September 28, 2011
In times of crisis Europe finds its solution

I have made a translation of a chronicle on the website of the Swedish think tank Global Utmaning, here:

“Malaga, summer 2011. The temperature is 34 degrees, but under the shading curtains above the inner city’s elegant shopping streets the wind blows comfortably, as if in an air conditioned shopping mall. The heat is more palpable in the city’s less privileged ourskirts, both in the sun and in the social climate. A notice in the newspaper tells the story of a demonstration in Rincón de la Victoria in support of a woman who has both lost her job and not been able to sell her old home because of the economic crisis. Now the bank requires two homes and a bridging loan she cannot pay. About one hundred indignados prevent court officials from gaining access to the woman’s home, while invoking the Constitution’s right to housing.

A single woman’s struggle against her bank gathers one hundred protesters in the outskirts of Malaga. Something is happening in Spain, as in many other European countries. The economic crisis that became a banking crisis that became a euro crisis has become a matter of confidence in the entire European integration project. The common currency, which much more than a currency was an integration approach, has become counterproductive.

The driving force behind European integration has always been economic. The entire EU’s creation rests on the idea that ​​a common market integrates the member states with each other and prevent nations from going to war. Only by giving up its dominance in the coal and steel industries to a supranational authority, France could agree to German sovereignty after the war. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the idea of ​​a common currency was a natural step in the same logic. Only by giving up its strong D-mark for a single European currency, France and other countries could agree to the reunification of Germany.

But now there is a crisis. In part a crisis for the euro as a currency, but in part also for the European recipe prescribing economic projects as solutions to political problems. Meanwhile, history shows that it is in times of crisis that the EU is forced to find a solution that often takes integration a step forward. And the most chronic of the EU’s political problems – the general lack of confidence and commitment to the entire integration project - still waits for a solution.

It has long been said that people affect society much more as consumers than as voters. It is certainly true on deregulated European markets, as it is true on global markets where the EU should be a powerful tool for small European nations to act collectively and gain influence. But so far the European integration has not given citizens the same opportunity to influence the markets, as it has given national politicians and officials.

The world’s largest common market consists of much more than import regulations, customs forms and bar codes. It consists of five hundred million European consumers who have the same goods and services to choose from, the same rating symbols and bar codes to decipher, and often the same currency to pay with. The EU is certainly much more than a giant department store, but it is as a consumer that most citizens encounter the EU in their everyday lives.

If citizens are provided a greater opportunity to organize themselves in their role as consumers to approach the decisions of EU institutions, it would not just be a way to try to legitimize the European integration project. It would be a way to gather citizens around various interests that don’t stop at national borders, and provide European democracy with a content. It would also be a way to enable a more democratic public interest to balance the individual, private and not least national interests that influence the decisions in Brussels far too much and far too often.

Under the shading curtains in Malaga’s inner city, next to Plaza de la Constitución, one of all the indignados has scribbled a political message on a temporarily restructured wall. ”Plaza de la Libertà” it says, with an arrow pointing to the square. But the ”R” has been replaced with a hammer and sickle. The Constitution’s right to housing may not be enough for the scribbler, who only relies on a communist revolution to give citizens freedom.

I seek no revolution at all. I do not want to overthrow the political power in the EU or even the power in the market. What I seek is a cautious and almost bureaucratic process to integrate citizens with the decisions made in the market so that invisible consumers can become visible citizens. You cannot create a functioning democracy and believe that it is once and for all given, regardless of what happens to the power in society. You cannot transfer power to supranational institutions or to international markets and believe that national democracy will follow by itself. When the power moves, upwards or sideways, democracy must be given a chance to follow along. “

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Filed under: euro crisis consumer Malaga indignados EU democracy 
August 12, 2011
Words are all we have

I consider myself an almost fluent speaker of English and French, but sometimes I need to look up words that occur in the media. One such word is thugs, expressed by British PM David Cameron recently. In 2005 I had to look up the French word racailles, expressed by the then French minister of interior Nicolas Sarkozy, to describe the rioters in the suburbs of Paris. Both words roughly point to the same Swedish translation, and both words were used by top politicians to describe situations of rioting and destruction in the street. 

Interestingly, the words hardly translate in the same way in the French and British societies. In France, the use of the word sparked an intensive debate in itself, most likely inspired even more rioting, and made president Jacques Chirac express his concern on the use of words in the political language. In Britain, although many are critical to the government’s tough reactions, the use of the word has passed almost without notice, and people rather turn up with brooms to clean up the streets. I sympathise with the British “broom armies”, but I also sympathise with the French concern for the use of words. Because words are all a democracy really has. Democracy means conflict, opposition and debate, but while some words will lead to understanding and solutions, others words will lead to quarrels and violence.

A friend of mine found my blog and expected me to comment on the tragic events in Norway three weeks ago. I told him I had no words. But the terror attack has sparked a debate at least in Scandinavia on the use of words in the political language. Although futile as a reaction, I think the events even more point to the need for democracy to find its energy from other conflicts than the cultural, ethnic and religious. If democracy focuses less on words such as immigrant, multiculture and Islamic, and more on words such as poverty, integrity and pollution, it can start to deal with the real challenges. /

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Filed under: thugs racailles riots political language 
July 21, 2011
A Dangerous European Identity


Holy Island Church, Co Tipperary, Ireland.

