Eurobonds, common debts to be guaranteed by all European countries but spent nationally, are anathema to the German public and German politicians. So it was kind of a surprise hearing Werner Hoyer, Minister of State at the German Federal Foreign Office, declaring “project bonds”, common debts to be guaranteed by all European countries, but spent on a European level, instead of a national one, to be a possible future development.

Mr. Hoyer, who is a possible candidate for the President of the European Investment Bank, what might explain the shift, was answering calls from Italy’s former Prime Minister Giuliano Amato. Both were attending a roundtable on “Changing the debate on Europe” at the Dahrendorf Symposium, held at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin last week. Mr. Amato said: “Let us issue Eurobonds for common projects. Let us give our citizens the feeling of getting more from Europe, nor less! Otherwise: Where should growth come from?”

Yet on what kind of projects the new debts should be spent for, both remained silent. In fact, it seemed, Mr. Amato and Mr. Hoyer intended primarily to make people feel better about the European Union. “We have to make the EU appealing, not a source of constraints”, Mr. Amato said. Citing concerns in Italy and Greece, he added: “Maybe some citizens say: ‘Well, without the pressure from Germany, we would get through our problems much better.’”

Whether or not intended, new, and probably expensive projects, seem to be seen as a possible way out of current euro-skepticism. “When it became nasty, language was not very peaceful anymore”, Mr. Hoyer reminded the audience. The usual legitimization of the EU might not be enough anymore, he fears. “We do need a new narrative on Europe”, Mr. Hoyer said. “We shouldn’t forget the old ones, but we should give people also a new one.”

If project bonds will mark a shift towards higher acceptance of the EU by the public or towards calmer markets remains difficult to judge in advance. To calm markets, which are in panic about a possible default of Greece, that could possibly then lead to further defaults, project bonds seem to be too small, no matter what size they are going to have exactly. To change attitudes towards Europe, project bonds might simply be the wrong answer, as they wouldn’t mean less austerity on a national level and, especially, painful but necessary reforms, to get rid of, for example, the traditional two-tier labor-markets that privilege those who already have got jobs, especially in the state-sector, and the elderly at the expense of those who have not yet found a permanent job and have to live with precarious part-time employments.

Maybe the problems could at least partially be solved by a different, more respectful way of communication. Wolfgang Ischinger, ex-ambassador and Chairman of the Munich Security Conference, and participant at the roundtable, called for more intervention by Europeans into each other’s internal affairs, but also for more emotion. “I believe we are not courageous enough. We have to intervene in each other’s internal affairs more often than we do, but not only negatively”, he said. “I am waiting for the moment when Merkel and Sarkozy will travel to Greece and tell the Greeks that we also love them. Emotional elements matter in Europe, and we need to tell each other that we love each other”.

At times, it seems, politics can be surprisingly romantic. As in every love affair, more romanticism would also mean less independency, though. Are Europeans ready to fall in love with each other with these strings attached?

Is a cold wind blowing in Europe, when it comes to its minorities? Participants agreed at last week’s panel on “Europe as a social space” at the Dahrendorf Symposium in Berlin: “We witness a decline of social space in Europe”, said Hakan Seckinelgin from the London School of Economics. “Europe has become a closed society, there is a racialization of society”, added Eric Fassin from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. “The scapegoat is changing but the logic of exclusion is the same”, said Angela Kocze from the European Roma Rights Center, a lobby group, in Budapest and the Central European University.

And indeed, Mrs. Kocze gave some depressing figures: More than 90 percent of Hungary’s Roma are unemployed. Very low numbers of Roma go to high school. A mere 0.2 percent of Roma attend university, she said. “We are witnessing the gradual empowerment of the extreme right in Hungary, the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden”, Mrs. Kocze added. But not only on the political right has the climate got chilly: “Italian authorities expelled European (Roma) citizens. And this decision was not taken by far-right politicians, but by the center-left government led by Romano Prodi”, she bemoaned.

Her conclusion was obvious: “The European project is under threat: From the left, from the far right”, and “from neoliberalism”.

Missing in this discussion were possible solutions to address the issue. Instead, participants largely stopped at concentrating on the problem. However, it became clear again, that missing information is a key. European media coverage on transnational social problems is far too superficial and random. When did you hear the last time about Roma exclusion in the (German) press? What do you know about Roma living in Berlin? When did you read the last interview with migrants coming to live here disclosing their motivations? Media and public, it seems, first have to recognize migrants and minorities, before stereotypes can pass to give way to more profound knowledge.

Let’s face it: The euro-crisis is the dominant topic at the Dahrendorf Symposium, held today (Wednesday) and tomorrow at the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften in Berlin. Eventually, almost all panels revolve around monetary issues. And in fact, many other topics are strongly connected to it – for example European democracy.

Ivan Krastev from the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia and the International Institute for Security Studies (IISS) recognized a deep democratic asymmetry between debtor- and creditor-countries. He stated that countries like Germany were still able to make autonomous decisions with regard to the euro-crisis. On the other hand, countries like Greece are merely expected to “accept, what was already designed“. This, he believes, is no sustainable solution and it remains doubtful whether “Northern” countries will in the end carry their point.

