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. “

1. sleepingmarket posted this