The relentless, obsessive refrain, even in those places where the fate of the European project is being played out – or commented upon – demands that nothing that is of any consequence for the European Union can be decided, or even considered, without the German and French leaders having first been provided with full democratic legitimacy for the next four or five years. As Jan Kordys recently reported, the former president of the Italian Council Enrico Letta has acknowledged that it was indeed “the forthcoming elections in France (May 2017) and Germany (September 2017)” that would be “decisive for the Union” (see EUROPE 11754).
Is this anything to be worried about? Given that Germany and France are the two most populous countries in the EU and are its two main economic powers, some would say that this waiting game now taken as the rule is justified. Yet a perfectly responsible man who has himself spent a lot of time in the European “holy of holies” as the head of the Italian government following his spell as a European commissioner deems it “shocking” that the future of the EU can be put on hold because of two national elections. What could possibly have got into Mario Monti?
The answer to that question can only be an epiphany: if the learned and wise former competition commissioner recognised that, “in a sense, we need a revolution”, it because times are changing and he can see that the EU cannot cope with the challenges that it is having to face today, neither on a democratic nor on a practical level, and its significant shortcomings are leading European citizens, even the most kindly disposed, increasingly to disconnect from a project of which they no longer feel part and, worse, of which they no longer want to feel part.
The revolution is, as Dutch philosopher Luuk van Middelaar pointed out, that times have changed in the EU along with the changing nature of its areas of responsibility: “A metamorphosis has taken place, from a system that didn’t need an explicit democratic legitimacy, which operated on the basis of what political scientists call permissive consensus. What we see today is ‘constraining dissensus’” (Le Soir, 24 March).
The upsurge of Euroscepticism, including within traditional, democratic parties, provides the illustration of this phenomenon. Populism is also a form of expression of this discontent among citizens which, beyond the exploitation of it by those ready to wrap themselves in the clothing of the murkiest ideas in order to achieve their national political paradise, may also be viewed as a “salutary threat”, according to Professor Philippe van Parijs, who holds the Hoover Chair of Economics and Social Ethics at the Catholic University of Leuven: “It reminds the elites that it is their duty to protect the interests of all fairly, not just their own or those of people like them” (Le Monde, Idées supplement, 25 March).
The remark by van Parijs is particularly intriguing in the case of the EU since, looking closely, who are the “elites” whose duty it is to protect the interests of all fairly, not only their own or those of people like them? The answer is simple: as things currently stand with the European institutions and the prevailing balance of power among them, there aren’t any. Within the European Council, none of the presidents or heads of government will find it easy to persuade the citizens of Europe that they are not looking out first for the interests of their own, their fellow countrymen and women, and especially of the people who brought them victory in the elections.
To ensure that the interests of all are respected, there might be the Commission or the European Parliament but these institutions have been largely brought to heel by the European Council which now claims to be the only body able to say what the twenty seven democracies remaining in the club want.
In this particular game, Germany and France are, then, the perpetual winners. That is to say the countries, the states – not necessarily the French or German citizens who, no less than elsewhere, are turning their backs on the European project. European democracy remains, then, the prisoner of national democracies and, in particular, those of Germany and France. If truth be told, however, their victories are only Pyrrhic: barely have the elections delivered their verdict than a form of dictatorship, exercised by governments, descends over European issues, denying the people and their representatives any meaningful input.
Democratic delegation of power is transformed into removal of democratic rights for the citizens of countries which, like Greece, can legitimately take the position developed by Enrico Letta, now Dean of the School of International Affairs at the Paris Institute of Political Sciences: “Since it’s in Berlin that my future is decided, it would be worth my being able to vote directly to select either Merkel or Schulz rather than voting in the elections in my own country, which have no bearing” (Le Monde, “ Idées” supplement, 25 March). Following that same line of reasoning, why not think about allowing all European citizens to select the next president of the French Republic, so that a European defence policy worthy of the name can, at last, emerge?
Some will see this as the ramblings of journalists. And so they are but they not any worse than the denial of democracy of which national governments are guilty at the risk of one day seeing the entire European project consigned to the dustbin of history by citizens as disappointed as they are disgusted by a Europe that eludes them.
Appearing before the European affairs committee of the French parliament on 11 January of this year, philosopher Etienne Balibar delivered this warning full of common sense: “As long as political debate remains confined within our national boundaries, we will encounter this obstacle (…): not only will we fail to find solutions to the problems facing us, our compatriots and our fellow citizens will not be aware of the very need for solutions to be found”. A few weeks later, this Emeritus Professor at the University of Paris-West, elaborated on his thought, suggesting that the real cause of the new rise of nationalism is “the way in which governments, concerned first and foremost with maintaining their monopoly on representing peoples, took advantage of the events of 1989 to block any move towards shared sovereignty”. And the left-wing intellectual went on to state: “There has never really been any federalism in Europe, lest, in particular, the republican idea of the ‘division of power’ might carry right up to Community level” (Libération, 27 March).
Contrary to what populists and nationalists say, the national sovereignty that is to be recovered as quickly as possible is a fallacious solution. On the contrary, what we need without delay to be looking for is full European democracy in all the areas where competence has been granted to the EU, so that the voice of the European people is finally heard, so that the European people can finally shape Europe as they wish, democratically, thus allowing them to take ownership of a project hitherto being pursued in their name but without them and to identify with it.
In their Declaration of Rome of 25 March, the leaders of the twenty seven states that are intent on remaining in the Union pledged “to listen and respond to the concerns expressed by our citizens” and promised to “promote a democratic, effective and transparent decision-making process and better delivery”. Will they do it?
In his opinion piece in the “Idées” supplement of the daily Le Monde, Enrico Letta suggests that the seats soon to be vacated by British MEPs in the European Parliament should become an electoral constituency covering all of the EU, thereby ensuring that, finally, “73 representatives of the European people” will be elected. Let us await the incoming occupants of the Elysée Palace and the German Chancellery to see if this suggestion is taken up and the first green shoots of European democracy break through into the sunlight. Or not.
Michel Theys