1. Universal values are at stake
2. We are in the same boat together
3. Poland could be committing a breach of contract

Universal values are at stake

I am not a subjectivist, although I am not a total objectivist either. So I do believe that at least some universal moral principles exist, but I recognise that with all the differences in culture, history and (as a consequence) terminology and ideas it can be difficult to identify them and spell out what they entail. In Europe and within the European Union, however, it should be possible to get a long way towards formulating common values which are fundamental to European societies. And the point with universal values is that not only do they apply to all, they are also a concern to all.

When looking for universal, or at least European, values, we will probably find that the most fundamental of these are closely related to, or rooted in, the Christian principle of agapè, which has found its way into modern conceptions like individual sovereignty and rights, self-fulfillment, democracy, and non-interference by the state. The basic idea, I think, is that every individual has value and deserves respect and recognition as an individual with moral capabilities and a right to exist. This principle precedes any disagreement we might have with the person concerned on the choices he makes or the acts he commits. And yes, issues like discrimination and gay marriage fall under this principle, because they are basically about recognising people as individuals in their own right.

It also seems to me that rants against any person or group for the fact that they exist are a violation of agapè-related principles. This is the more true in an unequal power relationship, i.e. the more the person or institutions who do the ranting represent the majority of society or have influence that affects the lives of those ranted against. Political, religious and opinion leaders with influence especially have a responsibility to show restraint, more so than regular Joe indulging in pub-talk – without wanting to exonerate him from his responsibility on a more local level: it is all about context.

Context, and the agapè-related principle of putting the weakest party first, is also what should rule so-called free speech issues like this one brought up by the beatroot. Actually, I don’t think freedom of speech is very useful as a moral principle at all – “freedom of dialogue” perhaps would be a better term, though I am open to suggestions. The idea is that public (political) speech without the intention to communicate, i.e. which does not depart from the opponent’s value as an individual, is not that worthy of protection, especially when the speaker is in a stronger societal position than the person or group he is talking about. Which is one reason why I am more sympathetic of applying “free speech” to parades claiming gay rights than to MEPs comparing women having abortions to Nazis.

We are in the same boat together

Poland is, just like my own home country, a member of the European Union. Polish citizens vote for the same European Parliament as I do. Their representatives there, and their ministers in the Council, vote and negotiate on the same laws as my ministers in the Council and my representatives in the European Parliament. The laws they adopt together apply to Poles as well as to me. Therefore, whether Poland’s government consists of bigoted idiots or of social progressives makes a difference for my own life as well. Methinks that should be enough reason for me to have an opinion on the outcome of the Polish elections.

Note also that I do not believe in the atomist conception of democracy as a mere summation of separate, individual votes (implying that Poles vote like they want, I vote like I want, and the summation of all this says what we want together). Counting the votes is only the last step of the democratic process. Much more fundamentally, democracy is not about voting, but about deliberation and mutual recognition: it is common decision-making, with the emphasis on ‘common’.

And yes, although we should always respect the unwelcome outcome of an orderly election and look at our own lack of cogency as the cause, voters can most definitely be wrong, misguided or stupid. Just because your side lost in the vote this does not mean you have to swallow your opinion.

Poland could be committing a breach of contract

Then, there is the point of what Poland signed up to when becoming a member of the EU. If the new government now decides that it does not like what EU legislation (the so-called acquis communautaire), the Accession Treaty and the Treaty of Nice say on fundamental rights then that is fine – but in that case they should opt to leave the EU again. It was, after all, a take-it-or-leave-it package deal.

Not that the law is infallible of course. The law does not coincide with nor is it a subset of morality, though it is an input to moral considerations. In other words: even if Poland is not breaking the law, it could still be wrong. But if it does break the law, this could be a reason to kick it out of the European Union. Note that the latter is not a necessity: as a pragmatist, I would say that the morality of the end result counts. So if threatening to kick out Poland helps to force its political leadership to stop undermining the position of minorities, threatening Poland may be a good idea. But if it has the reverse effect because the population rallies behind its current leaders, a different strategy should apply.

