Re-building Europe from the bottom up: Europe Works for London

Introduction

The European Union (EU) is passing through one of its worst periods of uncertainty and stress since its foundations were laid at the Treaty of Rome in 1957. ¹ There is as yet no definitive verdict on whether current difficulties are merely a temporary setback resolvable within the established policy framework or are symptoms of a fundamentally flawed and misconceived project. It follows that proposed solutions are in turn intimately bound with diverging views on what the EU is for and where it should be going.

This paper reports on an EC-funded communications project (Europe Works for London (EWL)) that asked participants, through film and discussion, to reflect on their experience of European funding. Participants were encouraged to ask their own questions and collectively attempt to answer them. The project explicitly addressed a disconnection between politicians and public in the debate about the EU and attempted to construct a ‘bottom-up’ interpretation of the EU through a variety of media.

The project took place in London, in the context of an imminent ‘in-out’ referendum on the UK’s membership of the EU. The next two sections in this paper summarise the current political context. These sections are followed by a detailed description of the project. The concluding section advocates the construction of a ‘citizen-led’ dialogue on the future of Europe.

Europe post-crisis: The end of convergence?

Before the financial crash of 2008, it could plausibly be argued that regional policy and other policy innovations were slowly nudging convergence among Member States in economic performance and living standards. Up until 2010 the euro, itself seen as a mechanism for further convergence and integration, was hailed as a spectacular success (Lynn, 2010). The 2008 financial crisis, among other consequences, has revealed and intensified underlying economic imbalances. In the broadest possible terms, the pattern of economic development among Member States after 2008 reveals a sharpening divide between northern and southern Europe. The monetary impacts of the single currency have affected north and south Europe differently in terms of financial stability and levels of indebtedness, and in the uneven imposition and effects of austerity. The financial crisis also interrupted the progress in living standards made among Member States in Eastern Europe (with the notable exception of Poland), although recent indicators suggest that in parts of Eastern Europe at least convergence of sorts has resumed, in part as a consequence of new patterns of industrial location (European Commission, 2013; Eurostat, 2015).

It is hazardous to attempt to summarise shifts in political outlook across an entity as complex and varied as the EU, but it is reasonable to conclude that economic divergence, recession, stagnating living standards and financial turmoil in the Eurozone have combined to reinforce a latent antipathy towards the EU and the process of European integration. There are resentments in northern Europe over bail-outs for countries in southern Europe and resentments in southern Europe over austerity imposed by countries in northern Europe (Tsoukalis, 2014). Anti-EU sentiment, however, cannot be solely attributed to economic crisis. Prior to 2008, hostility to the EU was entangled with hostility to migrants, the EU being implicated because of its basic principle of the free movement of labour within the union. In 2005, anxieties about encroachments on national sovereignty prompted voters in France and the Netherlands, two founding members of the union, to reject the EU Constitutional Treaty (Ginsberg, 2010).

Economic crisis has combined with older political obsessions over culture, identity, and national sovereignty to quicken centrifugal forces across Europe. Signs of a growth in detachment from European institutions are evident in the twice-yearly Eurobarometer survey. Conducted since 1974, it is the only consistent source of quantitative information on the degree of approval among European citizens for the EU, although it is not easy to interpret, not least because of successive waves of enlargement. Among the large range of indicators, concern for brevity dictates attention to just one, which is a question about trust in the EU. The proportion responding with ‘tending to trust’ fell from 57% in 2007 to 31% in 2014 across the whole EU. However, the survey also shows trust in all political institutions (including national governments, parliaments, and political parties) falling from a 2007 high point of 41% saying they ‘tended to trust’ their national governments to 27% in 2014 (European Commission, 2007, 2014). Levels of trust in national governments have consistently been lower than levels of trust in the EU, but the levels of trust in both have been falling and converging towards a similar low point. In contrast to the generally unenthusiastic attitude to European and national institutions, however, the survey found a warmer reception to the idea of EU Citizenship.

