Democracy in the European Union
The process of European integration has given rise to a new object of study – the European society. Several old questions concerning citizenship, democracy, government and institutions must be raised anew, this time at the European level. These are not only academic issues, but also major political concerns at European and member state level. There are fears that transfers of power to European institutions produce a characteristically new and worrying form of democratic ‘deficit’. The recent rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands suggests that this democratic deficit is beginning to impact on the Union’s legitimacy, further endangering the European project of ‘ever closer union’. How can this crisis be overcome, and in which direction should the European Union be moving? This new volume takes a closer look at the Union’s democratic deficit in an effort to establish its precise character and location; scrutinizes top-down institutional opportunity structures for participation, the actors that are shaping bottom-up mobilization, and the ideologies and discourses that are informing attempts to generalize political claims beyond the national level; provides a detailed insight into the scope and character of participatory practice in decision-making, the structure and visions of the European political class, and the role of civil society organizations and trans-national movements; looks at the debate on the EU as a community of values, as well as views about Europe in the new member states. This book will be of strong interest to students and researchers of the European Union, European politics and European studies, as well as those concerned with more theoretical aspects of governance and the public sphere. Liana Giorgi is Vice-Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences (ICCR), Austria. Ingmar von Homeyer is a Senior Fellow at Ecologic, the Institute for International and European Environmental Policy, Berlin/Brussels. Wayne Parsons is Professor of Public Policy and Head of Department at Queen Mary College, University of London, UK.
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Democracy in the European Union Towards the emergence of a public sphere
Edited by Liana Giorgi, Ingmar von Homeyer and Wayne Parsons
First published 2006 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business # 2006 Liana Giorgi, Ingmar von Homeyer and Wayne Parsons for selection and editorial matter; the individual contributors, their contributions
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Democracy in the European Union: towards the emergence of a public sphere / edited by Liana Giorgi, Ingmar von Homeyer, and Wayne Parsons. p. cm. – (Routledge advances in European politics; 39) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Democracy–European Union countries. 2. Political participation –; European Union countries. 3. European Union. I. Giorgi, Liana. II. Homeyer, Ingmar von. III. Parsons, Wayne. IV. Series. JN40.D475 2006 341.242’2–dc22 2005037154 ISBN10: 0–415–36909–6 (Print Edition) ISBN13: 978–0–415–36909–1
Contents
List of illustrations Notes on contributors Acknowledgements 1
Introduction: the political sociology of the European public sphere
viii ix xi
1
JOHN CROWLEY AND LIANA GIORGI
2
Democratization and the European Union
24
LIANA GIORGI
3
Participatory governance in the European Union
43
INGMAR VON HOMEYER
4
The emergence of a European political class
79
ELISE FERON, JOHN CROWLEY AND LIANA GIORGI
5
The anti-globalization movement and the European agenda
115
ELISE FERON
6
The European Union as a Community of Values
135
LIANA GIORGI, NIKI RODOUSAKIS, MARISOL GARCIA AND MARTIN PETERSON
7
EU accession and the public sphere in new member states: the case of the Czech Republic
157
´ K, TOMA ´ Sˇ KOSTELECKY ˇ ERMA ´ AND MICHAL ILLNER, DANIEL C ´ JANA STACHOVA
8
Conclusion: what future for European integration and democracy? 180 WAYNE PARSONS
Bibliography Index
199 209
Illustrations
Figures 4.1 7.1 7.2 7.3
Map of the European political class Public support for the Czech Republic’s application for membership of the EU by education Public support for the Czech Republic’s application for membership of the EU by party preference. Public support for the Czech Republic’s membership of the EU; voting likelihoods in the accession referendum
85 167 168 169
Tables 3.1 3.2 4.1a 4.1b 4.1c 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5
Case specific overview of conditions for participation Effects on participation Educational background of respondents by gender Educational background of respondents by nationality Educational background of respondents by political affiliation Experience studying and working abroad Multiple mandates and current position No mandate in the past or future Re-election rates among elected MEPs following June 2004 elections 4.6 Share of holding official positions at national level 4.7 Euro-enthusiasm (or Euro-scepticism) index 4.8 Political disenchantment index 4.9a European political ideologies by nationality of respondent 4.9b European political ideologies by politics of respondent 7.1 Answers to the question ‘Do you think that you have enough information about the accession process? 7.2 Support for Czech political parties
48 74 91 91 91 93 95 96 97 98 107 108 110 110 161 175
Contributors
ˇ erma´k is doctoral student at the Institute of Sociology, Academy of Daniel C Sciences of the Czech Republic. John Crowley is Senior Programme Specialist at UNESCO, Editor of the International Social Science Journal, and Executive Director of the Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche (CIR-Paris). Elise Feron is lecturer at the Institute of Political Science of the University of Lille, and Senior Research Fellow at the Centre Interdisciplinaire de Recherche (CIR) in Paris. Marisol Garcia is Assistant Professor at the University of Barcelona. Liana Giorgi is Vice-Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences (ICCR) in Vienna. Ingmar von Homeyer is a senior fellow at Ecologic, Institute for International and European Environmental Policy, Berlin. Michal Illner is Senior Scholar at the Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Department of Local and Regional Studies. Toma´sˇ Kostelecky´ is Senior Scholar at the Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Department of Local and Regional Studies. Wayne Parsons is Professor of Public Policy at Queen Mary College, University of London. Martin Peterson is Professor at the universities of Bergen, Norway, and Go¨teburg, Sweden and member of the Globalisation Committee of the Swedish Research Council.
x
Contributors
Niki Rodousakis is a research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences (ICCR) in Vienna. Jana Stachova´ is doctoral student at the Institute of Sociology, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic.
Acknowledgements
The research reported in this volume was carried out in the framework of the EU RTD Framework Programme project ‘The European Public Sphere: Assembling Information that Allows the Monitoring of European Democracy’ (EUROPUB) (Fifth RTD Framework Programme Improving Human Research Potential and the Socio-Economic Knowledge Base).
