What Does Europe Want? The Union and its Discontents. Slavoj Žižek

summer 2011, the ‘new poor’ facing a prospect of protracted unemployment or flexi-jobs below their qualifications and ambitions, and on the other hand, although it is exactly the Erasmus generation that is Europe’s last resort, education is being scrapped as part of ‘austerity measures’.¹⁶ Maybe the time has come to paraphrase the famous saying by Max Horkheimer and say, ‘Anyone who does not wish to talk about neoliberalism, should also keep quiet on the subject of the EU.’ And the same goes for ‘reforms’ in Croatia. Those who don’t wish to talk about the reforms of the financial sector should also be quiet on the subject of all other (legal, human rights etc.) reforms. Already more than 90 per cent of banks in Croatia are Austrian, French, German or Italian, and the Croatian ‘euro-compatible’ elites are trying to implement further neoliberal reforms portrayed as a necessary part of the EU accession process. And maybe this is what Mr Barroso meant when he was saying that Croatia’s accession to the EU will only strengthen the EU (with new privatisations and new capital flows).

      The third myth linked with the myth of prosperity is the following: ‘When we enter the EU, there will be more stability.’ Or as one liberal Croatian intellectual put it before the referendum: ‘For us the option is clear: either the Balkans or the civilised nations’, and his colleague added: ‘Eurosceptics are just bigoted obscurantists, maniacal patriots, fans of war criminals and tragicomic visionaries.’ This is the old myth, reinforced for example by Emir Kusturica’s movies, which show the Balkans as a dark region only good enough for war crimes. It is the ‘Imaginary Balkans’ so well explained in Maria Todorova’s classic book under the same title. But when the European Union got the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize for having ‘contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe’, it was exactly this myth which was repeated in the official press release by the Norwegian selection committee: ‘The admission of Croatia as a member next year, the opening of membership negotiations with Montenegro, and the granting of candidate status to Serbia all strengthen the process of reconciliation in the Balkans.’ Here you have it again, a celebration of the European Union’s mission ‘civilisatrice’, although it was exactly the EU that failed to stop massacres like that in Srebrenica. However, it is not really necessary to discredit the Nobel Peace Prize: by the time Henry Kissinger got it, it was obvious that Orwell’s famous credo ‘War is Peace’ had become a new motto for its awarding, a suspicion confirmed by the choice of Obama, who afterwards did not withdraw his troops from either Iraq or Afghanistan. Nevertheless, it is necessary to mention that one of the prerequisites for joining the EU is to be a part of NATO, not really known for ‘strengthening the process of reconciliation’ if we have in mind the war in Libya or other places. Or take the recent war in Mali, where the EU is again sending troops to fight ‘Islamic fundamentalism’ under the pretext that it is endangering European democracy. It is also worth mentioning that the current presidency holder of the Council of the EU is Cyprus, a still divided country, and that the Nobel Peace Prize is given in a country whose citizens twice refused EU membership. All in all, the myth of ‘stability’ goes hand in hand with the myth of ‘prosperity’, as there is no real peace in Europe, but exactly the opposite – a permanent economic warfare going on in the ‘bay of PIIGS’. Is there any better proof than the submarine deals that helped sink Greece, the billions spent on buying German U-boats while the EU is pushing for deeper cuts in areas like health or education?

      So maybe the time has come to change the doctor joke and switch the roles. The bad news is that the EU is in a big political and economic crisis, with corruption affairs erupting almost on a daily basis and unemployment rates rising. The good news is that Croatia is entering the EU: it is precisely Croatia’s accession, just like the Nobel Peace Prize, that should give new credibility and legitimacy to the European Union in its current state. In that sense, we could say that at this moment the EU needs Croatia more than Croatia needs Europe in the state it is currently in.

Slavoj Žižek

      5 WHAT DOES EUROPE WANT?

      On 1 May 2004, eight new countries were welcomed into the European Union – but which ‘Europe’ will they find there? In the months before Slovenia’s entry to the European Union, whenever a foreign journalist asked me what new dimension Slovenia would contribute to Europe, my answer was instant and unambiguous: nothing. Slovene culture is obsessed with the notion that, although a small nation, we are a cultural superpower: We possess some ‘agalma’, a hidden intimate treasure of cultural masterpieces that wait to be acknowledged by the wider world. Maybe this treasure is too fragile to survive intact the exposure to the fresh air of international competition, like the old Roman frescoes in that wonderful scene from Fellini’s Roma, which start to dissolve the moment that daylight reaches them.

      Such narcissism is not a Slovene speciality. There are versions of it all around Eastern Europe: we value democracy more because we had to fight for it recently, not being allowed to take it for granted; we still know what true culture is, not being corrupted by the cheap Americanised mass culture. Rejecting such a fixation on the hidden national treasure in no way implies ethnic self-hatred. The point is a simple and cruel one: all Slovene artists who made a relevant contribution had to ‘betray’ their ethnic roots at some point, either by isolating themselves from the cultural mainstream in Slovenia or by simply leaving the country for some time, living in Vienna or Paris. It is the same as with Ireland: not only did James Joyce leave home in order to write Ulysses, his masterpiece about Dublin; Yeats himself, the poet of Irish national revival, spent years in London. The greatest threats to national tradition are its local guardians who warn about the danger of foreign influences. Furthermore, the Slovene attitude of cultural superiority finds its counterpart in the patronising Western cliché which characterises the East European post-communist countries as retarded poor cousins who will be admitted back into the family if they can behave properly. Recall the reaction of the press to the last elections in Serbia where the nationalists gained votes – it was read as a sign that Serbia is not yet ready for Europe.