Tag Archives: democracy

Britain and the “unaccountable” EU

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A must-read piece by The Economist’s Charlemagne – more usually a columnist who leans towards the eurosceptic side – explaining very neatly why populist anti-EU rhetoric about democratic deficits and the EU being unaccountable is ignorant at best, and is poisoning British political debate:

“does he [David Cameron] really want British voters to believe that he believes that the EU is ‘completely unaccountable to the people of Britain’? I am not about to turn rabid federalist on you, but there are British ministers in EU meetings, British MEPs in the European Parliament, and British diplomats in every working group. They are not powerless: Britain is one of three Big Beasts, along with France and Germany, that wield serious clout in the EU. And they are all, at least last time I checked, accountable to the British people.

“He also says that when the EU does something, it is being taken out of “the realm of democratic politics”. Regular readers of this blog, or the column, will know I am not a swooning fan of the European Parliament. But the parliament does have say on quite a lot of European legislation. And though there is a great deal wrong with the way that MEPs are elected, I am not sure that laws approved by the EP have had no contact whatsoever with the realm of democratic politics.

If all coverage and commentary on EU affairs was like this, the world would be a much better place. Do read the whole thing.

Why voting for a eurosceptic party is a good thing for the EU

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I’ve done a lot of UKIP bashing on this blog over the last six years. I’ve ridiculed and attempted to debunk numerous eurosceptic claims. After all, I think that the idea of European Union (in its broadest possible sense) is a good thing, and I firmly believe that as long as some form of European economic/political organisation exists it is in Britain’s (and every European country’s) best interest to be a part of it. I also hope that, down the line, such international/supranational cooperation can be expanded far beyond Europe’s borders. Nationalism is, for me, an outmoded way of doing business, and detrimental to the best interests of the people of all nations – just as are all exclusionary ideologies, be they racist, sexist, homophobic or whatever. I am an internationalist and a humanist – again, both in their broadest possible sense – and so cannot support what I see as the parochialism of the nationalist/”patriotic” parties of right or left.

However, despite my dislike of UKIP, the BNP and other withdrawalist/anti-EU parties (of which these are the principle two in the UK), anti-EU and eurosceptic voices have a vital role to play.

The makeup of the European Parliament during the last five years has been sorely unrepresentative. Its racial makeup is nowhere close to mirroring that of Europe as a whole, with groups with sizable minorities left with nothing like the percentages of MEPs that one would expect, were the EP to mirror European society. Women are, as in most democratic societies, still hugely under-represented at EU level; there are few openly gay MEPs; few Muslims; only one Roma MEP despite this group being one of the largest and most persecuted of Europe’s minorities.

Eurosceptics – using the term in its broadest sense – are also sorely under-represented. The no votes in France, the Netherlands and Ireland are proof that there is a groundswell of discontent with the present EU system, and this discontent sorely needs to be aired more frequently in the European Parliament. Do a trawl of the blogs and you’ll soon see that even the most pro-EU bloggers will often violently criticise all kinds of aspects of the way the EU currently runs, from the obvious travesties – like the Common Agricultural and Common Fisheries Policies – through to issues of democratic representation (it takes 800,000 Germans to elect one MEP as opposed to just 80,000 Maltese, for example). With the EU still seriously under-reported in almost every member state, and with so few sceptical voices around to form an opposition – one of the most essential elements of any healthy democratic system – little wonder that there is so much public frustration. The worries of the people are not, in the eyes of the people, being addressed.

The EU is currently in a period of crisis. The failure of the 2001 Treaty of Nice to resolve the transition to a union of 25 rather than 15 was followed by the failure of the Constitution and Lisbon Treaty to mop up the mess, yet now the Union is of 27, with yet more queueing up to join. The EU is now a Union of half a billion people, one of the largest and most powerful economic blocs in the world, and yet is working on mechanisms designed for a much, much smaller organisation. Resentment has been building for years – not just among the people, but also among the governments that head up the member states. The Treaty of Nice, the Constitution, the Lisbon Treaty – these were all meant to resolve these tensions, and all have failed.

Even if the Lisbon Treaty does end up coming into force, still countless problems remain unsolved. There are still some member states that long for closer political union, while others desire little more than a trading bloc based on the Common Market; the current system of budget contributions still sees relatively wealthy western European member states receive far more funding than the struggling post-communist newcomers of the East. France, one of the richest member states, still receives a hugely disproportionate chunk of Common Agricultural Policy money, while farmers in Romania struggle by on little more than a subsistence level. And all the while, there remains no consensus on where the EU is heading – on what the EU is actually for.

Over the next five years – Lisbon Treaty or no Lisbon Treaty – these problems are all going to have to be addressed, and it is the MEPs who we are meant to be electing in a couple of weeks’ time who are going to have to scrutinise the plans and proposals that are put forward to resolve them. If the European Parliament is made up of a majority of unthinking europhiles, of fervent internationalists, then this scrutiny is not going to be intensive enough. Imagine a House of Commons made up of 80% Labour or Conservative MPs. That would not be healthy for democracy, but more importantly it would not be the kind of check that is necessary to prevent bad legislation and bad constitutional reforms from being passed. But with the lack of eurosceptic voices in the European Parliament, that is effectively the situation we have at the moment.

