One Last Chance for European Democracy

With the Eurovision Song Contest safely over, it's time to attend to the second most important pan-European exercise in suffrage: the European Parliament elections.

If I were a European, I'd start paying attention. The upcoming elections are Europeans' best and perhaps last chance to demand democratic reforms in the 27-nation bloc.

Feel free to laugh - just typing it seems a sad joke, for up till now the Parliament has been a symbol not of self-government, but of its betrayal.

Yet the spectacle of the last five years, wherein the European Commission-led Brussels cabal has blithely dismissed three referendums rejecting an E.U. constitutional treaty and steamrollered ahead with its plans regardless, seems to have left an impressionable dent on the apathy upon which Brussels has long relied.

Europe is now ripe for a protest vote against the Commission and its enablers in Parliament, at least if the wave of pro-democratic, anti-federalist candidates standing in the elections is any indication. As Brussels prepares sweeteners to bribe Irish voters into approving the Lisbon Treaty in October, thus paving the way for its full ratification in January, the situation has become urgent enough that the parliamentary elections could be the improbable staging point for a peoples' coup in the E.U.

To justify its ingrained anti-democratic structure and, indeed, its very existence, the Commission has long presented the false choice of either a centralized, authoritarian E.U., or none at all. Threatening a return to warring states and protectionist trade barriers, the Commission has told citizens that any democratic reforms, elections for commissioners or referenda on treaties would render the bloc so ineffectual that it would disintegrate completely.

Now, however, Brussels' worst nightmare might come true, as a crop of upstarts running in the elections work to convince Europeans that a third option exists - that of preserving what is best in the union, while returning the bulk of its power to the people and their national governments.

The 785-seat European parliament is today dominated by national party politicians who, having mostly proven feckless and incompetent in their own capitals, correctly surmised they could enjoy more prosperous careers in Brussels, far from the prying eyes of their actual constituents and national presses. They came to Schuman Circle, supped at the taxpayer-funded champagne receptions, and promptly abandoned any allegiance to their constituents whatsoever. They have instead sought the favor of the

unelected, self-appointed and supremely-powerful Commission, by consistently backing its every creep toward greater central authority.

Under the coalition banners of the leading European Peoples' Party and European Democrats (currently holding 288 seats), the European Socialists (217 seats) and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (100 seats), the bulk of parliamentarians have done nothing more than ensure that eurocracy will continue to be a growth industry, by allowing its practitioners ever-greater reach into the nations of Europe.

Unable to even propose legislation - the exclusive remit of the Commission, which is also the bloc's executive and regulatory branch - it has been far easier and up to now infinitely more lucrative for parliamentarians to slavishly rubber-stamp the European super-state, than to challenge its all-powerful Commission or even demand more responsibility for the elected Parliament.

Going into the elections, the European Independence/Democracy group -- which holds 22 seats and is largely distinguished by its nine UK members who support withdrawal from the E.U. entirely -- is the Parliament's only faction that advocates approval of a European constitution by referendum only.

Despite Brussels' best efforts to paint this caucus as a marginal gaggle of wingnut malcontents, the Independence group's contrarianism has caught on.

This rising pack of rebels runs the political gamut. In Britain alone, it ranges, on the statist side, from the "No2EU, Yes To Democracy" party led by unions railing against what they see as the E.U.'s unacceptably free-market bent, to the race-preoccupied British National Party, which opposes the E.U.'s free migration policies; to, over on the libertarian side, the above-noted happy free marketeers of Nigel Farage's rambunctious UK Independence Party.

While so-called "eurosceptics"- pronounced "heroin dealers" in Brussels - have in the past been seen as a British disease, the Commission's shenanigans and the parliament's utter compliance have now spread the discontent across the continent.

One of the most powerful counters to the current regime of obeisance to the Commission could be the new anti-federalist coalition set to form after the elections, when the UK Conservatives and the Czech Republic's Civil Democrats will abandon the European Peoples' Party umbrella and, together with Poland's Law and Justice party, form the new European Conservatives and Reformists group, dedicated to decentralizing E.U. decision-making and opposing the Lisbon Treaty.

But the insurgents most feared by the Commission and its sycophants are enveloped in the new pan-European Libertas party, led by Irish tycoon Declan Ganley who spearheaded the "no" campaign in Ireland last year which Brussels blames for the Irish rejection of the Lisbon Treaty then.

Running some 500 candidates across the continent and hoping to pick up between 100 and 150 seats, Libertas's key platforms are a dramatic democratic overhaul of E.U. institutions and a renewed allegiance to the bloc's free market. For Libertas, self-rule is an end in itself, and whatever E.U. structure is dictated by voters - whether it be a superstate or a simple free trade league - is best.

"We're not so much an anti-federalist party - we're more the anti-the-current-system party. If you're going to have a federation, make it democratic. We're not conceptually opposed to a federal Europe, we just want to see people vote on it," a Libertas official told me on a recent phone call.

The party's clear-eyed position that only elected officials should make laws translates easily to 27 languages. At the same time, Mr. Ganley and his diverse cohorts neatly sidestep sticky issues such as welfare or fiscal policy that might otherwise divide them, by insisting that only truly pan-European issues such as intra-E.U. trade should be decided in Brussels (that need-to-legislate requirement alone, if enacted, would automatically slice the Brussels bureaucrat army by at least half).

Critics denounce Libertas as being anti-immigration, but this seems a canard. The party supports a borderless E.U., with the only limitation being that migrants from one E.U. nation - while otherwise free to work, study and lollygag as they please - could not collect welfare in another, so as to prevent what Libertas calls "welfare tourism". This sounds at least more fair and free than the current system, whereby the Commission simply turns a blind eye when powerful countries like Germany flout the rules by restricting workers from eastern Europe.

But the main reason Libertas has the Commission scared silly is that its entire campaign centers around demolishing the myth that opposition to the Lisbon Treaty or support for democratic reforms mean rejecting the European project as a whole. Indeed, Libertas's line is screamingly pro-E.U. - the group claims to want nothing more than a powerful and cohesive union, but says this can and should only come about with the approval of the people.

For champions of democracy, perhaps the best outcome of these European elections would be for successful Libertas candidates to join that soon-to-be formed coalition led by the British, Czech and Polish spinoffs.

If Europeans use their votes wisely and if the individual parties do well enough in June, such a marriage could result in a surge for the E.U.'s democratic advocates, and swing the parliament to a majority willing and able to fight the unelected superstate.