Schmidt Talks Eurozone Crisis At Brussels Conference
Vivien Schmidt is a busy woman.
An expert on European political economy and democracy, the challenges faced since the 2010 sovereign debt crisis in countries in the European Union which include austerity measures and economic restructuring have left her insights in high demand. Earlier this year, the professor, who is the Director for the Center for the Study of Europe at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, was awarded a fellowship to study the unfolding effects of the crisis by the prestigious EU Commission Directorate-General of Economics and Finance.
What she found in the course of her research was a disconnect between rhetoric and action with profound implications for European democracies.
“This is a pretty big deal,” said Schmidt. “The EU in the crisis has been ‘governing by the rules’ and ruling by the numbers through policies demanding rapid deficit reduction. These haven’t worked, and the EU actors have recognized this.”
On Nov. 24, Schmidt was in Brussels to present a paper on questions of democratic legitimacy in the Eurozone crisis at the Annual Conference of the EU Commission’s Directorate-General of Economics and Finance. Her paper was titled, “The Eurozone Crisis of Democratic Legitimacy: Can the EU Rebuild Public Trust and Support for European Economic Integration?”
“Actors in the Eurozone Crisis have been reinterpreting rules and recalculating numbers by stealth. Essentially EU actors are saying one thing and doing another,” Schmidt said. “They have good reason, because austerity policies aren’t working. But it’s a problem for legitimacy. Southern Europeans continue to feel oppressed, even when they are being accommodated, and Northern Europeans feel like they are being deceived.”
On Nov. 19, Schmidt was a speaker on a roundtable at Harvard’s Center for European Studies that discussed “The State of Democracy in Europe: Reflections on the Eurocrisis.” Joining Schmidt were James Bohman, Professor of Philosophy and Professor of International Studies at St. Louis University, and Turkuler Isiksel, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Columbia University.
“I argued that when discussing democratic legitimacy, one doesn’t just need to talk about input legitimacy – which means things like citizen participation – or output legitimacy, which would mean policy effectiveness. You need to talk what I call “through-put legitimacy,” which is governance processes,” Schmidt said. “The problem for the EU has been that initially, actors thought governing by the rules would lead to good outcomes, even without citizen input. They’ve realized this does not work.”
Schmidt has just been asked to be a member of the Executive Board of the Austrian Institute for International Peace in Vienna.
“I was so surprised. It came out of the blue,” Schmidt said. “And one month ago, I was also asked to be on the board of the Wissenschaftzentrum Berlin (WZB), one of the foremost institutes for advanced learning in Germany in the social sciences. I feel delighted and honored.”
For next year, Schmidt intends to continue to pursue grants for the Center for European Studies.
“I’m also working on two books,” Schmidt said. “One on the Eurozone Crisis, and one on the importance of discourse and ideas in political analysis.”
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