A neoliberal rollback
Brussels returns to a calm and peaceful existence. The common currency crisis seems under control, there’s not much happening in terms of new legislation since the parliamentary elections are looming on the horizon, there’s not much happening anyway, right?
Wrong! There’s a series of huge rollbacks coming.
‘Rollback’ was the West’s approach to push back Soviet influence throughout the world during cold war times.
There is a similar tendency in the EU today, with the target being the welfare state, and an alliance of neoliberal states doing the rolling. The one thing that stays constant is the rhetorics. It is about reducing bureaucracy, abolishing ‘planned economy’ and promote ‘freedom’. Obviously only in the economic sense.
The neoliberal rollback proceeds on three fronts:
- in the euro zone there is a massive cut of the welfare state, in the name of consolidation and competitiveness. While it started with the countries hit by the crisis, there is a push to extend it to all countries, following chancellor Merkel’s reform plans.
- free trade, nominally the TTIP agreement pushed by EU and US uses competition and growth as reason to do away with ‘unnecessary’ barriers. This does not only risk social standards, but democracy itself, by providing investor guarantees.
- cutting red tape. Again calling for ‘freedom’ to businesses, the british prime minister Cameron is calling for the EU to orient towards a pro business agenda. The main goal is again the already now mostly inadequate EU social regulation body.
All of this happens behind the back of the national parliaments and citizens. Nothing of this is a topic of debate, and it all happens with the explicit blessing of chancellor Merkel.
Together with Cameron and other allies she is trying to establish facts for the parliamentary elections. Free trade is the most pressing topic at this moment. A neoliberal agenda should be front and center this coming spring, with the final goal to promote worldwide deregulation.
So how do the European parliamentarians act? For the time being they just don’t. They have just handed prime minister Cameron his biggest triumph yet by accepting his austerity budget…
The original post (in German) is here, an update (also in German) can be found here
Peter Nemschak
18. Dezember 2013 @ 10:25
Is there really a massive cut of the welfare state at least in Germany or Austria, a country which is my home country? How much welfare state do we want to have and can afford in a world of rapid technological progress and globalisation under the assumption that we have limited influence over the latter two developments? What can we do to help our citizens to deal with the challenges ahead (issue ofeducation)? How can we protect the weakest to enable them to lead a life of dignity, assuming that the means of the state are limited (issue of targeting social welfare)? Is it preferable to promote upward mobility in a society rather than redistributing wealth through social hand-outs (issue of incentives)?
After all liberal market economies driven by competition have proved superior to planned economies. That’s why they have been adopted by most countries in the world. The question is about the rules and famework within which market economies can work best for societies as a whole. The answer to these questions will differ between different societies and cultures. To focus in a superficial way on neoliberalism vs. socialism will not take us nearer to a solution of these complex issues. We must avoid the populist trap when we discuss alternatives: no alternative will be with unintended and/or undesirable consequences which must be made transparent as far as possible. Intransparency and hidden agendas are the breeding ground for radical political movements who promise a quick and painless fix for their audience.