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The Eurocracy is nigh

The crisis has been the perfect opportunity for the EU to push forward European integration. But now that some aspects of Greek and Irish sovereignity are now controlled by Brussels, the debate about the union’s democratic deficit is on once again.

Published on 8 December 2010 at 10:38

Feels like déjà vu. A little country in trouble, up to its neck in debts, with an illusory prospect of recovery in the offing. But no-one wants to lend the country any money. And the leaders, come hell or high water, assure the world that everything’s hunky-dory: after all, the next elections are coming up.

Then Brussels rushes in to save the situation: after all, a defaulting state could take the whole eurozone down with it. Six months ago it was Greece, now it’s Ireland. Portugal, Spain and Italy are next in line. The past two years’ economic crisis has cruelly exposed all the shortcomings in the European project.

As long as the eurozone was still taking shape, lenders accorded similar treatment to all its members, regardless of whether under the bonnet of growth there was a laggard Citroën 2CV (Greece) or a gem of an 8-cylinder turbo (Germany). In 2008, with the advent of the crisis, lenders finally took a peek under the bonnet: it turns out European countries really don’t run on the same engine.

Greece and Ireland - pioneers in European integration

For several days the Irish obstinately reiterated what has been their slogan ever since their struggle for independence: "Ourselves Alone". At the end of the day, that all caved in under pressure from the EU powerhouses. And so a couple of dozen billion euros in EU aid will be flying into Dublin in a few weeks’ time.

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Now obviously, and quite understandably, nothing’s for free: Berlin and Paris have tied strings to their antes so they won’t be wasted. They are demanding very specific quids pro quo, as they did for Greece: e.g. corporate tax and VAT hikes, budget cuts and a civil service pay freeze. Having such a European control tower monitoring EU economic policy and charting the budgetary or fiscal course to take seems a logical and natural consequence of sharing a single currency.

And so it happens that, in spite of themselves, Greece and Ireland are becoming pioneers in European integration, albeit on the turbo track laid down by European Central Bank experts. Likewise, the Union has finally managed to free its decision-making process from the popular referenda that previously thwarted the best-laid plans of Irish officials.

Democratic deficit continues to haunt Brussels

But remote-controlled democracy does pose some problems. On the one hand, it goes without saying for a lot of us that our leaders should only be the ones we pick in an electoral process. On the other hand, however, our societies are increasingly willing to liberate the political sphere from the vice-grip of elections.

In the late 1970s, David Marquand, a British academic and former Labour MP, talked about the “democratic deficit” in the workings of the European Community. Even as he praised the Eurocrats’ efficiency in those days, he deplored shortcomings in relations between officialdom and the electorate. He warned that if Eurocrats commandeered the decision-making process, Europeans would simply reject the European institutions as an intrusive foreign body.

30 years down the road, despite all its declarations of good intentions, the democratic deficit continues to haunt Brussels. At the present point in time, it would be plucky, to say the least, to submit the whole European project to a referendum, and might even cost electoral defeat.

Union won’t need member states anymore

The result of such a consultation could vex Eurocrats, especially right now, when, under the cloak of the economic crisis, they are seizing supplementary powers hitherto reserved to democratically elected governments. The governments targeted are, of course, the weakest. And there’s a reason why, even if the Germans breached the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact for years, nobody in Brussels even considered imposing budget cuts and fiscal measures on Berlin.

The first member state resistance movements have formed. On the night of 15 November, for the first time since 1988, MEPs rejected the EU draft budget. The British and their cohorts stood up to the European Commission, refusing to even deliberate on a European tax that would enable member states to pay less into the common kitty while giving the European executive branch more autonomy.

Were such a tax to be put in place, the Union, in theory, wouldn’t need member states anymore. Worse still, if we believe with Max Weber that every steadily growing bureaucracy (in this case, Eurocracy) eventually attains to perfect autonomy, then Eurocracy will eventually get by without the citizens. That moment may not be all that far off. Unless member states themselves hand in their EU membership cards before then.

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