‘Europe’ has barely been out of the headlines of late, but it will be of no surprise to readers to learn that thinktanks have been plugging away for years at what a reformed European Union may look like. Established players include the London-based Centre for European Reform, the Brussels-based European Policy Centre, and the economics-focused Bruegel, also based in the Belgian capital, whose interesting structure sees it count among its membership 17 EU member states, companies like Google and Microsoft, and institutions such as the National Bank of Poland.
Back in London, Policy Network released a new paper last month entitled Democratic Self-Government in Europe, which opened by warning that last year the Eurobarometer survey found for the first time that more EU citizens now consider the union to be undemocratic than democratic. The paper argues that, rather than tinker with the institutions in Brussels and Strasbourg, the EU should set about strengthening national parliaments – and it could do so without going through treaty changes which would provoke referendums across the continent. Its proposals range from suggesting there be a ‘new test of relative democratic authority’, which would see the EU ‘only act if it enlarges choices or protects certain values in a way that cannot be done by domestic parliaments’, to a right for 100,000 citizens of a member state to petition a national Constitutional Council to opt out of an EU law if it runs counter to domestic traditions. Such a council would be made up of ‘significant and representative figures from public life’ who would ‘hold hearings and issue reasoned decisions’. Meanwhile, the tank also suggests that a proposal from the commission should not go forward to the council unless it expressly commands the support of two-thirds of national parliaments. Combined, the measures would beef up the role of parliaments (rather than of governments). Finally, in the context of a potential ‘Brexit’, Policy Network also finds that ‘paradoxically, the constraints of EU law are such that a state may be less restricted by EU law when it is inside the EU … than when it is outside’. Such is the fate of the Norwegians, some of the most consistent implementers of EU legislation, who are obliged in Brussels to piggyback on friendly member states’ missions to articulate their interests and see off anything unfavourable.
The thinktank Open Europe agrees. Winner of Prospect magazine’s international affairs thinktank award last year, in a recent post on its site it too recognises the weaknesses inherent in Norway’s situation but it floats the idea of ‘EEA Plus’ – essentially, giving European Economic Area countries voting rights on matters relevant to the single market, with the possibility of the UK, and Turkey, joining. The tank does not back the idea as such, but references Jacques Delors in 1989 mooting ‘a “more structured partnership with common decision-making and administrative institutions”, which would have potentially given those countries market access and decision-making powers, rather than the limited right of refusal that EEA countries currently have’.
Elsewhere, the Fabian Society is to hold a ‘farewell to Dartmouth Street’ party this month, as it leaves the venerable old building near St James’s Park it has called home for more than 80 years. In the latest edition of the Fabian Review, society officer Deborah Stoate tells part of the story of the move into 11 Dartmouth Street in 1928, digging into the archives to recount how George Bernard Shaw lent £2,500 towards the mortgage. She discovers how in the summer of that year the Fabian News warned members that the common room would be closed due to the absence of the housekeeper, but reassured them newspapers would be provided as normal. Later in the year it apologised for ‘the disorganisation of the office consequent upon its removal’, and a housewarming (two shillings a ticket) was duly organised, making this month’s leaving party all the more an appropriate way to bring the society’s long tenure to a close.
—————————————————————————————