The global financial crisis that has led to the European banking and sovereign-debt crisis has now become a crisis of the Eurozone, the EU, and the European integration project as such. In phase 1 of our group discussions we have identified the lack of effective fiscal and economic governance at the European level as the central reason for the crisis. At the same time as we call for such fiscal and economic governance, we urge our political leaders to hold up democratic principles and adhere to them even in difficult times. After all, democracy is a core principle that we can be proud of as it is, unfortunately, sill a principle that sets Europeans apart from many other regions in the world. Having identified a core structural weakness in Europe, in the last phase we are going to make some concrete suggestions as how to solve the problem. And because democracy is a key factor that we need to take into account, in phase 2 we have tackled that issue.
In particular we have been interested in what democracy means in a European context. In his press statement at the G20, the President of the European Commission said that “in Europe we are democracies” and that this means that sometimes it takes time to make a decision (Barroso 2012):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18501667
His remark was directed at voices from non-democracies that want to advise European leaders on how to solve their problems. While Barroso has rightly suggested that we have a ’Union of 27 democracies’, in the heat of the moment he failed to address the fact that the Union itself is a democracy, even if an imperfect one. In addition to 27 national democracies we have a supranational democracy at the European level. European citizens directly elect their representatives to the European Parliament.
Much of the debate in member states currently evolves around shifting national competencies to the European level and what this would mean for member states. This is presented by some as undermining democracy, since national parliaments lose competencies. However, while national parliaments may lose competencies, the European Parliament may and should gain control over those competencies. Applied to our case, ideally, the European Parliament should exert the same control over fiscal and economic policy as national parliaments currently do. Critics are only right to fear an erosion of democracy in Europe, if the European Parliament is not strengthened accordingly. It is up to political leaders to prove these critics wrong, by further strengthening the powers of the European Parliament.
This is not a zero-sum game, in which national parliaments lose and the European Parliament wins. Globalisation and shifting international power relations increasingly make it difficult for individual member states to cope with the developments. On the one hand, national governments in Europe are increasingly recognizing limits to their capabilities. On the other hand, national governments are increasingly in a more powerful position vis-a-vis their own parliaments in their effort to be effective on the world stage. Either way, national parliaments are effectively weakened. In theory and on paper, they may still be in control, but in practice this is less and less true. Some politicians do not (want to) recognise this development, and stick to a model of national democracy that is becoming out of date, especially in Europe.
From our view, the future of democracy in Europe can only be one where the European Parliament exerts control over all policies that are ’shifted to the European level’ – with the Council functioning as a second chamber and co-deciding with Parliament in appropriate cases. If the European Commission is mandated to exert more control over national budgets, then the European Parliament needs to have a say. The same is true for decisions on how to use tax payers’ money to generate economic growth. Those policies that are best dealt with on a national or sub-national level, should remain under the control of parliaments on the respective level. This way national democracies retain an important role within a European democracy that has a strong supranational democratic element.