• As I said yesterday, the current system of institutional reform in the EU is unreasonable and unfair because it makes decision-making impossible. So let’s ditch it.
• Before attempting to reform the Treaties again, we need to agree on a new procedure to ratify Treaty changes first.
• My proposal would be to do this by a single, EU-wide referendum. A positive result would require reasonable majorities of the form: at least x% of all voters and at least y% of the voters in at least z% of the Member States should vote in favour, with x,y,z at 50 or more.
• The percentage of Member States where a Yes-vote is required (z) would be somewhere between 50 and 80% of the total number.
• In return for the EU-wide referendum, which gives every citizen a direct say, all Member States abolish (the possibility of) constitutional referendums at home for EU Treaty changes.
• Let’s carry on with the Nice Treaty for the time being, that is: until the new ratification system is in place. As Carl Bildt also pointed out on his blog, Nice does seem to work better than expected.

• National politicians and national media still have a major communication problem concerning the EU. European politicians too, of course, but they cannot solve the problem. Only those who already have the voters’ ear can do that.
• The irony of constitutional safeguards: Current legal constraints on the powers of governments prohibit the creation of legal structures that would offer better legal constraints on the informal powers that governments already have created for themselves.
• The democratic paradox: The smallest of Member States can veto a Treaty change supported by all other Member States. Isn’t this the dictatorship of the minority?
• If the issue was costs to tax payers or delivering concrete results, Irish voters would have voted ‘Yes’, massively.
• Nor can it be that the EU undermines symbols of national identity, like (in Ireland’s case) non-alignment, prohibited abortion, and low corporate taxes, as Ireland has opt-outs on the first two and tax decisions require unanimity in the Council.
• Perception, then, is everything.
• Today is Friday the 13th.

Update: First reactions by AFOE, Jon Worth, Nosemonkey.

This leaves one wondering when was the last time Tony Blair was taken seriously by the American president – the “Yo, Blair” incident perhaps?

Unbearably Blairite in its arrogance is also the following passage:

[Juncker, Fogh Rasmussen and Ahern] are bright people. Small countries can produce brilliant politicians. Putting aside a personal prejudice against EU institutions being forever run by Luxembourgers, I am not quarrelling with these candidates’ competence. But it is no disrespect to say that none is exactly a household name. Their candidacies seem to speak instead to a deliberate paucity of ambition about Europe’s global role. How seriously would they be taken by John McCain, Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton? Imagine the reception from Dmitry Medvedev when Mr Juncker turned up in Moscow to protest against his decision to turn off the gas. How much weight would these candidates carry even in Europe?

First of all, being unknown now is not exactly a problem that cannot be overcome: Hands up who (outside Illinois) knew Barack Obama before he decided to run for the US presidency.

Secondly, any future president meeting fellow world leaders will be speaking on behalf of the EU, not his home country. The size of the latter will not make much of a difference at this stage. Maybe it does during the appointment process or while EU countries are trying to forge a common position (which requires unanimity), but the precise point Stephens makes about Luxemburgers indicates that being from a small country may actually be an advantage then.

Of course Europe needs someone with stature, but what Stephens seems to forget is that it has to be the right kind of stature. Blair’s is tarnished not only by his handling of the Iraq war, but – more importantly – by his reputation of being all spin and no results for most except the first few of his ten years as Prime Minister. The British EU presidency in 2005 was, if not a failure (there was an agreement on the Financial Perspectives after all), at least a disappointment.

What matters in the end is that Europe’s future president has the personality, vision and above all the diplomatic skills to make a success of the job. I am afraid Tony Blair has proved to have none of these.

The names mentioned most often for the post that is newly created by the Lisbon Treaty are those of Tony Blair, Jean-Claude Juncker and Anders Fogh-Rasmussen. Which raises the question whether any of these three will ever hold the post. After all, experience often shows that names mentioned early in the selection process for a high-profile political position get so much time to be subjected to debate and criticism, that the nomination in the end goes to a less controversial (i.e. less debated) candidate.

So then, who are the quiet candidates who are more likely to become EU president than any of the top three? There are a few selection criteria (preferentially an experienced and well-regarded statesman/-women from a small country that is in the eurozone but neither too atlantic nor too federalist) which are impossible to fulfill all at the same time. With this in mind, and in no particular order, here are a number of suggestions:

• José Luis Zapatero. That is, if he loses the elections today, but even if he does not there is always a chance he accepts. A socialist, but not too badly. From southern Europe, but well-regarded in the north. From a large country, but not from one of the big three (Germany, France, UK). Won a referendum on the defunct constitution.
• Jean-Luc Dehaene. Belgium’s folksy and pragmatic former PM and one of Europe’s elder statesmen. One of the vice-presidents of the Convention that wrote the EU Constitution, but (unlike Guy Verhofstadt) too smart to become one of its figureheads and champions. Since then professional mediator in political conflicts in Europe and at home. Life motto: “Problems should be solved only when they arise”. The fact that he is a christian-democrat could work in his advantage.
• Wim Kok. Former PM of the Netherlands and another of Europe’s elder statesmen. A pragmatic social-democrat, very Third Way though not as blatantly as Tony Blair. Chaired the High-Level Group in 2004 that more or less revived the Lisbon Strategy. Escaped the 2005 referendum disaster in the Netherlands by losing the elections in 2002.
• Vaira VÄ«Ä·e-Freiberga. Latvia’s former president. Popular on the world stage, as proved by her serious candidacy at the time for the succession of Kofi Annan as UN Secretary-General. A balanced political profile as a moderate conservative who spoke out in favour of gay rights (no small thing in Latvia). Fluent in French as well as English, which would certainly help her getting support from France. Pretty atlanticist to the extent that she spoke out in favour of the Iraq war. This could work against her, as well as the fact that she is not (yet) from a eurozone country.
• Martti Ahtisaari. Former Finnish president. His Kosovo plan did not quite hold out as planned but this does not seem to have damaged his image as Mr Fixit on the international stage. From a small country, eurozone, no controversial views known. Seems a perfect candidate.
• Carl Bildt. Currently Sweden’s foreign minister and another heavy-weight from the north. Like Ahtisaari with extensive Balkan experience, which may also help him get the post of Europe’s High Representative if he does not become President and if Solana does not succeed himself. A moderate conservative. Author of highly readable blogs in both English and Swedish.

