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The more I think about the idea of “European values” after discussing it on a panel at #BelvedereForum19 last week, the less it seems to me that such a thing exists in any meaningful sense. 1/14
Firstly, the whole idea of “European values” (or “Asian values”) seems to me to be somewhat Huntingtonian – it suggests the fault lines in international politics are cultural, i.e. a “clash of civlisations”, though this doesn’t seem to occur to “pro-Europeans”. 2/14
That aside, it’s really not clear to me what these “European values” are. In order for the idea to be meaningful, they would have to be values that (a) Europeans share and (b) are distinct from the values held by people from other parts of the world. 3/14
It seems to me that there are some rather abstract universal values that are broadly shared around the world, and perhaps even “Western values” (though of course that is also a civilizational idea). But are there really distinctively “European values”? 4/14
It seems to me necessary to distinguish between values that Europeans collectively believe in, and values that are embodied by the institutional structures and policies of the EU (i.e. the values of the EU) – the two ideas often seem to be conflated. 5/14
For example, it seems to me to be difficult to claim that democracy is a specifically “European value” given that one of the main criticisms of the EU – to which I think there is something – is that it is not democratic enough. 6/14
Moreover, it seems to me that, in order for the idea of “European values” to be meaningful, Europeans must in some way be collectively committed to them in a way that goes beyond rhetoric – in other words they must act on them. 7/14
According to Article 2 of the Lisbon Treaty, the EU is “is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights”. 8/14
But though officials endlessly state that these are the EU’s values, the EU is pretty inconsistent in practice in the way it promotes/upholds them beyond its external borders (e.g. democracy and freedom human dignity in MENA). 9/14
It seems to me that the best candidate for a distinctively “European value” is the rule of law. After all, the EU is a community of rules. In a sense, it is nothing but a set of rules. What the EU does it to create rules. 10/14
But even this seems to me to be problematic. For example, the EU is doing very little beyond rhetoric to try uphold the international rule of law e.g. in Asia – nation states like the United States, the United Kingdom and Japan are doing much more. 11/14
Moreover, the insistence on rules, which is a specifically German idea (“Rechtsstaat” etc.), is a big part of the EU’s internal problems. Many of the conflicts within the EU are about resistance to rules that are perceived as undermining democracy. 12/14
You can see this most clearly in the euro crisis – see Brunnermeier/James/Landau on the euro crisis as battle between a German approach based on rules and a French approach based on discretion. 13/14
So in practice even the rule of law seems to divide Europeans as much as it unites them. It may be a value that a lot of “pro-Europeans” believe in. But that doesn’t quite make it a distinctive “European value”. 14/14