So what does the law say?

First of all, before the new member states were admitted as members of the EU, they were required to fulfill the Copenhagen criteria formulated by the 1993 summit of government leaders (European Council) in Copenhagen. They say:

Membership criteria require that the candidate country must have achieved:

• stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities;
• the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union;
• the ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic & monetary union.

“Human rights” in this context means human rights as formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of the UN, the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its thirteen Protocols (listed here) of the Council of Europe (not to be confused with the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU that was also included in the text of the European Constitution), and of course, the human rights paragraphs in the EU treaties themselves (see below).

The UDHR and the ECHR include the usual stuff, like the prohibition of torture and the right to a fair trial (CIA camps, anyone?). There is (art. 14 ECHR) also the prohibition of discrimination on all kinds of grounds, although some of these (including sexual orientation) apply only if they are guaranteed by national (or other, e.g. EU) law. Interestingly, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has (so far?) rejected calls to apply the right to marry (art. 12 ECHR) to gays and lesbians, but it has ruled it applies to transsexuals (defined according to their new gender).

There is also article 17 on the abuse of rights, which not only limits the use of free speech (for instance for holocaust deniers) but also basically tells Mr Kaczynski that there is no way back once a fundamental right has been established:

Nothing in this Convention may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein or at their limitation to a greater extent than is provided for in the Convention.

Another interesting article is number 8 on the right to a private and family life, which has been interpreted by the Court as meaning that it is illegal to prohibit committing consensual homosexual acts in private.

Then there are Protocols 6 and 13 prohibiting the death penalty, both signed by Poland.

Next, there is article 6 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), which sub 1 and 2 firmly establishes the EU as a Union of values, and which incorporates the ECHR human rights into EU law:

1. The Union is founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law, principles which are common to the Member States.

2. The Union shall respect fundamental rights, as guaranteed by the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms signed in Rome on 4 November 1950 and as they result from the constitutional traditions common to the Member States, as general principles of Community law.

Note how indent 1 outlines broad principles fundamental to both the Union and the member states in everything they do, whereas indent 2 lists more specific principles underpinning the laws made by the EU. That the fundamental principles of article 6(1) are taken seriously is proved by the fact that breaching article 6(1) is the only ground on which a member state can, eventually, be kicked out of the European Union (article 7).

Additionally, the Treaty on European Community in article 13 singles out discrimination as something so bad that it apparently warrants Community action. The article specifically includes discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation:

1. Without prejudice to the other provisions of this Treaty and within the limits of the powers conferred by it upon the Community, the Council, acting unanimously on a proposal from the Commission and after consulting the European Parliament, may take appropriate action to combat discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation.

As you see, article 13 requires unanimity in the Council, meaning that the new Polish government would in principle be able to block new EU legislation in this field. On the other hand, EU legislation and programmes based on article 13 that already exist now apply in Poland as well thanks to its signature under the accession treaty (article 2). This would include for instance Directive 2000/78/EC which prohibits employment-related discrimination on any grounds, including sexual orientation.

The human rights and rule of law requirements in the Copenhagen criteria have led to substantial reform in the ten accession countries, and still continue to do so in the (probable) future member states Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia and Turkey. Examples include the abolishment of discriminating laws and law clauses that still existed in many of the new member states, and programmes to help change discriminating policies and attitudes of state officials. But writing new laws is one thing, implementing and enforcing them is of course another. And as we have seen in Poland, it takes even more time and effort to change attitudes and ancient habits – a process that is not helped in any way when a government is in power that does not even want those changes.