We sorely need more critical voices if the EU is ever going to become the kind of genuinely positive force that it could – and should – be. We need more MEPs like Danish eurosceptic Jens-Peter Bonde (now sadly retired, though still active in the field of EU politics), and even like UKIP leader Nigel Farage – intelligent, sharp critics of the project who can home in on flaws and highlight things that the EU is doing wrong. Yes, they may have a tendency to over-egg the pudding, to play to the gallery, and to blow things out of all proportion to make petty political points – but they also highlight genuine concerns and, often, genuine problems.

If we don’t know the problems – and if these problems are not brought into the light – then abuses and mistakes will simply continue unnoticed. Until, that is – as British MPs have found during the last few weeks of the expenses scandal – something happens that shows just how bad the problem has got, and brings the entire system to the brink of collapse.

If you don’t listen to criticism, you deserve to fail. So though I may not agree with the anti-EU brigade, and though I will continue to mock them when they make mistakes and call them when they make unjustifiable claims, they have an essential part to play. They are the EU’s opposition, and in any respectable political system a vocal opposition is something to be encouraged, not suppressed. Even if they are wrong.

Germany, the EU and democracy

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The Reichstag with EU and German flagsThe European Union emerged, as we all know, as a response to the Second World War. One of the earliest aims of the founding fathers was to prevent France and Germany from ever going to war again by integrating their economies so closely that to do so would become impossible.

As a result – as well as, arguably, thanks to prolonged feelings of guilt about what the country got up to during the 30s and 40s – Germany has long been at the forefront of European integration. Germany remains one of the most enthusiastic EU member states – despite also having the strongest economy in the EU, formerly having one of the strongest currencies, paying the most into the EU budget, getting the least back, and being by far the most under-represented (by population) in the European Parliament.

It’s long been the case – albeit usually unacknowledged – that if Germany got fed up with the EU the entire project would be in danger of tumbling down. The EU could survive largely unchanged if almost any other member state decided that enough was enough (hell, if France pulled out it would arguably be improved, as the vast chunk of Common Agricultural Policy money that gets syphoned off by Paris could be redirected to more needy countries – and many more enthusiastic europhiles argue that if Britain jumped ship then the brakes the UK keeps putting on closer integration would finally be lifted, and the EU could reach new heights). If Germany gives up on the EU, all kinds of problems would kick off – not least because the European Central Bank runs out of Frankfurt.

Well, Germany hasn’t yet got the hump, and doesn’t show any signs of doing so just yet – but it could still throw a spanner in the works. Because oddly for a country in which nationalism and national self-interest have been so deliberately, systematically repressed (unsurprisingly, considering…), its constitutional court could yet rule that the Lisbon Treaty – and, by extension, many of the principles of the way the EU currently works – is illegal for providing ways for the German national parliament to be overruled.

And so it is one of the few remaining areas of German law that looks to the German national interest could end up being the brake on the current mode of EU integration, which itself originally started to prevent Germans looking too much to their own national interest.* Whoops!

As much as the anti-Lisbon Treaty crowd have got a bad reputation in certain quarters of the Brussels beltway – not helped by the lunatic fringes to right and left (as so often) being the ones who have shouted the loudest, and the recent announcement of anti-Lisbon party Libertas’ proposed candidates for the EU elections (mostly hard-right and nationalists, making a mockery of the “broad coalition for democratic reform” claims) – the German politicians who have brought this case before the constitutional court do have a point.

After all, if a national parliament (especially one from a country with a population the size of Germany’s) – elected by the people based on long-standing principles of representative democracy – can be overruled by the EU, an organisation whose democratic legitimacy is disputed to say the least, then what place for democracy in Europe?

And so, where the last time German nationalism reared its head to threaten the peace of mind of European states it was in the form of fascist dictatorship, this time German nationalism could well be rising up in the name of democracy. Democracy based around the principle of the nation state (something I can’t profess to be overly happy with), but democracy nonetheless.

The very fact that such a case merits the constitutional court’s attention shows that the legitimacy of EU decisions and powers has not yet been universally – or even legally – acknowledged. The argument that the EU is a method of overruling democracy, meanwhile, will continue to be made as long as the European Parliament remains the weakest of the EU’s principle institutions. (Will the upcoming EU elections reverse the trend for successively declining turnouts and so strengthen the case for the EP to be given more powers? I very much doubt it. It’s a catch-22 – the EP is perceived as being weak, so people don’t bother voting, so its claims to be the people’s voice diminishes along with its ability to assert influence. Such is the joy of EU democracy.)

So I ask yet again – when is the EU going to go for the kind of radical, democratic reform that is so vital for it to maintain support, and stop tinkering about with unsatisfactory compromises like Lisbon and Nice? Without the people behind it, the EU is doomed to fail. If the people were behind it – and had a sufficiently large voice in its decisions – then cases like this German one could never be brought, and complaints about the EU’s democratic deficit would become the preserve of nutters alone.

On party politics

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Originally posted as a comment to a post at the Local Democracy blog, a brief summary of my dislike of the British system of government/elections. The prime reason why I am still not sure if I’m going to bother to vote in the upcoming EU elections is precisely for the reasons stated below – I don’t like any UK political party. At general and local elections it’s easy – I vote for a candidate. The way EU elections work in the UK, I won’t get that choice when voting for an MEP – I only get to vote for a party.

