The launch event of the Th!nk About It project in Brussels raised a few essential questions when it comes to the EU. While they are not new questions, they still come to people’s minds whenever the discussion takes them towards the essence of the phenomenon, beyond bureaucracy and procedures. What is the EU in the minds of Europeans, why do we need it, how can we bring it closer to us, how does it influence our daily lives, why should we vote for a Parliament with (still) very limited powers etc?
All these questions are legitimate, even more today, when the EU has expanded to such a large number of states and turned into something completely different than what it was more than 50 years ago. However, we might never find answers to such questions, or at least not answers that would satisfy our need for good, solid answers. The simple reason for this is that all these questions originate in our knowledge of the states we live in, in how these states are organized and what their purpose is.
But comparing the EU with the (nation) states we are used to live in can only lead to significant differences. The EU is nothing similar to a state and maybe the problem of EU-makers has always been the attempt to make the EU look as much as possible like a state, at least with respect to the institutional system. The EU is nothing something formed and developed bottom up, but was from the begining an elitist project, ‘imposed’ on the Europeans top down. I do not mean to sound like a typical euroskeptic, but this is a fact we need to acknowledge.
For example, national parliaments emerged from the need of the people to be represented, while the European Parliament was ‘invented’ by the EU elites in order to make Europeans feel represented. The same kind of comparisons can be made for other EU institutions, but the European Parliament is probably the institution that has had the most to suffer from this mimetic approach used in the drawing of the EU’s institutional framework.
Maybe the wisest thing to do in order to find answers to these fundamental questions we have about the EU is not to think of the EU as what it is today, but to what each of us would want it to be, without intending to start an utopian institutional revolution. Blogging about this is the first step to let EU elites what people think, what WE think, and make our voice heard.
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Don’t you think the EP serves - at least in part - to represent Europeans? There has been significant progress, I think, in the decision making process from intergovernmentality towards supranational parliamentary decision making powers. Not to say that “we’re there” - not by a long shot - but I don’t think it’s impossible to have an effective European democracy..
Simon, I partly believe that the EP represents European. Since it is directly elected, it follows the same logic of national parliaments when it comes to representativity. However, the EP did not appear from the need of Europeans to be represented, but because EU elites wanted to bring the Union closer to the people. Even if it was a step forward, the foundation of the EP in 1979 has still been a top down process. I don’t think in 1979 the EEC could no longer make decisions or exist without the EP, like it generally happened in states when parliaments starting appearing. A European democracy is possible and it already exists to some extent, yet I still believe that EU elites are “copying” institutions without having the same base to lay them on.
So where do you distinguish between people and elites? Do you not believe that national parliaments have come forth out of a growing claim to power by a bourgeoisie (still more elite than people, I would contend) leading “the people?” Also, universal suffrage - essential, I think, to be effectively able to speak of representation - is in many places no older than a century. In France female suffrage was only realised in 1944!
Point being: is it really true that the EP fares so much worse as a tool for the people?
I would broadly say that elites are all those involved in EU decision making institutions, while the people is everyone else who is a citizen of a EU member state.
I agree that national parliaments also partly emerged “at the right time” from political calculations of the political elites and it was not just a wonderful success story of democracy everywhere. But, parliaments were a must at a certain point in the evolution of states, while in the EU it was not the case. Universal suffrage also became a must in every country that pretended to be a democracy, the people and the global trends asked for it and that’s why it was introduced. The EP was founded in order to make the EU seem like a democracy, because democracy is catchy for the people, but it was not a must in the institutional framework at the time. This is why only now, 30 years later,it is getting real significant powers (if the Lisbon Treaty is adopted).
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