Moreover, the Copenhagen criteria were political criteria, in the sense that the decision they had been fulfilled was made by politicians (i.c. government leaders), not judges. Rigging, therefore, was easy, and it is clear that in 2004, the political importance of having the ten countries join all at the same time had precedence over the desire to apply the criteria to the letter. This becomes clear from the fact that reports by human rights NGOs and even the Commission (for whoever cared to read more than just the summaries) on the situation “on the ground” remained critical. It also becomes clear from the fact that government leaders allowed Poland to attach a rather dodgy Declaration to the accession treaty, which reads:

Declaration by the Government of the Republic of Poland concerning public morality

The Government of the Republic of Poland understands that nothing in the provisions of the Treaty on European Union, of the Treaties establishing the European Communities and the provisions of treaties amending or supplementing those treaties prevents the Polish State in regulating questions of moral significance, as well as those related to the protection of human life.

Fortunately, “public morality” is generally (and certainly by human rights judges) understood rather limitedly, and the Polish declaration is clearly meant as a safeguard against legal abortion and (possibly) euthanasia. Moreover, a unilateral declaration by the Polish government does not prejudge in any legal way the contents of the European and human rights treaties and laws. But it does show where government leaders stood with their ambition level at the time they concluded the Accession Treaty. An assessment of the wisdom of that choice is beyond the scope of this blog posting (meaning that I am prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt as I haven’t entirely made up my mind about it). But as the new Polish government seems intent on moving things backward again, there seems every reason to keep a close eye on it.

Whoever thought ayatollah Ratzinger’s enthusiastic reception in Germany by thousands of catholic youth was just an exception should now really get suspicious. I certainly do, when I see even Germany’s liberals take over the arch-conservative agenda:

Karriere-Männern, die ihre Kinder abgeben (wie unser Herr Außenminister) oder nicht mal selbst welche produzieren, muß dringend klar gemacht werden, was es bedeutet, die Brut aufzuziehen. Deswegen bin ich für das Wahlrecht für Kinder: Wenn Eltern pro Kind eine Stimme mehr bekommen, werden sich die Prioritäten in Politik und Wirtschaft sehr rasch verschieben [...]

It should urgently be made clear to career men, who hand in their children elsewhere (like our Foreign Minister) or don’t even produce any themselves, what it means to bring up the brood. That is why I am in favour of voting rights for children: If parents had one extra vote per child, priorities in politics and the economy would shift very quickly [...]

This feels like we are back in 1900. I mean, what more tricks can you think of to adapt the political system to your own specific interests? Of course, life is not always easy for working parents, especially in countries where part-time work hardly exists and daycare facilities are still in their infancy (huh huh). But does “life is not always easy for X” warrant giving X extra votes? I should not think so.

Of course, you could argue that children should be accounted for as individuals wherever, and as much as, this is possible. Hence the left-liberal argument for child benefit as an individual income for the child, paid to the parents as its tutors.

But the “treat children as individuals” argument does not imply giving them the right to vote as well. In fact, the individualist argument is a little shaky already when applied to child benefit. After all, it is not the child itself but its parents who get to spend the extra income, and there is no guarantee parents use it to invest in their children. Still, child benefit can be accepted as it is as there is no other way to do this than through the parents, and as other arguments speak for it too. Those would be more holistic, like: children are a long term interest of society as a whole, or social-democratic, like: government should ensure that low income parents too can afford having children.

Money, however, is a necessity: people can not live without it. They can live without a vote: thousands of people in western societies do that happily – by their own choice, or because they have foreign citizenship. Consequently, the arguments to give people a vote need to be stronger than the arguments to provide them with money.

The argument for money is an individualist one: you need and use money for your own good (or, in this case, that of your own children). The right to vote, on the other hand, is much less individualist than communitarian, as you use it, perhaps, to defend your own interests, but more so to help shape the society you live in and your relationship to it. Arguments for granting someone the right to vote therefore derive, not so much from the mere fact that someone exists, but from the fact that he/she is recognised as a full member of society whose opinion on public matters is valuable to society. This is why most countries exclude the mentally ill, foreigners and children from the right to vote. This is also why it is contradictory to want the right to vote for a category (children) without actually giving them this right (vote by proxy through the parents).