Anyway, here’s my brief summary of what I don’t like about party politics:

I continue to hate party politics with a passion. Even ignoring the distortions that have come about thanks to whipping and politicians’ reliance on party funds, Labour and Conservatives alike (and arguably the Lib Dems too) really aren’t parties in the old sense any more anyway. There’s no real unifying ideology, just vast coalitions with hugely disparate, often contradictory beliefs, brought together merely by the pursuit of power. What we need is not party politics, but a return to factionalism – lots more smaller, focussed groupings based on clearly-stated beliefs, aims and policy positions. That would give voters a broader, clearer choice, and give a far better indication of just what it is the public is voting for at elections.

But, of course, with first past the post such a system will never come about. It needs a decent system of proportional representation – something hard enough to sell at the best of times, let alone the day after an Israeli general election…

And for proportional representation knockers, my preferred method is something like the single transferable vote system. It’s got a few problems, for sure, but fewer than FPTP in my books. Plus it’s got a good track record.

(For more on electoral reform – including a handy explanation of why Israel’s system of proportional representation is not *ahem* representative of PR as a whole, for when you see Israeli election chaos used in anti-PR arguments – check out the long-running and rather good Make My Vote Count blog.)

“Under the illusion that the borders are disappearing, they are actually rapidly growing”

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Interesting report over at Kosmopolito on a recent lecture by frequently controversial Slovenian lefty intellectual Slavoj Zizek. For followers of the post-Marxian philosopher, there’s probably not much new – but some of his ideas are well worth pondering at greater length, not least for those of us interested in the future of Europe. As Kosmopolito’s Tanchi notes Zizek as commenting,

“Under the illusion that the borders are disappearing, they are actually rapidly growing.”

These borders need not be the traditional lines on maps – they can be cultural as much as any kind of arbitrary physical boundary. Indeed, Zizek has much pondered the concept of multiculturalism, now gradually falling out of favour, as in this interview from back in August. Anti-multicultural right-wingers may be surprised at just how much they find themselves agreeing with this self-professed communist:

I think here we had enough of this multicultural ideology, which for me at least is often an inverted racism – namely for example when people come here – typically multiculturalists would say: “Oh I want to understand how you are different.” No… We need today codes of discretion, not more understanding. I think we should totally object to this liberal blackmail; we should understand each other – no the world is too complex we can not – I hate people, I don’t want to understand people. I want to have a certain code where I don’t understand your way of life and you don’t understand mine but we still can coexist.

Yet it’s not just a racial or national lack of understanding or rivalry that can be the problem – it can also be political. When the people become alienated from the political class, resentment can arise just as much (if not more so) than when fear or mistrust of “the other” leads to rising ethnic/cultural tensions. And it all stems from a lack of understanding on both sides – often coupled with a patronising tone from one or the other. The same tone that tells us that British National Party supporters join through resentment at lack of opportunity and personal failure is used to explain away the “No” votes to the European Constitution in France and the Netherlands (and subsequently the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland). As Zizek noted three years ago, after the French referendum,

The elite proposed to the people a choice that was effectively no choice at all. People were called to ratify the inevitable. Both the media and the political elite presented the choice as one between knowledge and ignorance, between expertise and ideology…

Patronise the people – even if they deserve it – and they will turn on you. Witness the recent kerfuffle in the UK on reality TV show Strictly Come Dancing, where the most useless contestant was repeatedly kept on by the public vote seemingly just to spite the expert judges.

Perhaps thanks to the weapons of mass destruction that never were, though the trend started long before that (Watergate, perhaps?) the world has become a more cynical, distrustful place – and politicians are among the least trusted of the lot. If a politician tells us that something is the case, we the people tend to believe the precise opposite. If a politician – sitting comfortably in their plush houses on their vast, taxpayer-funded salaries – tells us that they understand our concerns, our first reaction is to snort in derision.

And so the borders go up between the political elites and the people. Turnouts at elections drop year after year. More votes are cast for the winner of Big Brother than in general elections. Party membership tails off as even the most politically engaged lose faith and interest. Resentment grows along with populism, as politicians desperately try to re-engage with the public to the extent that Cabinet ministers feel the need to comment on The X Factor in parliament, or simply follow whatever mindless witch-hunt the tabloid press are up to this week.

If we’re alienated from our national politicians, what hope for those EU level politicians, about whom we know nothing?

And then, of course, there’s the psychological borders rising between the people themselves as opinions and resentments become entrenched and no amount of debate can change minds. Non-geographical borders along the purple America model, where resentment grows, and two ideologically wildly different nations live – literally – side by side in the same geographical territory.

Ignore the obvious race and religion based forms of multiculturalism – what happens when mutually-exclusive political cultures begin to arise within a democratic society?

But this post is already overlong and rambling, so perhaps that’s one for another day…

The state of EU debate

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A subject worth another look every year or so – especially with EU elections looming in 2009 – is what sort of discussion (if any) the European Union is inspiring among its citizens. After all, I remain top Google result for “EU debate” (and second only to the EU’s own Debate Europe forum without the inverted commas), and the nature of political discourse surrounding the EU was one of the reasons I first started blogging about the whole thing. (Largely to slag off some of the nuttier anti-EU types, at first, but I’ve expanded a bit since then…)

I last had a look at EU debate nine months ago, which provides a fairly handy overview of how nothing much has changed during the time I’ve been blogging (Don’t believe me? Here’s a post on the subject from four years ago) – and that followed an intensive series of posts on the possibilities for building a genuine European demos that I did for openDemocracy (that’s the thing that I got shortlisted for that Reuters award for).

