This note argues that the lack of awareness of our shared interests as Europeans
is one of the main causes for the inexistence of a true European constituency
made up of individual able to act politically upon their interests at
continental level. Mainstream European political parties have not taken up the
challenge of articulating such interests at pan-European level and have rather
left the work of engaging with their citizens to national parties.
The
result is that decisions at European level – especially in areas where the EU
as no (or limited) competence – are taken often on the basis of national
interests, which recent crises have proved to be against the overall European
interest and, ultimately, against that of its citizens.
This short
piece therefore suggests that investments need to be made on raising awareness
of our common interest as Europeans and to the definition of a clearer vision
for Europe in the 21st century. This would contribute to transforming
Europeans citizens into a constituency willing (and able) to put forward
ambitious reforms for Europe that require significant transfers of sovereignty
and, therefore, broad citizens' support.
1. Global challenges but national interests in Europe.
Challenges
are increasingly global. It is increasingly obvious that many issues cannot be
dealt with effectively by any single country alone. This is clear for most
challenges such as climate change, global governance, migration, smuggling,
terrorism, tax evasion just to name a few.
However,
in the absence of a global political sphere, the legitimacy to deal with any of
these global challenges is often constructed at the national level. It follows
that the approaches that are defined to tackle such challenges are often framed
as opposing national interest, or as opposing interests of actors at various
levels (e.g. local or global level).
In
Europe, thanks to the European Union and its institutions, the articulation of
interests can go one level higher compared to what happens in most countries. The
iteration between the expression of citizens' interests and the decision-making
process does not happen only at local, regional and the national levels but goes
up to the regional/European level. This additional level allows citizens of small
and medium countries to have an impact, through the democratic process, on
issues that they would normally not be able to influence.
However
such enhancement of European citizens' sovereignty does not materialise in all instances.
It does indeed take place in areas where the EU has competence to act and where
the European Commission is in the position to frame its policies in line with a
common European interest. This is certainly the case for the policies
addressing internal EU challenges such as the management of the internal
market, regional development, research and innovation, employment creation.
This is also true for external policies such as trade and, increasingly, for
foreign policy as proved by the creation of the Partnership Instrument which differently
from the other cooperation instruments was introduced precisely with the
objective of promoting the European (and mutual) interests[1].
On
the other hand, such reinforcement of European citizens' sovereignty does not materialise
fully when the European Commission has no competence to deal with an issue and
the power remains in the hands of the European Council. This is because the
Council works largely in an intergovernmental manner and its decisions are informed
by the perceived interests of the majority of the national constituencies that
the various governments represent. The representation of national interests, as
it will be noted later in this paper, often lead to decisions damaging not only
the European interest but also the interests of the citizens that the various national
governments claim to defend.
In
the following pages this national interest bias is further analysed and
some suggestions on how to overcome it in a European context are provided.
2.
Whose interest?
When
hearing the words “European interest” some may even argue that there is not
such a thing, or that the European interest is the sum of the national interest
of its member states. However, that is not always the case. As noted earlier,
if we think of key challenges such as the migration, climate change, defence,
terrorism, economic growth, freedom of movement or ensuring a high level of
welfare, it is easy to confirm that Europeans share a common interest which is
that of dealing with these issues effectively. It is also easy to agree that
dealing with these challenges is also in the national interest of individual
countries.
However,
while the “European interest” and “national interest” are aligned in the long
run, they may collide in the short run, due to electoral cost of burden sharing
and the cost of competence sharing with the EU. In other words, the national
electoral cycle weights-in heavily in the balance between short-term national/electoral
interest and long-term European/general interest. Furthermore, when the two
collide, the former is often preponderant when the competences to deal with the
matter lie in the member states represented in the Council and not in the
European Commission.
Typically,
the clash between these two sets of interests results in the EU's inability to
deliver as the EU does not have the competence to act and, at the same time, member
states do not have the tools to make a meaningful impact at “systemic level”.
In other words, as member states struggle
to keep competences in areas in which they do not have any more the ability to
have an impact, they impede the European level to take the lead and bring about
more effective solutions to the detriment of the citizens. Moreover, reasoning
on the basis of short-term national/electoral interest puts at odds the wish of
national bureaucracies to keep the competence/autonomy to deal with the issue
at stake and the necessity to tackle it at a higher (or more appropriate) administrative
or political level, which lead to a vacuum
of governance/government. The inability to deliver not only has a negative
impact on general trust in the EU (seen as inactive) but also in the national
political systems which are seen unable to deliver on the promises made by
national governments.
When
compromises are reached, often are sub-optimal and insufficiently ambitious to
constitute a definitive solution (i.e. too little, too late syndrome) which leads
to a “permanent emergency situation” which persists throughout the various attempts
to fix what earlier half-baked solutions could not address due to the lack of
political will at national level.
Delays
in dealing with the various crises also results in increasing the costs of
managing them in terms of social cost (e.g. following the economic crisis) and
in significant negative externalities such as the rise of populist parties
(e.g. due to the poor management of the migration crises) and the undermining of
unity among Europeans (e.g Brexit and welfare/mobility debate in the UK).
