Will the EU Disintegrate? What Does the Likely Possibility of Disintegration Tell About the Future of the World?

Abstract

Is it true that either the EU will be democratised or it will disintegrate? I concur that the current policies, principles, and institutions of the EU both generate counterproductive politico-economic effects and suffer from problems of legitimation. These effects and problems, which are not confined to Europe, give rise to tendencies towards disintegration. My second point concerns the timing of the required learning and reforms. Modest policy proposals and tentative steps within the existing EU Treaty framework may be too little too late. The question is whether there is enough time for deeper transformations in Europe—and also globally.

Full text

Will the EU disintegrate? What does the likely possibility of
disintegration tell about the future of the world?
Heikki Patomäki
Abstract
Is it true that either the EU will be democratised or it will disintegrate? I concur that
the current policies, principles and institutions of the EU both generate
counterproductive politico-economic effects and suffer from problems of legitimation
and. These effects and problems, which are not confined to Europe, give rise to
tendencies toward disintegration. My second point concerns the timing of the
required learning and reforms. Modest policy proposals and tentative steps within the
existing EU Treaty framework may be too little too late. The question is whether
there is enough time for deeper transformations in Europe – and also globally.
Keywords: anticipation, cosmopolitanism, economic theory, existential insecurity,
legitimation, nationalism, Yanis Varoufakis
Introduction
Brexit provides an opportunity to consider the context and possible futures of the
European project. The slogan of Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25),
‘The EU will either be democratised or it will disintegrate!’, associated with Yanis
Varoufakis, was written more than half a year before the British referendum of 23
June 2016. It was written following the Greek debacle of summer 2015, but may
seem even more relevant now (cf. Varoufakis 2016).
In the DiEM25 Manifesto, read widely in the first half of 2016, the idea of there
being only two main alternatives is explicated further: ‘If we fail to democratise
Europe within, at most, a decade […], then the EU will crumble under its hubris, it
will splinter.’ In its current form the EU has alienated Europeans and is stirring up ‘a
dangerous anti-European backlash’. What is more, Europe seems to be returning to
its barbarous past. ‘Proud peoples are being turned against each other. Nationalism,
extremism and racism are being re-awakened.’
1
The UK Leave-campaign stressed the problems of EU democracy by
proclaiming that ‘we are going take back control of our sovereignty’. But the result of
 Heikki Patomäki, Department of Political and Economic Studies, P.O. Box 54 (Street address: Unioninkatu 37)
00014 University of Helsinki, Finland, tel. +358 050 448 4400; e-mail: heikki.patomaki@helsinki.fi.
1
See DiEM25’s website at https://diem25.org/; the long version of the manifesto can be found at
https://diem25.org/manifesto-long/.

2
the UK referendum seems to confirm that the discontent among lower classes,
peripheries and at the margins of society has been channelled into a politics of
othering and scapegoating. The Leave-campaign did not involve any plan for
improving democracy. Rather its main narrative was that ‘others’ should not make
decisions for ‘us’.
In what follows I interrogate DiEM25 claims about potential for further
disintegration by scrutinizing their explanatory grounds. I concur that the current
policies, principles and institutions of the EU suffer from problems of legitimation
and tend to have counterproductive politico-economic effects. A problem is,
however, that the prevailing theories provide a framework that effectively preclude
alternative interpretations and thus make learning difficult. Moreover, the dynamics
of ethico-political positioning are ambiguous and complex. The second problem is
that modest policy proposals and tentative steps toward democratization of the EU
may be too little too late. I conclude by outlining some of the wider implications of
possible disintegrative developments in Europe. What is the true lesson of Brexit and
similar developments in Europe – and elsewhere?
What grounds our expectations about the future of the EU?
Deep-seated theoretical assumptions and general models of thinking about politics
and economics shape our anticipations about the future. Crucial to the EU’s future are
economic theories and theories of legitimation, the latter meaning moral, legal, and
political acceptability (see Patomäki 2013, 108-14). Economic theories can be
divided into two main groups: (i) variations of liberal economic theories, which
usually rest on microeconomic models of optimal equilibrium and on hypotheses of
efficient markets, and in part rely on new-classical macroeconomic doctrines; (ii)
post-Keynesian (and more generally heterodox) theories, according to which the
capitalist market economy is in many ways unstable, including in such ways that
processes of uneven growth and growing inequalities tend to be self-reinforcing.
Theories of legitimation can be roughly separated into two groups. On one side
are those according to which capitalist free markets and the resulting affluence
suffice to ensure political legitimacy, provided liberal human rights (including
property rights) are guaranteed and political leaders can be periodically chosen and
changed in elections. This theory is often associated with Joseph Schumpeter. On the
other side are more demanding theories of legitimation according to which the
acceptability of political rule require generalizable ethico-political goods that are
significant to us are and really mean something to our lives, such as generalizable
human development, social justice, and citizens’ active participation in democratic
practices and processes. One important contributor to this line of thinking has been
the German philosopher and social theorist Jürgen Habermas.