As such, for me to do another post on the subject is largely redundant. Thankfully, however, the newly revamped Kosmopolito (at an all new address and with an extra vowel) has had a stab, and brings a different, yet complimentary, take to the whole thing. One point in particular that stands out, however:

It is still cumbersome for non-experts to monitor the EU decision making process. Especially the internet and new online tools have the potential to make it easier to monitor and control EU decision making processes. Even though the europa.eu portal contains most of the information, it needs a serious relaunch. A new EU portal needs to be transparent, with a focus on policy processes that makes it easy to follow documents, combined with some interactive elements.

This cannot be stressed enough. I’m actively interested in the EU. I’ve been blogging about it for five years. I know my way around most of the sources of EU information available online, and I know (roughly) where to start looking to delve deeper into particular subjects. Yet even I still find it difficult to find what I’m looking for sometimes. (Where is an EU equivalent of TheyWorkForYou or The Public Whip? The only thing similar is Brussel Stemt, a Dutch-language site tracking the votes of Dutch MEPs – as far as I’m aware there’s nothing else out there.) The Europa portal has a near impossible task in trying to provide so much information in so many different languages, certainly, but it remains one of the most confusing, unintuitive sites on the web.

One of the major reasons why Euromyths spread so quickly – and also why the Lisbon Treaty has sparked so much opposition – is that the people find it impossible to find out information about the EU for themselves. (As noted the other day, to argue against the classic straight bananas Euromyth necessitates hunting down an obscure EU regulation and then trawling through and attempting to understand seven pages of legal jargon. Far easier just to believe what your newspaper tells you.)

If information is hard to come by or hard to understand, the power of the press and other self-professed experts to influence public opinion is massively increased. When the experts and the press are themselves ill-informed (as most journalists writing about the EU and many national politicians commenting on it sadly are) or biased (as is certainly often the case in the UK), the public is – intentionally or otherwise – going to be misled and misinformed. A misled and misinformed public in turn leads to misinformed debate, and that to an ineffective democracy. (Indeed, it’s arguable that part of the reason the public are so uninterested in the EU is that they’ve been consistently misinformed about just how important it is to their daily lives – if only they knew, claim some eurosceptics, they’d be up in arms.)

I’m afraid I can’t see this situation changing any time soon. EU debates outside the Brussels beltway remain largely non-existent, dominated by lack of solid factual knowledge and understanding (by both sides) and a lack of interest from anyone bar obsessives (as Jon Worth noted is still the case as recently as June, and as I’ve been saying for years). Hell, sometimes even the obsessives aren’t that interested.

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EU democracy from an unlikely source

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And from the most unlikely of sources – Britain’s leading terrestrial commercial television channel ITV. The self-same ITV that’s been kicking up a fuss over it’s obligation to provide “public service” programmes for the last year or more.

So, following Euronews, EUX.TV and the European Parliament’s own EuroparlTV, we now get a version aimed exclusively at the UK, aiming to promote knowledge and understanding of the EU and MEPs in the run-up to next year’s European Parliament elections: ITV Local’s MyEurope.

It may suffer from the perennial problem of these sorts of attempts to make the EU accessible (namely misguided efforts to target younger audiences via “trendy” music and over-excitable presenters), the promised Video profiles of MEPs are currently missing (at least for London), and their links section fails to mention this place or Fistful under EU blogs while finding time for the long-defunct Voice of Europe and a blog I’ve never heard of with barely any EU coverage, but still – who’d have thought it? A UK-focussed initiative to increase knowledge of EU affairs and encourage participation in EU democracy launched by a commercial organisation that’s previously shown barely a smidgeon of interest in Brussels. Whatever next?

Note to ITV – if you want a hand sorting out some of the niggles and expanding some of the written content, get in touch. I offer competitive rates and I’m fairly certain that a certain Mr Worth may be able to help you and all…

Still, MyEurope – a good initiative. MEPs have long been some of the least well-known of all public servants in the UK, an it’s long overdue that they were made a bit more accessible. Hopefully this should help.

More Irish referendum aftermath thoughts

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First up, Nanne’s done a handy roundup of blog reactions (with a few more from RZ) – which further goes to show that there’s no real consensus on what the hell should be done. Some more fervent pro-EU types are adopting the “sod the Irish” approach of continuing ratification and booting Ireland out of the EU if they don’t follow along like a well-trained dog. Some anti-EU types are revelling in the red faces in Brussels and calling for the whole thing to be scrapped again because (obviously) a no vote in a referendum means that every single person voting no did so because they hate the EU and everything it stands for. Neither extreme, fairly obviously, is a sensible option.

Me? I’m still at the stage of thinking out loud, so to speak – reading and writing helps me to work out what I think about things, which is why I started blogging in the first place. I’m still not sure if I’m getting anywhere on the short-term solution. Longer-term I have a far firmer idea of what I’d like to see done – but the likelihood of that coming to pass is minimal, so I’ll leave it for now.

Having read a lot of stuff about the vote over the weekend, the best comment piece I’ve seen so far comes – as so often – from the Financial Times. This quotation is somewhat selective, but gives an inkling of what’s becoming my approach:

First the French, then the Dutch and now the Irish have rejected much the same package of institutional reforms that were supposed to make an enlarged EU more effective and more democratic… Their attitude suggests a worrying gulf between EU decision-makers and popular feeling that needs a new sort of response… The No vote[s were] based on a ragbag of reasons to which there is no obvious response.”

