Habermas and Derrida
Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida, ‘February 15, or What Binds Europeans Together: A Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in the Core of Europe’ (Max Pensky tr) (2003) 10 Constellations 291. [Source]
Review
More than twenty years after the February 15 2003 Iraq War protests, one may observe, regrettably, the thwarted optimism of protesters and commentators that such a European display of civil activity would serve to prevent the war in Iraq. Habermas, writing in 2003, predicts that the date ‘may well go down in history as a sign of the birth of a European public sphere’ (p 291).
Habermas and Derrida argue for a ‘common European foreign policy’ (p 292). If the Iraq War was ‘the impetuous break with international law’ (p 292), then the Letter of Eight, ‘issued behind the back of the other countries of the European Union’ (p 291), was a breakdown of ‘the international order in Europe’ (p 292). What are the issues? The ‘American superpower... a future world order... the relevance of international law and the United Nations... [t]he gap between continental and Anglo-American countries on the one side, and the old Europe and the Central and East European candidates for entry into the European Union... the special relationship with the United States’ (p 292), etc. There is, however, one saving grace: Europe. Europe has, according to Habermas, a moral responsibility to ‘counterbalance’ the ‘hegemonic unilateralism of the United States’ and to ‘design for a coming global domestic policy’ within global institutions and fora (p 293).
Today, there is now a European Foreign Minister. Habermas had warned that, without a common European foreign policy, such a minister would be no good, ‘powerless’ (p 292). Central to the intra-EU tensions is the ‘visible contrast between the nations that really want a stronger EU, and those with an understandable interest in freezing... the existing mode of intergovernmental governance’ (p 292). Habermas urges that Europe will ‘fall apart’ unless it is united in common foreign, security, and defense policies. All member states, not just the ‘core European nations’ must believe in the EU as a supranational organisation with state-like jurisdiction (p 292). The EU, it is hoped, will inspire and not exclude. Habermas predicts that, as the European core becomes more ‘capable’ in terms of ‘effective action externally’ — the more it is able to prove the relevance of soft power ‘in a complex global society’ — the more likely it is for other states to follow in their lead (p 293).
What of European Union law and economics? According to Habermas, the ‘driving forces’ of the European Union — the ‘functional imperatives’ of the common market and monetary union — have been ‘exhausted’ (p 293). As Habermas alluded to earlier, we must distinguish between those who really want a stronger EU, and those who are merely interested in cosmetic changes: ‘Political projects that aim at the further development of the EU are now colliding with the limits of the medium of administrative steering’ (p 293). Today, not least in 2003, the new driving forces are the transformative politics that ‘take recourse to the motives and the attitudes of citizens themselves... a feeling of common political belonging on both sides’ (p 293). In other words, a ‘European identity’ (p 293). This identity, further, requires a kind of democracy where ‘[m]ajority decisions on highly consequential foreign policies can openly expect acceptance assuming the solidarity of outnumbered minorities’, achievable only through a shared fate and ‘the prospect of a common future’ (p 293).
We cannot, according to Habermas, derive this European identity from nature. We may observe the separation of religion and politics, ‘this social privatization of faith’ (p 295). The backdrop of this observation, of course, was Bush, who Habermas alludes to in his description of ‘a president who opens his daily business with open prayer, and associates his significant political decisions with a divine mission’ (p 296). We may also observe, in some European nations, a connection between the development of the administrative state and the ‘emancipation’ of a society from ‘the protection of an absolutist regime’ (p 296). More generally, it is the ‘spread of the ideals of the French revolution throughout Europe’ that marks European political culture, which is keen to recognise both forms of politics: as power, and as liberty (p 296). We also saw labour movements and those ‘Christian socialist traditions’ which espoused a vision of equality, justice, and solidarity achievable only through ‘collective action’ and struggle ‘against the individualistic ethos of market justice that accepts glaring social inequalities as part of the bargain’ (p 296). There is also, of course, the Holocaust, which Habermas argues has ‘remind[ed] us of the moral basis of politics’ and given us a ‘heightened sensitivity to injuries to personal and bodily integrity’ (p 296).
It is this shared history and political profile, the ‘belief that the domestication of state power demands a mutual limitation of sovereignty’ on the international level, that led the European nations to aspire toward supranational cooperation (p 296). Europe serves as a global model for systems of social welfare and justice, for cultural diversity, secularism, democracy, class consciousness, self-limited state sovereignty, ‘trust in the organisational and steering capacities of the state’, free-market skepticism, the ‘dialectic of enlightenment’, an intolerance toward aggression, ‘a preference for the welfare state’s guarantees of social security and for regulations on the basis of solidarity’, and a system of multilateral international law (pp 294–295).
The TEU on European identity
As Chalmers et al (2024) note,1 the EU has the twin agendas of supranational collaboration to achieve that which individual states could not do on their own, and the furthering of ‘a European heritage’. We may see this in the opening parts of the TEU:2
[...]
RESOLVED to mark a new stage in the process of European integration undertaken with the establishment of the European Communities,
RECALLING the historic importance of the ending of the division of the European continent and the need to create firm bases for the construction of the future Europe,
CONFIRMING their attachment to the principles of liberty, democracy and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and of the rule of law,
CONFIRMING their attachment to fundamental social rights as defined in the European Social Charter signed at Turin on 18 October 1961 and in the 1989 Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers,
DESIRING to deepen the solidarity between their peoples while respecting their history, their culture and their traditions,
DESIRING to enhance further the democratic and efficient functioning of the institutions so as to enable them better to carry out, within a single institutional framework, the tasks entrusted to them,
RESOLVED to achieve the strengthening and the convergence of their economies and to establish an economic and monetary union including, in accordance with the provisions of this Treaty, a single and stable currency,
DETERMINED to promote economic and social progress for their peoples, taking into account the principle of sustainable development and within the context of the accomplishment of the internal market and of reinforced cohesion and environmental protection, and to implement policies ensuring that advances in economic integration are accompanied by parallel progress in other fields,
RESOLVED to establish a citizenship common to nationals of their countries,
RESOLVED to implement a common foreign and security policy including the progressive framing of a common defence policy, which might lead to a common defence in accordance with the provisions of Article 17, thereby reinforcing the European identity and its independence in order to promote peace, security and progress in Europe and in the world,
RESOLVED to facilitate the free movement of persons, while ensuring the safety and security of their peoples, by establishing an area of freedom, security and justice, in accordance with the provisions of this Treaty,
RESOLVED to continue the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity,
IN VIEW of further steps to be taken in order to advance European integration,
[...] WHO, having exchanged their full powers, found in good and due form, have agreed as follows.
Title I — Common provisions
Article 1
By this Treaty, the HIGH CONTRACTING PARTIES establish among themselves a EUROPEAN UNION, hereinafter called ‘the Union’.
This Treaty marks a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as openly as possible and as closely as possible to the citizen.
The Union shall be founded on the European Communities, supplemented by the policies and forms of cooperation established by this Treaty. Its task shall be to organise, in a manner demonstrating consistency and solidarity, relations between the Member States and between their peoples.
[...]
Article 6
1. The Union is founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law, principles which are common to the Member States.