3
Table 1: Prognoses for the EU
Legitimation theory:
Schumpeter
Legitimation theory:
Habermas
(Neo- or ordo)liberal
economic theory
A. The EU basic treaties are firmly
founded, the EMU is legitimate
and functional.
B. The EMU may work, but EU’s
legitimacy is weak and unstable.
Post-Keynesian / heterodox
economic theory
C. The EU basic treaties are
unstably founded. The EMU
strangles Europe economically,
and is prone to crises.
D. The current EU basic treaties
are unjustified, and the likely
economic crises will eventually
destroy its legitimacy.
The whole EU, and particularly the EMU, has been built on interpretation A.
Interpretation B is critical of the EU basic treaties and of the EMU, but it is agnostic
on economic theory. From this perspective, the legitimation of the EU lies on shaky
foundations because of ‘democratic deficit’, lack of identity and proper citizenship.
Further, from the standpoint of interpretation C, the future of the EU looks uncertain
and dubious. However, according to this view the reason is not problems of
legitimation but the harmful economic effects of the EMU. Interpretation D combines
the two critical viewpoints’ as outlooks for the EU. Economic troubles resonating
with problems of legitimation are likely to result in a full-scale legitimation crisis.
None of these perspectives is categorically false. The euro seemed to work well
for the first six years. The available evidence indicates that citizens’ trust in the EU
institutions tends to correlate with economic performance, perhaps implying
interpretation A. Yet the early and brief success of the euro was ambiguous, as it was
built on imbalances sustained by debt in a financialized world. Since the global
financial crisis of 2008-9 and the subsequent euro crisis, the appeal of the EU has
declined both inside and outside the EU.
The fact that the proposed new EU constitutional treaty was rejected in the 2005
referendums in France and Netherlands speaks in favour of interpretation B.
Throughout the early years of the euro, the EU was constantly under criticism (as it
was in the 1990s), despite the fact that the economy appeared to be growing quite
briskly in many countries. This makes it understandable why the official objective of
the Lisbon negotiations was not only to strengthen the EU’s identity and decision-
making, but also to reduce its ‘democratic deficit’. The small steps taken in the
Lisbon treaty, however, did not remedy the situation. (See Patomäki 2014).
The crises of 2008-9 and 2010- accord with post-Keynesian economic
anticipations in interpretation C. And yet, the EU’s official responses have so far
remained broadly within the range of interpretation A. From studies in cognitive
science we know that causal and counterfactual reasoning about major historical
events is largely theory-driven (i.e. it is predictable from our abstract preconceptions;

