Dahrendorf (original) (raw)
Transformative Power of Europe reloaded, abandon the bridge too far and Many Europes in One: Three alternative Scenarios on the Future of Europe discussed in high-profile Berlin Dahrendorf Symposium
Our Symposium has assumed the role of ‘changing the debate’ on Europe. The main rationale behind this is that the reality has moved at a faster pace than our discourse on Europe. We must catch up: but actually seeing the dimension of a challenge we have to get a step ahead. We need to play the Hollywood script writers who were called in after September 11 and told by policymakers: And now, give us your worst and your best! Because to avoid every negative scenario, an option had to be
Utopia remains close, but far, after the Dahrendorf Symposium
Eleven panels, roundtables and keynote speeches brought together 53 participants (though the real number is actually slightly lower, as some speakers appeared more than once on the podium) from politics, academia and civil society. The Dahrendorf Symposium, held last week at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin, pointed high and aimed at “Changing the Debate on Europe”. In fact, participants discussed European democracy, the European social space and the European foreign policy. The dominant topic, however, was the euro-crisis. As Alina Mungiu-Pippidi from Hertie School has pointed out, three
No fiscal federalism without community building
European officials are seeking to solve the grand design failure of the Euro-Zone by constructing a major facade right on top of the gaping fault line. From a sociological viewpoint, the main defect of the Euro-Zone is not that it created a common currency without forming the institutions that can fashion a common fiscal policy—but that the citizens of nations involved neither understood nor agreed that their economic fate would be conjoined. To now fashion a European finance ministry with powers to make the member nations heed zone-wide fiscal policies
Project Bonds or Declarations of Love? How to Stop Hate Speech in the European Family
Eurobonds, common debts to be guaranteed by all European countries but spent nationally, are anathema to the German public and German politicians. So it was kind of a surprise hearing Werner Hoyer, Minister of State at the German Federal Foreign Office, declaring “project bonds”, common debts to be guaranteed by all European countries, but spent on a European level, instead of a national one, to be a possible future development. Mr. Hoyer, who is a possible candidate for the President of the European Investment Bank, what might explain the shift,
The unfair evaluation of Europe’s common foreign policy
From down-to-earth social problems, the Dahrendorf Symposium, held last week in Berlin, took a lift to the atmospheric altitude of Europe’s foreign policy. Discussing first “Europe as a social space”, addressing minority problems, it switched to “Global Europe”, addressing, well…, what exactly? European Foreign Policy seems to be a linkage of major failures. Europe did not push through a comprehensive climate change agreement; it did not find common positions either on Iraq in 2003 or on Libya in 2011, and had to accept the ruin of its nuclear non-proliferation strategy
Is Europe forgetting its social problems with regard to minorities?
Is a cold wind blowing in Europe, when it comes to its minorities? Participants agreed at last week’s panel on “Europe as a social space” at the Dahrendorf Symposium in Berlin: “We witness a decline of social space in Europe”, said Hakan Seckinelgin from the London School of Economics. “Europe has become a closed society, there is a racialization of society”, added Eric Fassin from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. “The scapegoat is changing but the logic of exclusion is the same”, said Angela Kocze from the European Roma
Closing of the Symposium
The three “founding fathers” of the Dahrendorf Symposium, Damian Chalmers, LSE, Helmut Anheier, Hertie School, and Bernhard Lorentz, Stiftung Mercator have just closed the symposium! Chalmers underlined that Dahrendorf would have enjoyed especially the uncomfortable questions raised by the conference. Anheier announced that the LSE, the Hertie School and the Sciences Po would set up a series of workshops to test some of the main visionary ideas raised during the symposium and keep the momentum alive. He explicitly mentioned the vision of a more democratic Europe proposed by the German
Global Challenges as the Motivation for deeper European Integration?
European integration has been in most cases positive for the European people. Nevertheless, Europe is no political pop star. In the past decades it was the prospect of peace that legitimised integration. However, this will not be applicable for the future as Norbert Röttgen, German federal minister, said yesterday. He is right as only 47 percent of EU-citizens still believe that their respective state’s membership in the EU is “a good thing.” Nevertheless, all participants of the panel “global Europe” pointed to the necessity of Europeans getting their act together
The courage of thinking big
The European integration has always had two faces. The first one based on the institutional, economic and legal convergence, and the other being more social, being expressed in the motions of European identity and European citizenship. Part of the first pillar – the Eurozone – is now at stake as a result of the financial crisis and years of negligence of mutual control within the European Union itself. Luckily so far the other aspect of the institutional integration in Europe is not being questioned. But we do not know what is
What to do with Greece?
Wolfgang Ischinger just proposed that “we should go there to hold a speech to Greece not only in order to tell them what they have to do but to tell them that we love them.” “Emotional elemtents are important, we have to tell each other that we love each other.”