Closer examination of Silvana Koch-Merin’s arguments reveals that, indeed, the proxy vote she favours would not be a vote on behalf of the children but an extra vote for their parents’ interests. They find it difficult to combine work and parenthood – a combination which is their own life choice, not a necessity (Yes, it may be a necessity for some or even many, but we have child benefit as a much less drastic instrument to deal with this situation. And yes, I am sympathetic to that life choice and I would vote for measures making it easier to make that choice, even though I do not have any children myself).

All in all, the “voting rights for kids” is just a silly idea, which serves nothing else than helping the FDP to suck up to conservatives promoting a certain way of life. And you wonder why, as current polls point to a “Grand Coalition” of christian-democrats and social-democrats, with the FDP in the opposition, as the most likely election outcome.

Would the FDP, being a liberal party, reject the communitarian arguments I gave and choose only the individualist ones, ideological coherence leads to the conclusion that foreign citizens too should get the right to vote in Germany. Their case seems a lot stronger than that of children.

Is this another example of “activist law-making”, as argued by opponents of the change? Well, perhaps, and that certainly increases the risk of losing popular support: Already, the conservative opposition has announced it will seek a revote of the law if it wins the next elections. But even if the law is activist and politically risky, that does not make it morally wrong to pursue its adoption. In fact, the Canadian government has done admirably what governments in a democracy are supposed to do: to show leadership and vision, also in the face of public opposition.

What keeps surprising me in debates like these, is not so much the opposition itself, but the lack of philosophical coherence behind that opposition. If same-sex marriage was opposed solely on the grounds of religion or tradition, I could easily accept (though not agree with) that argument. But more often than not, opposition comes from people calling themselves Liberals or Conservatives: People who, supposedly at least, put individual liberty first and who have a healthy distrust of state intervention in people’s personal lives.

How do they combine such principles with homophobic state intrusion?

** update ** The Spanish parliament has delivered, increasing the number of Truly Civilised Countries (TM) to four in the world. Next in line: Cambodia?

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 misunderstanding here is that Dutch people have a long tradition of tolerance. This is not true. The way I would put it, is that over the ages, Dutch people have not so much learned to tolerate, as well as to ignore differences.

Building a nation on calvinism
A key period in this respect, at least in terms of self-definition, was the Reformation of the sixteenth century, when many people in the area that is now the Netherlands converted to protestantism. This coincided with a rise of economic prosperity and increasing self-confidence of the merchant and burgher class. So much so, that when Spanish King Philip II (who inherited the region from his father, Emperor Charles V) tried to raise taxes, the result was popular resistance and a war of independence that lasted for 80 years. The Republic of the United Netherlands was born, and went on to become a world power (lest anyone forgot).

However, standing up against the lawful King dit not sit very comfortably with contemporary, and calvinist, notions that it was immoral to overthrow a government God had placed above us – even if that government acted immorally itself (cf. Kant, who thought likewise). The official justification, therefore, could not rest on conflicting views on taxation and the distribution of power, as was actually the case, but needed something higher. Religion came in useful. Calvinism puts moral, and religious, responsibility firmly with the individual believer, which means that worldly rulers cannot impose their religion by force. But as that was exactly what Philip, a devote catholic, tried to do, protestants could argue that they had no other choice: The Dutch national anthem, which originated in this period, still maintains that “I have always been faithful to the King of Spain”. Protestantism became the rallying and nation-building force in the Netherlands throughout and long after the 80 Years’ War.

