Introduction of the Lisbon treaty has been widely seen as marking the end of the EU’s institutional reform process for the foreseeable future. But Keith Richardson sets out an idea for a much more radical overhaul of the EU’s political and democratic structures
In these difficult, dangerous and changing times, it is our political helplessness that dominates the picture in Europe. Our inability to do more than muddle through one crisis after another, and the lack of any sense that Europe will become better equipped to deal with the next set of problems. The EU’s foreign policy barely exists, its economic and financial stability has been badly shaken, its single market is incomplete and now the survival of its single currency is being questioned. Europe’s citizens are losing confidence in the Union, while after 10 years of agonising negotiations, the main result of the Lisbon treaty seems to be the appointment of too many presidents, most of whom nobody else has ever heard of. In a world where giants call the shots – the U.S., China and even Russia – who can credit that the European economy is bigger than any of them and yet counts for so little in world affairs?
The alarm signals are loud enough: The climate is going wrong; supplies of energy, food and raw materials are at risk; old economic patterns are breaking up; governments can't finance their needs and more and more people can't find jobs. Millions across the world suffer from poverty, violence and injustice, and at time these tensions flare into conflict.
What are we Europeans going to do about it all, and how should we protect ourselves? Our nation states are too small to count for much in this era of globalisation. EU member governments struggle to make ends meet, pushed around by world events while clinging to a shabby illusion of independence. But the Union, big and rich enough to hold its head up in any company, is too divided, too cumbersome, too loosely organised and too slow moving to make its weight felt. More of its citizens now seem to regard the Union as part of the problem than as the solution.
There has to be some fundamental reason why the Union still struggles in vain for credibility, despite repeated efforts to give it a sense of direction. And to identify this reason one has to stand back from the tumult of events and consider the lessons of the popular votes where Danish, Dutch, French and Irish electors in turn rejected proposals which were meant to be so helpful. Not to mention the votes that did not take place, especially in Britain, where voters would have rejected anything with a European label on it.
What stands out from this analysis is an alarming paradox: Although sober assessment of the dangers we face tells us a stronger and more united Europe is essential, it is also impossible because European voters will not have it. And the voters are right! The spirit of democracy is so deeply embedded that they will not give more power to a Union that they do not understand and cannot control. Democracy means choosing leaders at open elections and then throwing them out if they fail to deliver, and this the voters cannot do at European level. Voters across Europe may be barely aware who the Union's leaders are, but they do know that they did not select them in open contest.
In short, there is no way to strengthen the European Union until we make it truly democratic. The voters need to own the EU and feel it to be their own creation and responsibility, not something foisted on them by those legendary "unelected bureaucrats of Brussels". This means that the old debate about whether the Union's central problem is a deficit of democracy or a deficit of delivery can be closed down. There is only one problem, not two. To be effective the Union has to be democratic, so the new debate should be about how to make that happen.
Building a democratic Europe will not be easy, nor popular in some quarters. Particularly if we insist that it must be transparent so that people can see that they are in control and can understand the texts as easily as they can, say, the French or German constitutions. There is only one way to do it, and that’s by stages. The process must also be voluntary, so only those countries that want to, will join, while the others wait to be convinced. This approach brings three immediate advantages.
First, it builds on practical realities. The eurozone countries are clearly stumbling in that direction. They see the need to stick together and they also see all the difficulties of maintaining a monetary union when each government can act independently. They blow hot and cold on the idea of economic government, but they know that that is unthinkable without some form of democratic control. "No economic union without a political union" is a valid and powerful slogan.
Second, it is legally feasible. There would be no need for the ifs and buts and contradictions of the Lisbon treaty. The idea would be to establish by another treaty a "Democratic Community" within the EU, keeping to Union rules but moving further ahead within its own territory. The Democratic Community would be authorised to legislate and act in areas which affect its entire population and their collective interests, but not to intervene in matters that only concern individual states. The notion of subsidiarity would be preserved, but expressed more simply.
Third, the balance between the whole and its parts would be preserved. Legislation would still require the agreement of a Parliament and a Council of member states, whether by simple or qualified majority – but with no rights of veto. Elections would involve the population as a whole, with sovereignty in the hands of the overall majority: the voters choose the parliament, the parliament chooses an executive president, who then selects the members of his Commission – better now to call it a government – to administer the Democratic Community's affairs according to Community law, within the framework of the treaty, and to be directly accountable to the parliament for doing so.
The principles are clear. When people vote they would be choosing their leaders, which is manifestly not the case today. Political parties would be responsible for nominating their candidates, knowing that the majority in parliament would have the final decision, while the president and government would have to retain the confidence of parliament or else lose office.
The treaty would be decisive – best perhaps to give it a more formal title such as "Founding Act", since to be easily understood it would have to be short and deal only with overall powers and structures. The Act would have to contain rules for setting up detailed working procedures, and for amending them when circumstances changed. The declared aim of the Community would be to protect the overall rights, security and long-term interests of its own citizens, and the Act would give it no powers except those necessary to achieve those ends, essentially the domains of economic/ financial and foreign/security policies, which (no coincidence) are precisely the areas where today the Union is so weak.
The rest is detail, and could be handled in different ways. Above all, though, is the need for good working relationships between the integrated Community and the larger, looser Union within which it would be embedded, bearing in mind the Community's role as a pioneer group, which by demonstrating the effectiveness of its democratic structure would attract and gradually absorb other member states until Community and Union become one, and Europe is at last equipped to speak for and protect all its people.
Building a democratic and effective Europe is a task for a generation, but the first step is to promulgate the idea as fit for discussion, to probe the political landscape, to ascertain who is interested and who is not – or rather who is satisfied with the way the EU works today and who could be tempted by something better. A vigorous public debate should be stimulated, perhaps by circulating a Charter laying down these basic principles.
Sooner or later, those governments that want to join would have to put their heads together to agree a text for the Founding Act. To fulfil its goal of democratic transparency the Act should be short enough to be printed on a single sheet of paper and given to every citizen in the concerned states, because to meet the requirement of democratic legitimacy it ought to be submitted to a popular vote and be confirmed (or rejected) by a single referendum on a single day in all the countries involved. Let the people decide!
Keith Richardson is a former Secretary General of the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT). His report "A Europe of Hope – Democratic and Effective" co-authored with
Gerard Montassier, is available from the
Federal Trust.