  Any other suggestions?

Some analysts think it is, and some even put Belgium on a par with Yugoslavia as proof that rising nationalism will tear the EU apart. In this view, both Belgium and the EU are elitist projects doomed to fail due to lack of support from ordinary people:

If Belgium does go down it will provide only the latest and starkest reminder of the endurance of ethnic nationalism in modern Europe and the corresponding failure of elitist supra-nationalists to forge larger identities holding any real meaning for ordinary people. (FT)

But this is way too easy. First of all, I am not at all convinced that the differences within Belgium are too big for Belgium to continue as a country. And secondly, I very much doubt that the rise of ethnic nationalism in Belgium is a bottom-up process (it was not in Yugoslavia either, by the way).

Socio-economic differences are often brought up as a reason for Belgium to split, and it is true that unemployment figures are very different on both sides of the language divide (kudos for the map). But both social policy and (mostly) taxation are federal competences (i.e. the same all over the country), and the regional differences in economic policy I feel tend to be exaggerated. What is clear is that the outsets as they happened to emerge from history were very different. Think Wallonia’s past in mining and heavy industry, think South of Italy, think North-East England: Wallonia would be a poor region even in a unitary state, except that in that case nobody would question the amount of money pumped into it from other parts of the country.

The language difference or the fact that language is tied to regions does not make it impossible for Belgium to be a viable state either. What is true is that Belgians do no longer have a common political space, instead of which there are now two strictly separated spaces: one with Flemish politicians catering to Flemish voters and Dutch-speaking media, and one with French-speaking politicians catering to French-speaking voters and French-speaking media. But if this caused the political problem, why then is Switzerland not falling apart either? That country has four languages and a quite similar election system, but (despite having a political problem of its own) it does not show the same signs of regional infighting as Belgium these days. So although the absence of a common political space does seem to be part of Belgium’s problem, I think it is sloppy logic to blame the problems on the linguistic divide. The correlation we see does not prove there is a causation.

Nor is regionalism as a political phenomenon a reason for secession, although its recent surge among politicians sparked the current crisis. Regionalism is not incompatible with federalism. In fact they are two sides of the same medal: it is normal in any federation (or unitary state for that matter) that there is dicussion about the vertical distribution of powers. If the system of constitution-making functions well, the resulting arrangement ends up somewhere in the middle: a dynamic equilibrium between those who want specific powers to be moved up the constitutional hierarchy and those who want to see them moved down. This is not an all-or-nothing game by the way: the same person often wants some powers to be moved up, and some down. All mainstream political parties in Flanders for instance support moving powers down from the Belgian level to the regions, as well as moving other powers up from either of these levels to the EU. This seems to be a nuance lost on those who insist on blaming Flemish “nationalism” for the current political crisis.

The current political problems do seem connected with a general sense among voters (not only in Belgium) of not being represented by the political system (this in turn is to be seen as part of modernity’s acute and even more general struggle to reconnect with its moral and spiritual roots – but that is a different story). In this view the other half of Belgium fulfills the function of Girardian scapegoat – like the EU, globalisation or terrorists do in many other countries. The electoral success of the populist, xenophobe Vlaams Belang party in Flanders, will have acted as a catalyst. In response to this party’s singling out of immigrants, it is easier for mainstream parties to seek an alternative, politically more correct scapegoat than to tell the unwelcome truth that the problem is complicated and that solving it takes time. The other half of the country is perfect for this role, as it is part of the system yet stands out as different, and does not go away too easily (which would expose the falsity of the claims). In this sense the communitarian stand-off would be how the Western world’s more general roots searching and scapegoating happens to have incarnated in Belgium, and language is just the stick to beat the dog with.

Especially in Flanders, where the discussion started, the driving force behind “ethnic nationalism” is the political caste – not the population which only recently, after more than a hundred twenty days of trying to negotiate a new government and a new constitutional arrangement, has started to follow politicians in their separatist conclusions. So, contrary to the view expressed in the FT article above, what is elitist in Belgium is not (or no longer!) unitary belgicism, but ethnic nationalism.

In Belgium’s case, this distrust of voters against the political system and class may be exacerbated by the country’s constitutional arrangements. Apart from the federal government and the three regional ones, there are three, partly overlapping, community governments. This results in 6 governments and 7 parliaments ruling the country together. The philosophy behind it is that the federal and regional governments deal with territorial, “physical” issues (like road-building) while the community governments deal with the language-related, “personal” ones (like education). This is an interesting, beautiful idea which I have often applauded in the past. But we may have to conclude that it has turned out to be too complicated for practical use, as the resulting division of tasks between the governments inevitably ends up to be rather fuzzy and untransparent. As tax is also mostly levied federally but spent regionally, it is very difficult for Belgian voters to know which politician is really responsible – which makes the system even more vulnerable for the scapegoat mechanism.