1
Introduction The political sociology of the European public sphere John Crowley and Liana Giorgi
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the European Union finds itself at the crossroads. On the one hand, the ambitious European project of ever closer collaboration has significantly advanced through the Eastern enlargement and the ever growing scope of economic integration. On the other hand, institutional and implementation deficits place serious barriers to further integration and raise, more urgently than before, the question of political integration – including its desirability and feasibility. The rejection of the Constitutional Treaty by the French and Dutch publics in 2005, as well as the ongoing budgetary crisis, testify to a serious legitimacy crisis. How can this crisis be overcome and where is or should the European Union be moving towards? There are three distinct narratives – responses to this question. The first considers further efficient and effective integration to be possible only once a political integration framework has been agreed upon and put into place. ‘Institutional reform’ is a term used to refer to these considerations, yet ultimately this is also a discussion about the EU political multi-level governance system, a possible Constitution and, for some, a state model. The second narrative with regard to the EU legitimacy crisis emphasizes the absence of a symbolically unifying European identity or ‘Europeanness’ among EU citizens and sees the legitimacy deficit closely linked to an identity deficit. According to the proponents of this narrative, as long as EU citizens are first and foremost ‘nationals’, pledging their solidarity to those ‘like them’ within their national territorial boundaries and identifying their national territory as the only legitimate sphere for politics, the EU as a polity will remain deficient. For this reason, it might be more sensible to concentrate any institutional reform efforts to rendering the EU an efficient expert-led international cooperation framework for making policy rather than politics. The third narrative links the legitimacy crisis to a democratic deficit: the reason why the European Union and the European integration project is not genuinely recognized as both lawful and justifiable has to do with the fact that it is non-transparent and unaccountable vis-a`-vis its citizens, hence undemocratic. Overcoming the legitimacy deficit thus requires overcoming the democratic deficit.
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These three narratives are not exclusive of each other. However, in the present official and academic discourse they tend to represent distinct views about what to emphasize or prioritize in either policy or research about European integration in the near- to mid-term future. This discourse fragmentation is to blame – at least in part – for the emerging impasse in European studies faced with increasing disciplinary and thematic overspecialization. It is also a barrier with regard to envisioning futures for European integration. This book tries to break with this tradition. The starting point of our analysis has been that there is indeed an organic link between the European Union’s legitimacy and democratic deficit, but that this is not the problem alone of any specific institution, a set of institutional rules or any single level of analysis. We need to scrutinize political institutions and rules (or the lack thereof) as much as policy processes, citizens’ concerns or patterns of participation (or the lack thereof). Such an approach requires a robust theoretical and normative framework in order to avoid that it spirals into a naı¨ve discourse of the ‘a bit of everything’ (and ultimately nothing) type. For us this is provided by the ‘model’ of a strong democracy as delineated by the notion of the public sphere. The objective of this introductory chapter is to outline this model and relate it to the individual chapters of the book.
Models of democracy and key considerations The idea that it is helpful to approach the theory of democracy from the perspective of a range of competing models is a familiar one. In a widely quoted book, David Held (1996) proposes a series of distinctions between ten generic models. The Greek idea of citizenship: democracy is defined as the direct political participation of (a very low number) of citizens. Republicanism and self-government: individual liberty is defined in political terms – the ‘active citizen’, after being replaced by the ‘religious man’, appears again in political theory. Liberal democracy: individual liberty is not political but private and economical; the intervention of the state must be limited in the economy and in private lives. Direct (Marxist) democracy threatens the concept of modern politics and presupposes in its canonical form the ‘withering away’ of the state. The technocratic and administrative conception of democracy emphasizes the importance of experts and centralized power. Elites are far from citizens who do not take part in political decisions; deliberation and parliaments are under the domination of party competition. Social and political conflicts are weaker, although freedom of opinions is high. Pluralism is characterized by the balance of powers and respect of minorities as well as different opinions; moreover, the political system is
Introduction
3
composed of various political parties and is based on the separation of powers. Legal democracy underscores the role of the constitution and the separation of powers; it favours minimal state intervention in private life and in the economy as well as a strong civil society; it seeks to restrict the role of interest groups and supports weak collectivism. Participatory democracy seeks the promotion of individual liberty, of self-development and of a collective awareness of common issues through the direct citizen participation in the regulation of the key institutions of society. Democratic autonomy: equal rights and duties for individuals: they are considered as free and equal provided they do not threaten the freedom of others. Cosmopolitan democracy is characterized by the reform of national and international governing institutions and the evolution of governance; similar processes of ‘globalization’ characterize the economy and the civil society.