Diminishing trust in all types of political institutions, including the mainstream political parties, is an important factor in considering the results of the 2014 European Parliamentary election. The three parties with the largest vote in their countries were the Danish People’s Party (DPP), UKIP and Syriza, each with 26%. Both UKIP and the DPP, which are notably Eurosceptic, were joined by other Eurosceptic parties winning high vote shares, including France’s National Front, Italy’s Five Star Movement, Austria’s Freedom Party, Netherlands’s Party for Freedom, and Finland’s Finns’ Party. Syriza gained popularity by opposing policies seen as imposed by the governing bodies of the EU, whilst at the same time respecting its supporters’ wishes to stay in the EU and the euro.

Just as some caution is warranted in interpreting the results of the Eurobarometer survey, some qualification is required in considering the success of what hitherto or in other circumstances would be regarded as ‘fringe’ parties. The Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy Group, the most unequivocal Eurosceptic political grouping in the European Parliament (which includes the UK’s UKIP), increased its number of seats from 31 to 45, but still only comprises about 6% of the Parliament’s membership. Depending on how they are categorised, about 70% of the European Parliament’s membership can still be thought of as strong supporters of the EU, although the UK’s representation is an exception in this respect (Diamond et al., 2015). The picture is muddied by the way national parties of varying shades of Euroscepticism elect to associate with the various political groupings in the European Parliament.

The parties that have presented a challenge to the traditional political groupings in recent elections are for the most part right-wing Eurosceptics, but not all of them fit neatly into the conventional ‘left’ and ‘right’ axis of political categories. As a group, they are better characterised as ‘populist’, a term that has acquired some precision since it has been the subject of considerable academic interest. Populist parties are not categorised as such because they attempt to make themselves popular in order to attract votes, although they do operate in mainstream democratic processes. They are best defined through their narratives, which tend to contrast a virtuous people whose will is frustrated by corrupt elites against dangerous ‘others’. Populists tend to oversimplify complex social or political problems and their stories are ‘popular’ because they appeal to a (mostly imaginary) community whose aspirations have been thwarted by a political process that no longer serves their needs. Populists and populism have become common features of modern democracies (Albertazzi and McDonnell, 2007).

A tendency to reduce complex issues to a set of simplicities does not fit easily into the multi-layered political processes of the EU. Integration involves bargaining and compromise, and populists are not especially amenable to compromise. If there is a crisis in the EU, arguably its origins stem from a collapse of what was known as a ‘permissive consensus’ whereby national elites were trusted by their electorates to secure their interests in a more closely integrated Europe. An influential body of theory assumed that as the institutions for European integration developed, acceptance and legitimacy would transfer from national institutions to European institutions (Mau and Verwiebe, 2010). In the current juncture, it is does not seem likely that this transferral of legitimacy has been the case. The EU is perceived as an elite project, its processes are opaque, and the locus of decision-making is remote from the lives of ordinary citizens (Hix, 2005). Trust in national political elites has eroded in part because many citizens do not trust them to secure their interests in Europe, or perhaps no longer see any gain in belonging to Europe.

The UK and Europe

There can be little dispute that among the older and larger Member States of the EU, the UK has always been among the most detached and conditional. The Eurobarometer provides a handy evidence base for what is in any case an accepted proposition. Throughout the survey’s history, the UK has been among the most Eurosceptic countries, if not the most, with the proportion responding ‘tending to trust’ (in the EU) falling from 25% in 2007 to 16% in 2014 – some distance, in both years, below the diminishing average across the EU as a whole. Among Member States, however, the UK’s trust in its own government tended to be slightly below the EU’s average for national governments, falling from 34% in 2007 to 25% in 2014. This is higher than trust among UK respondents in the EU, but that is hardly a ringing endorsement.

