agenda. As a person with no legal training, and as a representative ofthe discipline often lambasted for its circumscribed understanding of the letter of thelaw, I could hardly cast doubt over the contributions to Verfassungsblog. Also, thereseems preciously little to disagree with the book’s contributors; it is uncontested that‘the EU affects lives of many people in ways they perceive as profoundly unjust.’The main issue that most contributors to the volume and the thread of this debateaddress bears on the variegated impact economic developments across Europehave exercised on societies and polities, and importantly, on perceptions of legalnorms. Indeed, it is perceptions that prove the most interesting for both studentsof law and politics. is it merely a perception that some Europeans’ hold or is itas Eftheriadis and Bartl have pointed out, Eurozone and Europe respectivelylacking justice by design? Can the perceptions about the limits of justice in Europeexpressed by legal scholars be translated into a viable research paradigm to studyEuropean politics and societies?At the book presentation on June 4, both Giuliano Amato and Christian Joergesargued in favour of legal and political institutions greater involvement in managingthe impact of economy on people across the continent. Joerges indicated that theSingle market has been driving the political and social integration of Europeansocieties, and in the past it is from economic development that one would haveexpected a more just, redistributive Europe. Amato similarly pointed out that sincethe Euro crisis the perceptions about what is just, previously shared across theboard of the continent have been drifting apart, eroding he sentiment of common- 1 -purpose, trust and ultimately empathy toward those on the benefitting end of policiesredistributing the spoils.These are pertinent questions for citizens, but even more so for the politicalelites. While these enjoy significant latitude in framing policies to publics, they arethemselves constrained by two factors outside their immediate control: law andpast precedent, as I frequently have to remind my students. Yet, who are thosepublic leaders still prepared to debate the various sources of the justice deficit? Ifwe ultimately view the volume and debate that followed from aside: what are thereasons to address the justice deficit; who are the agents of change in this regard,and are the subjects and objects of justice deficit the same set of institutions? AsRuffert and Zucca remind us, when the EU ceased to be seen as a community ofspoils and became a community of joint liability, fewer and fewer volunteers havebeen keen on addressing the justice deficit.What one perceives justice to be depends on one’s view of the agents tasked with itsimplementation, and whilst it might be clear for legal scholars that laws are out there,social and political scientists often do find it hard to believe that legal benchmarksemerge in a norm-free space. The institutions that established and maintain justicein Europe anticipated a distinct vision of a just community of states, societies andindividuals, but how this vision is being received and interpreted across the continentis far from clear. Twenty-five years after the demise of communism in the East ofEurope, enhanced democratic cooperation and — in some states — considerablelength of EU membership, the once receding concern for those ‘closer to home’ hasyet again gained high currency since the Euro crisis.As the winds of populism blow across Europe, from the Algarve to Lapland and fromthe Irish to the Aegean Sea, it might be tempting to dismiss the return to nativismas a temporary and transitory vehicle of popular protest. However, as UKIP, GoldenDawn, Jobbik, the Sweden Democrats, Podemos, Syriza, Vlams Belang and TrueFinns all secure seats in local, regional, national and supranational assemblies,the questions mount about differential impact of the Euro crisis on comparativeattractiveness of these political forces to national electorate over the idea of a unifiedand indeed just Europe. With populist parties advocating extremely diverse politicalagendas, they all reach out to their voters hushing them away from the politicalforces who have dominated the political scene during the years of plenty before theEuro crisis.Perhaps unsurprisingly, the ‘lean years’ that followed saw a growing number ofpopulist themes dominating public concerns and increasingly questioning the verynature of the European integration project. Many of these have siphoned out thedebate on common European matters that laid the foundations for reproach from EUcitizens, such as recognition of diversity and redistribution of social and economicresources. Even in countries where, in the past, European issues enjoyed muchsupport, ethnocentric debates have made it onto the stage and into the politicalarena. In others, where centrist political forces have dominated agenda setting onall things ‘Europe’, these have re-capitalised on voters’ resentment with forces lyingoutside their nation-state and promoted the idea of welfare capitalism for their owncountry only.