Much of the discussion of the current crisis in
Greece and Europe in general has understandably focused on its economic characteristics.
But it is also possible to talk about a crisis of legitimacy from which the European
Union suffers – a crisis which predates the current eurozone crisis and even
the existence of the euro as a whole. A range of factors have been identified
as symptoms of this legitimacy crisis: fluctuating levels of support for, and
trust in EU institutions as reported in Eurobarometer surveys; low and falling
turnout for European Parliament elections; problems with the ratification of EU
treaties, both in referendums and using parliamentary methods; increasing
amounts of protest and contestation directed at the EU institutions; and non-,
or variable compliance with EU law on the part of member states, to mention just
a few.
Furthermore the two crises are linked. Not only
does the economic crisis expose and highlight the pre-existing crisis of
legitimacy in the EU, the legitimacy crisis affects the ability of the EU to
tackle the economic crisis, an argument put forward by David Marquand in his
2011 book ‘The End of the West’. The following discussion takes a closer look
at the relationship between the two crises by reflecting firstly upon the
problems underpinning the legitimacy crisis: a gap between citizens and leaders
which is fundamentally built into the EU structures. Finding that the EU’s
legitimacy rests largely on its ability to deliver certain outcomes including
stability and economic growth, it also considers the need for democratic citizen
inputs and a shared identity which are also thought to contribute to legitimacy
in liberal democratic societies. Finding limitations in both it briefly considers
some of the options for addressing the legitimacy and in turn the economic
crises.
Historically speaking, citizens have, for the most
part, been absent from the practice of and discussions about European
integration. The European institutions were constructed independently of
national populations, designed to stress administration and regulation and as
such to minimise the visibility of political choices at stake. Particularly in
the early days of integration the EU was an organisation characterised by
technocracy – which we are reminded, is nothing new in the EU, dominated by
expertise and operating largely on the basis of bargaining between opaque sectoral
and national interests. It displayed a marked lack of openness, transparency
and political accountability and all of this was despite the fact that the
Treaty of Rome called for an ‘ever closer Union between the peoples of Europe’ (emphasis added).
There was a fairly paternalistic approach to institutional
design: Jean Monnet believed that it
was wrong to consult the people of Europe about the nature of an emerging
community of which they had no practical knowledge or experience – an
approached grounded in suspicion of mass publics and concerns about the effects
they might have on the integration process were they to be involved. Instead integration
rested on the basis of a popular ‘permissive consensus’ which legitimated
integrative action through a tacit assumption that the collective outcome was
superior to what could otherwise be achieved through unilateral action. It
relied on the ability of elites to persuade the mass publics that European
integration was ‘a good thing’ rather than through ongoing active or informed
participation on the part of publics. Combined with a hyper-sensitivity to
national differences which had to be seen to be safeguarded this resulted in an
inherently ambiguous institutional design: power was fragmented, rules were
open to interpretation, and diverse actors were locked into joint processes
which were cumbersome and obstacle ridden. Adrienne Héritier argued that in this context subterfuge was
the only way to keep policy-making going.
By the time of the Maastricht treaty it was clear
that this approach to decision-making in the EU, as well as the basis upon
which EU governance had hitherto been justified, had become unsustainable.
Major economic, social and political changes in the world and in Europe in
particular had eroded traditional structures of power and thus, the original
bases of EU integration. European integration pushed forward at the elite
level, could no longer progress without public support because citizens
increasingly had the ability and the willingness to constrain, modify and even stop
the integration process. Legitimacy arguments based on the EU’s capacity to
solve problems requiring collective solutions because they could not be solved
through individual action – so-called output-oriented legitimising arguments – had
to be accompanied by input-oriented arguments deriving from citizen inputs and
control.
Throughout the noughties, a decade-long process
aimed at institutional reform both within and beyond the existing treaties
sought to ground EU action more firmly in citizen inputs in order to reduce the
perceived gap between citizens and EU institutions. Reforms emerging from this
process have included attempts to enhance the role of national parliaments in
the EU decision-making process; bolstering consultation regimes and channels
for inputs into the decision-making process from organised interests; and a
citizens’ initiative which allows 1 million citizens to request that the
Commission initiate legislation for the purposes of implementing the treaties.
Yet despite institutional reform the EU’s legitimacy problems persist and in
fact they appear to have deepened at the same time as attempts to tackle them
have increased.