David Cameron’s decision to commit to an ‘in-out’ referendum on the UK’s EU membership in 2017 following renegotiated treaty terms is a response both to Euroscepticism within his own party and the growth in UKIP support, which was taking votes from the Conservative Party in the run up to the 2015 General Election. The populist model fits UKIP perfectly. There is an appeal to a ‘pure’ homeland (qualified, albeit pragmatically, by an acceptance of the UK’s multiculturalism), a story of how European and national political elites have trampled on the legitimate aspirations of the people, and a reduction of complexity into two simplified issues – the EU and migration. Nigel Farage’s success in leading his party from the fringes of UK politics to a serious electoral force is based on in his success in conflating anxiety about immigration with antipathy towards the EU. UKIP’s core support is based on a group that slipped through the net cast by the two main parties, the Conservatives and Labour, to capture votes in the socially liberal ‘middle ground’ of the UK electorate. This core group mainly comprises white, elderly, working class voters left behind in a progressively socially liberal and multicultural Britain (Ford and Goodwin, 2014). In the event, UKIP damaged the vote of both the Conservative and Labour parties in the 2015 General Election.

The growth of UKIP, and the threat it posed to the Conservatives’ voting base bolstered the case made by a sizeable number of Tory MPs and party members in forcing David Cameron’s commitment to hold an ‘in-out’ referendum should the party win the 2015 election. For one section of the Conservative Party, the ‘in out’ referendum is a means of terminating the UK’s current relationship with the EU, but more nuanced versions of Tory Euroscepticism see it as a means of securing democratic legitimacy for the UK’s membership. Cameron’s compromise was to hold the referendum after renegotiating the terms of the UK’s membership, which in all likelihood he will fail to do. Currently, the items for the negotiation are, probably by design, somewhat sketchy. Nonetheless some demands, however vague, are probably close to Cameron’s own position, to that of the more moderate Eurosceptics in his own party, and to that of the centre-right parties that make up the European Conservatives and Reformists Group in the European Parliament. Notable among these demands are an opt-out for Britain from measures that move the EU closer to political integration and protections for Member States not in the euro. Also on the table are proposals to limit the access of migrants to welfare benefits and to control levels of immigration.

There is no fixed date for the referendum, although Cameron has signalled that it will be sometime in late 2017. Eurosceptics are pushing for an earlier date, in the hope of capitalising on current anti-EU sentiment and denying those who are pro-EU time to organise their case. There is a virulent anti-EU sentiment expressed in some parts of the print media, which, like UKIP, uses anti-migrant sentiment to stir up hostility to Europe. Early indications from opinion polls indicate that more of the UK’s citizens want to stay in the EU than want to leave (YouGov, 2015), but for the majority of the UK’s citizens, it is probably also true that the anti-EU case and the various distortions propagated by parts of the print media are currently the only side of the argument that is made and heard. Given recent surprises in UK politics, nothing can be taken for granted, and at the time of writing it would appear that the future of the UK’s membership hangs in the balance.

This is the context in which the project EWL was designed and delivered. The project is described in more detail below.

Europe Works for London (EWL)

EWL originated in a call for proposals issued by the London Office of the EC’s Representation in the United Kingdom. The EC has offices (called representations) in all the Member States of the European Union, the main functions of which are to act as the EC’s ‘voice’, which includes providing information, background briefings for the media, and reporting back to the EC in Brussels on political, economic, and social developments. The call was for a ‘Grant programme for initiatives to promote debate and raise awareness of EU policy priorities’. As the invitation was open to ‘higher education establishments, think tanks, NGOs and other not-for-profit organisations’, this call could be partly, but not wholly, interpreted as another instance of the EU as an elite project. Similarly, the sample of topics given on which to promote debate included items like ‘Is Europe failing to deliver the jobs and growth it needs to maintain its way of life in a competitive global economy?’ and ‘Does banking union create problems for those outside it?’ which might not normally be uppermost among the concerns of ordinary citizens.

