Opinion by Kai Schnier
In the last two weeks around 400 people died in two boat disasters off the coast of the Italian island of Lampedusa. This humanitarian disaster has caused a public and media outcry and triggered harsh criticism of European immigration policies. However, it is just a tiny piece of a much bigger puzzle. In fact, the Lampedusa shipwreck should not only be understood as a tragic catastrophe for its victims and its (political) perpetrators, but also as a wake-up call to European society as a whole. The Lampedusa shipwreck is the shipwreck of European values and goes far beyond immigration matters. It exposes a contemporary sense of hubris and carelessness within Europe that might be best explained by the emergence of a certain “European exceptionalism” amongst political representatives and the wider European public.
In recent years, it has been very common for politicians in Brussels to point their fingers – mostly at the United States and on the grounds of humanitarian and ethical concern. EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom described the continued existence of the Guantanamo prison as “shameful”. In light of the NSA-spying scandal, European Parliament President Martin Schulz confessed to be “deeply worried and shocked” and British member of the European Parliament and Sarah Ludford was recently cited, stating that the US-army’s use of drones “clearly raises moral and ethical” issues.
It is understood that the majority of these critical voices are justified. However, within Brussels and the governments of European member states it seems to have become a popular discipline to criticise Washington – as well as Beijing and Moscow – and thereby whitewash or at least gloss over many of the recent shortcomings within the EU itself. Openly calling into question the American drone policy and raising accusations of American hypocrisy with regards to the NSA-scandal seems to suggest that the EU has a clean slate on these matters. However, this is far from being the case.
In fact, Germany is just fighting off its very own “drone-disaster” and the German magazine SPIEGEL recently revealed that the European Union has already invested “hundreds of millions of Euro in research and development of unmanned aerial vehicles” – mostly in an effort to monitor and control the Southern borders of the continent and contain the unloved streams of African immigration. The same holds true for the European involvement in the NSA-scandal. In the aftermath of the first shocking news of large-scale US-spying within Europe, reports have revealed NSA-ties to a variety of European secret agencies, the most prominent example being the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), which appears to have transferred great amounts of data to the NSA over the past years.
The recent Lampedusa shipwreck is just another chapter in this rather extensive list of European shortcomings; shortcomings which should be addressed. One of the first steps towards an open discussion on these matters might be the realisation that the European Union – in the political behavior of its member states – is not so special after all. Over the past few years, European representatives and EU-optimists have implanted a sense of European exceptionalism into the societies of member states. The belief that there is something unique and especially virtuous about Europe has knowingly or unknowingly been cultivated. And while it is true that the EU as a political experiment is matchless and the philosophical dimension of a society of states is conveyed as strong, this should not mislead Europeans into believing that the EU is somehow acting in a more “humanitarian” and virtuous manner on the international stage than its global counterparts.
The Lampedusa shipwreck, the European drone ambitions, and the EU’s doubtful share in the NSA-affair and many other instances show that some European values end at the continent’s borders, that the freedom and privacy of European citizens is just as dubiously protected as the freedom of American citizens and that the EUs devotion to human rights and its pacifist ambition are just as often undermined by Realpolitik as is the case elsewhere. The blunt anti-Americanism that has ruled European media since 9/11 should not override the issues that politics are facing on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.
It would be pleasant to see European politics refocusing on the issues at hand, instead of settling back on the achievements of the Union and launching diversionary maneuvers by criticising politics made elsewhere. The EU should not lose its critical perspective on what is happening in Washington and other important capitals of the world. However, European politicians should start becoming much more critical of what is happening within and around the European borders. When Somalis, Eritreans and Sudanese are dying in front of the eyes of helpless Italian coast guards week after week, month after month and year after year, this should be valid proof that there is more than enough to work on.