The conclusion is that – while we are waiting for the end of the more general soul searching – pressure in Belgium (or indeed the EU if it follows the same recipe) could be taken off the system by changing two elements of the constitution:

1. Transparency
   First of all, the system needs to become more straightforward and transparent, so it is easier for ordinary voters to see when a politician is addressing something he can actually change, and when he is talking about something outside his influence. Belgium will have to become more like ordinary federations, with fewer governments.
   The communities will have to go, only the three regions and the federation must stay. Each region (and the German-speaking sub-region) will get its own official language (two for Brussels). A clear choice is needed on the purpose of language policy. In my view this purpose is linked to the preservation of culture, not to cater to individual needs. This means that most, if not all, of the current “facilities” as they exist around Brussels and along the language border ought to disappear, whereas they could perhaps be introduced for the French-speaking minority in Ghent.
   Most importantly, a more direct link must be established between taxes and their spending. Regional policies should be funded by regional taxes, federal taxes should be used to fund federal policies – or at least should be spent under the political responsibility and the supervision of the federal government. In this way voters will at least have someone to turn to (and know who to turn to) in case they are unhappy with the outcome of policies.
2. Flexibility
   Especially the last idea in the above could have a centralising effect if changes to the division of competences between the various state levels are difficult to undo. To compensate for this threat to subsidiarity (and in order to give politicians something to tinker with), we introduce another new element: flexibility. The constitution must continue to define decision-making procedures and continue to be difficult to change (requiring double majorities or whatever seems appriopriate). But a separate “Kompetenzkatalog” that lists the policy issues for which each state level is responsible must be (almost) as flexible as an ordinary law, so that it can be adapted every time the constellation of federal and regional governments changes after new elections. Incidentally, the exact same advice was given by former Belgian PM Jean-Luc Dehaene and his fellow ‘wise men’ for the EU Treaties in their 1999 report The Institutional Implications of Enlargement. As we know, the authors of the EU Constitution chose eventually to keep Part III (the policy part) in the Treaty instead of giving it a “lighter”, more easily changeable, status – with well-known consequences at least for the referendum in France.

Switzerland is proof that arrangements of a federal constitution are thinkable in which, even if political problems and discontent remain, the continued existence and governability of the state is not under constant threat. The ideas outlined in the above might help to get to such an arrangement for Belgium. And applying them to the EU (EU taxes for EU policies, a flexible Kompetenzkatalog) would be a good idea as well.

What is interesting, is that there are many parallels between Schröder’s political problems in Germany and those of the EU as a whole: In both cases, economic and social reform is badly needed. In both cases, the reform process has stalled. And in both cases, the main cause is a constitutional arrangement that is very similar.

So here is part one: Can German federalism teach us something for the debate on the EU’s constitutional future? The topic of part two will be: Does Swiss economist Bruno Frey have the solution?

Föderalismusreform, a review of Germany’s federal system, has been a theme in German politics for some time now. A commission led by Bavarian Prime Minister and CSU (conservative christian) leader Edmund Stoiber and SPD (social democratic) party chairman Franz Müntefering has been working for two years now on proposals to modernise Germany’s federal system. So far without result.

Yet there is wide agreement that the problem is situated in the distribution of powers between the Bundestag, the lower house of the federal parliament, and the Bundesrat, the chamber representing the states of the federation. One of the main reasons why Schröder has not been able to reform Germany’s economy, is, apart from leftwing opposition within his own SPD party, that nearly all reform laws required the support of the Bundesrat, where the rightwing opposition parties have a majority. Any proposal therefore had to please both the left and the right extremes of German politics. In such a sensitive area as socio-economic reform, this was a juggling act Schröder was unable to perform.

You could argue that it is normal for a federal system, especially one with so many built-in checks and balances, to have two chambers of parliament which both have to agree with legislative proposals. But Germany’s federal system is a bit special:

When Germany’s postwar federal constitution was designed, in the late 1940s, the choice was to represent the individual states through a senate, with elected senators, or a federal council (Bundesrat), with state government representatives. The latter option was chosen because it was more in line with Germany’s history as a confederation of states. This means, however, that all Bundesrat members from a specific state always vote as a block, because they represent the views of their state’s government, not its voters or parliament. Decisions of the Bundesrat are prepared in working groups until they are ready for formal decision-taking by a staff of civil servants from the states. Public interest in its proceedings is low, and state parliaments have little influence on how it votes. In 1984, Sontheimer [1] wrote that as a consequence of the way the Bundesrat functions:

… fungiert die Ländervertretung im Prozeß der staatlichen Willensbildung vornehmlich als ein Instrument der Exekutive und der Bürokratie, nicht jedoch als ein zusätzliches Organ der demokratischen Willensbildung.

(…in the process of federal decision-making, the representation of the states functions as an instrument of the executive and the bureaucracy – not, however, as an additional body of democratic will formation.)

Conflicts between the federal and the state level on the distribution of competences led to compromises which, according to Sontheimer, seem to give the states a lot of power as the federal level is only allowed to legislate in areas explicitely attributed to it by the constitution, but in fact concentrates legislative power at the federal level, leaving the states mainly the implementation and execution of federal laws:

Faktisch ist die im Grundgesetz zwischen Bund und Ländern geteilte Gesetzgebungskompetenz heute weitgehend beim Bund konzentriert, die Länderparlamente sind als Legislativen ziemlich bedeutungslos geworden. Hingegen liegt die Ausführung der Gesetze, d.h. die Verwaltung, und auch die Organisation der Rechtsprechung weitgehend in der Hand der Länder.