EWL was conceived and designed by Shared Enterprise, a Community Interest Company (CIC) whose primary focus is on tackling disadvantage and promoting equalities. ² The proposal put forward explicitly addressed the ‘disconnection between politicians and public’ in the debate about the EU by advocating for the creation of ‘grass roots, bottom up debate’ and proposing the means for doing it. The aim was to show how the EU had impacted on the lives of ordinary citizens in London by allowing beneficiaries of EU programmes to describe their experiences through a variety of media. Much emphasis was given in the proposal to the inclusion of groups currently benefiting from EU programmes who normally have little opportunity to participate in policy discourse. The target audience ranged across civil society, notably including NGOs involved in the delivery of EU programmes, but also including trade unions, businesses, and local and national politicians.

In sequence, the project consisted of a short (30 min) documentary-style film in which project beneficiaries and delivery organisations were given an opportunity to explain what various EU-funded projects were trying to achieve and how they had made a difference. This was followed by two half-day conferences, each styled as an ‘unconference’, because they were designed to escape from the familiar didactic format of expert presentation followed by questions and answers. Instead, participants were encouraged to ask their own questions and collectively attempt to answer them. Finally, You Tube and Facebook accounts ³ were created to host the film shortly before this article was written.

Currently, the two main EU funds delivered in London – the European Social Fund (ESF) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) – are nominally allocated to the London Enterprise Panel (LEP) which acts as an advisory panel to the Mayor. The funds are managed and delivered, on behalf of the LEP, by the Greater London Authority. In the 2013–17 programme, they are worth about £678 million, with £502 million allocated to the ESF and £176 million to the ERDF. Consistent with the aims of the funds, the priorities set out by the LEP (2014) are skills and employment, supporting SME growth, science and technology, and infrastructure development, including low carbon infrastructure. In the LEP’s 2014 document, it is pointed out that London is both a phenomenal economic success and home to 20 of the most deprived local authorities in England.

The film, produced by Shared Enterprise with Eyemoon Films, mostly avoided the technical details of project funding and delivery, but instead concentrated on how the funds had changed lives. The projects featured in the film ranged across support for business start-ups and small business growth, skills training, community education, support for international co-operation in mental health services and support in transferring the ‘social lessons’ of London 2012 to Rio de Janeiro. Among the larger NGOs included were the London Training and Employment Network, a membership-based organisation that promotes ‘people-based regeneration, economic development and social inclusion’, CEFLycnx, shown in the film delivering community education in Roupell Park, a social housing estate in Lambeth, Roupell Park’s management co-op, and ABI Associates, an enterprise support agency based in North London. Coventry University featured as the agency supporting knowledge transfer from London to Rio (the LONRIO project) and Queen Mary University of London in the mental health project. Apart from project managers and workers, appearing in the interviews were final beneficiaries, including small business owners, parents, and children. The business start-ups and business supported had a distinctively ‘London’ flavour, reflecting the city’s concentration of creative activities, ranging across music production, fine arts publishing, fashion design, exhibition organisation and communications, and photography and visual arts.

A common theme among the interviews concerned the flexibility offered by European funds, especially in their usefulness for reaching otherwise overlooked groups. These elements in EU funds of flexibility and discretion offered to local agencies, particularly in skills and employment initiatives, have been noted in much other commentary (for example, see Finn, 2015). Another recurring theme, and one which regeneration professionals would understand in terms of demonstrating counterfactuals, was the lengthy distance travelled by some project beneficiaries. In one instance, this was from unemployment and homelessness to business ownership. Another was a journey that started with a product development idea for a student essay and ended in a successful exporting business. EU funding supported collaboration, networking, and international knowledge transfer (the Queen Mary University of London project entailed collaboration with partner agencies in Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Poland). Business were offered access to expert consultancy, supported into export markets, or connected with alternative supply chains. Attention was frequently drawn to the diverse range of ethnic and cultural groups covered by the projects, prompting discussions of how individuals can simultaneously select ‘multiple identities’ – for example, Caribbean, English, and European. Otherwise unaffordable international exhibitions were supported, and networks developed, in one case through participation in international arts and media conferences with an explicit aim of promoting cultural and social diversity throughout Europe. Finally, an overview was given by The EU’s Representation in the UK, dwelling in particular on trade, environmental standards, the Structural Funds, and employment rights.

