03 November 2011

Stefan Collignon: European catharsis

Europe’s common public goods belong to all Europeans. They affect all of them, sometimes positively, sometimes negatively. In a modern democracy, citizens are the owners and principal of public goods and this gives them the authority to appoint a government as the agent with their efficient management. Hence, citizens are the sovereign, not states, and they have a common interest in controlling their government.

The solution to Europe’s problem of legitimacy is to set up a European government with clearly-defined competences that is controlled by the European Parliament and responsible to all citizens. Policy-making must be politicised, so that citizens have a choice. This will generate trans-European debates and European parties must formulate different policy proposals. It is this democratic process that unites human beings across nations, even if it splits them on ideological grounds.

It is often suggested that there can be no European democracy because there is no European people. But the nation as an imagined community is not in question; what matters is that citizens need a mechanism to formulate and express their political preferences with respect to very concrete issues, like how to deal with public debt in Euroland. The European people are those who are concerned and affected by the existence of European common goods.

It is now possible that Greece will blow up the European Monetary Union and with it the EU. But it is also possible that we seize the opportunity and establish a genuine democratic Europe, where European citizens take control of their lives. This must be the task of Europe’s left. As François Mitterrand once said: “The Right has only one objective: to keep power; our task is to give it back to you, the citizens”. In Europe, the Right wants to keep intergovernmentalism because it allows them to divide and rule. It is time this changes. Let us hope that after Europeans have carried euros to Athens, Georgios Papandreou will bring democracy to Europe.

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