_ Christian Zeitz, research director, Institute for Applied Political Economy. Vienna – Berlin, 18 October 2023.*
European integration should be an open project, as it was in its first beginnings. Capitalism should be a market economy and an order shaped by the symbols and signals of a price order. Europe should be organized by a continentalist order in the sense of free federations, of states that do not want to be patronized and of the re-establishment of an order linked to the culture and the free coexistence of the people in these states.
The project of European integration was not necessarily on the tracks it is on today from the very beginning. It was by all means an open project. See the Schumann Plan, the Union for Coal and Steel. It was a good idea in the sense of a peace order to connect nations economically and thus to prevent aggression potentials of states.
Criticism of organized refugee migration
Instead of legal and illegal migration, George Soros speaks of regular and irregular migration and pretends that we must accept or “manage” migration – that there is no alternative. Migrants are supposed to immigrate in an organized way. This constructivist approach of the EU has emerged in the relatively short period of 1992 and 2007, namely in the years of the Maastricht Treaty (citizenship of the Union, common foreign policy and common jurisdiction; Commission, Parliament, Council = essential features of a state), the Amsterdam Treaty (Art. 13 obligation to incorporate so-called anti-discrimination laws into the state jurisdiction, to restrict freedom of expression, specification of a cultural revolution on the European continent, goes far beyond the peace order), the Nice Treaty (the majority principle; an attempt is being made to wrest from the member states their last right of veto) and the Lisbon Treaty (unrestricted legal personality of the European Union = state or superstate).
1988 Edinburgh: dark development of the EU not yet foreseeable, e.g. discussion of the currency question, two proposals: Delors plan: single currency, Hayek: competitive currencies.
1989 Collapse of communist systems (mainly through privately organized initiatives): contributed significantly to the EU project gaining momentum.
On the current economic form
We do not have capitalism at present. We have political influence by billionaires, i.e. an alliance with the political sector and proximity of their activities to the process of money creation through multilateral linkages. We live in the age of a syndicalism therefore a neo-syndicalism and not in a capitalist or market order.
The idea of continentalism can counter the idea that elites metanationally divide and rule the world constructivistically. Such attempts have always existed, in Europe, for example, in the form of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.
Policy recommendations
Catallaxy: to make friends out of “enemies”, to make up for experienced injustice during World War II (expropriations resp. squeezed out by communism) not by demands for restitution of right and property, but to invest in former German territories, on former expropriated properties, to develop intelligent forms of cooperation, to make enemies friends, to be healed by Christ’s word of redemption.
The EU is not the solution for a better life of people and not a peace union anymore, because, e.g. today it is fuelling the war in Ukraine by asking member states to deliver weapons and ammunition to Ukraine.
Ideas of reason and ideas of Christian culture, on which our continent is built, should prevail, since a common culture is the basis for a common economy and a common law as well as the peaceful cooperation of peoples. A common culture is the precondition for capitalism in the real, good sense.
Self-sufficiency in the form of an agricultural local supply, a regional energy economy and a monetary order that does not mean common, centrally administered money.
*Presentation given at the “Conference of European Continentalism” on 18 October 2023 in the German Bundestag in Berlin.