- 2 -The shift away from the perception of the EU as the ultimate guarantor of justiceis particularly obvious in the region I am most familiar with, the Central EasternEuropean EU Member States. Here, the integration of national economies intoEuropean market delivered individual autonomy to many postcommunist citizenswhose memory of communist bloc integration made them resent the stiff control overindividual lives associated with supranational governance. With most postcommunistEU member-states offering just very loose social support and welfare, their publicshave foregone commitment to social solidarity and societal integration in favour of ahighly individualised culture of aspiration and achievement. Where before the 2004enlargement the ‘normative power of Europe’ contributed to institutional change andliberalisation of state-society relations, the rise of communitarian and reconciliatorysentiments in the region has found an abrupt end with the onset of the Euro crisis.More recently, postcommunist EU citizens vent their discontent with the direction ofsocial, political and economic change, but mostly about their unmet expectation ofprosperity and welfare in the EU ten years after joining the Union.Such an interpretative lens lends itself handily to critics of the EU, marketliberalisation and societal democratisation even in states a decade ago stillconcerned prominently with their dutiful place in the European family of nations.Indeed, it is the ‘nation’ that has become the main focus of both left and right politicalforces across the region, finding its most illustrious expression in Orban’s ‘illiberaldemocracy’. The concern for the welfare of one’s national community wedgedthe door open for the previously marginal idea of ‘saving the nation’ through ‘EUintegration of nation-states’ as in Estonia, Latvia, and Slovakia. These developmentsaffect not only these new and still consolidating, even if no longer peripheral polities;they solicit a peculiar kind of solidarity in the ‘old’ Member States about the pitfalls ofEuropean integration.Across the board of new Member States the new sentiment is on the rise aboutdiminishing opportunities for individual advancement in their countries, and in theunited Europe as a whole. Feeding from the common perception of publics aboutthe inability of the established political elites to amortise the impact of economiccrisis on national societies, publics in the EU member-states which just years earlierbenefitted immensely from freedom of movement in the EU see migrant citizens ofother Member States, not to mention those non-EU migrants as well as refugees,with great caution. There is a clear rift across the continent between the left and rightleaning populists emerging in different parts of the EU; these new political forcesincreasingly converge on the view of institutional responsibility for success, yetindividual achievement and success.Thus, while I wholeheartedly applaud this volume’s and this thread’s contributorsto shift the debate on the justice deficit, I am just not compelled to believe thatenough has been said about the too overpowering role of the Member States inthe European integration project. Indeed, the gamut of international organisationsdoes provide for some blueprint to steer domestic policy preference away fromself-serving ends. Yet, much power to shore up each and every Member States’citizens from austerity and competition lay outside of national governments’ control.And over these ‘lean years’ we have seen the rapidly changing perceptions about- 3 -welfare-state and increasing contestation of European redistributive arrangementsfor access to welfare and labour market, education and healthcare, housing andpolitical representation. These changes in public opinions have given rise to newsets of political issues debated around the continent by the European publics. Havethey challenged the established narrative of Europe as a place for sharing liabilitiesas well as spoils, as a good pupil of redistributive justice? I am not certain. Yet,the growing insecurities of European publics about access to and guarantees ofopportunities previously provided only to citizens of their state are high on politicalagendas in all Member States.This brings me squarely to consider the limitations of commitment to a joint politicalproject pledged during the ‘years of plenty’ by the European political leaders. Thiscommitment has been increasingly hard to sustain when the ‘lean years’ haveunlocked the potential for the return to nativism across the continent. The sets ofroles political elites have assumed when interacting with variant audiences – the EU,other Member States and domestic publics – in the process of consolidating theirelectorates and extending their bargaining power vis-à-vis other Member States haschanged dramatically as economic wells ran dry.In these interactions, political elites in all Member States have negotiated normativeconflicts in performing different roles: Domestically, they have assumed the roleof sovereign decision- and policy-makers in order to attain recognition from theircitizens; they claim to exercise control over levels of service available to theircitizenries in order to maintain perceptions of a ‘service station’ as during the ‘yearsof plenty’; finally, these political elites also sought recognition from internationalpartners by patching up their own image vis-à-vis their European partners. Yet moreoften than not, they have subverted the efforts to secure and justify their relationshipin terms of anything but entitlement, particularly in relation to their citizens’ accessto public goods and services. Although limitations for EU citizens to move from onecountry to another are not part of a serious debate (yet?), some Member States haveimposed conditions on entry for non-EU migrants. People of non-EU origin such asmyself, are required to demonstrate ‘good’ reasons for movement, having desirableskills etc, in short, allowing state to judge migrants’ potential to contribute, and assuch, earn rights.This rhetoric of contribution increasingly defines how the leaders of ‘old’ EU MemberStates’ frame their relationship with citizens from other, usually ‘new’ EU statesin terms of entitlement to rights on egalitarian accounts enshrined in EU legalprovisions. And here lays the potential for the EU to attain greater leverage overissues of justice and justification: While publics in some Member States are primedto recognise individuals’ contribution to common welfare regardless of her citizenshipstatus, in others access to public welfare is open only to those who discretelycontribute to economy. In itself, the relations between states with such differentapproaches to ensuring distributive justice ought to be regulated by neglecting theeconomic and political cost to states and ideally at the level of the EU. In such asituation every EU Member State would be clearly recognisable as an agent ofjustice for its own citizens as well as of citizens of other, not necessarily only of EUmember-states, in the role of sovereign authority ensuring equality of all its residents.