In the FT’s take, a repeat referendum would likewise return a “No” – and I imagine the same would be the case in France and the Netherlands had they been given a chance to vote on the Lisbon Treaty as they were on the Constitution. The anger in France at the two fingers the politicians raised to the people by denying them another vote on a treaty that was so similar to a text that had already been popularly rejected is immense. Who can blame them?

Because the biggest problem facing the EU now is not the much-needed institutional reforms that Lisbon (and the constitution, and Nice) was trying to fix to help the thing function more effectively – it is that the people of Europe are increasingly starting to think that there may well be something in all those allegations of the EU being an undemocratic project of the quasi-mythical political elites for the benefit of those same elites. And you can hardly blame them – French and Dutch “No” votes have already been ignored, the Danish and Irish people have already been told to vote again when they returned the wrong result the first time, and now it looks like the inconvenience of the Irish people voting “No” again is going to lead to some kind of get-around. It’s hard to think of the last time the people of Europe were consulted and their opinions actually taken on board. In fact, I can’t think of a time this has happened – bar the odd small-scale experiment as part of the Plan D initiative over the last couple of years.

Does it matter that on numbers alone the “No” voters in Ireland are a tiny percentage of the EU’s population as a whole? Not while the rest of that population doesn’t get a vote it doesn’t – as pointed out elsewhere, so what if “only” 860,000 Irish voted “No” when the rest of the EU denies the people a vote and leaves the decision up to a mere 9,000-odd politicians? And what does it matter while the EU continues to function with its current set-up, with smaller countries given disproportionate influence to counter the dominance of those with larger populations? The Lisbon Treaty aimed to fix some of the more silly elements of this, but Maltese MEPs would continue to represent 80,000 Maltese compared to German MEPs representing 800,000 Germans – and in many areas the national veto would still have been maintained. Because part of the very point of the EU is to prevent the larger, stronger countries from dominating the continent. To ignore Ireland’s vote is therefore to go against the very essence of what the EU was set up to achieve.

(Please also note that I say all this as someone who argued repeatedly against holding referenda on the constitution and Lisbon treaty. Contradictory? Possibly – but if you hold votes you’d damned well better abide by the results. If not, the people will tend to get increasingly annoyed with you. It’s bad public relations as much as it’s bad democracy.)

In any case, the FT’s proposal for the next step is one of the least contentious I’ve seen so far, and (I hope) the most likely short-term outcome:

It would be more sensible to put the Lisbon treaty on ice for several years, and try to rescue those parts that are important, uncontentious, and capable of being carried out without treaty amendment… Europe does not need to turn the drama of the Irish No vote into a fully-fledged crisis of confidence. Everyone is fed up with negotiating new treaties. The priority should be to make the EU work better with practical policies… with its present rules and 27 member states. The Nice treaty is not ideal, but losing Lisbon should not be seen as the end of the world.

Calm-headedness is the way forward, for sure. But, as I say, the institutional problems are no longer the most pressing. What is needed now more than ever is an energetic campaign to get the people of Europe on board. Mere propaganda drives will not do it – they need to be brought into the debate and made to feel that their voices count. Because currently – with the European Parliament still largely toothless and the French, Dutch and Irish referendum results all more or less dismissed by the powers that be – you can hardly blame people for feeling that in the EU, the people count for nothing.

The Lisbon Treaty is dead

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But considering it was largely the unconvincing zombie resurrection of the old Constitution anyway, it probably won’t be fully dead until someone’s cut its head off, put a stake through its heart, shot it repeatedly with silver bullets, smothered it in garlic-infused holy water, and tricked it into saying its name backwards three times.

Note to the EU: for Christ’s sake, can we please actually THINK about the next step this time? In detail? Preferably without the assumption that the people are too stupid to notice what you’re trying to pull on them (thus alienating them yet further from a project which seems increasingly separated from the needs of the European people) – and ideally with the people in full, genuine consultation at every stage.

The continent of Europe is far, far too diverse for such idealistic “one size fits all” projects to have any place in future EU planning – unless it’s the most basic statement of shared ideals and principles, along the lines of the American declaration of independence or the US constitution. Surely that much is obvious? Just like the American colonies – only far, far more so – Europe is not made up of one united people; we are many peoples with much shared history and culture, but with plenty that also divides us in terms of hopes, dreams and aspirations. The old Constitution, the Lisbon Treaty – hell, pretty much every EU and EEC treaty ever ratified – failed sufficiently to acknowledge this, and so failed to allay concerns. The longer this went on – especially as the EU’s power and presence seemed to continue to grow without so much as a by your leave from a democratic vote – the more annoyed, the more distrustful the people of Europe were bound to become.

The European project was started by political elites as a trade association with delusions of grandeur. It is now much, much more than that, with competence creep after competence creep. It is too unwieldy and unaccountable for the people of a continent with more than its fair experience of despotism and dictatorship not to start taking offence if it continues down the route of “what we say goes, and there’s not much you can do about it”.

I believe in the principles behind the European Union. I believe that the European Union has done far, far more good than harm both in Europe itself and worldwide. I believe that the European Union should continue. But not in the direction it is currently heading. Not with the attitude it has currently got.