Last
but not least, decision-making on European issues based on national/electoral
interests creates also a democratic problem in as much as national/electoral
interest of more influential countries (and its citizens who can shape them)
set the agenda and determine what is considered as acceptable and timely for
the EU as a whole.
The
desynchronisation between national and European/global interest also put
citizens in competition with one another as rights which resulted from the
articulation of interests within a national constituency are automatically
extended to third parties without a complementary adjustment placed at
supranational level (e.g. complementary welfare system in case of
mobility). Such adjustments, however,
especially as far as welfare and security are concerned, would require stronger
democratic legitimacy to be put in place and, therefore, a pan-European
constituency ready to rally behind it.
It
follows that decision making on European/global issues according to national
interests jeopardises the ability of Europeans to protect the key principles
that are at the heart of the European project such as solidarity, European
quality of life, equality among Europeans and unity, all of which have been
seriously challenged by the economic crisis, the refugees crises and most
recently by Brexit.
Faced
by challenges - which are increasingly global – Europe is confronted with a
persistent conflict of interest between national/electoral short term interest
represented by national governments and the general/European interest. Despite
the fact that in the long run the two interests may coincide such difference is
exacerbated in the short run. Under the current institutional setting,
national/electoral short-term interest will always prevail over the general
European one, simply because there is not a sufficiently strong and organised
European constituency to which all governments have to respond to and,
ultimately, national governments are only accountable to their own national
electorate (i.e. national interest bias).
In
other words today's EU institutional setting is in a partial deadlock: in the
absence of a European constituency - and faced with the imperfect EU
institutional setting - the most viable solutions seem to be are the well-known
“compromises” that are rarely sufficient solutions in the long run. In such a
scenario, a fundamental change in the way citizens' interests are articulated
at European level is desirable.
3.
Interests require a constituency to matter
Despite
the existence of a European interest – and as noted earlier even of a foreign
policy instrument to promote it - up to now the awareness of such a shared
interest has not trickled down to the majority of European citizens. Europe (or
Brussels) is often talked about as something which is separate from national
politics and often in contraposition with it and with national interests. It
follows that despite the fact of having shared interests, Europeans are not
aware of them and, therefore, they do not act politically to defend them. In other words the citizens of Europe have not
yet developed a sufficient awareness of their shared interest to become a
constituency able to promote change in line with their interests. The result is
that interests keep being articulated primarily at national (and local) level
through national (and local) constituencies. This continues to be the case despite
the fact that the EU runs European elections for the European Parliament and
that so called "European parties" put forward their candidates. Under
such circumstances, why the awareness of belonging to the same constituency
hasn't emerged? This is arguably linked to how political parties - as well as
the EU itself – are structured and work.
Political
parties, which historically had the role of articulating the interests of the citizens
into political action have not delivered on this task at the European level.
Mainstream European parties have rather acted as bureaucratic agglomerates of
largely different national parties that meet before the European elections to
define their minimum common denominator rather than developing direct links
with their (European) constituency. Most importantly, they develop their
minimum common denominator through a process that does not involve their
membership base – which often does not even realise that their party is a
member of a pan-European party.
This
means that the articulation of political interests into political action at
European level through mainstream European parties has not contributed to build
a constituency of European citizens aware of their shared interests and ready
to act politically at European level. Traditional European party up to now have
relied largely on national parties for any relation with the grass-root.
The
"spitzenkandidaten" process, leading to the indirect election of the
President of the European Commission through the European Elections, is
probably the only major improvement towards the Europeanisation of the European elections and contributed to
identify slightly more directly European parties with their affiliated entities
at national level. However, this innovation is certainly not sufficient to
build a sense of belonging to the same constituency. A true pan-European
electoral list could be set up to address this issue at the next European
elections and allowed to be voted by citizens from across the continent. A
proposal along these lines was put forward during the 2009-2014 European
Parliament legislatures but did not gather sufficient support.
At
the same time, if traditional European parties shied away from the attempt of
articulating the interests of European citizens directly at European level,
some pan-European political movements attempted to do so and build such a
pan-European political space for debate. One is the European Federalist Party,
which for the 2014 European elections joined forces with Stand Up for Europe
and took part in European elections in six countries with candidates defending
the same programme drafted and voted by its members from across Europe. Despite
the moderate electoral results, such an attempted to develop a more grass-root
pan-European approach to political participation in Europe showed that it is
possible to articulate interests at European level. The full impact of
initiatives of this kind in building a pan-European constituency is yet to be
assessed, but it seems that that they contributed to trigger a positive
evolution in some mainstream European parties which have also started granting
membership to individuals directly.
Overcoming
the crises by developing a clearer vision for Europe
If we
consider the weak awareness of the European interest among Europeans, and the
sub-optimal functioning of the EU due to the national interest bias and the
lack of a European constituency able to advocate for the European interest, the
crises that Europe has been facing over the past few years are not the main problem,
but they have rather crystallised the shortcomings of the EU's imperfect
institutional architecture.