The details of the above classification might be discussed at length, but its purpose is to provide a conceptual mapping rather than a catalogue. We cannot, of course, ‘choose’ the model that best suits us or any particular political situation; but we can sharpen our approach to practical or theoretical political problems by taking account of its contrasts. Each of the ten models summarizes some salient features of a real political system and also gives an account of the language in which its citizens have sought to make sense of it. Furthermore, identifying the models, even if they are regarded merely as ideal-types, points to the tensions between them and to the practical and theoretical issues that may be at stake in adopting or emphasizing one or the other. To describe democracy in terms of competitive elitism (as did Schumpeter, for instance) is to reject competing descriptions (in Schumpeter’s case, mainly in participatory terms) as unrealistic, and thus to circumscribe the range or scope of real-world democracy. Even if polemical considerations did not intervene, in other words, analytical options would carry normative baggage; in addition, ‘democracy’ has been a persistently contested notion since its modern re-emergence as a possible real-world model in the eighteenth century. Mapping ‘models of democracy’ thus helps to clarify what is actually at stake in analytical and normative quarrels about democracy. Using Held’s own approach, a series of issues appear to have particular significance in driving competing interpretations of the superficially straightforward idea of democracy as the ‘rule of the people’: The place of the state within the overall conception of democracy and politics, which can be generalized as the significance given to deliberate ordering (via authoritative command) as distinct from more or less
4
John Crowley and Liana Giorgi spontaneous self-ordering (via the unintended consequences of interaction) as a template for collective existence. The importance given to ‘civil society’ (however named) in democratic theory is a converse criterion. The scale of political action, which relates closely to its nature and purpose. If politics is conceived in terms of the collective reflexive life of a people, then the scale of politics will naturally tend to be thought of as unitary and uniform (e.g. in the modern context, by reference to the nation-state). Conversely, if politics is envisaged primarily in terms of problem-solving, there are likely to be as many scales or arenas of political authority and action as there are problems: politics will therefore be neither unitary nor uniform, and the nation-state – as indeed the strong normative idea of the people – will tend to be regarded as a rather arbitrary historical inheritance rather than a necessary political template. The processes that make up ‘politics’: a wide range of perspectives exist, from an emphasis on struggles and power relations to a privileging of dialogue and deliberation, with bargaining or negotiation models occupying a notional intermediate position. The subject matter or scope of politics. To say that the people should rule is not to specify over what they should rule (simply that no one else should rule, strictly speaking, over anything); even to say that politics is about solving problems is not to prejudge which problems are ‘political’. In the contemporary context, this issue points in three crucial directions, all of which remain profoundly controversial. First, what should be the link between the economy and politics? Second, are human rights a political issue, or an intangible framework within which politics must operate? Third, is there a conceptual limit (e.g. the limits of the human body, however defined) beyond which democratic politics cannot go without self-destructing? Needless to say, none of these questions is in fact dichotomous, and all sophisticated positions occupy some kind of middle ground. But the polar opposites are, nonetheless, the structuring factors of public debate. The nature of the people: whom does ‘the people’ include, and whom does it exclude? On what is membership of the people conditional? What sense are we to make of the suspicion about ‘the people’ that underlies traditional rejections of democracy as a viable template for government? Needless to say, these questions intersect with considerations about the territorial scale of political authority: patterns of inclusion and exclusion appear very differently if politics is circumscribed a priori by territoriality or merely contingently related to it, in the sense that many (but not all) issues that political systems need to deal with are themselves inherently territorial. Also of crucial significance in this respect are such institutional questions as rules for decision making and the existence of a status, possibly including specific rights and capacities, for minorities. The nature of political judgement. Again, this overlaps to a considerable extent with consideration of the nature of the people, but is nonetheless a
Introduction
5
distinct question. To regard political capacity as an aspect of common sense, a skill that can be learned in principle by everyone, an aspect of ‘character’ that itself may or may not be universally accessible, a gift that is likely to be rare and to flourish unpredictably, or a correlate of some kind of hierarchically ordered ‘wisdom’, is to offer vastly different interpretations of what membership of a political community entails. Undoubtedly, the democratic temper tended to confine the debate to a fairly limited contrast between political judgement as common sense and citizenship as popular education, but it would be misleading to view the other historically attested positions as having solely antiquarian significance. Current debates about the role of (especially scientific) expertise within democratic polities clearly show the survival of traditional issues and categories. What is important about these issues is that none can plausibly be regarded as foreclosed by common sense or theoretical logic. Arguably, all possible answers to all of them capture something of empirical significance about observable political systems, as well as something of normative significance about the fundamental idea of democracy. It is, in that sense, not simply an accident of the history of political thought that the various competing generic models have emerged and survived through centuries of debate. Allowing for the vagaries of intellectual fashion, they sketch the conceptual universe of democratic thinking.
Strong democracy and the concept of the public sphere Central to our understanding of a strong democracy is the notion of a public sphere. In discussions on democracy, and drawing in particular from the civic republican tradition, the term ‘public sphere’ or ‘public space’ is used to refer to the scope of citizen interaction found in democratic societies. It is, to use Habermas’ (1989) terminology, the ‘publicly relevant private sphere’ of interaction: here, individuals relate to one another not in terms of market transactions, nor in terms of power relations, but rather as politically equal citizens (subjects) of a polity. A public sphere delineates that space in which citizens come together to discuss and debate issues of common or public concern. The public space thus defined is easy to imagine and also realize in the ancient city republic or the local level of contemporary societies. It is much more difficult to bring about in metropolitan areas or the trans-national multi-lingual context. It is for this reason perhaps that contemporary discussion on the public space in general, and the European public space in particular, is very communication-centred, concerned with the role of the media in modern democracies and the potential of new communication technologies, like the internet, to provide virtual public spaces that can effectively replace real (physical) public spaces. Our approach in this book has been to focus on the public sphere as a guiding principle in democratic polities making necessary