The Lisbon Treaty is dead – don’t make the same mistake as last time of trying to dress up the corpse to make it look a bit different. Accept the fundamental failure of the treaty (and constitution), and accept that a far more radical solution is vital. A complete rethink. A deep, serious analysis of what the EU is and what it is for – and, most importantly, what the European people think it is for. This is something that hasn’t happened in decades, but that is absolutely essential if the EU is to avoid the further alienation of its citzens – citizens who, it should be noted, have not all been asked if they want such citizenship in the first place.

The EU has evolved gradually over the years based on vague dreams. It’s time for a reality check.

(BBC story on initial reports of the lost Irish referendum here)

Update: As the count’s not final yet (this post was written at around 15:30 UK time), keep an eye on the Irish Times’ Lisbon Treaty site, with real-time updates. The current tally is 46.3% yes, 53.7% no. Elsewhere I’ve seen turnouts estimated at 40-45% – not huge, but not bad for EU-related elections, and more than the last Irish rejection of a European treaty back in 2001, even if the margin of rejection seems to be smaller this time…

On the EU’s “democratic deficit”

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I’ve been planning a long piece on this for months, ever since that whole openDemocracy thing I did back in the autumn (which is, it turns out, what got me shortlisted for that Reuters award thing, rather than this place), but haven’t quite found the time.

The short version (guaranteed to rile the eurosceptics): nope, the EU’s not democratic – and nor should it be if Britain’s interests are going to be maintained. (I’ll try and explain in more detail at some point, but it’s unlikely to be overly soon…)

Anyway, back to the original starting point for this post. Amongst the usual stuck record of eurosceptic complaints under Timothy Garton-Ash’s latest offering about the EU over at the Guardian’s Comment is Free yesterday (I sometimes read these things just to remind myself why I’m not slipping back into full-on eurosceptic mode, despite the repeated disappointments, annoyances and embarrassments that come with being pro-EU*), this little beauty leapt out, by poster “tooter”. It’s one of the best succinct rejoinders to the perennial “the EU’s not democratic” complaint I’ve seen in quite a while, and echoes many of my own views:

I think this “democratic deficit” thing is overdone. The appointees you are on about are put there by people we elect. Great chunks of our government is run in the same way – the House of Lords being the most glaring example, but there are others, Quangos, the Judiciary (!), the PM (!) to name but a few.

Take one example, the European Central Bank. I read over and over again, as an argument against the Euro, about sinister “faceless bureaucrats” who will run our economy for us from Frankfurt. Well the ECB is accountable to no less than FOUR of the European institutions.

Who is the Bank of England accountable to? Can anybody name even two members of the MPC without googling? Are they not, therefore, “faceless bureaucrats” running our economy from London?

What do the europhobes think we are living in now?

He/she later came back with a quick, even snappier follow-up, reiterating the point:

“We British have something called a “Parliamentary Democracy”, as do most of Europe. We never elect our Prime Minister, we elect Members of Parliament. It is these Members who choose the PM. The PM is an appointee. As are the entire House of Lords. As are the Judiciary. As are the Generals, senior civil servants, heads of Agencies and othe Quangos, the Cabinet, Chief Constables, Bishops etc etc

So, europhobes, how “undemocratic” is the EU again?

I too am intrigued by the answer to this. Because the arguments against the EU employed by eurosceptics who have moved beyond petty patriotism (which, to be fair, is an increasingly large proportion these days – and to be clear I mean patriotism in the strict sense, with no nasty connotations) increasingly revolve around criticisms of inefficiencies and failures that are also invariably present at a national – even local – level of government. Because, after all, no system of government ever devised is perfect.

Yet when it comes to the EU, for the eurosceptics it seems that nothing less than perfection will do.

Or am I being incredibly unfair and/or missing the point?

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* By the way, I really, really need a better term than “pro-EU” to describe my attitude to the whole thing. Because as should be clear to regular readers I’m not a loyal cheerleader for the EU by any means, and advocate fairly radical reform. I remain a supporter of a European Union of some kind, and of close cross-border political and economic co-operation – and in some case integration – of the kind the EU helps facilitate, but not necessarily this European Union.

In the good old days, this would have labelled me a eurosceptic in the true sense (inasmuch as I am sceptical of the benefits of a number of things the EU is doing) – but now that that term has become synonymous with “anti-EU”, what’s left for those of us who are neither europhiles nor eurosceptics, but occupy that vague middle-ground of being largely in favour of EU membership while wishing the whole thing was just a bit, y’know, better? Because that does, after all, account for the attitude of the vast majority of the British population – it seems very odd that there’s not a term for us all…

EU-apathy

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“Not enough people care enough”.

Thus spake arch-eurosceptic Richard North of EU Referendum yesterday with regards to the ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and the distinct lack of any significant public outrage. It hits the nail right on the head, but don’t expect too much resignation from that quarter just yet.

As I’ve argued in more detail elsewhere, no one cares about the EU. Sure, if you go up to them and chuck half truths like the classic “80% of our laws come from Brussels” or “EU regulations cost us £66 billion” then they may get temporarily miffed that Johnny foreigner has some say over how our country is run. But the annoyance is fleeting – not least because even the most credulous person will be aware that self-confessed eurosceptics and withdrawalists are hardly the most impartial source for EU statistics, and that – thanks to a combination of the EU’s complexity and abysmal record-keeping – there’s no way of verifying such claims.