The more
interesting part of the crisis, therefore, becomes the way we address it. In
Chinese the word crisis (i.e. 危机) is
composed by two characters: "danger" and "opportunity".
From this angle, the crises Europe is facing are certainly "dangers"
as they are putting into question some principles at the heart of the European project
on and could even lead to the disintegration of the EU as we know it. On the
other hand, they could also be "opportunities" to improve the EU's
architecture and enhance the resilience of our institutions and democratic
processes.
To benefit
truly from such crisis, however, we need first to assess what Europe's crises
actually are.
If we
look at the crises that Europe has been facing over the past decade, most of
them are exogenous: the financial crisis that engendered the economic crisis
started in the US, the migration crisis has been triggered by the conflict in
Syria and by the instability in our neighbourhood. The key issue is therefore
why these crises have become permanent conditions. The answer is arguably
threefold:
- they have not been managed decisively, primarily because of short-term national/electoral interests (e.g. euro-crisis),
- they became permanent due to the structural weakness of EU's institutions vis-a-vis member states who constantly delay the implementation of necessary solutions (e.g. migration crisis),
- European leaders acted without a clear vision and did not consider the implications of their (non)decisions (with one notable example being German Chancellor Merkel initial statement on the refugees crisis).
However,
rather than opting to sort out fully the institutional weaknesses and reinforce
the democratic legitimacy of the EU institutions (which would have been needed to
put in place legitimately the ambitious policies needed to address the root-causes
that allowed the crisis to unravel) it was decided to empower the Troika which
was perceived as imposing reforms and supporting technocratic governments. Such
decision turned the crises into a democratic crisis. The latter evolved into the
current political crisis which de-legitimised elected governments in certain
countries, disenfranchised part of the electorate - which reduced its electoral
participation - and ultimately led to the rise of populist and nationalist
parties later galvanised by the poor management of the following crises that
hit Europe.
In
other words Europe - under the national interest bias - muddled through the
recent crises without a clear understanding of what was our shared interest as
Europeans, nor which should have been the guiding principles for our action. In
this light, the actual European crisis can be considered first and foremost as
an identity crisis based on lack of a
shared vision and purpose for the European Union in 2016.
How
to build a European constituency and give room to a European interest?
This
short piece argued that the lack of awareness of our shared interests as
Europeans is a cause for the inexistence of a true European constituency made
up of individual able to act politically on their interests at continental
level. Mainstream European political parties have not taken up the challenge of
attempting to articulate such interests at pan-European level and have rather
left the work of engaging with their citizens to national parties.
The
result is that decisions at European level – especially in areas where the EU
as no (or limited) competence – are taken often on the basis of national interest,
which has proved to be against the overall European interest and that of the
citizens. This has clearly been the case for the recent crises that Europe has faced
which could ultimately be traced back to a more fundamental identity crisis.
Against
this backdrop, how to ensure that Europeans becomes better aware of their
shared European interests and that the EU becomes better able to tackle its
crises?
–
Today's national debates are quasi-waterproof to
one-another, which tend to exacerbate the misunderstanding among Europeans
rather than finding common ground. It is crucial to build true European debates
to understand from a European perspective the various aspects of each crisis: European crises require European debates,
visions and solutions. Awareness of the implications of each crisis by
individuals from across the continent is a necessary condition to create the
necessary empathy among people which
is a necessary condition for solidarity
to emerge.
–
It is time to recognise that European interest and national interest do not necessary coincide
and that increasing national interest also clashes with the citizens' interests
of seeing the current crises overcome. This awareness should be taken into
account when reforming the EU in order to reduce the weight of the institutions
that represent primarily national interests (i.e. European Council). On the
contrary, considering that organisations at any level tend to pursue their own
interests of conserving or maximising their leverage, the concept of “citizens'
interest” instead of “national interest” should be framed as the key principle
of policy-making in Europe.
–
Issues that are considered of national interest
(e.g. national sovereignty, budget, welfare, security) need to be framed within
a European system of checks and balances
ensuring interpersonal justice, interregional justice, intergenerational
justice. To overcome the national interest bias we need to reorganise the
division of tasks/competences and budgets in line with citizens' interests and
develop policies at the appropriate level to respond to European citizens'
needs from as close as possible to them according to the principle of
subsidiarity (e.g. local level, regional level, national level, European level). Passing on national
sovereignty to the more appropriate level will ultimately lead to more
sovereignty for the citizens (not
less as nationalists argue) as people's interests will be translated into
policy decisions better able to deliver than individual national initiatives.
–
It is time to outline a clear European vision:
where is Europe and Europeans heading towards and why? It is crucial to go back
to the source of political legitimacy (i.e. the people) and rediscover together
the principles at the heart of our societies and democracies. At a time where
the search for identity is so pressing, it is fundamental to determine our long
term shared interest and objectives as Europeans (if not as global citizens) in
order to be able to define the institutional tools better placed to achieve
them. Such European dialogue should be a generational exercise carried out
through a pan-European participatory process that would lead to the definition
of a new “social contract” for 21st
century Europe.
Pietro De Matteis, PhD
(Cantab), President of the
European Federalist Party, Board member of Stand
Up for Europe
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