Half of the country though (in essence, the southern provinces which remained in Spanish hands for most of the war) was still catholic. With a nascent national identity that was so closely knitted to protestantism, this was a little awkward, even if the official mythology has it “religious freedom” was the main issue of the war. It is here that we see one of the first clear examples of “tolerance” as it would be practised in the Netherlands for centuries to come : With power and richess firmly in the hands of the western, protestant, provinces, the country’s elite decided to ignore the presence of the large catholic minority as much as it could. Mainstream culture was to remain protestant. But although religious leaders argued in favour of taking measures against the catholics, nothing was done that would antagonise them sufficiently to begin an insurrection. Catholics were free to hold church services, as long as this happened out of sight for the rest of the population. It was only in the nineteenth century that they regained the right to build their own churches. Their social status and prospects remained lower until deep into the nineteenth century, which showed e.g. in lower literacy rates.

Pillars keep people apart
The same method was followed in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, when a new potentially destabilising group entered the stage: the socialists. This time again, the situation was pacified by keeping ordinary folks organised within their own group, separate from the others, while their leaders sorted out the necessary political compromises between them. “Pillarisation”, or consociationalism as it was baptised by Arend Lijphart, was going to be the model organising Dutch society for most of the nineteenth and twentieth century. As a Dutch catholic, you went to catholic schools, were a member of catholic sports and other clubs, you belonged to a catholic trade union, watched television programmes made by the catholic broadcasting corporation and you voted for the catholic party. Likewise for the (since the nineteenhundreds) two protestant and one socialist “pillar”, and only slightly less likewise for the liberal one. Only the “tops” of the pillars, i.e. the leaders of organisations and political parties, would interact with each other and negotiate over whatever was necessary to keep the country as a whole running.

I should add that like in many northern-European countries, wether this is due to pillarisation or not, the pressure to conform is enormous within each social group. Hence the fact that, analogously to Scandinavia with its Jante law, most Dutchmen consider the saying “Act normal, that’s strange enough” equally, perhaps more, characteristic of their culture than tolerance.

The pillars disappeared only slowly, and not even completely, in the course of the late sixties and seventies of the twentieth century, mostly because the role of religion in the lives of (autochtonous) Dutch decreased. Also, people no longer felt committed to only one social group or political cause, but more often to several. Conformism as a cultural trait, however, remained. At a time when social progressiveness was the social norm set by political and opinion leaders, i.e. during most of the seventies, this allowed for the introduction of policies that would be anything but centrist in most other countries. Examples are the famous Dutch cannabis policy and, later, gay marriage and euthanasia. How effective the conforming process was, becomes clear from the fact that, as far as the majority of the population is concerned, none of these measures is subject to much discussion. And as long as they are not perceived as a clear threat to people’s everyday lives, this progressiveness is probably there to stay.

This is different as regards policies towards the one million or so inhabitants of foreign descent living in the Netherlands. Most of them are muslims originating from Turkey and North-Africa. They, or their parents or grand-parents, were invited to the Netherlands and surrounding countries in the nineteen-sixties and early seventies, as unskilled workers doing the impopular jobs of which there were plenty at the time. Problems arose when those jobs disappeared and many of these first generation immigrants could not find new jobs due to lacking language and education skills. The same top-down conformism that had brought liberal cannabis laws, now also brought the social policies seen as common-sense at the time. So the approach was to provide generous unemployment and other benefits, rather than taking the education and engagement measures prescribed by current, more liberal, views of the state as a springboard rather than a safety net.

Another important factor was the idea that immigrant workers would stay only “temporarily” and return to their country of origin after a few years of work in western Europe. This meant that there was no reason, for either side, to invest time, money or effort in a life together. It also reinforced the “natural” inclination of Dutch people to treat their new compatriots as they would anyone belonging to a “pillar” different from their own: with disinterest and disapproval.

The Fortuyn revolution: Lord of the Flies revisited
Then, finally, there is what I would call the “democratisation of social behaviour”. In the seventeeth century already, foreign visitors complained how rude, blunt and impolite the Dutch were. Now this was partly because these high-ranking diplomats and statesmen found it difficult to accept that ordinary people – commoners, and even women – treated them as they would people of their own rank. Such deep sense of equality is, of course, only a good thing. New however since the Fortuyn revolution, is the aggressiveness with which people assert their equal rights (or their interpretation of it). It is as if they have suddenly discovered the many rights and liberties granted to them by the modern state of law, but, like the boys in Lord of the Flies, without realising that with freedom comes responsibility.