But the overwhelming EU-apathy (rather than EU-scepticism or EU-philia) of the majority of the population is not through mere laziness. Being apathetic is an entirely rational choice. Because the major concern for the average person is not sovereignty, the place laws come from, or where their tax money goes. All these are, effectively, abstract notions that affect their lives not a jot. What matters to them is their daily lives – and on this, to most people, the EU appears to have little impact.

“So a chunk of my tax is going to the EU – so what?”, they think (or would if they could be bothered). “It’s not like if we pulled out I’d be paying any less – the government would just waste it elsewhere. Westminster or Brussels, what’s the real difference? I’m highly unlikely to have voted for the person who takes the final decision in any case – and the vast majority of all laws are drawn up by unelected civil servants no matter where they stem from.”

Because of this, the general attitude is a resounding “don’t know, don’t care” – and it’s an entirely rational ignorance.

Of course, pointing to the ignorance of the population is no justification for anything. That way lies the rationalisation of dictatorship, slavery, wife-beating, whatever – it’s the age-old reasoning behind every bit of oppression in history (it’s for their own good, you know…).

But, of course, the people DO care about things. Just not the EU.

Instead, what matters most to the people (at least in the UK) is, apparently immigration (43%), crime (41%), health (36%), defence and terrorism (22%), with Europe scoring a paltry 4%. On immigration, EU membership enables far closer co-ordination with our neighbours to prevent illegal immigration than would be possible with a series of bilateral agreements. The European arrest warrant and moves for closer co-operation between EU police forces should soon (hopefully) make all these scares about foreign criminals a thing of the past, as well as enable swifter justice for offenders who flee to the continent. Health policy is barely affected by EU membership, though through the EU’s influence we will shortly all be able to use the health services of all other member states, should we so wish (and the UK’s odd policy of allowing foreign non-taxpayers to use the NHS for free is nothing to do with the EU, if you were wondering). Finally, though the EU has little to no say in the UK’s defence policy, EU-wide anti-terror legislation and coordination has led to far speedier crackdowns than any individual member state could have managed on their own (remember the 21st July wannabe London bomber arrested in Rome? Just one of many…)

The thing is, in a democracy you need to get people to back your position in large numbers. This is something the anti-EU brigade have singularly failed to do at election after election, during which time all three major parties have become more or less pro-EU membership. The EU could well be the worst thing that’s ever happened to this country but the people, it would seem, are still not sufficiently against it to say enough is enough despite decades of anti-Brussels propaganda in every major newspaper in the land (Sun, Times, Telegraph, Mail, Express, News of the World, and occasionally the Mirror). Hence UKIP leader Nigel Farage’s failure to support the Lib Dems’ call for a referendum on EU membership, despite that being precisely what UKIP is supposedly aiming for down the line.

Plus, of course, getting people to vote for a radical change is very hard indeed. The status quo is pretty much always preferred, up to the point that either our daily lives are adversely affected or the alternative seems just so damned wonderful as to be irresistible. At the moment, although the EU does affect our daily lives, for the most part this impact is unnoticed and for the most part more or less beneficial; the idea of an ex-EU Britain, meanwhile, remains vague and worrying. Who would vote to be the unpopular kid at school who has to play on his own when they could be part of the clique?

So yes, by misrepresentation of what the Lisbon Treaty is and does you can briefly get up some anger and excitement from the general population – hence all the calls for a referendum a few months back. But for most people it’s hard to stay angry for long, especially about the EU – after a while, they tend to realise that they don’t really know that much about what it is they’re getting angry about and start to lose interest. (Everyone thinks they know what they’re talking about when it comes to immigration, crime, health, terrorism and the like, because we’ve all got more or less direct experience of them all – while most people are more or less aware that they know nothing of the workings of the European Union, because it’s simply too vast, complex and packed with jargon to make sense of.)

Plus, of course, the EU is simply not interesting enough to be worthy of anyone’s attention – which is precisely why it only ever makes the papers when there’s some new scare over a (usually misread) bit of EU legislation. Bureaucracy is boring, and the EU is nothing if not a bureaucracy – albeit a far smaller bureaucracy than many assume (around 25,000 people work for the European Commission – less than a fifth of the number who work for the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions…)

Of course, the pro-EU camp has precisely the same problem. “There’s a democratic deficit!”, they’re told. “The EU doesn’t listen to the people!”

There’s only one problem with this: based on the atrocious turn-out at pretty much every EU election ever (accompanied by a steady decline), the people have nothing to say.

In defence of MEPs

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Yes, I’ve been slagging them off a lot over the last couple of days – but there are always two sides to everything. Jon Worth makes a lot of sensible points about the current expenses scandal:

MEPs get the same pay as MPs in Westminster, have to work in 3 places in 3 countries… The MEPs’ expenses total about £100 million a year, but there are 785 MEPs, each of whom pays normally 4 staff… The total staff of the EP as a whole – MEPs, assistants, secretariat – is similar in size to a small-ish UK government department… while the UK’s Department of Work and Pensions employs more staff that all the EU institutions in total…

No facts, no figures. Neither [the Times] nor Chris Davies MEP have listed how much of this £100 million is supposed to have been used in a fraudulent manner. The Times – lazily – just assumes all of it is.

All very fair, all very valid. Go read the whole thing.