4
Tetlock 1999). Also the liberal doctrine of efficient free markets and sound money
comprises a circular chain of reasoning that is used to impose discipline on states and
their policymaking. Within the reasoning, the doctrine itself cannot be at fault; the
problem is always that it has not been properly implemented. Ad hoc explanations
make it possible to continue with the same basic framing of problems. For instance
particular actors may be blamed for the problems, such as the ‘lazy and corrupt
Greeks’. The logic of the circular system is such that its main goals become
sustaining the orthodoxy as it is, rather than revising it, or even replacing it, in light
of the unintended consequences of its implementation.
What makes this partly understandable is that in open systems with complex
processes of causation, it is next to impossible to create decisive tests for theories.
This applies to all theories, including those of figure 1. Plausibly, Varoufakis (2016,
226-7) relies on interpretation D in making his prognosis about the future of the
Union. He states that the on-going moves towards a political union and ‘more
Europe’
2
constitute a ‘never-ending loop of frightful reinforcement, authoritarianism
and economic malaise’. This ‘will complete the business of delegitimizing Europe’.
While actual legitimation is contingent on many events and processes, crucially it
depends on the turns of the economy. With the partial fading away of the euro crisis
since 2014 and fragile recovery of the EU economy in 2015-16, the image of the EU
among citizenry seems to have been improving somewhat, although in autumn 2015,
after the Greek episode, trust in the EU stood at almost all times low.
3
Explaining the prevailing tendency toward scapegoating and othering
While recent macrohistoric experience seems to support interpretation D, also as the
most likely future option, why is it that the European discontent is channelled, for
such a large part, into nationalist politics of othering and scapegoating rather than
into building a leftist-democratic movement (such as DiEM25) for a transformed EU?
Why is it that Varoufakis (2016) and many others are evoking historical analogies to
the First World War and its aftermath, and to the rise of fascism and Nazism in
Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, to understand our current predicament? If post-
Keynesian or heterodox economic and Habermasian legitimation theories are on the
mark, surely a rational response to the crisis of the EU would be to make the EU
institutions more functional and democratic?
Every question, whether practical-political or more theoretical, has a set of
presuppositions. In formulating our questions, we need to consider critically our
presuppositions. For instance, it is important to avoid making invalid assumptions
2
Varoufakis focuses largely on Germany’s Finance Minister Dr. Schäuble and his authoritarian plans, but officially the
main current design for the further development of the Union is the ‘The Five Presidents' Report: Completing Europe's
Economic and Monetary Union’, available at https://ec.europa.eu/priorities/publications/five-presidents-report-
completing-europes-economic-and-monetary-union_en.
3
The latest standard Eurobarometer is from autumn 2015, available at
http://ec.europa.eu/COMMFrontOffice/PublicOpinion/.

5
about continuity and discontinuity. Both the EU itself and many specific EU treaties
have been rejected in national referenda over the decades, even within the original
EEC6 (in France and Holland). Norway has rejected EU membership twice. If the
order of the 1994 referenda in the Nordic countries had been different, at least
Sweden would have stayed out and perhaps Finland, too. The number of UK voters
supporting staying in the EU was roughly the same in 2016 as it was in 1975
(16,141,241 and 17,378,581 respectively). Population growth and higher turnout
enabled the ‘leave’ side to get two times more votes in 2016 than it did in 1975. It is
also significant that many nationalist right-wing parties in Europe have relatively
long historical roots. The Austrian Freedom Party was founded in 1956 and the
French National Front in 1972. Most of these parties with a substantial number of
seats in parliament in 2016 emerged between the late 1980s and early 2000s.
The dynamics of the shifts we are observing are complex. Consider the four
possibilities presented in Table 2. Support for the EU, or criticism of it, does not stem
self-evidently from any of the four options. In terms of the left-right division, the EU
is typically perceived to be mainly a right-wing (neoliberal) project, yet many on the
left and right anticipate that this can change. The prevailing perceptions and
anticipations have themselves been changing over time. (Harmes 2012).
For instance in the UK, Margaret Thatcher’s conservative party at times
supported, rejected/resisted and sought to shape the European integration process. It
has been acceptable in so far as it has fostered market-freedoms, and in so far as there
has been a perception it can become more free-private-market oriented in the future
(justifying some ceding of sovereignty). However, by the time David Cameron
became leader, the Euro-sceptic right of the party were becoming increasingly restive
and the party more broadly ambivalent about their position. This may have been
partly because in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2008-9, the EU
Commission started to advocate financial taxes and stronger regulation of finance (in
2016 the City of London nonetheless supported ‘Remain’).
Another shift, from left to right, concerns the nationalist populist parties. In their
anti-establishment rhetoric, these parties have every so often defended nationally
based welfare-systems for native citizens; but when in position to make decisions,
they have characteristically consented to neo- or ordo-liberal policies (from option A
to B in Table 1). On the left, in turn, the popularity of Plan B and Lexit (both
meaning ‘left exit’) rose rapidly after the dramatic surrender of Syriza in summer
2015. The Plan B manifesto was signed in late 2015 by many of Europe’s best known
Left politicians, including Oskar Lafointane and Yanis Varoufakis, but soon there
was a split between the nationalists and cosmopolitans.
4
In this Forum, Boris
Kagarlitzky advocates the national Lexit-option, assuming that cosmopolitanism
necessarily implies neoliberal elitism and right-orientation.
4
Terrorist attacks postponed the first Plan B summit in Paris from November 2015 to January 2016. This first summit
was dominated by nationalists, while Varoufakis and many other cosmopolitans abstained from participating (see my
report at http://patomaki.fi/en/2016/01/preparing-for-plan-b-in-paris/). However, the second summit in Madrid in
February 2016, which I also attended, was open to different positions and aimed at compromise formulations.