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the establishment and maintenance of public spaces, rather than a single public space. Our overall aim has been to judge the links between these multiple public spaces across different territorial levels of government, and especially across member states, and how these impact on each other and on the European level of governance. A democratic polity centred on the public sphere has the following characteristics with reference to the six key questions identified in the previous section as central to democratic theory, i.e. the role of the state, the scale of political action, the processes that make up politics, the scope of politics, the nature of ‘the people’ and the nature of political judgement: A democratic polity centred on the public sphere relates to an idea of government as authoritative command and emphasizes transparency of rule understood democratically as self-rule. Whether the state is a necessary framework in this respect is a matter of vigorous debate, but it is at least clear that in so far as the traditional territorial state is regarded as obsolete, the solution is to be sought in a hierarchically ordered scheme of territorial scales, i.e. in some form of federalism. Politics expresses the collective reflexive life of a people. It is engaged in problem-solving only (albeit necessarily) to the extent that such collective life brings the people up against ‘problems’, which become so only within the democratic process itself. Deliberation is the fundamental democratic process. Bargaining and power struggles are acceptable only to the extent that they are normatively subordinate to deliberation and, ideally, set within an institutional framework where they can be regulated by deliberation. The subject matter of politics is indeterminate. However, a properly ordered democracy will be such that, at any time, the limits of political competence will be quite sharply drawn. In Habermas’ (1999) well known phrase, sovereignty and human rights are ‘co-originary’. The people includes, in principle, all those affected by the decisions taken in the course of the democratic process. The absolute minimum principle of inclusion is, of course, that all those who are subject to laws enacted democratically should participate equally in the process of deliberation and enactment. Political judgement is a skill that can be learned by anyone, and is indeed universally acquired in the context of socialization and education. Undoubtedly, some people may be less effectively taught; and, possibly, some may prove inherently more skilful. But neither of these distinctions offers any ground for distinguishing either in principle or in practice between those endowed with and devoid of political capacity. While such a model is fairly determinate in the context of democratic thinking and is in particular clearly and sharply opposed to other influential democratic modes of thinking, such as Schumpeterian elitist pluralism or
Introduction
7
Hayekian liberalism, it still offers considerable scope for variation. If publicity-oriented democracy has a generic name in contemporary political theory it is ‘republicanism’, and in order to clarify how this analysis can contribute to a sharper conceptualization of the idea of a ‘public sphere’ in the specifically European context, it is useful to specify some of the distinctions between varieties of republicanism. These refer ultimately to four main titular figures: Aristotle, Machiavelli, Rousseau and Kant. It would be mistake, however, to conclude that there are four distinct varieties of republicanism: on the one hand it is possible, to a certain extent, to combine several of the above influences (notably, of course, Rousseau and Kant); and on the other hand, important recent figures (most notably Arendt) have contributed to a redistribution of some of the classic issues. A survey of republicanism would be quite beyond the scope of this introductory chapter, and the suggestions offered here, along with the theorists chosen, are mainly illustrative. Strong democracy structured by institutions Benjamin Barber, drawing inspiration primarily from Rousseau and to a lesser extent from Aristotle, offers a theory (and a prescription) of ‘strong democracy’ as a way of life structured by institutions (Barber 1984, 1988). The current crisis of democracy, for example, is analysed by Barber in terms of the erosion of democratic institutions, including education, the public media and the state generally, particularly under the pernicious influence of contemporary modes of globalization (Barber 1995). Neither liberalism nor tribalism can be faithful solutions because the notions of individuals and of communities are not solutions in themselves. It is not old-fashioned to believe in politics, including in concrete and pragmatic politics rather than ideal politics. This is why both the idea and especially the structures of democracy should be improved: the representative institutions on which Europe depends have drifted away from citizens. Liberty, in Barber’s characteristically republican view, is distinctively political: it involves essentially the capacity to act together, and only in a subsidiary sense the capacity to protect ‘myself’ from the encroachments of others. The existence of liberty as a tangible and situated good depends on the stability of national political institutions and on our capacity to modernize them and help them to play their role. Education – the key to what Barber, in a striking phrase, idealizes as ‘the aristocracy of everyone’ (Barber 1992) – but also nationalism and religion are means of making this goal attainable. Politics does not mean trying to find absolute truth or justice but making everyday choices taking reality into account: there are no a priori solutions. Political liberty thus entails being a responsive and responsible politician or citizen. This is why the state is not inherently ‘far’ from citizens, or to be feared as liberals and conservatives tend to: state and citizens can work together to change the world in the name of common political participation.
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Undoubtedly, the common will of citizens, that is to say their collective feeling of membership, based on a common participation in the building of political society, a feeling of sovereignty, should be taken into account. As Aristotle wrote, men are ‘political animals’. Although each country has its own political culture and traditions, the remarks above can – and should – be applied in all Western societies. Europe would not be ill advised to take inspiration from local participation in American society and to encourage political powers to be less centralized. Moreover, contemporary immigration and multiculturalism can help us to find political answers to the new identity claims which could mean the improvement of ‘civic faith’. Following Habermas, Barber argues that democracy is fed by a collective feeling of membership in a common (political) society. To welcome ‘otherness’ therefore entails building a common citizenship based on responsibility, popular sovereignty, political will and strong participatory institutions. A sense of community through political action Although clearly within it in a generic sense, Barber expresses scepticism about the republican tradition as expressed in contemporary political theory, precisely because of its traditional character. He is concerned, in particular, that contemporary Machiavellianism may lack an adequate understanding of the public and of citizenship, and that the influence of Arendt tends to be uncomfortably anti-modernist. Other contemporary republicans, on the contrary, take Arendt and/or Machiavelli as their key reference points. Etienne Tassin (1999), for instance, thinks that philosophy is very useful to politics because it allows men to ‘understand common life in politics’. This does not mean that an absolute truth conditions politics as individual and collective actions, but that understanding the political condition of individuals implies finding the sense of ‘living together’, which is not easy precisely because both events and political decisions are uncertain. Historicism must be banished, as well as relativism. As a consequence, a public political sphere of actions must be created and nourished to give politics a concrete dimension, to help it to be close to individuals and encourage them to participate in it. But, as Arendt said, since political action is much more than ‘work’ (the goal of which is private, individual survival) because it gives sense to common life, common belonging to the world and pluralism have the same foundations. We must not ‘avoid’ the concrete world, reality, because politics is praxis. Once we have plurality, we have to build a political community of citizenship, that is to say the implementation of common and deliberative political action. Pluralism means mutual recognition and shared culture, whereas collective political action implies citizenship, political action and power, which is the opposite of domination, of strength. Moreover, the political sphere is a public sphere, it is not just a common and shared national or cultural sphere, as the latter concerns a limited number of people and the former the
Introduction