”In the debate on a possible common identity for the EU, Adenauer and Schuman have not been alone in their thoughts to base it in Christianity or in Christian values. In the work of the European Convention in 2002 and 2003, to collect feedback, debate and negotiate a new treaty, the reference to God suddenly came up again. A group of members suggested that the treaty article on the fundamental values of the EU, such as democracy, human rights, freedom and equality, would be supplemented by a clarification that these values ​​“include the values of those who believe in God as the source of truth, justice, good and beauty as well as of those who do not share such a belief but respect these universal values arising from other sources”. Without questioning the right to religious freedom, the proposal thus implied every European to support values of which God would be the source, whether they believe in him or her or not. The proposal was defended by the Pope himself, but the Convention President - Valéry Giscard d’Estaing - was not convinced. Any reference to God or Christianity has never been found in European treaties. The introducing preamble of the Lisbon Treaty, however, mentions “the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance”.

In his book “Identity and Violence” the award-winning economist Amartya Sen describes how the categorization of people according to religious, cultural or other identities reduces the complexity of each person’s identity and by itself causes conflict. When Samuel P Huntington in his thesis about the clash of civilizations brusquely categorized India as belonging to the “Hindu civilization”, he therefore ignores not only India’s 145 million Muslims and give arguments to the Hindu nationalist movement - he denies that all Indians have not only a religious affiliation, but also a linguistic, economic, social, political party, etc. Huntington not only presents a limited picture of India, he also presents a limited picture of every Indian. Whatever religious or cultural identities that we ascribe to the European project, therefore, we diminish the 500 million citizens of the EU to simply hold these properties, and indicate that all the other citizens of the world in some sense do not have that identity.

Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before Europe will gain the same confidence that its citizens still have in their nations. For nations, however, it took several hundred years, if it was at all successful, and many were the uprisings brutally put down and the peoples and languages suppressed and eradicated in the quest to unify the nation. Such behaviour simply doesn’t fit a union that aspires to be a contemporary democracy with the highest common values. As a first consequence of this notion, all attempts to unite the Europeans by a religion, or to create a common European culture that in itself causes conflicts, must be abandoned”. /

(Extract from draft script, during translation…)

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Filed under: Christianity EU identity Amartya Sen European Convention 
July 16, 2011
Pourquoi seulement Eva Joly?

Eva Joly est une des candidats de la présidentielle qui sont notés dans le média Européen - pas pour sa politique mais plutôt pour son origine. On raconte son histoire des origines simple en Norvège, son arrivé toute jeune à Paris et son avancement extraordinaire dans la société francaise, et on se demand « Comment elle pourrait aller jusqu’à là ? » Avec admiration on parle de son avancement dans un autre pays Européen comme quelque chose presque incroyable. 

Je suis le premier à partager cet admiration pour Eva Joly, mais je voudrais aussi demander ce qui est vraiment étonnant – le fait qu’un Européen pourrait changer de pays et avancer dans la sociéte jusqu’au niveau des élections présidentielles, ou le fait qu’elle en est la seule? Oú sont tous ces autres nationalités qui parlent bien l’anglais dans la politique britannique? Pourquoi il n’y a pas plus de Turcs dans le Bundestag à Berlin? Pourqoui on n’écoute pas souvent l’accent finnois dans le Riksdag à Stockholm, si courant dans la rue? 

Parce que dans un monde de plus en plus globalisé et dynamique, ce vieux continent d’Europe garde de ces frontières et de ces barrières. Dans un monde où la mixte des cultures et des réligions dans la rue est le normal, ce vieux continent d’Europe reste comme mariné dans son nationalisme.   

Et alors qu’est ce qui se passe quand cette francaise normalisée d’origine Norvègienne a bien réalisé que l’ésprit de la république francaise et la révolution ne se trouve pas dans le militaire, et s’exprime sur son souhaite de changer ces traditions assez soviétique du 14 juillet? Alors elle est tout de suite accusé de ne pas comprendre les traditions et les valeurs francais… Ce n’est que fatiguant, ce continent! /

(Source: lemonde.fr)

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Filed under: Eva Joly défilé militaire 14 juillet nationalisme présidentielle 
June 14, 2011
Our Common European Language



The Vienna Secession

“Wien mitte. With a wide grin of light, the silvery underground carriage approaches the platform. Its angular design and the bright orange arcades at Westbahnhof remind of a 1950’s film vision of the future. Line U6 towards Floridsdorf brings me up from the underground and back to the turn of last century. On a track high above the street the carriage crumbles between beautifully decorated facades and flourished balconies. Vienna’s subway is a travel in time rather than space. Perhaps only a capital that for four decades found itself in a Western backwater, surrounded by communistic states, can keep such a subway. 

I still haven’t spoken with a living person, only with machines and signs in waiting halls and platforms. Mechanically I follow a universal language of stylized symbols, bills and coins, supply and demand. My soul hasn’t landed yet and I am not prepared to understand that I have changed culture and language. Flying over half a continent takes far too little time. I also don’t master the spoken language, but everyone understands a hungry tourist with a few euros in the pocket and a Visa card. We actually do have a common language on our common European market, which functions perfectly well. I stroll in the interior and design shops that spread like a friendly disease in all European cities and amuse myself by trying to guess the identity of the objects. I turn on glass containers, ceramic bowls and wooden dishes, but nowhere do I find a sender. No mark, no designer, not even a country. Just a price and an anonymous bar code. What is the code for worker’s rights? For sustainable forestry? For the firm’s development of the local society? I have to learn the codes of the global market to understand where all the stuff comes from and who have designed them. With the freedom of open borders comes rootlessness. With the mass production of the global market comes a lack of information. And Buddha is apparently the God of the global market. Among sushi dishes and velvet clad candles he stretches out his flesh in red clay, white soap and terra cotta. Why Buddha, who wanted to relief our suffering by erasing our desire? The little statues have certainly not erased our desire for exotic interior design.”  

(Extract from draft script, during translation…) 

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Filed under: EU langugage Vienna consumer 
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