The only addition I would make is to stress that the apparent lack of transparency in MEPs’ finances is hugely damaging to both the European Parliament and to the EU as a whole. The perennial eurosceptic claims that the EU is riddled with corruption are, I hope, an exaggeration (after all, the lack of sign-off on the EU budget year after year is always due to irregularities on the part of the individual member states, not the EU itself). But without complete financial transparency and openness, there’s no way we can tell.

As the EU’s token bit of democracy, the European Parliament should be setting an example. An update to Annex I of the EP’s Rules and Regulations, specifically Article 4, would seem to be necessary:

Pending the introduction of a statute for Members of the European Parliament to replace the various national rules, Members shall be subject to the obligations imposed on them by the legislation of the Member State in which they are elected as regards the declaration of assets

These current regulations, it would seem, are not good enough. Where is the promised statute replacing the mish-mash of evidently inadequate national rules? Every MEP should be subject to a detailed register of interests. Every MEP should have to give an account of what they are using their expenses for.

We don’t need an account of every paper clip and biro bought. We do, however – especially after these latest accusations – need a proper, watertight reassurance that our representatives aren’t ripping us off. We need confidence that we are being properly represented by hard-working, committed and honest men and women, or the whole system falls down. As Mill noted,

representative institutions are of little value, and may be a mere instrument of tyranny or intrigue, when the generality of electors are not sufficiently interested in their own government to give their vote… Popular election thus practised, instead of a security against misgovernment, is but an additional wheel in its machinery

Turn-out in European elections is low enough already. Give the electorate the impression that their MEPs are corrupt, it will become even lower. And without the people, the whole project will fall down. Mill again:

Political machinery does not act of itself. As it is first made, so it has to be worked, by men, and even by ordinary men. It needs, not their simple acquiescence, but their active participation

Come on, EP/EU – get your act together. The majority of MEPs are undoubtedly hard-working and honest. Give us some way of seeing that this is the case, and give it to us sharpish.

Update: Certain Ideas of Europe brings up something I’d forgotten to mention:

most people inside the European bubble blame the scandal on the astonishing differences in the salaries currently received by MEPs, who are paid the same as their counterparts in their respective national parliaments. That will change after the 2009 elections, but for the moment that means some ex-Communist nations pay MEPs some €850 a month, while the best paid deputies, from Italy, receive more than €12,000 a month.

Erm, you remember that democracy thing?

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Well, according to the European Parliament it can go jump in a lake. Because they’ve voted not to respect the result of the Irish referendum (constitutionally required, lest we forget) on the Lisbon Treaty.

What we effectively have here is an admission that referenda will not count even if countries do hold them. An admission that the EU will simply ignore any member state that has concerns with the Lisbon Treaty, now that the elites have come to an agreement.

What we have here, in other words, is an admission that the European Parliament does not believe in democracy.

NOT.
GOOD.
ENOUGH.

(See also Devil’s Kitchen, with a good point about Tory – and UKIP – hypocrisy)

All this, of course, while allegations of endemic corruption amongst MEPs are beginning to snowball. Come on, EP – you’re supposed to be the respectable, democratic bit that we can all point to and say “hey, look – the EU’s going in the right direction, at least!” Get your sodding act in gear.

On free speech in the European Parliament

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Quick question: why is there so little condemnation from the pro-EU camp of the European Parliament’s recent actions in trying to stifle eurosceptic proponents of referenda on the Lisbon Treaty?

To redress the balance: I’m pro-EU and I’m anti-referendum – and I think this is an absolute disgrace.

The evidence of double-standards is palpable – people and MEPs protesting against things the EU machine wants to do are stifled and harassed; those who protest about other issues are allowed to continue on their way.

Yes, a bunch of eurosceptics dressed up in chicken costumes to highlight calls for referenda because they mistakenly think that the Lisbon Treaty is in some way more significant than Nice, Amsterdam, Maastricht, etc. etc. is ridiculous and stupid. Eurosceptic MEPs launching long speeches and using the regulations of the European Parliament to try and get their point across may be frustrating. But both of these are perfectly within the rules.

And, of course, most importantly it’s why they were elected. You don’t vote for a eurosceptic MEP for them to faithfully go along with everything the EU wants. You vote for them because you want them to oppose things you disagree with – even if that does include the entire EU project.

Yes, they may be irritating. Yes, many of them may be tits (Kilroy, I’m looking at you). But they are elected representatives who are doing what they were elected to do. Preventing them from doing this is not only to breach the rules of the European Parliament – it is effectively to disenfranchise their voters.

What happened to Friends of Europe Secretary-General Giles Meritt’s eminently sensible advice for the EU to start engaging with eurosceptics to help identify areas for reform? What happened to the European Commission’s supposed plan to the promise to listen that came with the “New Commission approach to dialogue and communication with European citizens”?

If the EU is ever going to get widespread and active popular support, it needs to show that it is democratic and that it listens. This is something I kept returning to in my dLiberation coverage for openDemocracy last year. It’s something that various EU bodies have said themselves countless times over the last decade or so. Yet time and time again, the EU gives the impression that it will only ever listen to those who agree with it.

Stifling dissent is not the way to win support – it’s the way to harden opposition and drive more people into your opponents’ camp. Shame on you, European Parliament.

Update: Oh, and this. If you want people to support the political system you’re trying to build up, you need openness and transparency – not secrecy and corruption – from your elected representatives.

The European Parliament is meant to be the jewel in the EU’s crown – constantly referred to as the proof that the organisation is democratic and accountable.

It needs to get its act in gear, if you ask me…