On 19 October last, Beacons argued that we needed to put a stop to the tired old song claiming that the European Union and its institutions should not interfere in the “home affairs” of a member state (see EUROPE 11886). The weeks since then have, unfortunately, more than amply confirmed the need to do this. In reality, events are increasingly unfolding to suggest that this Spanish crisis will be one that has a direct impact on the Union, whether the latter likes it or not. Unless it is willing to subject itself to the ridicule of its citizens, the Union will not be able to hope for much longer that it can find a way out of the Catalan wasps’ nest by posing as Pontius Pilate and washing its hands of the matter.
Many questions come to the fore and require the Union to step up to the plate and to take part in a debate that is now crucial at a European level. The European Commission and Parliament should lead from the front in this indispensable democratic debate and not the European Council. In this body, the national interests that each of the heads of state and government seek to assert are sacred and not one of them would think of rubbing up one of their peers the wrong way, as this could open the door to the same misadventure befalling them one day or another.
The Commission, on the other hand – and, obviously, the MEPs – have the right, if perhaps not indeed the duty, to ask the member states some awkward questions. Questions, for example, about what exactly is and what should be the rule of law. Let’s take the following example: the Vice President of the Commission, Frans Timmermans, quite rightly argued that there was no case for Catalonia to depart from constitutional rules, “in a member state where the rule of law is completely respected, where there have been no breaches of human rights or the rights of citizens, where the judiciary is independent, where there is a separation of powers, where there is no oppression of minorities, there is no reason why a region should hold a debate outside a state where the rule of law exists” (La Libre Belgique, 14/15 October). He is obviously quite right on a thousand different counts but, nonetheless…
Nonetheless, the question can be posed of whether, where the rule of law has been confirmed, a governmental team, such as that of Mr Rajoy, is able to place the public media, the Catalan public media in this case, under tutelage in an effort to, “guarantee the transmission of honest, objective and balanced news”. The rule of law is in rude health, as the historian Benoît Pellistrandi sarcastically put it, when a Prime Minister seeks to, “re-appropriate control of the Catalan audiovisual media in order to recreate ‘plurality’ (which has made some people crease up with laugher and assert that there is not much of this on the national television)” - (tempsreel.nouvelobs.com, 26 October)?
The former President of the European Parliament, Josep Borrell, appeared to have understood him perfectly well by pointing out that, “to get the voices of the Catalans heard” they are seeking the, “democratic control of the public media, which is a shame in a democracy” (Le Monde, 24 October) and that seeking control of the press in a state governed by the rule of law is a (very) poor show. Thanks to the partners of Mr Rajoy’s People’s Party in the fight against pro-independence Catalans, this dramatic idea was not retained. That does not mean, however, that the trouble has gone away and these kinds of ideas can therefore flourish in a state where, as Mr Timmermans said, “the rule of law is completely respected”?
This should at least encourage the European Commission and Parliament to ask whether the rule of law is always and in all cases without reproach and whether it can sometimes also be a convenient cover from behind which political leaders can camouflage a number of base acts and infringements to the rule of law and democracy as a whole. In this regard, how can we not remember, together with both Professor Victor Lapuente Giné and Max Weber, in Politics as a Vocation , who judged that the fundamental virtue of a political leader was “to be able to balance conviction with responsibility”, the political scientist at the University of Gothenberg who therefore explained that the German sociologist thought that, “a responsible politician will avoid doing that, which while impeccable from a moral point of view, could alter the supreme public good of social peace” (The Guardian, 22 October)? Is it certain that the Spanish Prime Minister has always and in everything, demonstrated an ability to think in this way, for example when it was necessary to respond to Catalan autonomist demands? Did he not, on the contrary, succumb to the temptation of imposing what Professor Albena Azmanova has recently described as a, “legalistic and sovereigntist interpretation of the 'rule of law'” (Social Europe, 24 October)? For this lecturer of Political and Social Thought at the University of Kent's Brussels School of international studies, Madrid has clearly breached the European Convention of Human Rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, by banning the referendum on 1 October and dismissing the Catalan Parliament. Even worse, by violating both the right to peacefully assemble and the freedom of expression, she accuses the Spanish Constitutional Court of allowing the Rajoy government to appear to, “reduce the rule-of-law” to the simple, “rule-by-law that has empowered many dictatorships”?
Is this political scientist right or wrong? It is obviously not up to Agence Europe to decide but it is, nevertheless, its role to judge perfectly inappropriate that a spokesperson for the Commission can do so by asserting, as Pascal Hansens and Lucas Tripoteau have reported, that the provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights Union may be invoked “only where they implement Union law” (see EUROPE 11893). Although the European treaties affirm that they can only be signed by a state governed by the rule of law, it is nonetheless, inappropriate to consider that the shortcomings in this state governed by the rule of law are not covered by the competencies of the Union!
It is therefore of the utmost urgency that the European Commission and Parliament enter the Spanish arena and calm down the bellicose and disastrous zealousness displayed by both Madrid and Barcelona. The problem is a European one. Similarly, to Professor Jean-Michel De Waele (political science at the Université libre in Brussels), huge numbers of Europeans have, “a real problem with the fact that democratically elected political leaders have been put into prison”. The time has come for the Commission – together with MEPs who are able to keep in mind – to recall that it is through political dialogue that a solution in Northern Ireland and the Basque country was found. The time has come for Europe’s real political leaders to admit that in Catalonia as elsewhere, they need to provide oxygen to the primacy of law and contemplate the warning provided by Richard Youngs, Senior Fellow of the Democracy and Rule of Law Program at Carnegie Europe, “If the EU doesn't mold a more rounded and proactive position on Spain's impasse, and more carefully define balanced rules for defending democracy within Europe, Catalonia will not be the last crisis that it passively watches spiral out of control” .
Michel Theys