Pim Fortuyn himself was a typical example: “I say what I think” was his motto – and damn the consequences if it was misinterpreted. So he said things like “the country is full” and “islam is a backward religion” – opinions that had their merit when put in the proper context and when softened with the nuances even Fortuyn in the end acknowledged, but which also fueled (without the nuances) his immense popularity among racists. When journalists asked if this did not disturb him, the typical reply was: “Don’t worry, they are in good hands with me”. Theo van Gogh, of course, fitted in the same category, with his remarks on burning Jews and on Muslims being goat fuckers (and these too have to be seen in their context which, in the case of Van Gogh, was that he simply offended everyone without discrimination).

In the wake of opinion leaders like Fortuyn and Van Gogh, more people felt encouraged to drop whatever old courtesy rules held them back, and to blurt it all out. In the name of free speech of course, and with the intent of “starting a dialogue”. And it has to be said that some of the subjects raised certainly are worth a discussion – the positions of women and homosexuals in muslim immigrant groups for instance. But it has always baffeld me how exactly you get someone to start a dialogue with you by slinging the deepest possible insults at him. So I do not entirely understand the outrage caused by an editor at Index on Censorship when he wrote that Van Gogh “abuse[d] his right to free speech”. Even if the article could have been more nuanced, it certainly had a point – namely that, as John Kerry might have said: “You can be legal, but you can be wrong!”. Even if the law allows something, it may still be ethically wrong to do it.

In my view, the angry reactions to the “free speech abuse article” are typical for modern western society, where people are increasingly rights-oriented instead of virtue-oriented. They do indeed, as Buttiglione said (and as he does himself!), fail to distinguish between morality and the law. But that discussion is for later in this series.

This is part II in a series on values. Next: Part III, Failing States in East and West. Previous: Part I: Introduction

An increasingly frightened and insecure population yearns for solutions. And on both sides of the Atlantic, an increasingly confident political right provides them. But which values are under threat? And, most of all, where are the socially progressives in this debate?

Most of the analysis I see does not do justice to the complexity of the situation. I miss things. For instance, I do not think the Netherlands is or ever was a tolerant country. Indifferent: yes, but tolerant: no.

Secondly, I think we should distinguish between the muslim extremism that originated in the dictatorships in the Middle-East (like Bin Laden’s or Palestinian extremism), and the “new” muslim extremism motivating disgruntled youths who grew up in the West (like the murderer of Van Gogh). Their anger seems to be directed not at western policies in the East, but at western policies at home. If that is true, we are dealing with different problems, requiring different solutions.

Thirdly, “values”, in my view, is a dangerous catch-all term obfuscating our view of what they entail. Modern society, in particular its socially progressive part, have lost track of which values really underpin modern society, and have difficulty formulating them. The modern right has fewer inhibitions refering both to ‘values’ in general and to actual values like ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, or ‘respect for the individual’ – but, it seems, not always in their modern meaning. This confuses the debate, and risks taking it in a direction most people would not agree with.

I have been trying to combine all the elements I just mentioned in one big, comprehensive, analytical essay. Due to time and other constraints, however, I find it difficult to complete that analysis in the foreseeable future, or at least before the whole debate is over. Therefore I have decided to split up the essay into smaller parts which are easier to handle for me and allow me to develop my thoughts over time. It has the additional advantage that the smaller composite parts fit better into the ordinary ‘blog’ format. I may or may not revise or combine the individual parts later. Keep watching this space.

This is part I in a series on values. Next: Part II, Tolerance in the Netherlands.

