Re: [Nettime-nl] Joris Luyendijk: Waarom Brexit goed nieuws is (The Guardian)

[Ron Peperkamp <ron@peperkamp.nl>]

Dat ontbrekende platform is natuurlijk precies het probleem. Volgens
Mathieu Segers is het weinig realistisch om op multinationaal niveau een
discussie te organiseren die burgers werkelijk intensief zullen volgen. Hij
gelooft meer in debatten in nationale parlementen, maar dan moeten onze
politici daar ook wel Europese thema's ter discussie stellen. Dat laatste
vinden ze lastig want de essentie van de Unie is het compromis – en dat
laat zich nu eenmaal moeilijk verkopen. De nuance van het rommelige
compromis met haar impliciet vertrouwen dat het uiteindelijk voor iedereen
de beste uitkomst oplevert, legt het in ieder geval altijd af tegen de
zekerheid dat die technocratische elite maar wat aanklooit en het echt
állemaal, rádicaal anders moet.

Het drama in Engeland laat zien dat de laatsten aan de winnende hand zijn.
De horden willen de grenzen sluiten voor Polen, Syriërs, Oekraïners en
goedkoop Chinees staal. De mijnen en staalfabrieken moeten weer open, de
kanonneerboten uit de mottenballen voor zo'n heerlijk vertrouwde
visserijoorlog met de IJslanders en die oh-zo-succesvolle, jonge
stedelingen zouden eens een maand met een pensioentje op het échte
platteland moeten doorbrengen!

Ik vrees dat de tijd van beheerste strategen als Monnet, Schuman en
Mansholt nu toch echt voorbij is. Something wicked this way comes...


Ron

2016-06-28 12:50 GMT+02:00 Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>:

>
> (Joris L had al 'n beetje hetzelfde gezegd in de NRC vlak voor het
> referendum)
>
>
> Brexit is great news for the rest of the EU
> Joris Luyendijk (The Guardian, June 28, 2016)
> (
> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/28/brexit-great-news-eu-britain-sovereignty
> )
>
>
> Democrats across Europe are in shock over Brexit, when they should be
> jubilant. That a slim majority of British voters – primarily English and
> Welsh – have acted against their own short- and long-term economic
> interests to leave us is a blessing. For decades British governments have
> played a double game: getting all the benefits of EU membership while
> opting out of its burdens, in the meantime undermining and even
> blackmailing the club from within. All of this is now over.
>
> To understand why Brexit is such good news we must look not at the lies of
> the leave camp but at the arguments of remain. They consist essentially of
> two claims. The first is that leaving would only make things worse – what
> leave rightly derided as “Project Fear”. Second is remain’s promise that
> the EU would never be more than a market. Fears over the loss of
> sovereignty were misguided, remain argued, since the UK would block and
> veto any future moves in that direction.
>
> Let us pause and reflect on what a remain win would have meant. If they
> are ever to become functioning and legitimate democratic entities, the EU
> and the eurozone must reform dramatically. In some cases this means the
> return of certain powers at regional or national level – all too often
> “European cooperation” has become homogenisation and needless
> centralisation. In other cases we may decide to invest more powers at
> European level if this strengthens its democratic nature and increases our
> power versus the corporate lobby.
>
> Had remain won the referendum, the EU would have become hostage to British
> sabotage. Future British prime ministers would veto any fundamental change
> involving the transfer of sovereignty, arguing, correctly, that their
> people had voted only for the current set-up of the EU. Britain would
> continue to demand ever more opt-outs and concessions – playing to the
> fantasy that membership is a British favour to the rest of Europe. The
> British press and Europhobe politicians would go on portraying the EU in
> the most lurid, mendacious and derisory terms, making us look terrible in
> the eyes of Americans and English-speaking Asians, Africans and Russians.
>
> The problem with Britain was not that it was critical of the EU. The
> problem was bad faith and delusional thinking. As the referendum debate has
> shown, the country has not come to terms with its own global irrelevance –
> hence its refusal to pool sovereignty. It continues to believe that as a
> sovereign nation it can get everything it had as an EU member, and more.
> When Europe’s democrats talk about “EU reform” they mean putting
> arrangements in place to make Europe’s pooling of sovereignty democratic.
> Britons mean the rollback of that very pooling of sovereignty. For this
> reason, Britain’s membership would have hit a wall sooner or later.
>
> Which brings us to remain’s conception of the EU as merely “a market”.
> This is a disastrous view. Markets are never neutral arrangements but
> always political constructs. Consider whether you allow pharmaceutical
> companies to market antidepressants directly to consumers, as in the US, or
> not – as in Europe. Both are “markets”, but the difference in impact on
> society is profound. Think of environmental standards, genetically modified
> organisms, anti-trust law (when is a market an oligopoly?), privacy or
> priorities in enforcement of intellectual property violations. Then there
> is the question of what should be a market in the first place: education,
> health, the prison system?
>
> Leaving these decisions to European technocrats means that we effectively
> hand over control of our society to the corporate lobbies that have direct
> access to those technocrats. These days global banks and other
> multinationals operate on a European level while politics still take place
> on a national level. The consequence is that big corporations can play off
> one European country against the other in a regulatory race to the bottom,
> demanding ever lower if not downright homeopathic tax rates.
>
> Is this the EU we want? Or do we build a strong and democratically
> legitimate countervailing power that can operate on the same European level
> as the corporate lobby? If the latter, we need to construct a vibrant
> pan-European political space with real debate and real powers. It is crazy
> that Europeans have their own court, parliament and currency, but no
> pan-European public forum to debate what to do with these instruments.
>
> Perhaps the construction of a European demos of this kind is all too much,
> all too fast. What is clear is that the current EU is corporate and
> undemocratic and the eurozone is a disaster. Europeans can throw in the
> towel, dismantle the whole thing and retreat to their powerless little
> countries. Or they can make a final attempt to make the European project
> work.
>
> A minority in Britain wanted to be part of this, but the mainstream did
> not. Let Europe now play hardball in the negotiations and then wish all the
> best to its British neighbours.
>
>
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-- 
Met vriendelijke groet,
Ron Peperkamp

-----------------------------------
Ron Peperkamp
ron@peperkamp.nl
M: +31 (0)6 1226 3331
-----------------------------------
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* Meer info, archief & anderstalige edities:
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