The European Union continues to be confronted with a crisis of democratic legitimacy – apathetic or hostile public perceptions; the lowest turnouts of any nation-wide elections; the defeat of the euro ‘yes’ campaign in Denmark; a genuine confusion as to what the EU exists for. All these factors, and more, create a real challenge for those who wish to see the EU better understood, more efficient and more effective. But help may yet be at hand in an obscure section of the Nice Treaty. The so-called Annex IV of the Treaty has the potential to close the information and enthusiasm gap that blights the EU. This is because it calls for a very public and wide-ranging debate over the future of Europe.
There is a paradox here. Centre-left governments throughout the EU are currently delivering real economic and social progress. Yet this fact is little understood or appreciated by the public. Europe’s economic area is stable and growing. It may yet outperform the US economy to become the world’s economic growth motor this year. Allied to this the EU made an historic commitment to full employment and structural economic reform at the Lisbon summit in March 2000. But, as with the institutions of the EU themselves, an information and awareness gap ensures the public’s failure to connect progress with European co-operation. The challenge and opportunity of the new post-Nice future of Europe debate is to close this gap.
In the United Kingdom context this is easier said than done. No other European country suffers from such a deep division between its two major parties over the benefits of membership of the EU. Nowhere else do you find a mainstream centre-right party so Eurosceptic and anti-European as the Conservative Party of William Hague. The negative impact of the media, too, is difficult to overestimate. The hysteria, paranoia and, at times, xenophobia on things European of the print and broadcast media in Britain is as breathtaking as it is baffling. It is as if the European Union exists solely to steal the sovereignty and identity of John Bull. The reality is that European co-operation is a pooling of sovereignty to better achieve common goals such as full employment, prosperity, security and environmental protection.
Yet an information gap that creates scepticism and hostility in degrees across the whole European Union exists. And it is fed by other factors too. One is the simple fact of geography. Another is political indifference that at times verges on arrogance. It can be difficult enough for someone living on a peripheral housing estate to connect their child’s education, or their refuse collection with their local council or central government. Identification with the institutions of the EU is simply too wide a divide for most voters to bridge. All MEPs are daily confronted by the sense of remoteness as they try to fire public imagination about the importance of the union in people’s lives. I once asked a Spanish Socialist MEP colleague how the European parliament was seen in his country. He replied by asking whether I remembered the Russian cosmonauts who blasted off in the 1960s but who were never brought back to earth. A Portuguese Social Democrat MP told me that MEPs in his country were seen as remote and overpaid.
Herein lies the roots of the indifference come arrogance that in part also blights the EU. There is a terrible tendency for some of those determined to build a new Europe to disregard public opinion. Hostile opinion polls and sceptical public audiences are treated with a mixture of sympathy and contempt. On 15 January 2001, several leading newspapers across Europe, including The Guardian, Le Monde and El Pais, published the results of an opinion poll into the euro. The eight-country poll showed high levels of dissatisfaction with the currency. However, many senior EU politicians merely dismissed the survey as irrelevant. Some actually argued that the reason for the poor poll rating was that people had been asked the wrong questions. This leads to ‘a we know best’ attitude that helps to perpetuate the information gap. Yet these very same politicians argue passionately that we must do more to bring Europe closer to the citizen.
In the context of the Danish referendum this perceived Brussels elitism was a decisive factor. No matter how hard the ‘yes’ sayers campaigned, they were unable to break the image of the euro, and by extension Europe, as a project of the elite being imposed on the people of Denmark. Given these challenges, and faced with the prospect of 130 million new EU citizens joining the present 370 million over the next five to ten years, there is a need to ask again the significant question about the European Union – Why does it exist? Why is it important to the daily lives of half a billion Europeans?
In the United Kingdom this was reflected in Tony Blair’s assertion, at the launch of the cross party Britain in Europe campaign, that once in every generation it is necessary to make a case for Europe. The Prime Minister’s Warsaw speech last autumn gave practical expression to his belief in the need for a reformed, modernised and enlarged EU. This speech was one in a long line of speeches by senior European politicians in advance of the Nice Inter-Governmental Treaty. Yet though all were made on the road to Nice, their content very much looked to a final destination further over the political horizon. And in Annex IV of the Nice Treaty, Europe’s leaders built the vehicle to make this new journey possible. In Nice EU heads of government committed themselves to hold a ‘wider and deeper debate about the future development of the European Union’. They also agreed to ‘monitor the democratic legitimacy and transparency of the Union and its institutions, to bring them closer to the citizens of member states’. All this was set in the framework of another inter-governmental conference to be held in 2004, based on the four key issues detailed in Annex IV: the delimitation of competencies (or who does what at what level of government: local, national or European); the simplification of Europe’s various and confusing treaties to make them easier to read and understand; defining the role of national parliaments in the EU’s structure; and identifying the status of the Charter of Fundamental Rights.
Each of these four key issues is worthy of political analysis and detailed debate. Inevitably there will be other issues raised too. But, in the first instance, the EU must concentrate on the historic opportunity to close the information gap provided by the Nice Treaty. For the whole essence of Annex IV is to stimulate wide ranging public consultation over the next eighteen to 24 months as to what the EU is about. This has the potential to engage public opinion in its widest sense on a fundamental debate about why the EU exists and why it is important. And it will be crucial that questions of process are resolved to guarantee real consultation and real public debate.
The shape and form of this public consultation is gradually coming together. It must be a bottom up, not top down debate. It must involve all levels of civil society – MPs, MEPs, academics, local and regional governments, the business community, trade unions, and the voluntary and non-governmental sector. Importantly, it must also be a debate that occurs in the applicant states, not just among existing EU members. The challenge for those already deeply involved in EU matters is to resist the urge to prejudge or artificially to mould the outcome of the consultation. Clearly politicians are elected to lead, a sentiment that is often more keenly felt by the body politic itself than the people who elected it. But at this early stage of the future of European debate, the contribution particularly of MEPs should be to stimulate and facilitate debate. Any hint of political indifference or arrogance would be seriously counter-productive, and would fly in the face of the real opportunities that are now on offer.
All of Annex IV’s points have real potential to boost public understanding of how the EU works, and how it could work better. But the debate over competencies, hugely important for the German federal system, and echoed in Tony Blair’s Warsaw call for a charter of competencies, will be the key to unlocking the full potential of this post-Nice debate. This, allied to the challenge to national parliaments, will be the decisive factor in determining whether the future of European debate can revitalise the democratic legitimacy of the EU.
The voluntary pooling of economic, social and political sovereignty has had many benefits. The EU in 2001 is moving towards full employment, the completion of the world’s largest single market, a cleaner environment, better co-operation against international crime and much else besides. The problem for European institutions is that very few citizens are actually aware of the role they play in achieving these important and laudable aims that effect daily lives. Similarly, given the overwhelming preponderance of social democratic governments across Europe, this is an opportunity missed by the centre-left family. The future of Europe debate, constructed around Annex IV, is a real opportunity to address this democratic information and awareness gap. If it is handled with indifference, arrogance or elitism the distance between the EU and its citizens will grow and ultimately destroy public support for its institutions. But if it is handled with enthusiasm, transparency and conviction, it has the potential to genuinely revitalise the democratic structures and the EU.