‘If we leave, we’ll lose culture, the economy, and Scotland’: Reflections on the UK and Europe

The first showing of the film was at what was scheduled as an ‘unconference’ in east London in late June 2015. Strictly speaking, an unconference is meant to be participant driven, with an agenda determined by what would otherwise be the audience at the beginning of the meeting. The June event conformed with much of this definition, although the agenda was partly pre-determined, not least because participants had to watch a film. Afterwards, participants divided into four groups, with the common task of naming three things shown in the film that had happened because of the EU. Each had a unique question to answer, and each had to devise a question to ask one of the other groups, meaning the answers to nine questions, four of which were devised by the participants, were reported back at a plenary session.

Unsurprisingly, the answers to the first, common question were fairly uniform. Funding was a commonly identified benefit, for obvious reasons, among the NGOs present, but so too was ‘exchange of skills and knowledge’, described in similar but slightly different ways as ‘involvement in learning networks’, ‘new ideas for similar challenges’, and ‘supporting innovation’. Less common were ‘a focus on social exclusion’, ‘funding for risky ventures’, and ‘climate change programmes’. In conformity with the view frequently expressed in the film that EU funding afforded greater flexibility than would otherwise have been possible, ‘reaching groups that don’t tick the normal boxes’ was put forward. Specific groups mentioned included the young unemployed, women, and aspirant entrepreneurs, all of which were usually also part of an ethnic minority group or from deprived communities more generally. There was a clear perception that EU funding provided more support for environmental or climate change projects than was available at the national level, which perhaps followed from an argument that was made with some force in the film.

One question was concerned with connecting individual projects to the bigger picture of what EU funding was meant to achieve. Again, the theme of learning through networks, and ‘making connections’ was predominant. There was a clear consensus that EU funding had helped create opportunities that would not otherwise have existed, but more prosaically, the purpose of EU funds was understood as improving people’s lives through supporting businesses and creating jobs. One somewhat contentious suggestion was ‘50 years of peace and stability’, but this was among several remarks that indicated an appreciation of the European project as something wider than a funding pool supporting economic development or regeneration projects. This appreciation hinged on notions of social justice, and once again brought the discussion back to the inclusion of otherwise excluded groups. One participant had worked on a project funded through Daphne, a transnational programme that supported projects tackling sexual violence and harassment (originating from DG Justice) which was seen as an instrument for promoting women’s rights. Responding to a question on EU citizenship (and if it would be missed), there was a clear identification of the notion of EU citizenship with (what were seen as) European values of equality, democracy, tolerance, and inclusion. Northern Ireland’s PEACE Programme was mentioned as an instance of the EU as a force for good.

The word ‘opportunity’ arose frequently in the discussion on citizenship, accompanying a sense that opportunities for individuals, or possibilities for further personal development, would be restricted if the UK were not part of the EU. Echoing some remarks made in the film, the idea of a ‘European identity’ was understood as part of a complex of ‘multi-layered identities’ (perhaps understandably given the wide ethnic and national mix of the participants), but also something that was enriching rather than diminishing. Rather than empowering the national culture, a withdrawal from Europe was anticipated to diminish national status, in part through its fragmentary effect on the UK’s union (hence a remark that leaving Europe would mean losing Scotland).

Among the questions participants put to themselves concerned the fairness of EU funding allocations. There was a somewhat selfless suggestion that a larger share of funding should go to the UK’s more deprived regions, which overlooked the fact that London accommodates some of the UK’s most deprived communities. There was strong agreement that EU funding tends to favour large organisations. Give the ethnic mix of the participants and the generally favourable disposition among participants towards the EU, it was perhaps surprising that one group asked whether black or minority ethnic groups identify with the EU, or ‘find it welcoming’. Perhaps less surprising was the question of whether ‘white’ communities ‘would be educated or alienated by the film’, given that the majority of the beneficiaries of EU funding shown in the film were non-white. This became linked to two other questions asked, which was how should ‘the truth’ (the argument for) about the EU be communicated, and who should be responsible.