Similarly to the EU’s proposed Constitution, Germany’s Constitution distinguishes between exclusive federal competences on the one hand and competences the federal level shares with the state level. There are also areas where the federal level lays down only framework principles, leaving it to individual states to fill in the details.

The predominance of the federal level in the legislative process was caused mainly by the fact that it claimed most areas of shared competence for itself, saying this was necessary for a uniform arrangement of living conditions:

Entscheidend für das große übergewicht des Bundes im heutigen Gesetzgebungsprozeß wurde die Inanspruchnahme der meisten Bereiche der konkurrierender Gesetzgebung durch den Bund unter Hinweis auf die Notwendigkeit einer einheitlichen Regelung der Lebensverhältnisse.

This “uniform arrangement of living conditions” is in fact one of the holy cows of German politics: current president Köhler created a political row shortly after he took office, simply by suggesting it might be easier to solve former East Germany’s persistent economic problems if wages and social security benefits were allowed to be lower in the eastern states than than they are in the west.

Over the years, the individual states in Germany kept little more than cultural matters, police and municipal law to legislate on. But even in these areas, the competences of state legislators have been further eroded by state governments, who started to coordinate policies through ministerial conferences and treaties between the individual states of the federation.

Note, at this stage, the similarities between the German and the EU (con-)federal construction:

• both have “senates” representing the administrations of the individual states rather than their parliaments or peoples, with most of the actual decision-making done by civil servants of the individual states and behind closed doors;
• both have constitutional arrangements spelling out which competences belong to the (con-)federal level, which to the state level, and which to both;
• both have shown a tendency to concentrate power at the highest level, which is defended by referring to the need for “uniform living conditions” (Germany) or “a level playing field in the internal market” (EU);
• in both, states use intergovernmental coordination and agreements to create common policies where no formal (con-)federal competence exists;
• there is a consensus in both that constitutional and economic reform is needed, but tangible results have yet to be produced;
• in both, there is discussion, but no consensus, on whether (and which) competences should be returned to the state level.

A difference between the EU and German discussions on reform, is that what is usually seen as the EU’s main problem is the distribution of competences between the EU and the member state level, as well as the EU level’s lack of democratic legitimacy. In the German discussion on the other hand, the main issue for politicians seems to be that state governments have too much power to block federal legislation through the Bundesrat: Back in 1948, only 10% of German laws required Bundesrat assent – today, this is as much as 60%. In a lecture she gave in 2003, Angela Merkel made clear that she wanted to see the percentage reduced to 30, because the involvement of state governments in so many federal decisions make it more difficult to carry out economic reforms.

So Germany’s problem is a seeming paradox, with the individual states having both too much and too little power. President Köhler was probably right to suggest that certain decisions should be returned to the individual states, allowing them more room to conduct their own socio-economic policies. But his fellow party member, and likely future chancellor, Angela Merkel was also right saying that it is too easy for the governments of individual states to block federal laws. Therefore, German reform would have to consist of moving some competences from the federal level back to the state level, while at the same time reducing the possibilities for state governments to block legislation that remains federal. The net effects of this operation would be that power is taken away from the state governments and returned to the (state and federal) parliaments, that Germany is liberated from its current state of governmental paralysis and that the country’s economic problems finally, hopefully, get solved.

But with so many constitutional similarities between them, the thought that perhaps the EU’s problems should be solved in a similar way as Germany’s becomes rather tempting. It is in fact true that the EU has been used by national governments as a means to accrue power, by moving a great deal of decision-making behind closed doors, away from the eyes of parliaments and the public. It is also true that the EU is often accused of having too many competences – although I would argue that it has, largely as a result of the closed door decision-making, acquired the wrong set of competences.

To me, for instance, it seems utterly wrong that in 2005 agricultural policy still is entirely an EU thing. I also find it strange that the EU does have a common currency (with a few odd exceptions), but no common economic policy. That there is no common foreign and defence policy to back up the EU’s common trade policy seems, for an economic world power, also wrong and counterproductive.

Those are of course my own views, and other people’s opinions on which competences belong at the national or the EU level will be different. Much less questionable, however, is the general lesson the EU could draw from Germany, which is that either you make something an EU competence or you don’t – but once you do, you should also give the EU enough clout to actually do something with it. If state governments cannot part with the powers they have shared, as happened in the EU and in Germany, the result is stalled decision-making, expectations not lived up to, problems remaining unsolved and public loss of confidence for all levels of government.

The next question to solve then, is how you decide which decisions should be taken at a common or federal level, and which at a national or regional level. Swiss economist Bruno Frey has some ideas about this. My thoughts in a future posting.
____________________
[1] Kurt Sontheimer – Grundzüge des politischen Systems der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Piper, München, 1984, p. 248.

As motivating ideas behind European integration, “uniting again what had been separated” and “all men will be brothers” should be equally appealing in 2005 as they were in 1945 and in 1989. What the EU does seem to lack these days, as opposed to its early years, is leaders whose “magic” is able to unite the masses behind those ideas.

