An Affront to Our Democratic Dignity
For those, like me, who have lived all their lives in a democracy, the impending coronation of Europe’s president is a rather strange affair. We can leave aside the fact that the people of most of Europe were given no say on the creation of the post. We could even leave aside that – for whatever resons, good or bad – there will be no mass voting for the new post. Yet what is particlarly jarring is that this important decision seems to be almost completely outside of the public sphere.
You might think that – at the very least – those who are aiming at the presidency would, within a democratic culture, seek to appeal over the heads of national prime ministers, to build a bit of public support and maybe even leaverage a bit of popular pressure. Yet the front runners have barely even done as much as put themselves forward and tell us – the public – that they want the post and that they think they’d be good at it. Instead we – the British and European public – have been reduced to keeping our ears to the ground, to watching out for rumours in the newspapers about who is doing deals with whom, as though the race for the presidency were a game of chess.
Indeed the EU in general is structured around a contempt for democracy. Earlier in the year we were treated to the spectacle of EU commissioners – accountable to nobody – telling Britain’s elected government that it must exacerbate problems of mass unemployment by reining in its fiscal deficit.
And if there is one word I am sick of reading right now it is ‘Europhobe’. Over at Liberal Conspiracy – and indeed throughout much of the liberal left – it seems to be deployed as a catch all term to describe any skepticism about or opposition to the EU. Its a language that implies that skepticism about the EU is primarily the domain of irrational Little Englanders, driven by xenophobia towards continental Europeans and petty nationalism.
And this in turn offers a clue as to why sections of the soft left are so bizarrely supportive of the EU. For some time now I have felt parts of the left are more interested in fighting ‘culture wars’ than politics wars, more interested in sniggering at relatively disenfranchised people who read the Daily Mail, or fly the British flag than addressing the big questions about the distribution of economic and political power. Thus when it comes to the EU it seems that some people think it more important to define themselves in opposition to nationalism and patriotism, than to take a stance in defence of basic democratic values.
There are certainly advantages to a federal Europe. But if it is going to be a modern day version of the Holy Roman empire – where princes ‘elect’ emperors – or an enlightened bureacracy in which huge power is excersised by unaccountable comissioners – then, as a democrat I say that we are better of out of it.
Reader Comments
Here here to every word. That is all.
Cheers dud:).
The other aspect is that a democratically elected national government with a mandate to implement a socialist agenda will be tied up in a legal assault through the executive structure of the EU. The EU will give us a situation where what we vote for has to be in line with accepted EU norms or they will feel free to declare it unacceptable.
indeed – such as nationalising certain industries.
Of cour executives know this and are much happier when their hands are tied in certain ways – when enforced displine insulates em from popular demands. Pre 1973 this was done by the Bretton woods system. Today it is the EU.
I guess one of the problems with democracy and Europe is how we can measure what we should actually expect from an order as politically weird as the EU. On the one hand, it’s a hell of a lot more democratic than virtually any other intergovernmental body — you won’t get the UN even thinking about what the electorates of its member states might want out of resolutions, and there is nothing like the parity of status among states in the UN, that exists in the EU. On the other hand, it has a Parliament that’s not really Parliament at all — it doesn’t initiate legislation, and can only reject it in limited cases.
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After reading the treaty, my understanding of the post of President of the Council was as an almost, ‘administrative’ role, merely making permanent the rotating role that already exists. Initiation of ‘legislation’ would remain, to my understanding, in the Commission and the Council. As the Council is composed, as it always has been, of elected officials, one wonders what we’re really losing democratically here. I can sort of see the benefit of a president. For a start, it answers the question Kissinger once asked: “Who do I call when I want to speak to Europe?” And it means that, unlike the present situation, the titular head of the Council is not a primarily political animal.
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The truth with Europe is that much of what the EU does is so boring that nobody really cares. Voter turnout in elections seems to show this. People are much more intersted in how regularly their bins will be collected, than the minutiae of fishery quotas and standardising units in the manufacturing sector, or making sure suprmarkets are using the same amount of salt in their food products. The idea that most people would want to vote for this post, seems to me, a bit like wishing to vote for the head of the civil service.
Yeah Blair’s a shitbag and a liar, and he might even become President of the EU, but you would do well to look at the *historical* opposition to the EEC/EU in Britain and then think about how British nationalism ties into the rejection of Europe as a sense of identity, there’s a lot of history here, etc
The idea of world revolution and workers’ control is clearly alien to people whose political aspirations end with ‘democratically electing a national government with the mandate to implement a socialist agenda’. In their minds, we could have socialism in one country if it wasn’t for those damn Europeans trying to fuck with our lovely little Island. As if.
Fortunately, ‘Euroskepticism’ is largely the reserve of reformist outfits such as the CPB and their pathetic No2EU – Yes To Democracy type campaigns – so the assertion that petty left nationalism separates the men from the boys (or the hard left from the soft left) is a bit rich.