WAYS TO GET THE EU BACK ON TRACK

For getting the European Union back on track, the decision-making role of member states' governments should be recognized as a fundamental condition for the existence and the functioning of the EU. It is not accidental that the European Council has emerged as the main decision-making of the EU and its president as a more influential actor than the Commission's president. One can assume that, there being no prohibitions in this respect in the Lisbon Treaty, the future evolution of the EU will eventually lead to a re-composition of the two presidencies in a single person. In the recent crises, the European Council and its president have clearly established their role as political executive of the EU, with the Commission and its president giving rather a technical support. The recognition of the role of the governments through the European Council is crucial for making further advance in the integration process. This does not mean a radical downgrading of the Commission. It does, however, mean that the simplistic vision of the Union which, remarkably enough, still survives in certain features of the Lisbon Treaty ought to be buried once and for all. The EU is now concerned with matters of such seriousness that only a Union of States represented at the highest level can deal with them. At its turn, the increased decision-making role of the European Council's president should raise strategic demands regarding his/her legitimacy and democratic representativeness.

However, if that is true, it is also true that in democratic polity all powers, in particular those at the highest leevl should be checked and balanced. Thus, the strategic role recognized to the European Council should be balanced by a strengthening of the European Parliament, not necessarily in legislative terms but also in institutional ones. This balance should be promoted also in the fields of financial adn foreign policy. Even in those policies where decisions have not a legislative form, the European Parliament should play a supervisory role, calling the European Council's president and the members of the Commission to accounting to the European public it represents. It is not sufficient that the European Council or the Euro Summit will have to inform the European Parliament about the establishment and operation of monetary and fiscal policies. The European Parliament should become part of the policy-making, if not decision-making framework. And it is not sufficient that the High Representative be a vice-president of the Commission if s/he continues to chair the Foreign Affairs Council. The High Representative should become a coherent executive officer, with the role of coordinating the European Council's president and the Commission's president, and not member states' foreign affairs ministers. At the same time, the European Parliament and the Foreign Affairs Council should play the checking and balancing role of the legislature of a separate system.

These changes seem necessary especially if the EU will move towards some form of institutional differentiation, for instance between an inner Europe constituted by those eurozone member states and willing to use the procedure of reinforced cooperation for deepening their integration in a growing number of policy fields among which financial and foreign policy and an outer Europe constituted by those member states interested to stay in the single market but willing to maintain their own domestic sovereignty in monetary affairs, and also to regain that sovereignty in other previously Europeanized policy fields. In fact, it might be paradoxical to see the more integrated Europe (the inner Europe) operating according to the intergovernmental constitution and the less integrated Europe (the outer Europe) functioning according to the supra-national constitution of the Lisbon Treaty.

Closer co-operation between national and European Parliamentarians is essential if the impact on civil liberties of inter-governmental cooperation on internal security questions is to be properly accountable. Of all the EU institutions, the European Parliament has grown most in political influence, and even greater role for the European Parliament seems inevitable. It will elect future Presidents of the Commission and could eventually share with the Commission a right to propose European Union legislation.

Low voter turnout in European elections is a serious problem. But part of the problem is that elections for the European Parliament tend to be fought over purely national issues, and fail to offer voters genuine choices about the kind of European society they wish to see. Only when European parties are empowered to fight European elections with distinctive European programmes, and with power to appoint the EU Commission (the executive) can voters be given significant choices and thus greater incentives to vote.

An overt politicisation of the EU governance system seems underway. In the past the virtues of consensus in the interest of 'the construction of Europe' were valued more than those of democratic political conflict. But only when democratic European politics and elections offer serious choices about the future of European society can EU governance be given energy and legitimacy. All the rest is simply bla, bla, bla.

According to the Pew Research Survey published on 13 May 2013, the effort over the past half century to create a more united Europe is now the principal casualty of the euro crisis. The European project now stands in disrepute across much of Europe.

Support for European economic integration – the 1957 raison d’etre for creating the European Economic Community, the European Union’s predecessor – is down over last year in five of the eight European Union countries (Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Poland and the Czech Republic) surveyed by the Pew Research Center in 2013. Positive views of the European Union are at or near their low point in most EU nations, even among the young, the hope for the EU’s future. The favorability of the EU has fallen from a median of 60% in 2012 to 45% in 2013. And only in Germany does at least half the public back giving more power to Brussels to deal with the current economic crisis.

The prolonged economic crisis has created centrifugal forces that are pulling European public opinion apart, separating the French from the Germans and the Germans from everyone else. The southern nations of Spain, Italy and Greece are becoming ever more estranged as evidenced by their frustration with Brussels, Berlin and the perceived unfairness of the economic system.

These negative sentiments are driven, in part, by the public’s generally glum mood about economic conditions and could well turn around if the European economy picks up. But Europe’s economic fortunes have worsened in the past year, and prospects for a rapid turnaround remain elusive. Nevertheless, despite the vocal political debate about austerity, a clear majority in five of eight countries surveyed still think the best way to solve their country’s economic problems is to cut government spending, not spend more money.

The French are also beginning to doubt their commitment to the European project, with 77% believing European economic integration has made things worse for France, an increase of 14 points since last year. And 58% now have a bad impression of the European Union as an institution, up 18 points from 2012. The French now have less faith in the European Union as an institution than do the Italians or the Spanish.