After the resounding Dutch ‘no’ to the EU Constitution and last weekend’s EU summit, I still believe this is the case. Here is why:

Polls conducted shortly after the referendum reveal that both French and Dutch voters support the general idea of EU integration. Whatever the right-wing (nation-state oriented) EU-sceptics say, no less than 72% of French voters are in favour of continued integration. Similarly, 84% of Dutch voters support the EU in some form or another, whereas only 16% could be considered EU-sceptics. Other, more extensive polls published only recently (France, Netherlands) confirm these figures. In short, the French and Dutch votes were directed against this EU, not against the EU. This is an important conclusion to begin with.

With that in mind, finding strong arguments against the contents of the Constitution becomes rather difficult. On balance, it brings progress rather than anything else relating to the objections brought up in the campaign, while most other arguments for a ‘no’ (on Turkey, the budget, net contributions) had nothing to do with it or were grossly exaggerated. If the EU is undemocratic and not transparent, the Constitution makes it more democratic and more transparent. If the EU is too complicated, the Constitution makes it a lot simpler. If the EU’s policies are too liberal or not liberal enough, the Constitution leaves plenty of room for EU politicians to take a, democratically sanctioned, different course. And if the Constitution is long, this is because detailed prescriptions are necessary in order to curtail Brussels’ power sufficiently and effectively.

Of course, one could still argue that the Constitution’s improvements do not go far enough. But the picture for most voters after the campaigns is the complete opposite: that, by adopting the Constitution, the EU would become less democratic, more (or less) liberal, more complicated and more centrist or distant. This probably explains the frustration on the yes side, which often had the impression no one was even listening to its arguments. And they were right, as in this dialogue des sourds the other side was not talking about the Constitution at all, but about a more fundamental problem.

The 2002 Fortuyn crisis in the Netherlands clearly indicated that something was wrong there with the relationship between the electorate and the political classes. And despite the fact that many Dutch politicians of the pre-Fortuyn era have been replaced by others, the crisis is still there. Public confidence in the country’s leadership is even lower than it was at the time of the Fortuyn murder. More disturbingly, confidence in the mainstream opposition parties is hardly any better. They would probably win the elections if there were any right now, but only by lack of an alternative, which, fortunately, the populist right is not providing either. Pim Fortuyn’s own party of cronies and loonies is back from 22 seats just after his death to between 0 and 1 in the current polls, and the life time cycles of various alternatives that spring up every now and again (including maverick Wilders) seem to get shorter and shorter.

But it is no different in France, where a common complaint is that the country has been ruled by the same old men and their cronies for ages. Nor is it different in the UK, where Tony Blair was re-elected thanks to the electoral system and the weak opposition, not to his popularity among voters. Or Belgium, where the rise of the extreme-right Vlaams Belang seems unstoppable. Austria (FPÖ), Italy (Alleanze Nazionale, Lega di Nord), Denmark (Dansk Folkeparti) and the anti-globalist movement are other cases in mind. In my view, the votes in France and the Netherlands against the EU Constitution as well as the now rising ‘no’ support in Luxembourg, Denmark, Poland and the Czech Republic fit into the same pattern.

Research shows that, even during the Fortuyn crisis, Dutch public confidence in political parties was still one of the highest in Europe. In most other countries, notably Germany, the UK, Italy and France, it is considerably lower. Therefore I see no reason to assume that public unease is limited to only a few countries. Still, it is remarkable how difficult it is for ruling parties to admit that something is the matter, even in the middle of a crisis, with polls racing down and defeat staring them in the face: “Look at this country, it is doing fine! People are more prosperous than they have ever been, they have no reason to complain! The populists are lying, fearmongering and scapegoating, they have nothing to offer!” Every time this happened, whether the issue was domestic policy or the EU, the ruling parties were absolutely right. But still they lost the voting.

The French sociologist Jean Baudrillard seems to be closer to the truth than either the ruling parties or their populist opponents, in an article entitled “L’Europe divine” published on 17 May in Libération. He writes:

Le jeu est fermé d’avance, et tout ce qu’on sollicite, c’est le consensus. Oui au oui : derrière cette formule devenue banale se cache une terrible mystification. Le oui lui-même n’est plus exactement un oui à l’Europe, ni même à Chirac ou à l’ordre libéral. Il est devenu un oui au oui, à l’ordre consensuel, un oui qui n’est plus une réponse, mais le contenu même de la question.

and:

Car ce non en profondeur n’est pas du tout l’effet d’un «travail du négatif» ou d’une pensée critique. C’est une réponse en forme de défi pur et simple à un principe hégémonique venu d’en haut, et pour lequel la volonté des peuples n’est qu’un paramètre indifférent, voire un obstacle à franchir.

As I understand him, the problem for voters is not so much with the issue at stake or with anything else that is factually or reasonably connected to it, but, on a meta-level with not being in control of events. There is a link here with Baudrillard’s own work on hyperreality and other critiques of the influence of mass media on public opinion. The idea here is that the picture people have of the society they live in is shaped by the mass media which, as a result of market pressures, have to come up with news that sells: sensational crimes, corruption scandals, political crises. Tabloids have no incentive to add nuance to this picture, for instance by pointing out that crime statistics stay the same or improve, or how favourably living standards in Western Europe compare to those in countries to the east or the south. According to Belgian sociologist Mark Elchardus this also influences the way our democratic systems function: Even when the media themselves are diverse, with newspapers ranging from the Sun to the Financial Times, media consumption for most people is not. The result a social divide which is not, as in the past, between ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ but between ‘knows’ and ‘know nots’: between a small group that is well-educated, well-informed and confident about the future on the one hand, and a large, scared and cynical, group whose idea of political reality is shaped by a constant flow of horrifying crimes and political scandals on the other. This, combined with the individualisation and de-ideologisation of society, leads to a democracy that is more person and less idea oriented, and in which politicians only survive by running from one incident to the next media hype, instead of developing long-term visions for the future (which, in turn, only reinforces the idea that the tabloids are right). We live, as Elchardus puts it, in a “drama democracy”.

