Towards a mighty union: how to create a democratic European superpower

Abstract

A strong European Union is needed today more than ever: to act as a reliable partner to the United States, Great Britain and the other great democracies; to deal with the growing threats on her southern and eastern periphery; and most pressingly of all, to deal with the euro sovereign debt crisis. In order to do so, Europeans will have to abandon the gradualist fallacy that union will be achieved in small incremental steps and learn the lesson of history that all successful mergers, such as the British and the American, have been carried out in one fell swoop at a time of extreme crisis. They will have to recognize that the road to unity took a fatal turn when the failure of the European Defence Community caused a bifurcation between politico‐military and economic integration. Today, as we face potential fiscal and economic meltdown and as the external threats to Europe mount, we have another opportunity. We can only seize it, however, if we realize that full European union, if there is to be one, will be an event, not a process. It must follow more or less the American example with a directly elected presidency, a house of representatives elected by population and a senate, which represents the former nation‐states and regions. There is no need for the United Kingdom to be part of this project, but it is essential that both unions work together for the common good. Because the existing political elites are incapable of rising to the occasion—and in many cases are actually antipathetic to it—the task must fall to a new pan‐European party: the Party of Democratic Union.

Improving social dialogue: What employers expect from employee representatives

“…The decline in traditional industrial relations institutions makes union renewal an urgent challenge (Martínez-Lucio, 2016;Sen and Lee, 2015). Even with the decline of membership, recent literature firmly suggest that this is the moment where union 'revitalisation' becomes an important part of the labour and employment relations agenda (Fairbrother, 2015;Frege and Kelly, 2004;Martínez-Lucio, 2016;Simms, 2012).…”

“…Even with the decline of membership, recent literature firmly suggest that this is the moment where union 'revitalisation' becomes an important part of the labour and employment relations agenda (Fairbrother, 2015;Frege and Kelly, 2004;Martínez-Lucio, 2016;Simms, 2012).…”

Emergency Europe

“…At the core of this approach in the European case would be various forms of partisanship, possibly involving a pan-European party (compare Simms, 2012), but most likely centred on opposition parties at the national level — those, that is, which have not themselves accepted the logic of austerity — acting independently or in transnational coordination. Among their targets would be the actions of governments, but under conditions where these actors do not hold exclusive authority, a wider partisan agenda would necessarily involve undermining the claims of those non-state actors that have achieved the power to ‘speak truth’ and which lend credibility to the emergency manoeuvres of political actors.…”

Interpreting the Outsider Tradition inBritishEuropean Policy Speeches fromThatcher toCameron

“…As a result, each leader was acutely aware of the propensity for British European policy visions to be interpreted – rightly or wrongly – as a form of Phase 3a ‘sabotage’ that echoed London's diplomacy towards the US and West Germany at the end of 1955. Liberal reforms of the EU have had to be spun by the prime ministers as a response to the existential dilemma of the EU's democratic deficit – one that has gained traction across the EU and its Member States, Eurosceptical and Euroenthusiast alike (Simms, , pp. 57–8), especially since the eurozone crisis and latterly the 2014 European Parliament elections.…”