Europe’s democratic challenge

The Minister based his remarks on the following points (check against delivery):

• Thank you for this invitation. Happy and honoured to be here at this concluding RECON conference. Congratulations! RECON is a success story: 21 partner institutions across Europe, received excellent reviews, had more than 60 conferences and seminars organized across Europe. The European Commission has described it as a role model for large international research projects. I commend ARENA for coordinating this project.
• What democracy for Europe?  This is the main question this research project has been dealing with – no less! The question is of a fundamental nature, constantly recurring in the history of Modern Europe. And the answers to that question differ. One of Europe’s strengths: left behind the idea of one overall idea to organise thoughts, mind, and history, present, past and future. (Re: Symposium on Tony Judt, Paris June 2011).
• Backdrop: Europe has come a long way the last decades, found unique forms of cooperation. From our short-sighted contemporary perspective, we often fail to see what a fundamental shift this is. In the past, European states in crisis turned against each other.
• Debates in the 1990s: enlargement or deepening: those who wanted deepening were skeptical about enlargement. In the 1980s: EU project was about deepening, consolidation of cooperation between the EU 12. Delors, Single European Act (signed in 1986), Maastricht (signed in 1992). Then history ran its course. The Berlin Wall came down. The EU did the right thing: inviting the new democracies into the club.
• The enlargement has set new standards for modernity and democracy throughout Europe. But the challenge is that it has left us with something that has been enlarged and deepened in the same project, making the European Union perhaps too big, too diverse, too distant from its citizens and too ambitious for its capacity and for the readiness of its citizens. The current crisis has revealed and accentuated these challenges.
• Would like to address/reflect upon two democratic challenges for Europe (from a politician’s point of view), two elements under pressure, interlinked and important in a well functioning democratic system: 1. Political confidence/trust 2. Social capital.

Political confidence under pressure

• Does the European cooperation project have sufficient democratic legitimacy, the necessary ownership? Europe can look back on some good years; welfare and democracy. The EU is no longer seen as the bearer of reconciliation and prosperity? Democracy is often taken for granted by a generation that hasn’t experienced dictatorship or the Cold War.
• Ownership of the European project is put to the test.  Those who are protesting in the streets don’t feel they are represented by the EU or their national governments; lack confidence in political institutions. President van Rompuy last week: he underscored how important it is to restore confidence.
• Blame games. “Eurobashing”. Political tensions/lack of political confidence among people are used by forces that want less European cooperation/solidarity – or who at least see the potential for votes in blaming the European establishment. “Grass-roots vs elites” – they claim to understand “the people”.
• Danger: Reversing European integration would be detrimental for everyone. The EU may be struggling to promote a vision for the future, but no one has a credible vision for the way back. And the way out of this crisis is not less European cooperation.
• ‘All politics is local’. People live their lives in the nation state, in the city, in the village. European structures such as the European Parliament cannot replace national and local democratic structures, only supplement them.
• Democracy in Europe requires effective European integration and well-functioning democratic nation states. If the crisis teaches us anything, it is how much European integration relies on well-functioning nation states – and how much nation states depend on European solidarity. If democracy on the national level does not function, Europe is also in trouble. The challenges facing good democratic governance many places in Europe (such as corruption) have European repercussions. We must stop speaking of democracy at the national level and democracy at the European level as if they were clearly distinct, or even opposed, issues.      
• The political situation in Italy and Greece: governments that originally had a majority of the seats in their parliaments have been replaced by technocratic caretaker governments. Gives pause for thought. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that these solutions were advocated by democratically elected parties as a means of restoring confidence. Most important, the policies to be implemented by these new governments must be approved by national parliaments, which are democratically elected. After all, this is the essence of European democracy.

2. Social capital under pressure.

• Democracy is also about participation. Crisis means danger of a whole generation of youth marked by mass unemployment. A danger to democracy, stability, social cohesion and growth. Example: Spain, where already high youth unemployment has risen further still as a result of the crisis.
• Do we accept increased inequalities as the price of economic readjustment? Do we accept that generations of youth, vulnerable minorities and immigrants will be “lost” because so many of them can’t find jobs?
• These are political choices. If the cost of tackling the crisis is raising poverty, increased marginalisation of vulnerable groups and less social cohesion, Europe will emerge from the crisis weakened rather than strengthened. Our societies will be more fragmented; there will be a real possibility of more political unrest and conflicts within our societies. Increasing disparities may undermine support of the European project.  Thus, political responses at the national level may get in the way of solidarity and democracy at the European level.
• You have been conducting research on these issues; have come up with a lot of valuable findings, and probably a lot of new questions. Questions that will need new research, new thinking. That is to a large extent what Europe is about and can bring Europe forward in challenging times.

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