Although the European Union has been so successful in gaining the broadly-based support of its member countries, it remains the object of widespread political unease among the people. How is it that the EU can be both successful and politically unpopular?
There is a simple explanation. The Union's real stakeholders − to use a term that corporate executives have borrowed from the gambling world − are not the often-sceptical citizens of Europe, but its 27 national governments. The Union was to a great extent originally inspired by a supra-national vision shared by many people in post-war Europe. But it has since become very much the creature of national governments, solving problems for them that they are unable to solve for themselves.
The Union adapts to this reality in everything it does, whether dealing with day-to-day issues like energy or avian flu, or with the complexities of over-arching European regulation. It also holds true when a new treaty is negotiated, such as the recent deal over the Reform Treaty. EU documents and treaties are not written with the primary purpose of impressing public opinion or being transparent for ordinary citizens: they are written to satisfy the bureaucrats and political representatives of 27 nation states, and to reconcile the complex interests of the many pressure groups across Europe. The EU's output naturally and inevitably reflects complex compromises among all these stakeholders.
The European Union is thus fully accepted by national governments, and increasingly by civil society in the form of NGOs and interest groups as well as by most elite opinion. Yet it is still not an integrated and legitimate part of national political systems, and national electorates are not fully engaged in or committed to its ways.
In democratic terms, the EU's success in dealing with governments is certainly not a politically beautiful thing to behold. The Reform Treaty that salvaged much of the EU's draft constitutional treaty was negotiated behind closed doors and with as little publicity as possible. The constitutional treaty had been killed off by the French and Dutch referendums, and that lesson had been learned by other EU governments. European electorates are on the whole not considered mature enough to be told in plain language what the Union is all about.
The much-discussed issue of the Union's democratic legitimacy does not, contrary to widespread belief, lie primarily in a mistrust of the EU institutions by the citizens of Europe. In fact, Eurobarometer findings and other surveys suggest that the European institutions are seen by the average citizen as no more and no less legitimate than their national political institutions.
The real vulnerability of the Union is the or lack of connection between national governments and their political systems. The problem becomes particularly acute when a national referendum on an EU treaty fails – as has now happened four times. The referendum route to ratification has failed, as I argued last year in the Spring 2006 issue of Europe's World. National politicians, however much there may be consensus between government and opposition, cannot guarantee a positive outcome from referendums on the EU issues. With "No" votes therefore likely to remain a very real possibility, the question that now has to be addressed is whether the alternative for European reform should be a system of direct negotiations between national electorates?
It does not take a seasoned political scientist to realise that such a process between 27 − or even only 10 − electorates will not lead to a result within an acceptable period of time − if at all. To say, as supporters of referendums do, that one must give democracy time to work, this may be acceptable nationally, but not when it comes to a multi-national negotiation. No results can be achieved without the complex compromises that only mandated negotiators, not electorates, can deliver.
Getting rid of referendums on EU matters would certainly evade the risk of the European reform process being suddenly derailed once again but it would not be taken as a sign of the EU's political strength. On the contrary, It would probably lead to renewed euro-scepticism in a number of member states.
As most of us know, it is national governments that are the real problem. They have so far seen no need to engage their electorates in the politics of the Union, and they no doubt fear that creating such links would only limit their freedom of manoeuvre. No serious attempt has therefore been made to overcome such structural difficulties as the lack of a common language and the lack of European media that play an important part in the EU's political misfortunes.
In any case, some of the most engaged and creative thinkers about the future of the European adventure have failed to deal with this issue. Their thinking has chiefly been focused on constitutional measures that might strengthen the direct legitimacy of Union institutions, and they have argued for a more federal constitution, a stronger and perhaps bicameral European Parliament and so on. All of these ideas approach the problem from a supra-national perspective, and tend to assume the existence − or at least gradual emergence − of what the ancient Greeks called the demos − a common people who think of themselves primarily as Europeans.
Optimists argue that generational and sociological change may gradually turn the electorates of nation states into a European demos. But the question for our time is how to prevent the Union from being paralysed, or even from collapsing, where these changes have not yet occurred.
In the immediate future and the medium-term, the Union must rely on the institutions that have brought it thus far. Institutional reform can to some extent help solve the democratic problem. But the Union needs to provide an alternative to referendums. To rely only on parliamentary ratification may be viable in some countries, but it is unlikely to be sustainable in countries that have already gone down the referendum route.
Sketching an alternative to referendums, in the form of directly-elected national negotiators to future conventions or intergovernmental conferences, was the main focus of my previous article in Europe's World. It would allow national electorates a direct influence on the reform process through their choice of negotiators. It would allow countries to say "no" to reform, but it would do so in a way that would make clear the nature of the political problem. Negotiators can make mistakes, and they can be replaced democratically. Finally, electing national negotiators does not require constitutional reform at either national or European levels.
The European Union already has its Permanent Representatives Committee (COREPER) where the ambassadors of the EU's member governments interact across the whole range of issues. I believe we should turn it into a more visible and more political organ by having its members instead drawn from national governments at cabinet level. They would be permanently stationed in Brussels, but would return to their capitals for cabinet meetings.
A number of other useful processes are already under way or under consideration. The emergence of Europe-wide political parties based on existing national parties is a trend that would be strengthened if they became players in the selection of the President of the European Commission and the permanent Chairman or President of the Council envisaged in the Reform Treaty. A more structured and formalised tie between national MPs and the European Parliament's MEPs would be another small step in the right direction.
The Brussels-based press corps covering EU affairs and its institutions is the largest in the world, yet we don't have either a European media or European media audiences. It ought not to be beyond the wit of man, though, to provide EU aid to promote mature democracy at European level.
After the negotiations earlier this year that led to the Reform Treaty, most of our national leaders want to forget about the ordeal they went through and look to the future. But the future as always lies right in front of us. The Union has not been reformed for the last time, and the problem of its political legitimacy within national political systems will not go away. The long-term survival of the Union depends on solving these political challenges, and understanding why the issue of the European constitution brougth us so close to disaster. We must think politically and institutionally. If we do not, the next "pause for reflection" is unlikely to have as satisfactory and lucky a conclusion as this time.