Tuesday, June 25, 2013
A0.08 (Oudemanhuispoort)
The EU is in the throes not just of an economic crisis linked to the Euro, but also a political crisis linked to the impact on European democracy of the policies and processes engaged in efforts to solve the crisis. These have exacerbated long-standing problems with regard not only to the EU’s democratic legitimacy but also to European solidarity. Democratic legitimacy has suffered as a result of the fact that citizens have even less say in the decisions that affect them than in the past. The excessively intergovernmental process of Eurozone crisis decision-making, in which member-state leaders in the European Council decide, the European Parliament is sidelined, and the European Commission serves as a secretariat, has unbalanced the long-standing ‘democratic’ settlement for EU governance—in which all three institutions pulled their weight. Not only does this preclude parliamentary debates that could serve to amend and/or legitimize policies negotiated behind closed doors by the Council but it also straightjackets the Commission with regard to implementation. The technocratic automaticity of the rules decided—consisting of more and more stringent pacts for fiscal consolidation—has made any real ‘economic governance’ by the Commission impossible. The results are bad policies that undermine ‘output’ legitimacy because of their recessionary and deflationary economic effects; bad processes that undermine ‘throughput’ legitimacy because of rule-making that lacks transparency, accountability, access, or efficacy; and bad politics that undermine ‘input legitimacy’ because of their lack of citizen participation and their reduction in citizen representation. These only fuel further citizen disaffection from the EU as well as disillusionment with their own leaders whose discourses often also stoke the fires of nationalism by rejecting any real Europe-wide solidarity—fiscal as well as social—that could bring an end to the crisis. Is there any wonder, therefore, that we see the rise of extremist parties on the right and the left, ready to jettison the Euro and, possibly, the EU?
