Unrepresented Foreign Residents: The PSOE/Ciudadanos coalition says it'll give
us foreign residents the right to vote (and stand for office) in
local elections. Not before time, perhaps. For In Spain, there are
fewer foreigners in governing bodies than in other European countries.
In fact, says, El País, Spain trails the rest of Europe on
this. Well, as Lenox Napier says, at least this is now on the table.
Even if nothing is likely to improve near-term.
Living off Your Parents: I believe the UK incidence of 16 to 30-year-olds living at home is rising but I wonder if it'll ever reach the current 80% figure for Spain. Of those who do achieve independence, 84% are forced to share their abode with 2 or more roommates. Truly a lost generation.
Living off Your Parents: I believe the UK incidence of 16 to 30-year-olds living at home is rising but I wonder if it'll ever reach the current 80% figure for Spain. Of those who do achieve independence, 84% are forced to share their abode with 2 or more roommates. Truly a lost generation.
Oh, dear: An Irish Catholic priest has been caught on video snorting cocaine in his home, in a room full of Nazi memorabilia.
Quotes of the week:
- It’s not easy to combine the spirit of the Wife of Bath with that of a Hollywood diva, but Adele managed it. Times reviewer of her Belfast show
- I'm a unifier. Donald Trump.
- It must be galling to be lectured by the Prime Minister of Belgium about the need for European unity and integration, when there's not the slightest sign of unity nor progress to any integration in Belgium itself. William Hague.
Finally
. . . . Surnames: Where's yours from? To no great
surprise, mine is from South Wales. More to the point, it's labelled
Celtic, which should make me very welcome in a part of Spain which
insists it's the 7th member of the international Celtic
club. Not that the other 6 totally agree. No Celtic language, they
unkindly point out. Click here to check yours.
THE
BREXIT SUPPLEMENT
Two,
related, articles today. The first rejects the view that the EU is an
undemocratic institution and the second comprehensively challenges
this view.
The
EU has its flaws – but calling it anti-democratic is falsifying
reality
The
EU’s allegedly undemocratic nature has become one of the most
potent arguments in the coming
referendum.
It is a rallying cry for Eurosceptics of right and left.
Boris
Johnson has slammed the EU for being “increasingly
anti-democratic”.
Iain Duncan Smith, another leading Tory Eurosceptic, says he was
horrified when Silvio
Berlusconi,
the former Italian premier, was replaced by an administration of
unelected technocrats in 2011. He
told the Sunday Telegraph
he raised the topic in a cabinet meeting: “I said, am I the only
one here that feels distinctly uneasy about Big Brother turning
around to the elected government and saying, you must go?”
Kate
Hoey,
one of the Labour party’s most prominent campaigners for Britain’s
exit, has railed against the EU for being anti-democratic,
anti-socialist and unaccountable. Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek
finance minister meanwhile has called the EU a “democracy-free
zone”
– although, unlike Hoey, he thinks Britain should stay in the union
and fight for reform. Some criticisms of the EU’s democratic
deficit – for example, that it is bureaucratic, untransparent and
remote – are partly valid. It also lacks a demos, an electorate
that thinks of itself as European. But it is a gross exaggeration to
say it engineers coups against elected governments that it doesn’t
like.
The
European commission, a hybrid of a civil service and a government,
can be bureaucratic. There are too many rules in some policy areas,
some of which aren’t well thought out.
But
that is true of all governments. Civil servants can be infuriating.
But government would be even more amateurish if politicians took all
the decisions without any experts at their side.
What’s
more, the notion that the European commissioners are faceless
bureaucrats is misleading. While they are not directly elected by the
people, they are chosen by each of the 28 governments which in turn
are elected. Almost all are politicians. Think of former British
commissioners such as Peter Mandelson or Roy Jenkins.
The
most extreme critique of the EU, though, is that it has brought down
elected governments.
The
situation isn’t so different from the US cabinet. The secretary of
state, treasury secretary and so forth are not directly elected by
the people. They are appointed by the president. But few would call
them bureaucrats.
It
is also fair to say the EU isn’t transparent enough. The main
weakness is the council of ministers, which along with the European
parliament is responsible for passing laws.
The
council,
in which Britain has a 13% vote, is made up of ministers from the 28
member countries. That is democratic enough. But its proceedings are
held behind closed doors. When it is acting as a legislative
assembly, that isn’t right.
An
even bigger weakness, though, is the EU’s remoteness. Though voters
elect members of the European parliament, turnout
in elections is low,
and few people know who represents them.
There
are two main solutions to this problem. The one advocated by
Varoufakis, and his new pan-European reform movement, is to create a
truly sovereign parliament. But most British voters would reject the
idea of a more powerful European parliament. The better approach is
to decentralise power and strengthen national parliaments.
David
Cameron’s deal
to renegotiate Britain’s relationship with the EU did make some
progress on this score. He got the other leaders to pay more
attention to the principle of “subsidiarity”: decisions being
taken as closely as possible to the citizen. He also
secured a “red card”
that will give national parliaments power to block EU laws if at
least 55% of them club together – though that is, admittedly, quite
a high threshold.