It is probable that the same social divide pictured here for public views on crime, politics in general and immigration, to a large extent applies to public views of the EU as well. In this case, we not only have an extremely low basic level of information among the public and the press, but also an incentive for national politicians to use “Brussels” as a scapegoat for their own and nobody’s failures. These two factors combined for many years to create the ideal starting point for an anti-Constitution campaign with all the characteristics of Elchardus’ “drama democracy”. The result is easier to see in France than in the Netherlands, but visible in both: In France, the groups voting ‘yes’ were the higher executives, the higher educated and the higher incomes. In the Netherlands, these groups voted against the Constitution, but with smaller margins than average.

But however much I think this analysis is correct, I do not agree with solutions (proposed by Elchardus, for instance) that try to turn the clock back, by moving decision-making away from the whimsical electorate and back to the organisations that “really” represent them. Because doing so would imply that, somehow, the message sent by voters was “wrong” and had better be ignored. Although I certainly believe that voters in France and the Netherlands were wrong as far as the Constitution text is concerned, in the sense that voting ‘no’ moved them further away from the constitutional arrangement they probably want, the idea to push through a project without winning the confidence and support of citizens first, not only seems disrespectful and arrogant but rather counter-productive as well.

People do indeed resent choosing between ‘yes’ and ‘yes’. However, this resentment does not stem from “keeping to be told” that there is no other option, as the populists phrase it, but from feeling out of control, realising that there is in fact no other option yet not feeling very comfortable about its implications. And in our modern societies with their emphasis on the value of individual autonomy, there is little that makes people feel less human than the idea of not being in control of their own destiny. We saw this in the massive anti-globalisation protests a few years ago, in the general anti-political cynicism found in many countries and its culmination in anti-establishment populism, and in the wave of anti-EU-ism that now seems to be going through Europe. In each of these cases, protests were directed against the opaque, seemingly limitless powers (of the corporations, the political elite, and “Brussels”, respectively) that supposedly rule our lives. In short, people feel they have lost control, and they want it back, badly.

But what does control mean? First of all, individual choice conceived as the result of rational considerations by a detached individual, in the confinement of his own mind, is of course an illusion. Individual choices occur in a social context. They tend to be much less unique and individual than modern dogma makes us want to believe, and are more likely to be the result of complicated historical, sociological and psychological processes. This should affect the way we think about democracy as well. Rather than seeing it as the arithmetic summation of as many individual choices as there are voters, democratic decision-making too is a largely collective process in which we all influence each other. The key question here, which determines if we feel in control on an individual level, is to what degree we are prepared to accept the outcomes of that process, especially when we are on the “losing end” of a vote.

My favourite philosopher, the Canadian Charles Taylor, seeks the answer in collective identity (emphasis mine):

To see why, consider such a regime from an individual’s standpoint. Say that I am outvoted on some important issue. I must abide by an outcome I oppose. My will is thwarted, so why should I consider myself free? Why does it matter that it is the majority of my fellow citizens, rather than the decisions of a monarch, that is overriding my will?

[...] This question is not merely theoretical. It is rarely put on behalf of individuals, but it regularly arises for sub-groups, such as national minorities, who see themselves as oppressed by majorities. Perhaps no answer can satisfy them. Whatever one says or does, they may be unable to see themselves as part of a larger sovereign people. They therefore see its rule over them as illegitimate, which is precisely the point: the logic of popular sovereignty requires an idea of collective agency based on a sense of individual belonging that is much stronger than in our lecture audience.

[...] The crucial point is that regardless of who is right philosophically, it is only insofar as people accept some such appeal that the legitimacy principle underlying popular sovereignty can work to secure their consent. If identification with the community is rejected, the government will be illegitimate in the eyes of the rejecters. In short, there can be no democracy without a shared identity as participants in a common agency.

In the same article on Sovereignty in Europe and Iraq, he concludes:

In some ways, [compared to Iraq] much less is at stake in building a new democratic community out of the already free and prosperous European countries. But whether the “democratic deficit” on the European level be remedied also depends on whether a shared European identity can be forged out of the 25 nations that will soon make up the European Union.

I agree with this in principle, although the next question to solve then is what constitutes a shared identity. Does it have to be explicit? Europeans travelling to other continents often have the experience that they feel more “European” there than at home. Not only because they suddenly realise how much, in terms of culture and values, they have in common with fellow Europeans compared to the local people they meet, but also because local people in their contacts affirm them in that European identity. At home in Europe, though, where it matters for our discussion of European democracy, that European identity feeling is very weak and seldomly made explicit.

The question is if it has to be: do you feel European because you keep being told you are – like American schoolkids have to salute the flag and sing the national anthem every day? Or is it a more implicit process, is “European identity” the right word for the feeling of “belonging” that emerges as you gradually become aware that you are part of a European, rather than a purely national context? It may not come as a surprise that my preference is for the latter interpretation.

