Eurozone blues

20 September 2011 _ René Cuperus
Pinned down by the eurocrisis, both the social democratic PvdA in the Netherlands and the SPD in Germany are caught in an awkward catch 22-situation. What is going on?

Both the PvdA and SPD are in opposition, but at the same time they are not. In Germany and the Netherlands two ‘’governing coalitions’’ exist simultaneously: a formal one and an informal one; a coalition for domestic purposes (right wing austerity politics) and one for international and European purposes. The eurocrisis has opened a problematic split across government and opposition lines.

In Germany we see a “pro-European’’ coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), German Greens and SPD set against a more eurosceptic combination of the Christian Social Union (CSU) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP). And in the Netherlands, the conservative-liberal VVD and christian-democratic CDA government parties join the opposition PvdA in supporting the all-out rescue of the eurozone (so far including Greece) while ‘coalition-ally’ Geert Wilders’ right wing Freedom Party (PVV) is driving a campaign against the eurozone: “No more money to Greece. Kick Greece out of the eurozone. Restore the Dutch gulden.

In other words: as far as the rescue of the eurozone is concerned, the German and Dutch social democratic parties take their ‘’European responsibility’’ and support the pro-European stance of the dominant government parties. In Germany the SPD supports the CDU of Merkel and Schäuble, while CSU and FDP are becoming more and more unreliable towards Europe.

In the Netherlands the case is even more extreme: here a minority government made up of the VVD and CDA, rely on a common agreement with the Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders. In European affairs however the Dutch government has to be supported and rescued by the progressive opposition, because the government partners agreed to disagree on Europe (and Islam). Wilders’ Freedom Party is anti-EU, and explicitly does not support the European policies of the centre-right government. So for the European and international dossiers, the Dutch minority government depends completely on the centre-left support of the PvdA (and smaller progressive parties such as social-liberal D66 and the Dutch Greens).

This puts the PvdA in the awkward situation of ‘’governing while in opposition’’, of ‘’responsibility without power.’’ The party is squeezed between opposition and government, between pro-European mainstream and anti-European populism. This position cannot be sustained in the long run, because it leaves the party extremely vulnerable. The PvdA can be accused of keeping a right-wing conservative-populist, austerity-government in power, while at the same time being criticized for supporting a delicate, costly and unpopular eurozone rescue.

This is a vulnerable position for two reasons. First of all, the Dutch political climate can still be characterised as eurocritical compared to the post-war, pro-Europe euphoria of its European founder-days. The post-Constitutional Referendum trauma of Euroscepticism in the Netherlands is still intact. This attitude is based on enlargement fatigue, the neoliberal bias of EU-integration, the non-obedience of the Stability Pact regime by the big countries (France and Germany) in 2003, and the unintended consequences of the free movement of labour. Both left-wing and right-wing populist parties are well positioned to tap into the negative indifference towards the EU of large parts of the Dutch electorate.

Secondly, this is complicated by the actual social democratic position on Europe. As Olaf Cramme recently analysed in a Policy Network paper, we here encounter ‘’The weakness of social democratic pro-Europeanism’’. In contemporary social democracy, in contrast to official doctrine and hypocritical rhetoric in programmatic manifestos, there exists only lukewarm support for the European Project. In theory, the centre-left should be its most fervent supporter, but in reality social democratic parties are fully entrenched in national politics. It is no accident, that these days the most outspoken propagators for the European cause are Greens or Liberals (Joschka Fischer, Guy Verhofstadt). No social democratic politician can be seen for miles. A lot has to do with the fact that the European project increasingly is conceived to be an elitist venture by the internationally linked happy few, and conversely is not seen as the ‘’International of the Proletariat’’ by the traditional constituencies of social democracy. This is substantially undermining the social democratic support, especially in the Netherlands where a strong anti-neoliberal eurocritical Socialist Party is competing with the PvdA.

What to do? How can social democrats in Germany and Holland successfully break out of this precarious position? Should SPD and PvdA block all right-wing austerity politics in exchange for their European loyalty? Or should they urge for new elections, breaking up the actual euro-schizophrenic coalitions of the right? Should they combine a pro-European position with a more radical left-wing programme against (the excesses of) financial capitalism?

In October a high-level meeting of SPD and PvdA will be organised in Berlin. ‘Triple AAA social democrats’ are obliged to come up with clear answers on how to combine international cooperation and solidarity with national democracy.

This essay was originally published here.