- 4 -Thus, as a student of politics and polities, I can only hope that several lessonsfrom Europe’s Justice Deficit? between the legal scholars will be imported into myown discipline: First and foremost, we ought to take seriously the link betweenperceptions of justice deficit and the impact of political economy on Europeanpublics. This of necessity opens up the Pandora box of issues that political studieshave dodged in favour of engaging in self-congratulatory assessment of the (overall,positive) impact integration on economy across Member States. It is worth remindingourselves that only spurious interest in the European social model has been aroundwhile the interest in the ever deeper integration of economies did not match upwith equal social integration of publics across the continent into European society.Particularly, the long-term impact of integration into common market of the ‘new’Member States politics and societies have been barely touched upon while theircitizens voted with their feet, leaving in droves to reach more open and competitivemarkets for labour, education, and cultural production in the Western, ‘old’ MemberStates.The second cue that students of politics should take from the Europe’s JusticeDeficit? is that about the challenging underpinnings to the normative order acrossthe Europe. The emerging range of new populist political forces of all spectrums isgradually transforming the pool of candidates for governmental posts, tilting politicaldebate to focus on concerns of growingly nativist electorate. As in this country,issues of the EU membership, freedom of movement and access to welfare arecast in a distinctly economic light and become part and parcel of alternative politicalvisions. Politicking on issues of short-term relevance are effective when they focuscost-benefit calculus as the debate about the immediate policy steps, yet these can– and do – resonate mostly when electorates are hard pressed to make ends meet,go through the long spreadsheet of positives and negatives, or both. Regrettably,for political pundits of sorts, Amato’s plea for greater mutual responsibility is ananathema. Where membership in the Eurozone, freedom of movement and deeperintegration are projects securing common welfare are but a ball in political ping-pong,solidarity between parts and countries of Europe will remain challenged by self-promoting political communicators.Finally, the discussion in the book and on this blog should pull political scientists intoa more active engagement with what many of us, political scientists, perceive to bedry and forbidding issues of law and matters of justice. By now, the whole generationof political scientists has been engaged in discussions about the immediate impactof Europe on economies, states and their peoples. Oftentimes in the past thesechanges have been an attractive rallying point for social movements that tookalterations in the welfare regime close to heart. Today, many of these changessip through from the everyday into the political arena via political contenders andtheir leaders who are not heeding the pledge for justice. As both anti-statist andwelfare-nativist ideas spread across societies and form the backdrop for politicalcampaigning, the acutely felt economic pressures of electorates provide a ready-made mix for considerable roll-back in redistributive role Europe at large and the EUspecifically can play in the ‘lean years’. So, if we are to take seriously the questionabout justice deficit in Europe we ought to expand the scope of justice to incorporateall residents of the EU into explanations about why Euro crisis caused reluctance to- 5 -demonstrate solidarity with those who are a bit unlike us. Ultimately, it is the lack ofsolidarity among citizens of nation-states that is at the heart of blame shifting from‘us’ to ‘them’, be it for the failure of Europe to be as one wants it to be, or for failureof others to hamper our expectations.In this overcast corner of Europe from where I write, people have more oftenthan not felt remote from political decision making, opting in for labour marketopportunities closer to home and relying heavily on their closely knit network offriends and family for education, welfare provisions and opportunities for socialadvancement. As can be increasingly seen in other parts of Europe today, publicsrarely take concerns over matters of justice seriously unless they do perceivelaw, state, political elites and above all the EU promote their individual wellbeing.The book’s contributors as well as authors in this blog note duly that presently theEuropean integration project is challenged by these radically changing perceptions ofcitizens about the type of polity they want to be governed by and the sort of societythey feel confident enough to identify with.- 6 -

When asking, ‘if there is justice deficit in Europe?’ we should query the power of Member States

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When asking, ‘if there is justice deficit in Europe?’ we should query the power of Member States

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