Europe Is Strangling Democracy

Where governments are punished with fines for breaking rules on deficit and debt levels, the risk of provoking a national backlash against the EU is strong. Far-right parties that will claim, like Wilders, that the EU constitutes an intolerable presence in the democratic life of their nation, will have every incentive to structure their approach to politics around opposition to the EU. Thus the treaty threatens to widen the democratic deficit that characterises EU politics and may even drive some member states into the hands of fully-fledged far-right governments. The treaty constitutes a significant deepening of European integration in the economic and budgetary sphere, but without any concomitant steps toward legitimation through either national or EU democratic institutions. Neither the Oireachtas nor the European Parliament will have any input into decision-making or the crucial scrutiny of deficit and debt levels of the participating states once it is signed.