The
most extreme critique of the EU, though, is that it has brought down
elected governments. When Eurosceptics make this allegation, they
typically point to three examples: Berlusconi’s departure in Italy,
George
Papandreou’s resignation
as Greek premier at roughly the same time, and Alexis
Tsipras’s inability to get rid of austerity policies
after he was elected Greek prime minister last year.
Although
the EU certainly played a role in each of these situations, none
meets the definition of a coup.
Look
first at Berlusconi. By autumn 2011, he had already lost the
confidence of the Italian people because of
sex
and judicial
scandals.
Meanwhile, his coalition splintered and as a result was on a
wafer-thin majority.
Then
the government’s borrowing costs started rising after Berlusconi
refused to implement retrenchment policies advocated by his finance
minister. Italy was on the verge of bankruptcy when the premier was
hounded out of office.
Sure,
Berlusconi also lost the confidence of Angela Merkel, Germany’s
chancellor, and Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s then president. But the
main factor behind his resignation was that “his majority was not
there any more”, says
Roberto D’Alimonte,
professor of political science at Luiss university in Rome.
The
Papandreou story was in some ways similar. He decided to hold a
referendum on a bailout plan he had negotiated with Greece’s
eurozone creditors. But he failed to tell in advance either those
creditors or senior members of his own party, including Evangelos
Venizelos, his finance minister and deputy prime minister. Merkel and
Sarkozy were certainly unhappy. But Papandreou could still have hung
on to power if his own MPs hadn’t turned against him.
When
a prime minister loses the confidence of his parliament that surely
cannot be called a coup – even if foreign heads of government are
pleased with the outcome.
The
Tsipras situation is different because he managed to keep the
confidence of the Greek people and parliament. The issue, rather, is
that he wasn’t allowed to get rid of the conditions set by the
country’s creditors, despite promising the electorate that he would
do so. But when a country borrows a vast sum of money, it obviously
comes with strings attached. Tsipras made wild promises he couldn’t
hope to keep. What happened wasn’t a coup: it was the case of a
demagogue being forced to face reality.
So
yes, the EU suffers from a democratic deficit. But that doesn’t
make it anti-democratic. And the solution is not to quit the EU but
rather to fight to make it more decentralised, transparent and
accountable. Who knows? In a generation or two it might even develop
a demos.
It
seems to be almost an absolute that those who are most in favour of
the EU are those who know least about it, and how it works.
And
although that cannot be true – as so many leavers are also
profoundly ignorant about the ways of the EU – it is certainly the
case that EU supporters such as Hugo Dixon are not exactly brimming
with knowledge about the construct they so much love.
In
this case, in a 1,000-word piece for the Guardian,
he is parading his ignorance about the demonstrably anti-democratic
nature of the EU, failing completely to understand the reasons why
this should be so.
Issues
such a the treatment of Italy and Greece come to the fore, and one
hears the litany of complaints about excessive bureaucracy, the
unelected European commissioners, portrayed as "faceless
bureaucrats", and the fact that the Council of Ministers
legislated behind closed doors.
Also
mentioned is the "even bigger weakness" of the EU's
remoteness and the low turnout of the European parliament. And in all
this, the views of some of our less-informed "eurosceptic"
are relied upon to add supposed depth to Mr Dixon's case, one in
which he asserts that the EU has its flaws "but calling it
anti-democratic is falsifying reality".
In
all this, however, neither Mr Dixon nor any of those he calls to
bolster his case get close to pinning down the main reason, if not
single reason, why the EU not only fails as a democratic construct,
but – contrary to Mr Dixon's assertion, is also quite distinctly
anti-democratic.
The
lack of democracy – the so-called democratic deficit – is perhaps
something that can be fixed, or at least partially improved. But
there is no cure for something which is inherently anti-democratic –
short of changing it beyond recognition.
And
that factor which makes the EU anti-democratic is the European
Commission and its "right of initiative", the fact that is
has the monopoly power to propose new legislation.
This
has two-closely linked effects. Firstly, and obviously, this means
that no law (or legislative initiative) can be pursued without the
approval and direct participation of the Commission. It cannot be
forced to act, and it is accountable to no one if it chooses to
refuse action.
The
allied issue is one of removal or amendment of existing laws. The
point here is that, in order to do either, another law must be
proposed – it takes a law to remove or amend an existing law. With
its right of initiative, only the Commission can decide on whether
that will happen. No matter how bad or unpopular a law might be, if
the Commission digs in its heels, it stays.
This
right of initiative is not accidental. This was deliberately
introduced by architect of the Union, Jean Monnet as a means of
making it politician-proof. He intended that powers should be vested
exclusively in its "Platonic guardians", rendering them
totally immune to the vagaries of democracy.
To
understand this is to appreciate that the institution is beyond
change. To have the Commission set up in any different way would be
so fundamentally change the nature and dynamics of the European Union
that it would no longer be the same organisation.
Thus,
whatever Dixon might think, the EU is an anti-democratic construct.
It was designed to be anti-democratic and cannot function in any
other way and still be the EU. It could possibly become a democratic
organisation but, if it did, it would no longer be the European
Union.
Living with the Atlantic Blanket.
Dawn 2 days ago:
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