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whole political community of citizens. Tassin (1999) has specifically applied this argument to the emergence of a European polity and has logically, on the basis of this interpretation of what publicity entails, expressed scepticism about the conceptual basis of a European public sphere. Political action gives the individuals their real common identity. Furthermore, political judgement is collective and reinforces the common sense of the community. Thus, the common world is composed of individuals who, as individuals, judge politically and, as a consequence, give a common sense to the political action which is part of the judgement. Tassin refers to Arendt’s interpretation of Kant, who considered that such a collective political judgement created a feeling of universality and cosmopolitan citizens. Tassin criticizes sovereignty because it implies submission and the absence of common world, of freedom and of pluralism. As a matter of fact, power cannot belong to an individual or to a restricted group of people, it does not imply relationships, even between institutions and men. It belongs to the whole political community, even when some people represent other people within the political sphere. Indeed, the political sphere is fragile, because politics is fragile, indeterminate, threatened: time is abolished except in the concepts of beginning and promise. Politics exists only in collective action, in deliberation which does not have specific goals except itself. Political power is, by definition, useless as it aims only at making individuals work together and take collective decisions for their common world. It does not aim at reaching a consensus, contrary to what Habermas claims, because politics is not government. More concretely, according to Tassin, there should be a balance of powers, because the law does not submit individuals, it rather links them to each other. Procedures, communication between people within the public sphere are not the point: the feeling of belonging to the same political community is much more crucial. Politics is an institution. The common world both conditions citizenship and gives it its meaning. Individuals are equals and independent, but they are also linked to each other through a fragile common feeling of membership and responsibility, and through the idea of political confrontation by virtue of the res publica. Beyond liberalism to emphasize civic virtues By contrast with both Barber and Tassin, John Pocock (1975) offers an interpretation of republicanism in which Machiavelli is perhaps the most powerful influence. Underlining Barber’s point that modernity is one of the things at stake in debate within republicanism, Pocock qualifies the excessively positive image of modernity understood in terms of open societies, private liberties, political rights, liberal economy and peace, by offering a critical historiography of liberalism. Politics in Western countries has been reduced to private interests and pluralism for more than thirty years. What we have forgotten are the key questions of ‘living together’ and common principles. This is why Machiavelli is a model for many authors for whom
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politics means civic virtues and political ideals, i.e. political freedom, properly understood. For Pocock, Machiavelli plays a major role in the American imagination of nation building, which cannot be reduced to political and economical liberalism. He argues for a civic and humanistic definition of politics: people are citizens before being traders. And virtue means that people work together for their common destinies through a stable and pluralistic political order in which all can recognize themselves. Such a republican order is based on autonomy, ‘civicness’, limited specialization of political functions, and active participation of all citizens in politics. In Pocock’s opinion, the debate on modernity must take into account individual rights and the limitation of political authority, but discussion of politics cannot be restricted to such liberal concerns. According to Quentin Skinner (1978) and others (for example, Alasdair MacIntyre), there is a moral gap between the liberal conception of politics and the Aristotelian political tradition. The conception of negative liberty, for instance, has made political liberty a negative notion – something is lacking. One of the claims about political liberty in this line of thinking links freedom to self-government, to civic virtues (personal liberty is linked with the notion of public service). This means that only some well defined ends deserve to be pursued. Another claim is that freedom implies constraints: freedom depends on our willingness and capacity to maintain civic virtues. Virtue is thus a constraint; we must force ourselves to be free (which explicitly relates Rousseau to the tradition under discussion). The supposed tension between individual rights and duties may thus be simply a misplaced liberal obsession. In fact, according to Skinner, real freedom, based on political participation, is not an ‘obligation’, since humans are naturally social (Aristotle); moreover, they are moral beings with human purposes. As a consequence, human freedom may be a positive notion. This is why humans need to create a political association in order to realize their nature and liberty. In the classical republican tradition (Machiavelli, Harrington, Milton), the condition for freedom thus understood is to abolish absolutism in order to live in a free state. The benefits of living in free states, from the Machiavellian perspective, are ‘civic greatness’ and ‘wealth’, and also personal liberty (individuals remain free to pursue their private ends, whatever they are). In order to maintain individual liberties, we must promote the res publica, a self-governing republic, which implies that citizens cultivate civic virtue, the will to serve the common good, to improve the freedom of the community. The required qualities are courage, determination to defend our country against foreign conquerors, and prudence; and the required institutional conditions, which in some ways are even more difficult to establish, are guarantees that political decisions are taken by the entire political body and the avoidance of corruption. The means are the coercive power of the law, but not in a Hobbesian sense. For Machiavelli, the priority is to protect individual liberties and avoid servitude.
Introduction
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Republican thinkers in what is often called the ‘classical’ tradition thus connect social freedom with self-government, but also link the idea of personal liberty to that of virtuous public service. That the preservation of individual liberty should imply coercion and constraint (duties which may have to be enforced) is only superficially paradoxical (pace liberalism) because our ends, being indeterminate, are not always moral (pace Aristotle). There is nothing contradictory in proposing to place moral constraints on oneself. Today, it is commonly said (or wished) that there are many areas of public life where increased participation may improve the accountability of our representatives. But the most important goal is not to build a ‘genuine democracy’ based on ‘power to the people’. Rather, we must first of all put our duties before our rights to warrant the latter. Dialogue towards rational consensus Ju¨rgen Habermas (1999) self-consciously relates himself to the republican tradition, but derives it primarily from Kant, with the added influence of Rousseau. His interpretation is thus significantly different from both Barber’s straightforward Rousseauism and ‘classical’ Machiavellianism, and also conflicts on a number of points with the Arendtian tradition. Furthermore, his sustained attention to the ‘post-metaphysical’ fact of ‘pluralism’ places him in a closer and more internal connection to liberalism (e.g. Rawls) than most republicans – for whom, indeed, liberalism is often the main conceptual adversary. Habermas himself would argue that his theories offer a synthesis of liberalism and republicanism and reveal many of the supposed oppositions between them to be bogus. While we may not accept that conclusion, it is clear enough that it conveniently summarizes his overarching intellectual objectives. Habermas’ conceptual framework seeks to combine law, justice, democracy and rights. Therefore, morality is a key concept, as well as a law which is to be procedural and discursively grounded. This project is bound to create a common and participatory political sphere, a common feeling of membership in the same political community. Habermas does not agree with Arendt, who thought that conflict – more exactly peaceful conflict – was the key to democracy and in a sense even its ultimate goal. According to him, pluralism, differences of opinions and values (e.g. different conceptions of ‘the good’) can be handled only through rational consensus, not conflict. The consensus, in turn, cannot be strictly substantive (in the ‘postmetaphysical’ context), but must have a procedural character. Referring to Kant, Habermas insists on the importance of dialogue and considerations of differences, while rejecting communitarianism. Habermas also seeks to bridge or at least narrow the gap between democracy and rights in stressing the importance of commonly shared values, which implies that laws should be self-imposed and binding in order to reconcile legal and factual equality (the discourse principle links self-legislation to law).