But could they have a case? Could it be that the politically correct thought police (not my words!) is judging Mr Buttiglione, who is definitely one of the most interesting of the new Commissioners, unfairly? I, for one, would not a priori exclude that possibility, so let us try to find out.

Two aspects in particular seem to be important: 1. Mr Buttiglione’s views on moral issues, and 2. how he intends to (not) translate these into politics.

1. Moral views: Sin, single mothers and homosexuality
Mr Buttiglione’s views on a number of key issues, which are close to the Vatican’s, have been widely reported in the media. Homosexuals are, in his opinion, sinners, marriage exists so women can raise children under the protection of their husbands, and a single mother is not a very good person.

However, Mr Buttiglione has also said that he does not regard most other sinners worse than himself, which, although hardly comforting for the thousands of gay adolescents struggling with their sexuality, still is an important nuance. On single mothers he later said that he had been quoted out of context, and that what he said was a metaphore for transatlantical relations (although this does not alter the fact that, for a metaphor, most speakers use images they assume are obvious for their audience). It should also be added that Mr Buttiglione did not mean to say women should not work at all – in fact, his party favours better facilities for working mothers so they can combine childcare with a career.

Whatever the nuances, it is clear that Mr Buttiglione’s values are, in the broad European context, on the conservative side. This is also how he sees it himself, for instance when formulating his political CDU party’s political credo (emphasis by eulogist):

Dobbiamo saper essere conservatori sul terreno dei grandi valori, riformisti su quello delle politiche istituzionali, liberali nell’economia e democratico-cristiani nelle politiche sociali, privilegiando, sempre e comunque, la difesa in concreto della dignità di ogni singola persona umana.

This conservatism emanates clearly from the central place of the family in CDU’s political programme. And make no mistake: it is an “obvious truth” that a ‘family’ can only consist of a man and a woman: “la famiglia è costituita da un uomo e una donna“. On its website, the leader of CDU’s parliamentary group underlines strongly that gay and unmarried couples do not qualify as families, for instance when allocating social housing. Such an “obvious manipulation of reality” could never be tolerated:

Per primi su questi temi siamo intervenuti, come per primi, nel settembre del 1996, con il collega Giovanardi, abbiamo sollevato il problema della sostanziale parità di trattamento nell’assegnazione delle abitazioni popolari tra famiglie riconosciute dalla Costituzione, coppie di fatto e coppie gay. Il nostro Stato democratico, la nostra Costituzione e il nostro Parlamento non posso accettare quest’evidente manipolazione della realtà.

Not surprisingly, Mr Buttiglione and his CDU party are strongly opposed to abortion (legalised by ‘law 194′ in Italy) and any research in the field of therapeutical cloning. And the French daily Le Monde recalls in an article how Mr Buttiglione stopped very short of calling AIDS a punishment from God at a Vatican sponsored conference in 1989.

However, as his supporters do not cease to point out, Mr Buttiglione does endorse the anti-discrimination paragraphs in the EU Treaties (articles 6 and 7 TEU, article 13 TEC).

2. Moral and legal laws: Kant and freedom
So far Mr Buttiglione’s values. The real test is, of course, in his actions: he is entitled to be as conservative as he wants in his opinions, but as long as his policies take sufficient account of other views there should not be any problem. In his hearing by the European Parliament’s committee on civil liberties, justice and home affairs (LIBE), the professor of philosophy refered to Immanuel Kant to make clear that not everything that is immoral should be prohibited: “I may think that homosexuality is a sin, and this has no effect on politics, unless I say that homosexuality is a crime.”