The underlying reason was not, however, that Greece was expected to take harder cuts than countries could bear, Mr. Krastev explained. Some Balkan-countries even imposed harsher austerity-measures in the last 20 years or so. Instead he presented four alternative causes, to explain why austerity meets resistance in Greece and elsewhere: First, Europe has become more conservative. Young people in Southern European countries don’t go on the streets to demonstrate for a better future. Instead, they claim the right to live like their parents. Second, Europe has become more pessimistic: In 1989 people in the East-European countries depicted the EU as “heaven”; today polls suggest that people in Europe are more pessimistic than anywhere else in the world. Third, the communist legacy paradoxically helped to strengthen competitiveness post-1989, as trade unions didn’t enjoy much support in Eastern Europe. But they are influential in Southern Europe. Finally: Eastern Europeans had a positive picture of EU-institutions in comparison to their national institutions, while today EU-institutions are often seen as evil and national institutions as benevolent.

Most of these assumptions can be challenged, of course. There are many other differences between Eastern Europe 1989 and Southern Europe 2011. The countries in today’s crisis are not only already part of the European Union (Eastern countries were not), they also introduced a common currency (which most Eastern countries still do not use). Southern European countries are democracies and market economies, so no one expects a systemic transformation. At the same time, people are used to speak up loudly, a tradition more unknown in countries under communist dictatorship.

However, protests show that the current approach towards the debtor-countries might very well fail, if measures are not accepted as legitimate. How could democracy thus be strengthened on the European level? Norbert Röttgen, Germany’s Minister for the Environment, came up with an old and still radical vision: The introduction of a European federation. Only by concentrating more powers on a European level, he claimed, could Europe win back lost power. These powers were needed to decide how we want to live and to reclaim lost ground from the economic and financial sector. They were also needed to make decisions more legitimate and acceptable. People, he said, should elect directly the President of the European Commission, who should also guide European politics. Council and Parliament should become a federal two-chamber parliamentary system. National elections should be coordinated.

In the eyes of many, these ideas might go too far. If they are feasible remains doubtful at best. And many questions are still open: What if, for example, a European parliament would approve by a vast majority measures to be implemented in Greece but rejected by the Greek? Shouldn’t countries concerned enjoy veto-rights? While open questions remain, a debate on legitimacy and democracy on the European level is urgently needed in today’s more complicated European world.

Interview with Figen Izgin from Colette Rosin and Sandro Marques.

For the first time, in the Regional and local elections that will take place next Sunday 18, in Berlin, the five main political parties in Germany propose a candidate with a Turkish cultural background and blood ties. This fact has attracted attention nationwide by the media. Cafébabel Berlin went to talk with one of the candidates, Figen Izgin, Kandidatin für das Abgeornetenhaus in Kreuzberg Nordiwth DIE LINKE.The interview took place in a local café in Adalbertstrasse. Colette Rosin and Sandro Marques conducted the interview that you can follow here:

The workshop En Scène and the stage director Damien Poinsard presented the play La God Maschine in ACUD.

by Sandro Marques

What could be expected from such a mixture of Woody Allen, Tennessee Williams, Guido Reyna and some Greek Tragedies? Amusement, illusion and clashes between characters, profound questions about the meaning of live? In this fusion there was a little of everything and the outcome from several months of work had its fruits. The play started but the subtitles didn´t want to cooperate. So, the first act was without German subtitles. If planned or not, there were no complains by the audience that filled the room. The challenge of not offering everything and letting room for the poetic perception of your audience is courageous.

By the second act, the public was engaged with the play and laughs started to be heard. Contrasting with the calm starting of the initial act, the rest of the play got in a fast rhythm and amusing one. Only by the middle of the second act, a baby woke up and started to cry. The text is mainly based on Woody Allen’s play God (A Play), with small sketches inspired on A Streetcar Named Desire by Tennessee Williams. Two Greek Goddesses, a dramaturgical author searching for immortality and innumerous other characters just add to the confusion following the method of decomposition and reconstruction of the dramatic act used by Damien Poinsard. On a quest for the truth, all this different references engage with hilarious moments trying to find a solution that ultimately satisfies the author. Everyone is entitled to its own truth but ultimately it is God’s will that predominates in La God Maschine.

Questions like the immortality of the author, what is real, what is the truth, were being thrown throughout the play but the main reason for everybody to be there was not to think about it. For some theatre it isn’t. The main purpose is entertainment, the experience of a collective moment of joy and, if because of what we are listening, watching, feeling with that experience, we can still think for a moment, the great message was delivered. What better than learning with joy? As it was said in the play, for other messages we have the Deutsche Post.

by Sandro Marques

Based on texts by Helen von Druskowitz and Virginie Despentes, Cléo Mieulet read, in French and German, texts by two authors which address the topic of Femininity (die Weiblichkeit) and Gender Studies. With almost one hundred years separating both writers, the importance of these two women for this discussion is of great relevance.

Virgine Despentes, winner of the Prix Renaudot in 2010 for Apocalypse Bébé, normally writes about the forgotten women that don´t fit in the cage of the feminine: bad girls with violent attitudes, “ugly” women not mirrored by the everyday images of beauty. Helene von Druskowitz, born in 1856, the second women to obtain a Doctorate in philosophy, the first Austrian woman, criticized religion, sexism, the gender inequality and is a reference for Gay and Lesbian History.

The reading switched from one language to the other with such great fluidity that it made the change almost undetectable. Of course, this true Babelian experience is always possible when there is one common language and that was, the portrait of a woman as written by a woman. The bet maide by La Ménagerie, of connecting people despite their natural language, through theatre, but also bringing other kinds of performances to the second edition of this scenic arts festival is a winning bet.

The confrontation between different roles attributed to man and women, based on expected levels of sensitivity, strength or emotional behavior are as valid in Druskowitz as they are today. That is what makes a classic, isn’t it?

Photo: Cristina Aibéo