Ian Manners on 'Achieving European Communion in the Planetary Organic Crisis'

Published 22 March 2023

Cover of Ian Manners' report 'Achieving European Communion in the Planetary Organic Crisis', illustration.

The report published by EU3D: EU Differentiation, Dominance, and Democracy, argues that European Union challenges and crises of the past decade, including the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis, refugees, ethno-nationalist/Brexit movements, COVID-19, and Russian invasion of Ukraine are part of a planetary organic crisis (POC) of economy, society, ecology, conflict, and polity.

The recognition of the symbiotic relationships between these challenges is crucial for moving from symptoms to causes in order to understand how dominance and differentiation affects the sharing of genuine democracy in the European Union (EU).

Instead of terms such as ‘cooperation’ or ‘integration’, the paper uses the concept of ‘European communion’ (the subjective sharing of relationships), understood as the extent to which individuals or groups believe themselves to be sharing relations (or not), and the consequences of these beliefs for European political projects, processes, and products.

The paper argues that the POC co-constitutes the democratic decay of European communion which in turn weakens democracy in the EU. Dominance in the EU involves powerful actors structuring social change through differentiation of member states, policy sectors, and social groups. Genuine democracy is social democracy based on equality, rather than hegemonic dominance and social differentiation.

The research report was published as part of the EU’s Horizon 2020 programme-funded EU3D research project. EU Differentiation, Dominance and Democracy (EU3D) is a research project that specifies the conditions under which differentiation is politically acceptable, institutionally sustainable, and democratically legitimate; and singles out those forms of differentiation that engender dominance.