Kant, famous for his “categorical imperative” as the prime motivator of moral action, did indeed distinguish between moral and legal laws. As an intentionalist, someone who is interested in the motivation behind people’s actions, he attached great value to moral righteousness: people should do the right thing of their own accord, not because they are forced to. Most of what is ‘right’ should be achieved by people doing the right thing out of conviction. Coercion by law is there only for what remains. For Kant, what is morally right could be discovered from the general principle laid down in his categorical imperative: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”. Its extension to the realm of politics meant that there should be established: “A constitution allowing the greatest possible human freedom in accordance with laws which ensure that the freedom of each can coexist with the freedom of all the others.” This leads to a rather limited expectation of how much of ‘the right thing’ can be achieved through the state. The role of the state, according to Kant, was therefore not to make people happy (which was why he opposed utilitarianism); happiness was something for the individual.

If this seems quite liberal, we should not forget that for Kant, there was only one moral right: he was definitely not a moral relativist or subjectivist, nor did he, in his time, have to deal with the problem of clashing value systems forced to coexist within one state or globalised world. The “internalisation (into the individual conscience) of moral sources” that is characteristic for modern western thought and is the source of its built-in tolerance had only just begun in Kant’s time.

It is this caveat which we, as modern readers, should keep in mind when reading 18th-century pleas for individual freedom like Kant’s. Even more so when when they return in 21st-century accounts drawing heavily on thinking that predates the Enlightenment, like those of conservative christians. Mr Buttiglione favours “individual freedom”, “respect for the person” and “non-discrimination” and refers to Kant in order to make clear that “not everything” should be regulated by law. Familiar and reassuring words, that seem to refer to modern concepts. But this freedom, respect and non-discrimination is entirely defined within a value system that substantially predates modernity, a value system that is rigid, unipolar and external, and which is the only, unquestionable, road to morality. Kant, who after all was also a product of his time, saw no contradiction between his plea for equality and individual freedom, and his standpoint that woman could never be eligible to vote. Much in the same way, for Mr Buttiglione, his concept of freedom and non-discrimination does not include things like abortion or equal treatment of homosexuals. It is, quite literally, “freedom, but not as we know it”.

It is also this pre-Enlightenment kind of ‘liberation’ which is refered to in the names of movements like “Communione e Liberazione“, which was cofounded by Mr Buttiglione. It is “fundamentalist” in the true sense of the word: it is highly critical of the “hedonism” of the modern world and does not distinguish between politics and the doctrines of faith. Nor, it has to be feared, does Mr Buttiglione, who, for instance, tried to remove sexual orientation from the list of prohibited grounds for discrimination in the European Constitution. This is the same list he now vowes to defend as a Commissioner.

From the non-fundamentalist point of view, there are still numerous discrepancies between the principles of human rights and non-discrimination laid down in the EU Treaties on the one hand, and Member State and EU laws and practices on the other. Think of differences in ‘age of consent’ for hetero- and homosexuals, the position of women, reproductive rights or the mutual recognition of national marriage and partnership arrangements. The European Commission could play an important role in bringing more unity and consistency with fundamental principles in this area. As I pointed out earlier, Mr Buttiglione would, in his role of European Commissioner for Justice and Home Affairs, be the sole person who could take initiatives in this area, but it should be clear by now that he will not do so. That is the main problem with his appointment: not what he will do (as we still have the Council and the European Parliament to block any proposals that are too much out of centre), but what he will not do.

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updated: 23-10-04 16:40

latest news updates:
26-10-04 13:47 – Le président des eurodéputés libéraux tente de sauver la Commission Barroso (Le Monde)
26-10-04 10:05 – Barroso warns of EU crisis, urges Parliament to accept his 24-member team (CNN)
26-10-04 05:00 – Concessions offered by EC president as crunch vote looms (Guardian)
22-10-04 14:07 – M. Barroso reste sous la menace d’une censure du Parlement européen (le Monde)
22-10-04 08:45 – No absolution for Buttiglione (EurActiv)
21-10-04 18:01 – Buttiglione peace plan rejected (EUpolitix)
21-10-04 14:30 – Barroso’s EU line-up stays – Buttiglione ‘sorry’ (EUpolitix)
21-10-04 12:32 – Barroso offers to cut Buttiglione duties (FT)