6
Table 2: Ethico-political alternatives in European politics
Left-orientation (cooperation,
solidarity; freedom and
efficiency require socio-
economic equality)
Right-orientation
(competition, private markets;
freedom and efficiency require
socio-economic differences)
National orientation
(‘we’ = ethnic nation or
citizens of a sovereign state)
National welfare-state and
democracy
National determination of
policies and inclusion/exclusion
Cosmopolitan orientation
(‘we’= humanity or world
citizens)
Global Keynesianism, global
social justice and/or global
democracy
Global free markets and
movements, coupled with
common institutions such as
global money
Shifts over the national/cosmopolitan and left/right divides are dynamic and complex.
In their orientation, the liberals and post-Keynesians of Table 1 can be either national
or cosmopolitan. In countries considering entering the EU, the cosmopolitan left has
been divided, commonly arguing and voting against joining the EU. Once in, they
have shifted their position and declared that the point must be to transform the Union,
because developments are path-dependent, and because cosmopolitanism can be
furthered also through the EU. Cosmopolitans on the right, such as Robert Mundell,
can be enthusiastic about the EU, but consistent formulations of free-market
globalism are rare.
5
Usually global economic liberalism has been premised (i) on the
free movement of goods, services and capital, and (ii) on the national powers to limit
the movements of people. Capitalist world economy is also about exclusion.
Gradually since the formation of the Maastricht Treaty, but especially as a
response to the flow of crises that started with the financial collapse of 2008-9, the
overall effects of these and other shifts have amounted to diffusion of doubts about,
and distrust in, the European integration project. To understand the complex
dynamics of various shifts, we need theory-derived but falsifiable hypotheses to
explain why the overall trend has been toward renationalisation of politics (the main
tendency) and toward cosmopolitan left’s transformative ideas (a weaker tendency, so
far having involved significant electoral success only in Greece and Spain).
From theories of ethico-political learning we can draw, first, the proposition that
collective human learning explains the historical quest for democratization and
simultaneously points towards cosmopolitan sentiments. Actors come to understand
that collective rules are the product of their autonomy and free, mutual agreement
5
Optimal currency area theory, pioneered by Robert Mundell (1961), has also been used by EMU opponents (for a
critical discussion of the theory and its applicability, see Patomäki 2013, 60-4). Mundell, himself has trenchantly
supported the euro project, and in 2000 predicted that by 2010 fifty states would have joined the Eurozone. Several of
Mundell’s writings on the world currency can be found at http://robertmundell.net/economic-policies/world-currency/.

