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The T-Dem (Treaty of Democratisation), which manifesto can be read here, is a project for a new, fairer and more sustainable social model: T-Dem is based on the idea of a common European budget to reduce inequalities between countries, which can be voted by a democratically elected assembly of Europeans.
Voxeurop: You have often talked about governance reform which appears in the talked-about Democratisation Treaty that you have presented together with Antoine Vauchez, Anne-Laure Delatte and Guillaume Sacriste. To your knowledge, has it had an impact in the world of European politics?
Thomas Piketty: I would like to emphasise that [with issues about EU governance reform] nobody can come up with a perfect miraculous solution. We work with colleagues and citizens, not only in France but also in a lot of European countries -- we've collected more than 100,000 signatures from political leaders, European and national MPs who come from many different political groups, from the centre-right to the centre-left, the left and even from the far-left. It is true that we do not have a lot of signatures from the right and the far-right, but we do have signatures from people belonging to very diverse groups.
Let's go back to the problem from the beginning: the question is how to get out of the unanimity rule. Currently, if we want to adopt a tax or a budget in Europe, each member state in the Council of the European Union must approve the entire plan submitted to the ECOFIN council and the Ministers of Economy and Finance. Let's suppose that we all agree to move to the majority rule. How would it work? The least complicated solution would be to say that the decisions will still be taken within the current institutional framework, with the European Council (of heads of state and government) or the Council of Ministers on the one hand, and the current European Parliament on the other. But in the European Council, or the Council of Ministers, the rule would be applied by a qualified majority (that is, 55% of the member states representing 65% of the population) rather than by unanimous vote.
That would already be a great step forward! But this would still be far from perfect because, even with the majority rule, the European Council and the Council of Ministers remain a weak democratic institution in the sense that the deliberations are held behind closed doors. Which is problematic to those who prefer to have a democratic parliamentary chamber! And if it happens behind closed doors, that isn't by chance. Since we have only one person to represent the entire country, it is very difficult to obtain a majority vote from a deliberation composed of diverse groups. It's hard to say "I didn't have a chance because I was in the minority, tough luck. Next time, I'll be in the majority". This prevents any notion of a decision made easily by the majority. It would be possible if each country were represented not by one person, but by ten, twenty or thirty people in order to represent all kinds of public opinion, such as in the parliaments in each member state.
‘The idea of the Democratisation Treaty is to say that it is more ambitious from the point of view of a federal Europe to involve national parliaments since it would completely transform national parliamentary democracies into segments of European parliamentary democracy.’
We think that, with the Democratisation Treaty, there is no need to completely get rid of the member state leaders of the Council nor the ministers in the Council who will continue to work together anyway within the framework of the current institutions or will still work on all sorts of subjects. But regarding budget and tax matters, we propose a European assembly composed of members of national parliaments in proportion to the country's population, of political groups that are present in national parliaments, and that this assembly can have the final say on the budget and common taxes.
Another solution, which European federalists have always advocated by tradition, is to give the last word to the European parliament, as is the case now. The difficulty is that this would mean that the budgetary and tax decisions would be taken entirely independently from democratic institutions of the member states, which are currently represented by the national leader or the minister. This is a bit problematic in the sense that the member states still play an essential role, including wanting to escape the whole affair, as the UK has shown. There's a bit of paranoia about refusing to allow MEPs to take part in the tax and budgetary decision at the European level. But we must recognise that MEPs can very well, at any moment, say that what is decided at European level does not suit them.
In the end, these parliaments of Europe have the power to sign or revoke treaties that bind the European countries together. The idea of the Democratisation Treaty is to say that it is more ambitious from the point of view of a federal Europe to involve national parliaments since it would completely transform national parliamentary democracies into segments of European parliamentary democracy. In particular, the national legislative elections would also become European elections, since the candidates in these elections would be required to say how they intend to vote (or not to vote) on economic recovery plans and on budgets in this European assembly, which the MEPs would also be part of.
How would this work?
There are several ways to implement the majority rule. One, this could be that the majority is taken from the Council of Ministers and European Council. The majority could come only from the European parliament. Or, the majority could come from the new European assembly, where the national deputies are strongly involved. In our proposal, it would also include MEPS. What is important is that those who no longer want the unanimity rule and want to move towards a majority rule explain their own proposals. Within the member states, there are a lot of politicians that complain about how Europe is currently being run, but they don't make any proposals on how to make it better. We cannot just wait for the next financial or political crisis to happen before we try to find solutions to these questions at the very last minute. We are trying, with our Democratisation Treaty, to anticipate this kind of discussion.
What we propose is quite similar to the Franco-German parliamentary assembly that, for those who are not aware, was created last year. The Franco-German bilateral treaty, which was the Elysée treaty signed by de Gaulle and Adenauer 50 years ago, was renewed last year. And one of the important measures from that treaty was the creation of this Franco-German parliamentary assembly, which at the moment has purely a consultative capacity. However, this same bilateral treaty could very well decide to grant the power to vote, for example, on a common tax on the profits of large corporations, or an environmental recovery plan between France and Germany.
What is the difference with what T-dem proposes?
The difference with what the Democratisation Treaty is proposing is that this should be open to Italy, Spain and other European countries who would like to be part of it. Also, we would like to give real powers to this assembly.
If the Netherlands and Denmark had given their final veto vote last July on the recovery plan, or if we have a similar veto problem in the coming weeks or months, we could easily imagine that this type of parliamentary assembly established by France and Germany under the Franco-German bilateral treaty could be extended to other countries. It is thus not simply an abstract discussion. What this Franco-German bilateral treaty has shown is that it is not very complicated to make a treaty for a very small number of countries, including the creation of separate political institutions, even if there are only two countries. It is still the most important in terms of population and GDP. So I think things can go a lot faster than we think.
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