The problem with this process in Europe right now, is that the European context of our lives is already there (and I think it would be even if the EU had not existed), but our awareness of it has only just set in. And because it is all so new, we do not trust the process yet: we do not know how it works, which arguments are taken into account before decisions are taken, or what to expect next. This becomes markedly clear in a poll conducted after the ‘no’ vote in the Netherlands, which showed that with 32% the most common reason for people to vote ‘no’ was not loss of sovereignty, the economy or the accession of Turkey, but simply that they felt uninformed. As far as the Netherlands were concerned, this discovery during the referendum campaign must have come as a shock to many people: according to Eurobarometer 58 of 2003, Dutch people had one of the highest opinions of their own knowledge of the EU, yet they scored lowest among the old EU-15 in a simple knowledge test.

Add to this a general feeling of distrust towards anything political that our societies seem to be going through, and you find that people feel they neither know what is going on, nor trust those who do know and who are taking the decisions for them. Those are, in fact, good reasons for a ‘no’ vote.

Overseeing all this, in order to restore confidence in European cooperation (whatever future form that takes), it looks like we have to make sure that people:

• feel they know what is going on,
• trust those involved in the actual decision-making, and
• have confidence in the general direction things are taking

To begin with the latter: it is striking that a confidence crisis never arose when the economy was doing well, during most of the nineteen nineties. So for a large part of the population, fear of the future must be part of the story. These days, with terrorism, the lagging economy, aging populations and its effects on health costs and pensions every day in the newspaper, there is much to be fearful about. Recent EU developments blend in perfectly in order to confirm that impression:

• the introduction of Euro coins coincided with record inflation, especially in the Netherlands as a result of a pro-cyclical tax policy (note that the Euro had been around for several years already; it was the introduction of tangible coins that mattered)
• Enlargement with ten relatively poor countries in Central and Eastern Europe is easily perceived as a threat to the labour markets and economies of the old Member States (the famous Polish plumber), even though most serious economic analyses point to the opposite
• talk of Turkish EU accession may have fed into popular fears of Enlargement in general and of muslims in particular (although, to be fair, this element was far less pervasive than expected in both France and the Netherlands)

Much of this is, perhaps, a matter of perception, but most of all of how you put it into words. But words are dangerous things, especially in politics: Once someone has captured something (a problem, a feeling) into words, and those words fail to do justice to the complexity or full extent of the feeling or problem, the danger is that the words and what they represent, rather than the phenomenon they are trying to describe, become the focus of public debate. This is what populists do, whether advertedly or (more often, I suspect) inadvertedly: capturing justified feelings into the wrong words, thereby diverting the debate from the real problem, and ending up with the wrong solution – sometimes with destructive results.

Clearly, societies with low knowledge levels of the issue at hand are more likely to fall victim to (opinion) leaders believing in the narrowness of their analyses. This is why it is so important in the first place that the media finally start to provide informed coverage of EU decision-making. Not more pro-EU coverage, no, just informed criticism written by journalists whose work ethics are about wanting to inform people, to challenge rather than to confirm them in their beliefs. That would be a nice change of the present situation.

But the worst problem of all, in my opinion, is that Europe’s leaders are no better than their populist challengers and, for years, just went along with parroting the tabloid press. They followed, instead of led. They could have presented vision, truth, and hope for the future. They could have presented Enlargement as an oppurtunity, rather than a threat. They could have conceded that inflation was so high because of tax breaks pumped into an overheated economy, instead of blaming the Euro. They could have presented Turkey as a successful muslim democracy, the regional example Iraq failed to become. They could have taken the blame for failing to reform France’s and Germany’s sluggish economies, rather than putting it on globalisation. They could have used Europe’s weak performance during the wars in former Yugoslavia and in the run-up to the Iraq war as arguments for more, rather than less, integration of foreign policy. And they could have admitted that their own backroom deals are the cause of lopsided distributions of subsidies and of Czechs paying for Irish incomes, and use that as an argument against national vetoes and for transparency, instead of the reverse.

If voters in Europe are to regain trust in its decision-making, they need new and better leaders. Leaders with the intellectual capacity to understand their own decisions and to develop visions that look further than the next elections. Leaders who also have the communication skills to convince people of their views and to inspire confidence in their decisions. Leaders who are not afraid of democracy, but who know that voters can be reasonable and are prepared to bring sacrifices if necessary, and that if they are not, it is because they, the leaders, have failed to convince.

When the French and Dutch people voted ‘no’ to the European Constitution, this was most of all a vote of no-confidence in, not only their own national leaders, but the entire European leadership including that of other countries. Voters did not believe that Schröder, Chirac, Blair, Balkenende and the others, as a collective, would be able to put their squabbles aside and get Europe and its economy on track again. The last European summit only proved them right. Again.

The Constitution text as it is now consists of a set of, partly new, decision-making rules, the Charter of Fundamental Rights earlier adopted but not legalised by EU governments, and what basically is the text of the existing EU treaties covering cooperation on everything from “protecting the physical and moral integrity of sportsmen and sportswomen” to prohibiting “the prevention, restriction or distortion of competition within the internal market”.

The existing EU treaties were pretty long, complicated and detailed. There were of course reasons for this: First of all, because the European Commission was never conceived to be “the government of Europe”, which would be a political body with freedom to act, but a civil service, faithfully carrying out what national governments wrote down in the treaties. Mutual distrust was always part of the European story. Countries, with reason, did not trust each other with carrying out the treaty provisions faithfully and without discrimination, so they created the Commission, “guardian of the treaties”, with the sole right of initiating measures implementing the treaties’ provisions. Political checks and balances were built into the system by requiring the national governments, united in the Council, to consent to each implementing measure proposed by the Commission. The European Parliament was created later as an additional, democratic, check on the process.

