German Europe: Are there Alternatives?

Contributor(s): Professor Ulrich Beck, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, Professor Mary Kaldor | The basic rules of European democracy are being subverted or turned into their opposite, bypassing parliaments, governments and EU institutions. Multilateralism is turning into unilateralism, equality into hegemony, sovereignty into the dependency and recognition into disrespect for the dignity of other nations. Even France, which long dominated European integration, must submit to Berlin’s strictures now that it must fear for its international credit rating. In this event, Ulrich Beck, Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Mary Kaldor discuss the current political crisis and how to reinvent democracy in Europe. Ulrich Beck is professor of Sociology at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. His recent books include Cosmopolitan Europe (with Edgar Grande) (Polity Press 2007), World at Risk (Polity Press 2009), A God of One’s Own (Polity Press 2010), Twenty Observations on a World in Turmoil (Polity Press 2012), Distant Love (together with Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim) (Polity Press 2013) and German Europe (Polity Press 2013). Daniel Cohn-Bendit is a German politician, active also in France. He is currently co-president of the group European Greens–European Free Alliance in the European Parliament and co-chair of the Spinelli Group, a European parliament intergroup aiming at relaunching the federalist project in Europe. His latest book is For Europe (2012; with Guy Verhofstadt). Mary Kaldor is professor of Global Governance in the Department of International Development at LSE, where she directs the Human Security and Civil Society Research Unit. She has just completed a report on The Bubbling Up of Subterranean Politics in Europe based on research undertaken by seven field teams across Europe.