Legalism at a Dead End or the (Br)Exit of Politics

Abstract

Back in 2007, the year during which, alongside others, Romania and Bulgaria joined the European Union (in January) and the world financial crisis began with the French global investment bank BNP Paribas terminating withdrawals from several sub-prime loaded hedge funds (in August), Perry Anderson concluded aLondon Review of Booksessay entitled, “Depicting Europe,” with words that today must be seen as prophetic: “the long-run outcome of [European] integration remains unforeseeable to all parties. Even without shocks, many a zigzag has marked its path. With them, who knows what further mutations might occur.” The narrow but decisive vote by the UK electorate on June 23 to “take their country back” represents just the latest, and arguably biggest, shock in what can only be described as a decade of seismic activity for the European project. Indeed, it is hard to believe in post-Brexit 2016 that only a little more than a decade ago, in 2004, Jeremy Rifkin could proclaim the “European Dream […] a beacon of light in a troubled world,” beckoning, as it were, “a new age of inclusivity, diversity, quality of life, deep play, sustainability, universal human rights, the rights of nature, and peace on Earth.” Such lofty words must sound no less than ludicrous to the sober and cynical minds of contemporary Europeans who see seemingly entrenched post-War realities, many having to do with European integration, assailed head on. What makes this (again seemingly) dramatic change yet harder to digest is, of course, the fact that much of the damage is self-inflicted. It is decidedly not the same as some external oil-price shock to which an otherwise well-governed and self-conscious incipient political community has suddenly been exposed. Instead, the Brexit vote symbolizes more starkly than anything else the deep crisis that has been building up within the European project for a much longer time than its proponents would wish to admit.