Naturally, in this construction, it is unthinkable that the Commission would do anything of its own accord. Any initiative it takes must have a legal base in the treaties, i.e. must be part of a task explicitely given to it by the national governments. This is why the treaties are so long and detailed: firstly, because every time governments decided to pool a new task at the EU level, they had to create a new treaty provision. And secondly, because detailed prescriptions were necessary to keep the Commission, a mere civil service, in check.

In short: Long treaties, and long constitutions, are solidified distrust. As such, the complexity at the EU-level is inherently eurosceptic. The reverse, a short Constitution outlining only the rules for decision-making without treading in actual policies, is only possible if you accept that the Commission becomes a political body not subject to the national governments. That would be a huge step towards stronger integration.

Erhard Friedberg in Le Monde, 6 June 2005:

Quant aux partisans du oui, ils n’ont pas davantage amélioré le niveau d’information des Français ni fait avancer la cause de l’Europe. Ce, pour la simple raison qu’ils ont centré toute leur argumentation autour de deux points, modulés différemment par les uns et les autres, mais qui avaient en commun un gallo-centrisme d’autant plus gênant qu’il était soit inavoué, soit totalement inconscient. Le premier de ces points a développé l’idée que la Constitution reflétait les conceptions françaises, qu’elle était en fait “française” et, à ce titre, acceptable et bonne.

Le second a porté l’idée que, par un vote positif, on “renforcerait la position française au sein de l’Europe” afin d’éviter que ne l’emportent les forces malignes du libéralisme et du marché (version du oui de gauche) ou les tentatives de nos partenaires de grignoter les avantages que la France retirerait de l’UE (version plus cynique du oui de droite).

Le message transporté par cette argumentation était bien gallo-centriste : il considérait comme acquise la supériorité des conceptions constitutionnelles et politiques de la France et impliquait une vision quelque peu dédaigneuse des discussions qui avaient permis le compromis final.

and:

La tendance est à brocarder le byzantisme de la bureaucratie bruxelloise, sans comprendre que le processus politique européen, pour complexe et sinueux qu’il soit, est souvent infiniment plus ouvert à la délibération, plus riche et diversifié que ne l’est le processus administratif et législatif français.

Philip Stevens in the Financial Times, 6 June 2005:

Europe’s crisis – and this is one of those rare moments when crisis is not an overstatement – does not look quite the game, set and match for the British that some imagined only a few days ago. The wounding of France’s Jacques Chirac and the separate electoral troubles of Germany’s Gerhard Schröder do indeed leave the newly re-elected Mr Blair as the continent’s strongest leader. Yet if the EU descends into angry stasis, there will be nothing to lead. And, if only for the benefit of the Eurosceptics, it is worth pointing out that France voted against, not for, the idea of reducing the EU to a simple trade bloc Europe.

Wojciech Kosc in Transitions On-Line, 6 June 2005:

Indeed, it seems that, for Prime Minister Marek Belka, France’s rejection of the European Constitution gives Poland even more reason to adopt the constitution. “We should go forward to show our determination and that we are Europeans,” Belka said. “It is also a chance for us to strengthen our position in the EU.”

Marek Borowski, leader of a young left-wing party, the Polish Social Democrats, believes it could do more than strengthen Poland: A Polish Yes could result in a longed-for reversal in the roles that Poland and France have played in Europe. “This is a great opportunity for Poland,” Borowski said on 29 May. “It’s always been France that decided about the integration. Now we can say how we understand it.”

and:

For Pawel Dembinski, a Polish-born professor at Freiburg University in Switzerland, one thread lines the polar differences between countries like France and Poland: egotistical, nation-centered attitudes. That will help neither the old EU-15, with its fears about the effects of enlargement, nor the new member-states which, he contends, only want to milk the EU of its money. Such attitudes cannot coexist, Dembinski wrote in the daily Rzeczpospolita on 3 June.

“In order to create and maintain the unity of Europe, we need politicians who will be able to explain to the people that a Europe of egos has no future. Even the constitutional treaty would not prevent that. The problem is there are no such politicians. Neither in the West, nor in the East,” Dembinski concluded.

“A Mayday Call for Enlargement”, Transitions On-Line, 6 June 2005:

As Europe’s sputtering “motor” goes through those national debates, the EU’s would-be members need to be encouraged to reform and to prepare themselves for membership. If Europe’s leaders then feel that they need a referendum before future enlargement and if the vote is then “no,” so be it: Years of trying to join the EU would have helped the transformation of the western Balkans, Ukraine, Moldova and – hopefully, one day – also Belarus.

A rejection of further enlargement, though, would show that some of the post-World War II divisions in Europe persist. If that is the case, the end of the post-war period could be traced back to 29 May 2005. Perhaps it is appropriate that there was also another anniversary this May: the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Sergei Borisov in Transitions On-Line, 6 June 2005:

Diplomatic meetings regularly lay claim to be history-making, but when the foreign ministers of three nuclear powers and the world’s two most populous nations meet for the first time outside an international forum, the term can perhaps be used with some justice.

Still, it was not clear what type of history the foreign ministers of Russia, China, and India were making when they met on 2 June, with Russian observers ranging in their assessments from a sober categorization as a “development of cooperation” to the grander notion that they were “creating a counter-revolutionary alliance.”