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European democracy in terms of ‘publicity’ Why give a democratic model centred on the public sphere ideology precedence for the European Union? There are two main reasons for this. Our argument is first, that this model has some kind of normative priority; second that that there are specific reasons within the dynamics of the emerging European polity for competing models to be less likely to be available here than at the national level. Normative considerations What is most distinctive about the civic republican model as a general theoretical approach to democracy is that it is premised on scepticism about the two fundamental processes that lie behind the most practically significant competing models: aggregation and delegation. The aggregative principle states that, citizens’ preferences being diverse, often conflicting, chaotically uncoordinated and imperfectly known, the political process must offer processes for them to be bundled (by setting a manageable agenda framed by issues on which people can adopt a fairly limited range of relevant – and possibly sharply conflicting – positions) as well as decision procedures that ensure that, on the whole, policies (defined as choices among bundled positions) that are opposed by the majority or by powerful vocal minorities are not implemented. The principle of delegation, which is compatible with the first though not necessarily combined with it, states that politics is, for technical reasons, subject to the same general laws of ‘division of labour’ as all other forms of collective human activity. Competence, taste, ability, ambition, along with various random factors, lead some to concern themselves with the management of public affairs and others to be passive or indifferent. Not only is there nothing wrong with this – it is actually more efficient in producing the ‘public good’ than a participatory system where everyone tries to do a bit of everything. It follows that it is both likely and desirable for democratic systems (defined for these purposes as systems where everyone’s voice counts for something and everyone’s vote counts equally) to develop mechanisms for efficient division of political labour. Representative institutions, political parties, opinion polls and the mass media are among the characteristic institutions of ‘delegation’ democracy in this respect. It is a reasonable summary to regard contemporary democratic systems as relying, on the whole, on a combination of aggregation and delegation, in the sense that their characteristic institutions depend on both principles and that the standard justifications offered of them depend on claims about the mutually supportive operation of delegation and aggregation. At the theoretical level, the Schumpeterian model of competitive elite liberalism is an ideal-type in this regard. The question, then, is what might be wrong with this generic model and what might lead us, in spite of its undoubted
Introduction
13
descriptive usefulness, to give normative priority to civic republicanism? The answer lies in two sets of considerations that are entirely familiar from the literature, but the significance of which nonetheless needs to be appreciated. First, the formal justification of aggregation is open to a series of damaging objections. ‘Voting paradoxes’ are sufficiently familiar not to require detailed discussion here. Suffice it to mention Kenneth Arrow’s ‘impossibility theorem’ which, generalizing Condorcet’s paradox, shows that the conditions required for voting procedures to produce collectively stable decisions in terms of fixed prior preferences are, theoretically, highly restrictive. In addition, as a model of democracy considered substantively rather than formally, aggregation is open to the challenge that, by considering preferences to be fixed and largely independent from the political process, it excludes any idea of citizenship as participation in a process of collective self-determination. It is not necessary to subscribe to the strong view that, in the words of Pierre Bourdieu (1980), ‘public opinion does not exist’ in order to justify scepticism about the stability, coherence and even significance of opinions expressed publicly. But, if preferences are in some sense indeterminate, the very idea of ‘aggregation’ becomes largely meaningless. Second, and to a large extent independently, the idea that delegation as a principle of political organization might be justified in democratic terms comes up against some fairly massive issues of political sociology. At a formal level, democratic delegation requires both a robust conception of public opinion – regarded as not essentially exposed to manipulation in the context of elite competition – and an elite that is fairly open, or at the very least not entirely endogamous. There is extensive evidence that really existing democracies tend to violate both conditions – indeed, arguably, the historical trend in so far as there is one is towards increasing violation. Specific European considerations The general normative priority of the characteristic features of civic republicanism takes on a specific significance at the European level. Elite pluralism in historically established democracies can rely on a dense web of institutions, practices, and background values and preconceptions, that correct some of the bias inherent in the principles of aggregation and delegation. On the one hand, some idea of the public interest is embedded in nationhood and statehood: this may be imperfectly articulated and far from consensual, but it nonetheless remains a background resource that reduces the need for the formal institutions of political authority to produce their own legitimacy within the terms of their own operation. On the other hand, and in many ways more importantly, political authority is only one aspect of a whole web of regulation that corresponds to what we might call ‘societal governance’. Institutional density undoubtedly sharply distinguishes the EU from its member states. Whatever one may think of elite pluralism or its corporatist
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variants in normative terms, it is abundantly clear that the background resources on which it can rely at national level are significantly lacking at European level. The lack of a common language is merely one aspect of this deficit, and in many ways not the most important. Of more profound significance is a degree of institutional fragmentation that is a barrier to the emergence of a shared political culture and, simultaneously, a major factor in the absence of a focused political agenda. Comparison with cohesive federal states perhaps brings this contrast into sharper relief. The United States has regional political systems embedded both in institutions and in an available language of identity. But there is unquestionably a national political system that serves to organize patterns of regional variation, and furthermore one that, inside the Beltway, is highly cohesive. In so far as the EU can be considered from the same perspective, the situation is almost precisely the opposite. In other words, it is the thickness and self-contained nature of the characteristic institutional systems of each of the member states, rather than any substantive difference between them, that best accounts for the unquestionably and correlative ‘thinness’ of the EU. These facts are very familiar, but their significance seems not to be adequately appreciated. It is striking that even a defender of the EU such as Jacques Delors has gone on record as regarding four policy areas as being inherently inappropriate for Europeanization: education, culture, social welfare, and law and order. In light of earlier comments, this list looks very like an enumeration of what is institutionally constitutive of state-centred nationhood; its effect, if taken seriously, is certainly to entrench an irreducible difference between the member states, which remain heirs to the nation-state tradition and continue to reflect it in modified form, and the EU, which cannot aspire to the same degree of institutional and symbolic cohesiveness. It follows that, unless the democratic deficit is taken to be a necessary feature of Europeanization – which implies that, as Euro-sceptics would claim, a choice must be made between democracy and Europe – the EU must, for structural reasons, draw more on the distinctive resources of civic republicanism than the member states. Publicity may be a background resource at national level; it cannot be at European level. It is to this extent that consideration of the specific features of the political integration of Europe reinforces the general normative arguments for a generically civic republican approach to the assessment of contemporary democracy. The reader will note that we consistently avoid considering the problem of democracy at European level as one of identity that emphasizes the symbolic elements (passports, anthems, flags and the other paraphernalia of nationhood). It is often presented in public debate – if not also in academic contributions – that subscription to a form of European collective identity could possibly overcome both the actual and the perceived democratic deficit. In other words, the democratic deficit is closely related to an identity deficit. However, rather than formulating such an identity at the symbolic level, it is both more theoretically coherent and more practically plausible to
Introduction
15
relate it to the democratic process itself. This idea that democracy might be self-legitimizing is a little more plausible. If people are given procedures that enable them to be genuinely citizens, then they will tend to act as citizens and feel themselves to be truly members of a political community. Intuitively, a public sphere or space is one in which genuine citizenship is possible. Adequate democratic procedures would thus promote a sense of identification, and vice-versa, leading to a virtuous cycle of truly European citizenship.
