What is happening to Europe (or to its Nation-States)?

A year after Sarkozy’s contested decision to expel EU citizens (Romanians and Bulgarians) from the French soil on the basis of their alleged threat to public order, a recent measure of the Spanish Government raises attention. The measure will probably have a less outstanding echo than the French one, but the assumptions from which it stems are not so different. From Thursday August 11, 2011 Romanian citizens without a Spanish legal work contract and intended to have it, cannot enter Spain. The practical implication of such measure is clear: Romanian will only enter Spain as tourists, since it is more likely to become part of the British Royal Family rather than to find a job in Spain without being there. Why this measure? According to the government, about a third of Romanians in Spain is unemployed. Add to that unprecedentedly low employment rates, the African political crises, and the global recession, and you get to the crystallization of a principle that comes from a far-away (because apparently forgotten) past. The European Commission approved, the Commissioner of Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, saying: 'We give our support because of the particular situation of Spain'.

The European project of unity and social cohesion, as developed by Delors, Monnet, Spinelli, seems to clash always more frequently with the cracks that it had tried to mend. Those of national borders. To blur them seemed at that time to be the more desirable direction, firstly through the economy and finance, then through politics. However, many facts today pose serious questions on the extent of the success of that project, and – perhaps more importantly – on the potential of those ideas of being alternatives to nationalism in times of fast capitalism. As discussed Douglas Holmes (2000) it seems that French technocratic principles of administration, and Catholic social doctrine, by which the founding fathers were inspired, have failed to weaken the national principle. Frankly, it was not easy, as that principle has been the condition of possibility for politics over the last three centuries. The issue at stake today is that it seems to be again crystallizing and radicalizing.