Europe’s democratic sickness
Paul Hilder*
Britain’s relationship with Europe is in dire straits. Certainly, Tony Blair left the June summit a conquering hero. He managed both to protect his red lines and to repel that terrifying Belgian, the bespectacled Guy Verhofstadt, from the ghost ship of the European Commission presidency.
Now Blair is in fighting mood, preparing to join battle on the constitution and defuse the myths of the Eurosceptics. His decision to hold a referendum was a masterpiece of instant strategy, stealing Tory election thunder and giving him the perfect summit ultimatum. But it may return to haunt him. For Europe’s malaise is both broad and deep. Without swift inventive action, the referendum will be lost – and with it, a raft of hopes for our common destiny.
The UK Independence Party is only the British symptom of Europe’s difficulty. The two biggest Czech parties in the European elections were Eurocritical from right and from left. The anti-immigrant, anti-EU Vlaams Blok came second in Belgium; a new sceptical ‘Junelist’ was third in Sweden. Poland’s Eurosceptics Samobroona, the League of Polish Families and Law and Justice won over a third of votes there, while new parties campaigning for reform and transparency surged to prominence in the Netherlands and Austria.
Less than half of all Europeans now think the Union is a ‘good thing’. Postal votes reversed the fall in British turnout; but elsewhere the story was different. People and power are coming unstuck on our continent, and no one seems to know what to do.
The new treaty is not so bad, but it’s not so good either. At Verhofstadt’s Laeken summit in 2001, European leaders proclaimed their determination to bring Europe ‘closer to the citizens’. But the Convention they established neglected that task for a housecleaning which, while much-needed, could have been left to the lawyers. It descended into institutional wrangling: the meat and drink of Brussels, but poison if you’re trying to involve anyone else.
The need for reform is not the end of the tale. The more fundamental challenge to European democracy is the self-evident failure of our processes connecting people with parties and power. This is true from European to local level. Political parties are among our least-trusted institutions; but circumventing official politics for rambunctious direct democracy could undermine the civility of our societies, as Swedes suggested after the murder of foreign minister Anna Lindh during their Euro-referendum.
The problem is that in an interdependent world, we haven’t yet worked out how to govern interdependently and involve citizens. In my new collection on these questions, wise Pole Jan Zielonka says, “Democracy can hardly work in a complicated if not impenetrable system of multilayered arrangements moving at different speeds and run by shifting groups of unidentified and unaccountable people.” The tangling of European, national, regional and local levels and of a range of interests in government, business and civil society leaves citizens mired in complexity, retreating to simpler certainties – as they did in these elections.
When powers have moved to Europe, the executive license formerly reserved for foreign policy has infiltrated the domestic sphere. The people’s revenge is to claim a veto in foreign policy, as the European majority did over Iraq. Governments look more and more lonely and beleaguered; they slip into a fortress mentality, rather than opening themselves to a wider range of views. Our media become opportunistic conductors of instant opinion, seldom turning into constructive action: we march under placards of “No” rather than “Yes”.
In recent days, liberal papers have been full of moans about how “the case for Europe” was not made in these elections. But you can’t sell a Europe full of hot air. There is no silver bullet. We need a continent-wide process to revive our democracies, owned from the local level up. That means re-engineering the Union to face the people, evolving our political parties into more open structures that can communicate relevantly again, exploring how direct democracy and citizen participation in decision-making can be boosted from villages to capitals, and linking national and EU deliberation and decision-making.
This process must be led from all corners of Europe. We need to rediscover the vital heart of sovereignty, open up our multi-layered world and find our place in it. Otherwise we will not only be unable to sell our political system in the Middle East – it will be hollowed out at home as well. The collapse of the Union, like the splintering of our societies, is not out of the question.
The UK takes up the chair of the Union next year. It and others should seriously consider encouraging a European democracy process; this could even give Blair referendum ammunition. Surface gripes about ‘protecting national sovereignty’ conceal a deeper concern revealed in a poll by Charter 88 last year. Respondents worried significantly more about not knowing how decisions are taken, or feeling that there are not enough checks on the EU, than about Union powers in taxation or foreign policy.
This problem can no longer be sat on. If referendums are lost, it’ll be because our leaders have too long turned their backs on revitalising democracy at home and in Europe.
But we, the citizens of the continent, can also no longer trust our leaders to take care of things. Will another battle joined from the lonely heights of 10 Downing Street or from Chirac’s Elysée really fill us with hope? If we are left cold by their efforts, perhaps it is time for us to take the debate into our own hands.
London, september 2004
* Paul Hilder (democracy@pobox.com) is editor of The Democratic Papers (British Council, Vision 2004) and a founder of openDemocracy
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