All eyes on Europe

At least the eurocrisis means — for once — the EU isn’t dull. Let’s make the most of this opportunity to start taking it seriously.

Having reported on the EU for quite a few years it is with some interest that I have been following the sudden explosion in coverage of matters European. Back in 2006, writing about breaches of EU directives on sewage processing and the Irish national standards agency's reluctance to accept European Technical Approval status for building products seemed not only unglamorous, but downright geeky. Even rather more interesting subjects, such as the conflicting signals the EU has sent out on the issue of privacy online, were hardly the stuff headlines are made of. Like much of what journalists report daily, these were small issues, infinitesimally small when set against the eurocrisis, so it's hardly surprising that my first ever EU-related page one lead was on finance and not whether dwellings in rural Ireland are processing faeces with appropriate regard to groundwater.

Of course, the eurocrisis is the kind of excitement none of us would wish on anyone.

I do wonder though, should the EU and ECB manage to put all the banks (and national economies) back together again, if we will once again drift off into our euro-slumber, confining the EU to tales of straight bananas, features about how tales of straight bananas are lies and, of course, finance pieces that most of us mere mortals don't read and would struggle to understand at any rate.

Perhaps not though. Perhaps this crisis shaking the eurozone and the very EU itself is enough to make us fundamentally reassess our relationship with Europe. Obviously this is already happening in politics. In Britain, as elsewhere in Europe, the eurosceptic right is getting louder. Less well reported is the fact that the equally eurosceptic left is getting bolder too, certainly in Ireland where I am based. But just as there is more to politics than parliaments, there is more to Europe than the pronouncements of politicians.

As someone who considers himself a eurocritic at the least — I'm in favour of freedom of movement, but less enamoured of unelected commissioners handing down edicts from on-high – I think the only potentially positive thing that can come out of the eurocrisis is that we might read and hear about the EU's machinations a bit more. At times it can be hard to avoid the sneaking suspicion that the EU is tedious by design, that boring electorates (and journalists) into submission is a tactical measure undertaken by EU elites who float above us without much in the way of democratic legitimacy. For now, though, the EU is anything but boring, so those on all sides of the debate would do well to seize the day and get talking.

Yesterday the Guardian's Comment is Free section published excerpts from a new book by Jürgen Habermas. The German philosopher is worried about a democratic deficit in the new, all-singing, all-dancing (but no-voting) technocratic EU. Tempting as it is to lay at least some of the blame for this at the door of thinkers like Mr Habermas who have long argued for tighter European integration, it is at least heartening that voices whose criticism of Europe does not come draped in nostalgia are beginning to be heard.

Nevertheless, the truth is eurosceptics have been right about one thing all along: love it or loathe it, the EU has always been important, creating and amending as it does so much of national law in member states, setting basic standards for goods and services and, most importantly of all, issuing a currency for seventeen of those states.

Speaking for myself, I'm unlikely to ever become a euro cheerleader. I see too much bureaucracy and disregard — contempt even — for the will of the people, and I have yet to be convinced there is such a thing as a European public. If there is to ever be such a thing, if indeed it would be desirable, we all need to start taking the EU more seriously. Even when it is boring.

Image by Karen Eliot. CC licenced.