Should-Read: Marco Buti and Karl Pichelmann: European integration and populism: Addressing Dahrendorf’s quandary

Should-Read: Marco Buti and Karl Pichelmann: European integration and populism: Addressing Dahrendorf’s quandary: “With its current competences lacking the ability to address distribution effects…

…the EU is seen as an agent of globalisation rather than a response to it.  At the same time, it is charged with undermining national autonomy, identity, and control. This column sets out five guiding principles for policy articulation at the EU level for a new positive EU narrative…. The current rise in populist parties is a wake-up call resembling what the late Ralf Dahrendorf… summarised a little more than 20 years ago as a quandary…

To stay competitive in a growing world economy [the OECD countries] are obliged to adopt measures which may inflict irreparable damage on the cohesion of the respective civil societies. If they are unprepared to take these measures, they must recur to restriction of civil liberties and of political participation bearing all the hallmarks of a new authoritarianism (…) The task for the first world in the next decade is to square the circle between growth, social cohesion and political freedom…