The European Union is increasingly playing a more significant role in the lives of the British people, but in the last European Elections in 2009, a mere 34.7% of British voters bothered to take part. This lack of interest is no doubt due to a lack of understanding about how the European parliament works and what effect it actually has on our lives. After all, only 65% of registered voters took part in the UK General Election, so it makes sense that not nearly as many people would interest themselves in an election of a far away institution of foreign politicians and political parties that no-one has ever heard of. The main UK parties all compete for our votes by explaining their views and intentions on the economy, jobs and education etc. but none of them really stress the importance, let alone their stance, on the European Union.
This post aims to expose some basic truths, particularly for those that may not aware of them, without getting into some of the more topical issues that are currently in the headlines. It serves as an introduction to what will be a reoccurring theme of this blog, a theme which I hope you will agree, if not least after reading this post, is by far the single most important issue facing us today.
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The European Union is an incredibly complex socio-economic political experiment. It is a regulatory/governmental body that works and shares staff with a spectrum of institutions, national governments and civil service units. It legislates for 27 member countries that make up about 500 million people on a vast array of policy areas including the environment, agriculture, migration, business regulation and competition, defense, justice, human rights, education and monetary policy (for most members).
In theory, it is the perfect organisation. Governments work together to pool their physical and intellectual resources to drive economic growth, maintain social stability and ensure the freedom and equality of all European citizens. There are certainly many instances in which European integration brings fantastic advantages in the path to achieving these ideals. Barriers of trade can be brought down and businesses can thrive in the wider European market. Legislation and regulation can be centrally managed which saves vast sums of money on the research and implementation costs that each separate country would otherwise spend individually. Manufacturers can export goods across the continent in a harmonised market without needing to conform to individual market standards and regulations. The freedom of movement for individuals and businesses enables easy relocation to take advantage of previously inaccessible regions and markets and encourages free enterprise. All of these things can potentially produce massive savings and higher economic efficiency.
Unfortunately, for economic reasons, yet fortunately, for the awesomeness of the human race, Europe is a very long way from resembling the United States of America. The sheer number of countries, cultures and languages, and a history of war across the continent makes harmonious integration a much more complex and daring task to undertake. To make rules and regulations fit equally for all the peoples of Europe is simply not feasible. Compromises and concessions have to be made.
From a UK point of view, the first thing that comes to mind is the difference in culture between the cold-climate hard-working northern European states and the hotter-climate slower more relaxed lifestyle of the Mediterranean states. This cultural separation evidences itself in the attitudes of the people with regard to EU law enforcement. In a culture where it is the norm for people to run a red light when driving at night, for example, and very rare to ask for ID when selling alcohol and tobacco, it is not a great leap to assume that many EU regulations, such as goods specifications or environmental restrictions, would also be ignored, or at least taken with a pinch of salt. On the other hand, in a country where the police take pride in upholding even the smallest of laws such as littering in public places or wearing a seatbelt, people genuinely struggle to change their norms and routines in order to conform to the very same EU laws that other states do not bother to enforce.
In spite of its clear advantages, the manufacturing harmonisation can potentially cause huge problems for small businesses that must alter their produce. There are even cases where EU specifications on goods can render a domestic product illegal that was not even meant for export in the first place, leading to huge wastage.
Soon to take effect in Britain will be the new Resale Rights Directive (a tax) that guarantees artists and their heirs a percentage of profit every time their work is resold. This is of course great news for artists, but a blight on the future of London auction houses that currently control around 50% of the entire European art market. Art traders wishing to avoid this new levy will simply opt to auction their art in New York or Geneva instead, the result being a big loss for British trade.
Consider also the Temporary and Agency Workers Directive that essentially grants temporary workers the same pay, holidays and work conditions as permanent staff that do the same work. This seems reasonable and is theoretically designed to prevent a ‘race to the bottom’ where all countries simultaneously attempt to deregulate in order to attract business and consequently no-one ends up winning, which would make sense, if we were not in a globalised world where businesses can simply leave Europe altogether if regulations get too tight. All it will do in practice is deter employers from taking on temporary workers at a time when UK unemployment is around 2.5million and 1 in 5 youths aged between 16 and 24 are out of work.
So why is it that so many of the decisions taken at EU level are so obviously detrimental to some of the member states? The answer is that the majority of decisions actually do benefit the majority of member states, but that every decision taken also has its losers, and so many decisions are taken at this EU level, that so long as they remain in the EU, each and every country must deal with its fair share of undesirable legislation. In the same way as a change in UK tax rates will benefit some people and anger other people, a change in EU law will benefit some people and anger other people. Only on this scale, the angry people can be whole countries. What aggravates this feeling of anger even more is that most people don’t actually know who this European Government is. After all, if you and many other people in your town were unhappy about a certain EU regulation, what would you do? Who would you talk to? Do you think your MP would be able to do anything about it?