7
(Kohlberg 1971, 164 f.; Piaget 1977, 24 f.) Cosmopolitanism involves a hypothetical
attitude, a holistic perspective, and adherence to generalizable and often abstract
principles of justification (Habermas 1976, 69-94). These theories of collective
learning indicate that the development of cosmopolitan orientation requires more
learning than national orientation and requires a favourable social context. National
orientation is compatible with tying identity to given norms and roles of the
institutions and traditions of a particular political community; it is also compatible
with the reification of those roles, institutions, norms and traditions.
In functionally differentiated capitalist market societies, economic problems can
become threatening to identity (because not only one’s earnings but also social worth,
rights and duties are tied to a position as an employee, entrepreneur or capitalist) and
endanger social integration (because many integrative functions are secured by
market-based or tax-revenue dependent public organizations). (Habermas 1988, 20-
31) Problems of social integration and a threatened identity translate into existential
insecurity, providing fertile ground for processes such as securitisation of social
issues and telling Manichean stories antagonising the situation.
6
Actors can bring
about securitization by presenting something as an existential threat and by
dramatizing an issue as having absolute or very strong priority. Securitization is also
about identity politics, as is Manichean story-telling about struggle between good (us)
and evil (specific or generic others). Thus emerges a hypothesis about a two-phase
causal mechanism, efficacious in contemporary geo-historical context.
Figure 3: A two-phase causal mechanism leading to other-blaming
6
Guzzini (2012) examines securitization as a non-positivistically conceived causal mechanism. For a related but more
future-oriented analysis, making an explicit link between political economy and security, see Patomäki (2015). Aho
(1990) remains one of the best summaries of the deep-structural and characteristically Manichean underpinnings of the
processes of enemy-construction, based partly on his studies of right-wing extremist movements in the United States.
.
PHASE 1: economic trouble / economic downturn or crisis
--> threatened identities, pathologies of socialisation
existential insecurity
PHASE 2: securitisation --> othering &
enemy-construction --> demand for
exclusions and other exceptional measures

8
The two phases of the mechanism described in Figure 3 are connected causally, but at
the level of meanings, they can be largely disconnected. The category ‘economic
trouble and crisis’ involve both subjective experience (trouble) and systemic effects
(downturn and crisis). Thus unemployment or its threat, precarisation of work
(meaning transformation from permanent employment to less well paid and more
insecure jobs) and falling behind due to increasing inequalities, can all translate into
‘trouble’ from the point of view of those experiencing the hardship.
Social class positioning matters morally (Sayer 2009), as well as by
predisposing actors to particular forms of learning and by generating characteristic
(dis)trust to established institutions. Pathologies of socialisation and existential
insecurity can expose ‘ego’ to securitisation and to stories that are composed from
older, or transnationally dispersing, elements of meaning, apparently ‘explaining’ the
experiences of vulnerability and insecurity.
7
Commercial and social media play a key
role in the dispersion of these kinds of ideas, especially to the extent that they can
sustain positive feedback loops and thus generate self-reinforcing processes. Violence
dramatically exposed in the media can further inflame the process of othering. To
share related sentiments of ‘us’ vs. ‘them’ can also be cherished as democratic; as
being on the side of the ‘people’.
Three scenarios about the future of the EU
Varoufakis’s reliance on perspective D of Table 1 in his prognosis about the future of
the Union does not seem unfounded. Trust in the EU has declined, in part due to a
prolonged economic downturn and crisis (with deep roots in the global
financialization process), but in part because of what is perceived to be the
undemocratic or unchangeable nature of the EU. From existential insecurities stem
also exclusive processes of identity politics, securitisation and enemy-construction.
The future of the EU depends, however, to a significant degree on future
economic developments. In open systems precise predictions are not possible. Even if
post-Keynesians are right and the austerity-driven tendency toward low investment
and high unemployment is permanent, and new crises are to be expected sooner or
later, a lot depends on the precise budget-positions and timing and nature of the next
downturn or crisis. Even a relatively short-lived semi-recovery of the European
economy would give time for the EU to evolve in novel directions.
The current EU strategy is to tighten the Union under the rubric of enhancing its
external competitiveness. In practice this amounts to austerity; further market-based
‘reforms’; budget and labour markets discipline (coupled with labour-markets
‘flexicurity’); internal devaluation and perhaps also currency devaluation; flimsy
banking union; and development of elements of modest common fiscal capacity.
7
I discuss the processes of unlearning and pathological learning via the generic, yet also context-specific experiences of
vulnerability and insecurity in much more detail in Patomäki, forthcoming.

