Europe’s democratic divergence
Paweł Świeboda
Commentary
Europe’s electorates continue on different trajectories. Further economic slowdown expected in the first half of this year, will exacerbate the tensions and intensify the blame-game. In the process, the continent’s democratic politics is becoming a mirror image of the economic imbalances which have been at the heart of the eurozone emergency. If the problem is not addressed, next year’s elections to the European Parliament are likely to become an exercise in mutual recrimination which will further weaken efforts to solve the crisis.
The roots of Europe’s democratic divergence are deep and reflect both the policy choices made over the past decade as well as the way democracy is practiced in the member states. A lot of attention is devoted to the former but very little to the latter. As election after election shows, it is an illusion to believe that there is now a single European debate just because the eurozone shares a joint headache of an incomplete common currency. It is not the question of creating an imaginary European demos. Political processes in the member states need to be at least compatible with each other and have a joint interface to address real issues in real time rather than be reduced to rubber-stamping „the only possible“ solutions.
In the US, there are different angles to the political debate from state to state but there is a common frame of reference. There are governors and state legislatures. Forty-nine of state parliaments are bicameral bodies while Nebraska has a unicameral one. Each state decides on the duration of the term and electoral districts but the overall construction of the political system is almost exactly the same. In Europe, there is nothing of the kind. Each member state has reacted differently to the challenge of legitimising the successive waves of deeper integration. The Danish Folketing and the German Bundestag have been closely involved in all decision-making while the French National Assembly has played more of a back-stage role in the process.
In the absense of a strong federal centre of gravity, the divergent political traditions have created massive discrepencies between the way national elites explain their course of action in the crisis. In Germany and in the North, the government’s message has been: our strategy has worked, it is the others who have mismanaged and need to convert. In the South, it has argued that nothing will change until the obsession of Germany and its peers with austerity is corrected. France has been navigating the middle-course, with its heart in the South but a token set of measures in place not to risk too much with the financial markets.
Today, Europe needs to address the challenge of its faltering political system almost as urgently as it has to fight the economic crisis. In Herman van Rompuy‘s blueprint for the Genuine Economic and Monetary Union presented last year, one of the four pillars was devoted to democratic legitimacy. No details have been worked out on the logical assumption that it is essential to know first what needs to be legitimised, namely what fiscal and economic integration the eurozone will undertake in the future. It is becoming clear, however, that the margin for waiting is getting narrower by the day.
Two actions need to be taken in the next few months. Firstly, the member states have to undertake to strengthen the democratic scrutiny of all new commitments undertaken at the European Council level. Parliaments have to be involved both before and after Council sessions in a broadly comparable pattern across the EU, so as to improve mutual interaction.
Secondly, the one beast which the political class needs to fight is that of the lack of alternative. The essence of the democratic process lies in the primacy of choice. If that choice is seen as wanting, electorates will feel alienated. Thomas Friedman has once dubbed as the Golden Straitjacket the framework of economic policy required for successful growth strategy in the world of open markets. „Once your country puts on the Golden Straitjacket“, he wrote, „its political choices get reduced to Pepsi or Coke“. The next round of elections, including those to the European Parliament, will show whether Europe can manage to open up the boundaries of democratic debate or whether it will be stuck in the cramped realm of miniscule choice.