Conclusion and comment

Current stresses in the EU arise from both a short-term failure in delivery and performance, and a longer-term and more serious detachment among citizens, or a sizeable proportion of them, from what the EU is meant to represent. Regarding the first, the economic crisis has widened inequalities in Europe and reduced the perceived benefits of EU membership. Regarding the second, nation-states for the most part remain the focus of political interest and participation, and the EU has yet to acquire sufficient democratic legitimacy to impinge on national sovereignties. A sizeable proportion of the EU’s citizens would appear to reject the aim of closer integration, and do not appear to accept, or have lost faith in, the full set of values and ideas the EU claims to stand for. Genuinely democratic institutions at the European level are as yet underdeveloped or are perceived to be. A yet more pessimistic interpretation is that as integration develops, decisions made at the European level have more concrete impacts on the everyday lives of ordinary people, making genuine democratic participation an even more urgent imperative. But as Europe becomes more democratic, so too does the potential for conflict between Member States.

Despite these apparent trends in the wider society, the participants in the EWL ‘unconference’ appeared to accept and support both the short-term legitimacy (immediate and tangible benefits) and long-term legitimacy (what Europe stands for) of the EU. This was present in the mostly positive remarks made about the impacts of EU-funded projects and the values that accompanied them. More widely, the EU was seen as a force for good in the world, especially in its promotion of peace and equality. However, the context in which this discussion took place should clearly form part of any conclusions to be drawn from this project. The audience was drawn mostly, but not exclusively, from what might be described as ‘regeneration professionals’ who are naturally favourably disposed to EU funding and hence to the EU. But it was also a typically London audience, or what some commentators might refer to as a ‘metropolitan’ audience.

Given its cosmopolitan character, both in terms of its demography and the orientation of its businesses, London tends to be more favourably disposed (or at least less unfavourably disposed) to the idea of the EU than many other parts of the UK. Travelling to Europe is easier from London than from other parts of the UK, especially to Paris or Brussels. London is a city of migrants, who have less difficulty in constructing their identities around overlapping notions of race, nation, or supra-national constructs defined by values and ideals. As migrants, they are much less receptive to the anti-migrant conflation of EU membership with immigration. Some proof of this is given by the results of the 2014 European elections, in which UKIP gained 17% of the vote share in London compared with 27% in the rest of the UK. In the 2015 General Election, UKIP won 8% of the vote share in London compared with 13% in the UK.

It cannot be known whether a similar event organised in another part of the UK would achieve a similarly positive result. Nonetheless, there is scope to at least experiment with similar events in other parts of the UK, or even in using communications technologies to link several cities together across Europe in a common debate. Possibly, communities of interest as well as of place could comprise a project’s participants (e.g. Europe works for Youth, Europe works for Women, etc.).

In conclusion, some modest insight has been gained which might apply to future communications. As politicians can no longer rely on passive consent, the institutions they create must strive to create legitimacy through active participation. Communications should be designed to support opportunities to participate in the creation of shared ideas and understandings. It is by no means clear whether Europe has created the institutions that can accommodate citizen-driven dialogue. New, multi-direction methods of communications are required in which citizens are active participants in the creation of ideas, rather than passive repositories of information or consultees in an established agenda. New media and communication styles could support this. Finally, civil society in the realm of ideas and competing narratives is the key conduit through which understandings are communicated, and participation in civil society is how new political identities are constructed. EU funding has, through successive programming rounds, supported community activism in which the key values supporting European integration are demonstrated through practical actions yielding tangible benefits. If the EU is to be re-built from the bottom up, long may EU-supported community activism continue.