9
These policies feed into the first phase of the mechanism depicted in Figure 3.
The explicit idea, however, is to increase demand for European goods and services in
the world markets – at the expense of other countries. World imports and exports
cancel out. Although it is not impossible for all countries to simultaneously grow the
value of their exports and imports, their overall sum is always zero. In Varoufakis’s
(2016, 240) estimation, ‘to escape its crisis in this manner the Eurozone must reach a
current account surplus in relation to the rest of the world of no less than 9 per cent of
total European income’. This is highly unlikely to succeed, but if it succeeded, it
would ‘destroy the hopes of America, China, Latin America, India, African and Sout
East Asia for stability and growth’. The estimate of 9 per cent may be unreliable, but
the argument is sound.
There are more than one possible future for the EU, however. A possibility is an
increasingly disciplined and militarised Union. Common external enemies can unify.
Perhaps the exit of Britain will facilitate consolidation of the remaining EU via the
escalating conflict with Russia, constant ‘state of emergency’ related to the refugee
crisis and terrorist attacks (often by the migrant sufferers of class inequalities),
increasingly strained relations with Turkey, economic competition with China and
India, and the election of “America-first” Donald Trump?
The two-phase mechanism presented in Figure 3 can be exploited also to further
a common European cause. The identification of threats to ‘our European’ existence
can create unity and acceptance, or at least acquiescence, to the ever more
disciplinary rule of the EU. Indeed, from a cosmopolitan perspective, one of the
ambiguities of the Union has always been the possibility that it generates a
nationalism of its own and evolves into a military great power. What is more,
expanding security and military spending could boost the European economy. By
pooling part of this spending through the EU institutions, and perhaps by introducing
EU taxes, the Union could manage to create some common fiscal capacity.
This scenario may not be the most likely one. The euro crisis has drawn
attention away from developing a common European security and defence policy.
The US and NATO, together with EU member states, remain the main players also
vis-à-vis Russia. The prevailing disintegrative tendencies makes it difficult to
convince the audience that a united Europe is the best answer to the perceived
existential threats; while the process of building an increasingly disciplined and
militarised Union would take time. And yet with several propitious circumstances
coinciding and coalescing, attempts to construct such a union might eventually
succeed. The EU would then be on par with the US, Russia and China, a military
superpower in the global insecurity community, which has potential of being further
destabilised by new downturns and crises in the world economy. This is not a good
scenario for the world as a whole.
The third possible future for the EU could result from the success of the left
cosmopolitan project to transform the Union. There are various plans to use the
resources of the European Central Bank and the instruments of the European
Investment Bank to create a public investment programme on a European scale (e.g.