Allow me to answer this question by explaining the structure of the EU, as briefly as possible considering its complex nature, so that you may appreciate the underlying meaning of the title of this article.
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| The European Commission |
The European Council is composed of the 27 heads of state, each one elected or selected, from each national parliament, which is of course elected into power according to individual country systems. David Cameron is therefore the member of the European Council for the UK.
The European Parliament is directly elected by the peoples of Europe. (I use the term ‘peoples’ to distinguish between ‘people,’ representing one political unit, or one country in this case, and ‘peoples’, representing one or more political units.) The European Parliament is made up of the elected representatives of all the peoples of Europe and has 736 MEPs (members of the European Parliament) elected in 2009.
The European Commission is the main executive body of the EU. It manages the day to day running of the Union. It is responsible for all EU laws and regulations. It consists of 27 commissioners, one for each member state. Each Commissioner is responsible for a particular policy area, such as education, competition etc. The Commission possesses the main legislative power in Europe. In order to ensure coordinated and coherent drafting of Union law, the Commission is the sole initiator of legislation. Legislation is then passed down to the Council and the Parliament to discuss and vote it through into law. Requests to draft legislation can also come from the Parliament but the Commission reserves the right to reject these proposals. The Commission acts as a supranational authority, meaning that it is separate from national governments and required to act solely in the interest of the Union as a whole, independent and neutral from any national government influences. European Commissioners are exempt from taxation in their home countries.
Therefore, an appropriate and more fitting name for the European Commission could be: The European Government.
For most logical minded people, this immediately raises a question. If we elect the European Parliament, and we (albeit indirectly) elect the European council, but Europe is actually governed by the European Commission, then who elects the European Commission?
The President of the Commission is elected by the European Council, which puts forward candidates from each member country to be Commissioners. The other members of the Commission are then selected jointly by the President of the Commission and the Council. The Parliament must then approve the decision. To give an example: We, the British people, elected the conservative led coalition into power in the UK. David Cameron, along with 26 other heads of state from other countries, cast their votes in the election of the President of the Commission, who, according to the suitability of candidates for the policy area assignments, approves the other Commission members based on the candidates proposed by the Council.
So, is the government of Europe democratically elected by the peoples of Europe? - only very very indirectly. This is the root of what some call a lack of direct representation in the government, which brings about a lack of legitimacy, or a Democratic Deficit.
First of all, we all know that our Prime Minister is an extremely busy man; he works primarily in the UK and has all kinds of international commitments, not just in Europe. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that many decisions taken by the Council members are not thought through in great detail by the heads of state but instead managed primarily by each government’s Euopean advisors and delegates. People who do, of course, care about our country but make decisions with other external inputs not just from our government but many European government research and administrative institutions and stakeholders. The question is whether many decisions taken at the level of the EU Council are really the decisions of the member states and not agreements between bureaucrats and diplomats, influenced by the Commission, the administration of the Council and particular dynamics in Brussels that pressure Council members to pass legislation without full awareness of the potential impacts.
It is also not unreasonable to assume that with a European Parliament of over 700 members, 7 different political parties and over 20 different languages being spoken, things can tend to get a bit confusing and the minority views can easily be swept aside. A minority view, which in the case of the European Union, may in fact be the popular public opinion of a whole country.
Let us take the UK as an example once again. After the 2009 elections, the UK now has 72 MEPs in the Parliament, spread across 6 different European political parties. The largest congregation of British representatives (25 MEPs) sits with the ECR party, the European Conservatives and Reformists, which you could simplify as centre/middle right party. There are then two other groups of 13 British MEPs in the EFD party, Europe for Freedom and Democracy, a right wing party, and the S&D, Socialists and Democrats, a centre left party. The remainder of the British MEPs are aligned with the Liberal Democrats, the Greens and a few other smaller parties.
This means two things, firstly that the UK has more conservative and euro-sceptical representatives than the other member states, and more importantly that more than 50% of the British MEPs sit with minority parties that make up a total of 7% (the ECR) and 4% (the EFD) of the whole European Parliament. Which means that they (we) have about the same input into EU politics as the Lib Dems do in the UK parliament (before they made the coalition). In other words, the voice of the UK in the European Parliament is only very soft. Not a single British MEP sits with the largest political party, the EPP, European Peoples Party, of which the President of the Commission is a member.
To summarise, the very structure of the European Union puts the will of the people, channelled through the elected European Parliament, and the will of the nation state, channelled through the European Council, both in a secondary position beneath the will of the European Commission, a supra-national governing body of unelected commissioners acting solely in the interest of the European project.
So how can the ordinary citizen of Europe hope to have their opinion heard in the increasingly powerful and influential European Government..?
Put a message in a bottle, and cast it out to sea.
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