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Abstract
Trust is a fundamental condition for a fair and cooperative society. But what if trust collapses? This article is interested in the disrupting effects a further erosion or even collapse of trust could have for European Union (EU) policies and institutions. It is argued that a breakdown of trust could create serious risks, but also opportunities, and is therefore an important factor that the EU must consider when designing its future policies and strategies. To this end – by using a forward-looking and trend impact analysis approach – the article provides insights and options on how strategic political responses for the EU could look like to turn the trend around and again enhance trust in the European project. Empirically, it addresses issue and policy areas such as trust in political systems, justice, science, economic regulation, cyberspace, surveillance as well as ethnic and religious diversity.
Keywords:
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
†. Views expressed in this article are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the position of the European Commission.
1. http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en (accessed 30 April 2015). See also speech by Vice-President Ansip “A safe and secure connected digital space for Europe”, Brussels, 20 January 2015.
2. Notably, already the Europe 2020 strategy paid attention to high levels of trust for consumers and companies in the digital era (European Commission Citation2010, 19).
3. See also Agence Europe, Energy: Debate on energy union project now full on, 3 February 2015.
4. “Weak signals” are the first signals of emerging change. They are the most current information about possible futures that one has. At the other end, “strong signals” record a clear indication of a coming change near in time and place. “Weak signals” are odd pieces of information that seem somehow meaningless or irrelevant. They can, nevertheless, indicate important future events. One has to recognise that a “weak signal” to some may not be a “weak signal” to others and that a “weak signal” indicating a particular change in one cultural and political context may be taken to indicate something else in a different context.
5. For the link between immigration and political trust see, for example, McLaren (Citation2012).
6. See http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs_419_en.pdf (accessed 30 April 2015).
7. One prominent example where scientists did “not get it right” were the scandals of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 2009 (“Climategate”) and 2010 (“Himalayagate”). The 2010 scandal started with the discovery of an error in the IPCC’s 4th assessment report, which stated that the glaciers in the Himalayas would melt away completely by 2035 – the year that was correct was 2350 (see Blankesteijn, Munnichs, and van Drooge Citation2014, 23).
8. A “civic nation” consists of all those who subscribe to its political systems, rules and values regardless of ethnicity or race, religion, gender, or language. “Ethnic nationhood”, on the other hand, is defined by language, religion, customs and traditions.
9. In the US the National Science Foundation research funding priorities have become recently a matter of political contestation in the US Congress and have led to a radical reduction in funding for the social sciences as well as to a politicisation of the focus of such research (see Morales Citationforthcoming).
10. Birnbaum, Michael, “Germany looks at keeping its Internet, e-mail traffic inside its borders”, The Washington Post, 1 November 2013.
11. Miller, Claire Cain, “Revelations of N.S.A. spying cost U.S. tech companies”, The New York Times, 21 March 2014.
12. Acohido, Byron, “Snowden affair continues to chill cloud spending”, USA Today, 8 January 2014.
13. Landi, Martyn, “52% wary of expressing their views online, one in three do not feel free from government surveillance”, Belfast Telegraph, 1 April 2014 (http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/technology-gadgets/52-wary-of-expressing-their-views-online-one-in-three-do-not-feel-free-from-government-surveillance-30143204.html; accessed 30 April 2015).
14. See, for example, http://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2015/sep/07/peer-review-preprints-speed-science-journals (accessed 30 April 2015).