The public sphere as a sociological process The previous sections tell us what a public sphere would look like and why the EU is unlikely to be democratic without one. What they do not tell us is how public spheres emerge in general. The question is what sociological features might guarantee, or less ambitiously permit, the emergence and stability of a public sphere structured by a language of political justification based on impartial argument that serves as a regulatory ideal. The point is not, of course, that political actors cease to have distinctive interests, values and identities when speaking or acting publicly. They cannot, and even if they could there would be no normative reason to demand it of them. Rather the regulatory language is one that enables actors to know what kinds of arguments count as good and what things cannot be said in public without discrediting a claim and its author. In a very formal sense, such criteria are indistinguishable from ‘political correctness’, which may be understood in a very derogatory way. For public language to have normative significance, therefore, some standard of conformity to the ‘public interest’ needs to be available at least in principle. To make this requirement positive would be highly implausible: indeed, we should be suspicious of any attempt to define the public interest independently from the democratic process itself. It is more plausible, however, as a negative constraint: the idea of the public interest equips us with tools to detect arguments, whether explicit or implied by claims advanced, that are prima facie bad in the sense that they are designed solely to use public means to obtain private advantage. In democratic terms, obviously, such a language can be neither chosen nor imposed; it necessarily emerges, and one would expect it on general sociological grounds to emerge as an aspect of procedures and processes in which it is embedded and to which it gives meaning. ‘Publicity’, understood in terms of public accountability (accountability in public and accountability to the idea of the public), is simply a convenient and sociologically resonant name for this kind of evaluative language. The first feature of publicity is what Habermas (1996) puts at the centre of his analysis: the fact that the public sphere relates politics to law. Lawmaking involves defining general rules for persons and circumstances unknown, or at least imperfectly known. It means shifting attention from bargaining about resource sharing for any specific issue to deliberating
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about rules to guide resource sharing more generally. The planning and use of physical infrastructure, such as housing and leisure facilities, offer numerous examples. Such infrastructure obviously occupies specific spaces, and issues of access and quality are themselves highly localized. It may, however, be more politically effective to mobilize at a higher level. In that case, one would expect to encounter the claim that the state should provide (or order the council to provide) resource x for group Y. However, forms of mobilization that succeed in federating a durable coalition usually have a rather different character, expressing more abstract, more generalizable – in a word, more political – concerns. Typically, the revised claim is that law A should be passed in order to guarantee equitable access to resource x (or some broader class X of resources) for all groups (including, of course, Y). In other words, claims that are legislative in the generic sense that they are about the rules of politics are political in a way that typically does not make sense ‘locally’ because the local is by definition not so much a space as a sub-space. It is of its nature to be embedded in a larger-scale entity. The complexity of Europe, on the other hand, is underlined by the fact that the member states are neither strictly autonomous, nor merely ‘local’ with regard to the EU. What is important sociologically is that the politicization of claims, and the corresponding shift from bargaining to deliberation, depend on the dynamics of mobilization rather than on the good intentions of the actors involved. Otherwise, the idea of a public sphere would be purely wishful thinking. Whether the dynamics of mobilization suffice to impose deliberation on actors who do not have an interest in generalizing and politicizing their claims is, however, doubtful. The process sketched with reference to the nationalization of local claims depends crucially on the comparative weakness of the initial mobilization and the structural necessity to change scale, because of the lack of legislative capacity at the local level. Pure bargaining may be a perfectly stable format for other kinds of claims. Habermas himself would of course argue that the dynamics of argument – even within a bargaining format – force the participants towards deliberation. But this is inadequate, since it leaves willingness to participate in good-faith argument ungrounded within the dynamics of mobilization. The problem for a sociological analysis of the public sphere is, therefore, to specify the structural conditions that make participation in deliberation a rational political strategy even for actors who are unreasonable in the Rawlsian sense that they are not motivated by a desire for just cooperation. Such conditions cannot, of course, provide guarantees, or even impose enforceable constraints on political participation. Arguably, indeed, democracy depends on the absence of guarantees or constraints of this kind. The conditions are simply those that make it more probable that membership of a society organized as a political community should take the form of participation based on public-spiritedness – in other words what one would usually call, for normative purposes, citizenship.