In any case, addressing the legitimacy crisis by
reforming the EU institutions to make them more open and transparent can only
go so far. A large part of the problem is in the behaviour of the governments
of the member states. Governments have always played the EU and their citizens off
against each other. Traditionally they have claimed to populations that their
hands are tied by the EU – blaming ‘Brussels’ for unpopular decisions that they
themselves have signed up to. At the same time they talk about securing the
goods for domestic audiences in Brussels which doesn’t always bear much
resemblance to the realities of treaty negotiations. The side-stepping and
repetition of referendums doesn’t help either. Twice in Ireland referendums on
treaties (Nice then Lisbon) have been repeated after the first referendum
delivered a negatove result. In the immediate aftermath of the referendums on
the Constitutional treaty in France and the Netherlands there were discussions
– brief and then dismissed – of re-running the referendums.
And as well as blaming Brussels for unpopular
decisions member state governments may even start to argue that public opinion
at the national level – or some notion of the national interest – means certain
avenues for co-operation at the EU level are impossible. When treaties are
increasingly subjected to mechanisms of direct democracy this can be
intensified. Some member states, such as Ireland, have a strong constitutional
basis for holding referendums on EU–related issues (in this based on court
rulings which stated that EU treaty change is necessarily also constitutional
change and so requires a referendum). Not all member states have such an
approach and as referendums are used on an ad hoc basis there is opened up the
possibility that calling one, or threatening to call one can be intended as, or
perceived as a political move to shut down certain discussions or options in
treaty negotiations. Here then we see the co-existence of two different models
of democracy and democratic decision-making in the EU – a federal type model
where governments are sovereign and a direct democracy resting on a strong
notion of popular sovereignty – with no clear argument for saying which is more
legitimate. Nevertheless, what both models incorporate is a sense of an
identifiable political community from which preferences emerge – either
directly or mediated by national governments.
For the EU, by contrast, its democratic and
legitimacy problems are more intractable due to the absence of a European
demos. In most national societies, input legitimacy rests on a shared identity
or belief in an essential ‘sameness’ stemming from pre-existing commonalities
in history, language, culture, ethnicity – a so-called ‘thick’ collective
identity. On most counts given the historical, linguistic, cultural, ethnic and
institutional diversity of the EU’s member states, the Union is very far from
having achieved such a ‘thick’ collective identity. The economic crisis exposes
this further as the response has generally been in terms of ‘sovereignty’
rather than ‘solidarity’. Furthermore, in the absence of a thick collective
identity, institutional reforms will not greatly increase the input-oriented
legitimacy of decisions taken by majority rule since simply amending
decision-rules cannot (or at least not in the short term) provide the sense of
‘we-feeling’ necessary to sustain a majoritarian system of democracy in the EU.
Part of the problem seems to be that democracy is
understood very much in ‘national’ terms. Democratic decision-making processes
are viewed in terms of formal representative structures of the kind found in
the member states, and as a consequence the dominant response to the EU’s
democratic problems has been to increase the powers of the European Parliament.
Governments are viewed as custodians of the national interest but this is also
often conflated with the ‘general will’ and so is rarely questioned or
contested. Feelings of Europeanness are not dispersed equally or with
sufficient intensity to generate solidarity. This poses the question therefore
of whether the best way to enhance democracy in the EU and tackle its
legitimacy and economic crises is through a strengthened intergovernmental
system in which no decision could be taken but with the explicit consent of all
member states. Besides the enormous transaction costs that this would entail it
is not evident that it would enhance the legitimacy of EU decision-making given
that member state governments are often the source of the legitimacy issues in
the first place.
To conclude, the problems of legitimacy that
permeate EU decision-making structures and the current economic crisis in
Europe are interconnected. Without a sense of a European identity and political
community the solidarity that could facilitate collective decision-making to
help member states in trouble is elusive. When securing outputs of economic
growth cannot be guaranteed, the lack of citizen input in decision-making is no
longer tolerated. A return to pure intergovernmental decision-making would not
necessarily be either more democratic or effective. At the same time a
technocratic solution would be inconsistent with the need for the direct
legitimation of EU action and would imply regression rather than progression.
The notion that decision-makers ‘know best’ for Europe may be a tempting way of
insulating difficult decisions from public scrutiny and contestation but it is
such a sentiment that was hard-wired into the EU’s institutional architecture
and is at the root of the legitimacy crisis from which the EU continues to
suffer – and which makes the economic crisis harder to tackle.
Dr Elizabeth Monaghan, University of Hull
For the GPPF Nottingham Forum, March 2012
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