Beyond the issue of membership itself, Brits with an interest in Europe should turn our attention to meaningful reform of an embattled European Union. Others are doing so: this month’s Occasional Paper in the Social Europe Journal, ‘We need a Europe that is truly social and democratic’, is idealistic, radical, and far-reaching and penned by a group of German social democratic academics and politicians. The idealism alone might conflict with the more immediate concerns of stabilising the euro and moving out of crises but there is much here for those in the UK to pay close attention to. It addresses two linked crises: the economic one (economic progress has stalled and been decoupled from social progress), and the democratic one (the lack of confidence that the EU has the ability to change anything). Despite the occasional tendency towards vagueness, the paper proposes some useful first principles reformers can work from. These include:
- The ‘normalisation’ and ‘politicisation’ of EU democracy to be more like national representative democracies: Europe-wide candidates for executive positions, and a truly sovereign legislative parliament.
- Decisions to be made as close to the electorate as possible. This requires the expansion of principle of subsidiarity. The European parliament should decide ‘where the EU’s writ runs’. Elsewhere national parliaments should take the decisions.
- A two-chamber European parliament, with national governments taking part in a ‘co-decision’ process. I made clear my support for this in a New Statesman article almost a year ago greater links between national and European parliaments are key.
- A eurozone group of MPs within the parliament.
- Priority being given to the basic social rights over the fundamental freedoms of the market to be enshrined in the EU treaty. This would be a turnaround and would allow states more ability to override overly prescriptive state aid rules in more cases. I would welcome this, given that questions were raised last week on this issue with regard to the Business Bank. Governments should be able to help in areas it sees fit without fear of falling foul of EU directives.
- A is ‘risky’ but ‘necessary’ referendum on changes to the eurozone.
British observers will be first of all concerned about the heavily eurozone-centric analysis, and the acceptance that there will be a ‘core’ and a second tier. A useful relationship between the euro and non-euro members must be found, but alienating ourselves from eurozone decisions, as our prime minister has done, will lead to more alienation when we meet as one EU. In addition, much of what is proposed requires treaty change. In Britain we are legally bound to give the electorate a referendum on treaty changes and those of us against a referendum on membership might ask whether it might be better to focus first on reforms that can be made without a treaty change which would threaten the ‘wafer-thin’ consent for the EU. Moreover, what if people are so turned off they reject at referendum reforms that would ‘legitimise’ democracy and in principle connect them better with decisions? There is also a sense in which it might be the wrong way round: focusing on process before outcome. People need to see that the EU can improve their lives before we ask them to accept further changes and transfer of power.
On the Europe-wide personalisation of executive positions, this is something that has widespread support but I’m not sure this will have the desired effect: in the UK we have had a modern, personalised, representative democracy for some time. Our MPs take to Twitter and Facebook to engage but it hasn’t stopped the slide into general disinterest and populist protest-voting.
In this column next month I will set out what I think the reform agenda should be for the Labour party. For example, our support for subsidiarity must not be based on running down social protections. What pro-Europeans will find refreshing in the SEJ paper is that it starts from a basis of positivity, rather than mistrust and suspicion. One thing the authors get right is that a social Europe cannot be built without PES members going into the 2014 elections ‘on the offensive’. This is how we will differentiate ourselves from the Tories’ reform agenda, which is all about oppositional retrenchment. If some of the ideas sound strange to British ears, the SEJ paper does serve as a marker of how far adrift we sometimes are from our cousins. There is much to be gained by interested Labourites opening an honest dialogue with European politicians, even of other political families. I must warn them, though; this may involve travel to ‘the continent’.
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Alan Donnelly is a former leader of Labour in Europe and a political consultant. He tweets @alandonnelly57
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