10
Varoufakis, Holland and Galbraith 2013); and to relieve national budget constraints
for instance by a new application of the so called Golden Rule, exempting public net
investment from the relevant deficit targets (e.g. Truger 2016). These plans do not
necessitate changes in the basic treaties of the EU, so they could be implemented
fairly rapidly.
But none of these proposals is on the EU agenda in summer 2016. The first
phase of the current plan to ‘complete Economic and Monetary Union’ is due to be
completed by summer 2017 and the last phase by 2025. If a will emerges to change
the course of EU economic policy, it will take at least a year to start implementing
even a modest plan. What is more, the proposed – and even more so, the realistically
achievable – scale of the required expansion in public spending appears rather
limited. Doubling the level of European Investment Bank lending or adding gradually
about 1% of GDP deficit funding to public investments would boost the European
economy to a degree, but may well turn out to be too little too late. At best, these
plans could buy time.
The realisation of the DiEM25 scheme to democratise the Union would take
time too. I know only one way to speed up the process, namely the use of citizens’
initiatives and referenda on the euro and related fiscal discipline.
8
In any case, the
purported DiEM25 first step is to achieve full transparency in decision-making.
Written in autumn 2015, the manifesto demands that this should be realised within a
year. More realistically, it is conceivable that full transparency could become one of
the main themes of the European Parliament elections in 2019. Its successful
implementation is yet another matter – as is whether this is what EU citizens really
want and need.
The second demand is to convene ‘an Assembly of citizens’ representatives’
within two years. Nothing like this is on the agenda in summer 2016. The euro crisis
and Brexit may have prepared the ground for revisiting and revising the Treaty of the
European Union in certain regards, but even in the best of circumstances, to initiate
this kind of process will take probably two to three years. Currently there is no
political will to establish a directly elected constitutional assembly. If anything, the
EU has become more intergovernmental during the euro crisis. The composing and
then signing of the draft for a European Constitution in the early 2000s took almost
three years. Nearly a year later, it was rejected in the French and Dutch referendums.
Conclusions
The five presidents’ plan to ‘complete the EMU’ is unlikely to succeed. Its success,
on the other hand, would probably be detrimental to the world economy as a whole,
8
Civil society organizations and interested political parties could use the mechanism of citizens’ initiative to call
simultaneously for referenda in the EU as a whole and within member states. A lot hinges upon the design of the
referendums. A referendum should include multiple choices – the third option being the cosmopolitan Left’s alternative
– and the voting system could be designed to take into account multiple preferences (there are different methods of
doing this). See http://patomaki.fi/en/2016/01/beyond-plan-b-and-c-on-the-use-of-citizens-initiative-and-referenda/.

11
especially if others’ tried to respond in kind. The policies now demanded from the
member states strengthen tendencies toward disintegration via the causal mechanism
depicted in Figure 3. The alternate scenario about a disciplinary and militarised future
EU may not be the most likely one, but with mutually supportive circumstances
coinciding and coalescing, it can well happen. Because this kind of Union involves
military Keynesianism, it could work economically better than the current EU, but its
legitimation basis would be internally shaky and externally dangerous.
The third scenario outlines the left cosmopolitan project to transform the EU.
The main problem for this project appears to be time and timing. Even if a strong
political drive to transform the EU develops, perhaps as a result of the next economic
crisis, it is likely that the transformation process will take many years. Moreover,
until such a collective will forms, the process of ‘completing the EMU’ is proceeding
in accordance with the scheme of the five presidents’ report. This means that the
Union must muddle through something like a decade or more before the effects of the
transformation will become tangible in the everyday lives of European citizens.
Meanwhile new crises are likely to erupt and new shifts in the political landscape to
occur. The question is whether the current Union can survive until 2025-30.
What would the disintegration of the EU tell about the likely future of the
world? The option-fields of tables 1 and 2 and the mechanism depicted in figure 3 are
in no way confined to the European context. The tendencies that are causally
efficacious in Europe operate also in other parts of the world political economy, as is
evident from the popularity of right-wing populist-nationalist political leaders ranging
from Donald Trump via Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to Vladimir Putin. Meanings are
context-sensitive and specific substantial developments path-dependent, yet local and
regional processes are interwoven in the dynamics of our planetary economy and
politics. The scenarios of global politico-economic competition among great powers
gradually assembling the conditions for a global military catastrophe are increasingly
pertinent (they have become more likely than in my earlier assessments, currently
describing the most likely next future; cf. Patomäki, 2010).
The contradictory nature of the plan to ‘complete the EMU’, and the security
dilemma implied by the alternate scenario of militarist EU, indicate that a better EU
becomes possible only when it is understood that the relevant whole is not Europe but
the world. To succeed, the left cosmopolitan project has to go beyond Europe. This
means that it would have to articulate a vision of overcoming the contradictions of
the world economy by means of green democratic global Keynesianism (see
Patomäki, 2013, ch 8). Even in the best of circumstances, that task, however vital, is
going to take still more time than the transformation of the EU.
References
Aho, J. (1990). Heroism, the construction of evil, and violence. In V. Harle (Ed.), European values
in international relations (pp. 15-28). London, Pinter.

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