In the aftermath of the latest bailout deal for Greece, leading European politicians have said that the political integration of the European Union should move forward more quickly. Yet their ideas are a recipe for disaster further down the road. Before any decision is taken, the peoples of the European nations must be heard on exactly what kind of European Union they want.
"I've poked a fork in my eye, so now you, Greece, must do it too." This is the gist behind the opposition to the most recent Greek bailout, emanating from a broad range of eurozone nations. Baltic states and former members of the Eastern Bloc have been especially firm in opposing further help to the downtrodden Greeks.
These countries went through hard times of their own. They made deep budget cuts to get their house in order, throwing large swaths of their population into poverty. The cuts moved through successive governments, despite oftentimes tough opposition. Countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Slovenia are finally doing better. And the broadly shared sentiment, a kind of negative solidarity, is that Greece too must now swallow the bitter medicine.
It thus comes as no surprise that it was actually the Slovenian government that pressed EU leadership to draw up a Plan B for Greece, meaning to have them kicked from the eurozone, as The New York Times has been able to confirm.
To prevent further mishaps such as what has befallen Greece, the powerful German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schauble, turned again to ideas he has long held for a new European authority -- an entity that would have competence over national budget policies. This would transfer budgetary powers to an empowered European Commission in Brussels.
In an interview with Le Monde, Bernard Coure of the governing council of the European Central Bank voiced similar ideas, proposing that, in essence, European leaders cut electoral ties to their domestic constituencies. In his view, this should make it easier for them to make decisions in the interest of European solidarity, and very likely against the interests and wishes of folks back home.
One could sum up these views as "enforcing solidarity from above." Neither Schauble nor Coure mentioned what should be obvious: that the peoples of the democracies that make up the European Union get to have a say in all this first. Without firm backing in the shape of a democratic mandate, their ideas -- if realized -- could have consequences that will in the long term endanger the entire European Union.
How democratic is it to have a European government that wasn't elected and so doesn't have a democratic mandate? The European Commission and the recently established office of the EU president (who is basically the chairman of the Council of Ministers) are hardly paragons of democracy, selected as they are by a process resembling in many ways the murky political games played when the Vatican's cardinals elect a new pope.
The one European institution that actually does have a democratic mandate -- the European Parliament -- hardly has real power. Whenever the issue of increasing the Parliament's power is raised, national governments and parties in most national parliaments balk. There is a reason for that: Most of their voters are against it.
The European Union is what it was always meant to be: a confederation of nation-states, with each nation pursuing its national interest. This is how the machine was built. For decades politicians of different political stripes sold the European Union project as an engine for prosperity. The message stuck.
Judging by the 2005 referendums on further European political integration in France and the Netherlands, which ended in a resounding ‘No', the current loose confederacy is exactly what most Europeans seem to want. Opinion polls and electoral research have over the years confirmed this, and the Greece conundrum has only hardened this stance. One might say that those who sold the European Union as that prosperity engine are reaping what they sowed.
If Europe's leaders want more solidarity between nations -- which in the end means the transfer of money from one national government to another -- then their first goal should be to convince the people of the long-term benefits.
Cutting the ties that bind politicians to their nations by itself will not suffice. Solidarity cannot be enforced; it is fostered with care and conviction. If it is solidarity they want, then Angela Merkel, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, Wolfgang Schauble, the Slovenians, the Balts, all will first have to change their tune and their message to their respective electorates.
They should grow a pair and go to the people.
(AP photo)
