> European Federalist Party:
Power to the People? The Road to the 2014 European Parliament Elections
E U ROP EAN FE DE RALIST PARTY
By Pietro De Matteis
PARTI FE DE RALISTE Apart from the election of the first European Parliament in 1979, European elections E U ROP ÉEN
have hardly been considered a decisive moment in European politics. But this time it is different. The Eurozone crisis has dramatically shown us how our lives are deeply interconnected, and how policies decided (or not decided) in Brussels may dramatically affect the life of citizens Europe-wide: The endless debate about E U ROPÄISCHEN austerity-led policies or growth-oriented measures is just one example. As argued FÖDE RALISTISCHE PARTE I and below, such interconnection between Europeans has increased at every level could make the 2014 European Elections the first one accompanied by a true European debate.
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e have all lost the count of the number of meetings and summits that our heads of state and government attended over the past five years in their attempt to tackle the Eurozone crisis. In the same vein, the European media have increasingly highlighted the European relevance of national events, such as the elections in Greece and in Germany or the political uncertainties in Italy, just to name a few. Such awareness of European affairs has also facilitated the development of increasingly heated debates about member states’ domestic policies involving foreign officials: What previously would have been labelled as “unacceptable foreign interference” has become increasingly common. Indeed, those who have always argued that a “European political public sphere” does not exist will have to acknowledge that it does now, thanks to the crisis. The exchanges did not increase only at the heads of state level or through the media. European civil society and trade unions have started to organise Europe-wide protests and to offer their proposals to overcome the crisis. This was further helped by the fact that Europe appeared to be less able as of late to deliver growth, jobs and social stability. Of course, when we say Europe we must consider the European Union as well as the individual nation states. In fact, while the former is limited primarily by the amount of competences (and budget) attributed to it by the member states, the latter are intrinsically constrained by their 56
“What previously would have been labelled as ‘unacceptable foreign interference’ has become increasingly common.” own size and resources; mostly insufficient to make the difference in the twenty-first century.
This is the case in Greece, in France, in Germany, in Hungary, in Italy, in Romania and of course in Spain, Belgium and in the UK. These movements represent the unease of an increasing number of citizens who are unhappy with the status quo and who feel left behind in a rapidly changing world. For them, the fundamental question is how to change things and to determine whether the benefits of being part of a larger political entity outweigh the costs in terms of bureaucracy and reduced accountability.
It could be argued that European nation states are among the most visible victims of the success of process of globalisation of production and consumption. If, on the one hand, they have accompanied the rise of new continental-scale economic powerhouses such as China, India and Brazil to the benefit of some European businesses, on the other hand European countries have seen dramatically reduced their political weight in the international arena, as in a “quasi-zero-sum game”. Furthermore, the new global business paradigms based on “tax optimisation” together with the competition from emerging markets is making the foundations of the European social model increasingly unsustainable.
From such an assessment – not always very accurate - some would argue that the “go it alone” is the best strategy, and would set as their objective the regaining some sort of “independence” from the larger political entity; be it the unitary state in the case of separatists movements, or the European Union as it is the case for nationalists and eurosceptics. Others, instead, would argue that only by working together in a Europe-wide democracy can we actually tackle this century’s challenges, and that if we do so through a well-functioning federation we can significantly improve efficiency and accountability.
The growing “collective incapacity” of EU countries to keep delivering on their promises of providing a constant improvement of our standards of living and the impossibility for the EU to step in to fill the gap, created a large political vacuum which is now being filled by an increasing number of extremist, separatists and anti-euro political movements in most European countries.
If we take a step back and look at today’s Europe, we will realise that what we are facing is an expectation-capability gap between what the average citizen’s expectations and the capabilities of the current political structures to tackle them. In addition, citizens’ expectations are either stable or increasing over time while the capabilities of those bodies tasked to fulfil those expectations in Europe (i.e. national and local
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