Ivan Krastev: Global and European Integration and Its Political Backlash

Описание: Ivan Krastev from the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) and the Centre for Liberal Strategies discussed the claim that globalisation is in a deep crisis because of COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine. If this is true, he argued, Europe will be the biggest winner because of its strong political and economic integration. Trends like on-shoring (moving production from faraway destinations like Asia) or friend-shoring (moving production to countries that are reliable in times of geopolitical crisis) are very much in favour of Europe’s economic setup. He claimed that companies, capital and people usually don’t move far but instead prefer closer destinations, as the history of European economic integration has shown. For Krastev the war in Ukraine challenges four major assumptions of European integration. 1) That economic interdependence is a source of security. The current ‘weaponisation’ of natural gas by Russia is a major source of insecurity. 2) That military power no longer matters. Because Europe is militarily weak, it can’t help Ukraine sufficiently and is politically marginalised in the conflict. 3) For companies, the economic logic has changed from efficiency to resilience, i.e. reliable production in close geographical vicinity to the market is preferable to the cost-cutting, just-in-time manufacture of goods. 4) The prevailing economic paradigm in the EU has also dramatically changed from fiscal and monetary austerity to outspending the crisis, i.e. dealing with the crisis with massive public spending in order to minimise its effects.

Video edited by Iulia Anamaria Barta

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