Introduction
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The sociology of political participation, of which work inspired by the theories of Pierre Bourdieu is exemplary, is generally regarded as – and to a real extent is self-consciously constituted as – a critique of and alternative ¨ ffentlichkeit. What to the ‘idealism’ of Habermas and other proponents of O Bourdieu calls the ‘political field’ (champ politique) coincides empirically with the ‘public sphere’: it is characterized by the mobilization of resources, the expression of interests and the articulation of justificatory language (Bourdieu 2000). It is the forum in which membership of a society organized as political community is constituted – the forum, in other words, of citizenship. In Bourdieu’s interpretation, however, the political field is also the point where political domination converges, in mutually reinforcing ways, with economic and symbolic domination to arrange and justify unequal participation. It is the place, in other words, where domination dresses up as citizenship. As people confronted with cross-dressing tend to, Bourdieu views this with a mixture of technical admiration and moral revulsion. At first sight, no two things could be more different than a public sphere and a political field. In fact they are, pace both Bourdieu and Habermas, mutually reinforcing. What prevents citizenship being simply a sham in the political field is the competitive pressure to which those who attempt to monopolize it are subjected. And what prevents the public sphere being merely wishful thinking is precisely the same competitive pressure. What develops, in other words, is an uneasy balance between the tendency of public-spiritedness to emerge from cynical politics and the tendency of even the most idealistic politics to close in on itself. This balance, like citizenship itself, is a question of empirical degree: there are no knock-down arguments, sociological or quasi-transcendental. Effectively, a public sphere is an open political field: one from which nothing is excluded a priori and in which practical limits to inclusion can be overcome if people care about them enough. If it did acquire closure in any of these respects, it would cease, ultimately, to be ‘public’ in the full sense of the word. Meaningful citizenship is the correlate of such openness. The most crucial point to be noted about this outline characterization is that it makes the emergence of a public sphere a matter of degree. Publicity is not either present or absent; it is more or less significant within a political system. Its significance grows as a wider range of actors and issues are regulated by publicity, and conversely declines when larger sections of the political process are condoned off from the kind of normative assessment that republican citizenship entails. More formally, it may be useful to distinguish for these purposes between three dimensions of openness that are, in principle, fairly independent, and the impact of which on the strong idea of publicity is cumulative. Furthermore, the three dimensions summarize the thrust of the extensive research on the forms and implications of political exclusion – especially the subtle exclusion that affects those who are formally included as citizens, but whose concerns remain unheard and
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unrecognized. The first dimension of openness is in terms of persons. A genuinely public sphere would be open in principle to all and, in practice, would offer a sufficiently wide range of options and relevant resources – including opportunities to establish innovative coalitions – for no one to be structurally excluded. The democratic ideal, of course, would demand truly equal access, but this standard is so exacting that it is of little assistance in assessing real-world systems that are, to varying degrees, imperfect. The second dimension of openness is in terms of issues. A genuinely public sphere would be indeterminate with respect to questions that can be raised and problems that matter. At any point in time, a political community will tend to rely on a broadly shared common sense within which some things are not political, not topics for public discussion, not recognized as ‘things’ at all. This is normatively acceptable so long as that common sense is provisional – not in the sense that all actors submit it to reflexive criticism (which would be incompatible with the very idea of common sense) but, much more simply that nothing prevents it being challenged at any time by any one. Again, it would be absurdly exacting and ultimately self-defeating to insist that everything must always be up for grabs, but the principle of publicity does give us the critical resources to be sceptical of things that are persistently and routinely taken for granted. The third, and in some respects most challenging, dimension of openness is in terms of modes of discourse. One interpretation of publicity associates it closely with a particular kind of public intervention – one based on impartiality and reasoned argument from general principles and abstract concerns. It is a familiar finding of critical sociology, especially from a feminist perspective, that such rules of engagement – even if only at the level of entrenched common sense – are highly exclusive. A necessary corollary of openness to persons and issues is that discourse is not regulated other than by the requirements of deliberation itself, and we might indeed add, against Habermas’ own views on the communicative process, that civility as a condition of open-endedness is a far more appropriate standard here than rationality as a condition of consensus. Arguably, the public sphere might benefit hugely from the deliberate fostering of non-standard forms of engagement, precisely because our taken-forgranted notions of impartiality carry heavy unacknowledged baggage.
Contents and structure of this book Let us start by summarizing the theoretical argument of the previous sections. This is that the democratic model centred on the public sphere, which should and is being given precedence for the European Union by reason of the latter’s institutional ‘thinness’, implies a twofold focus on citizenship: from the top-down perspective, on the institutional opportunity structures for participation and, more specifically, their openness with regard to persons, issues or modes of discourse; from the bottom-up perspective, on the forces and actors that are shaping mobilization and, in turn, the generalization
Introduction
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of political claims beyond the national, hence at the European level. At the same time, a public sphere is not clearly delineated in that it either exists or it is absent. Its emergence is rather a matter of degree: a strong European democracy is that in which the public sphere plays a significant role; a weak European democracy is that where the opposite is the case. This theoretical argument provided the basis for the research that is documented in this volume. All of the contributors in this volume worked together over a period of three years studying public debates and instances of participation across policy domains and several countries, as well as at the level of the EU supra-national institutions, in an attempt to both document and analyse the emergence of the European public sphere and its degree of significance. Our research design was guided by two principal considerations that follow directly from our theoretical argument: First, that in order to tap on the emergence of the European public sphere it is necessary to look into the decision structures and procedures, and examine to what extent these allow for the contestation of decision-making by citizens and their representatives. Second, that insofar as the consolidation of the European public sphere depends equally, if not more significantly, on the ability of relevant intermediaries civil society organizations, political parties or social partner organizations to ‘Europeanize’ political claims, assessing the ‘degree’ and ‘scope’ of the European public sphere implies that we have to look into the patterns of mobilization and narratives of these actors. Accordingly, the contributions to this volume deal respectively with opportunity structures for participation (Chapter 3), the emergence of new ‘European’ actors (Chapters 4 and 5), and the latter’s narratives on the European Union at the supra-national and national levels (Chapters 6 and 7). Chapter 2 places this research in the context of the democratic audit scholarship. Following this short overview, let us take a closer look at the individual chapters. In search of a methodological framework that would allow us to measure and monitor the degree to which publicity informs European democracy, Liana Giorgi, in Chapter 2, suggests that it might be more reasonable to think about these questions in terms of ‘democratization’. Even in the absence of supra-national institutions such as those of the European Union, contemporary societies would still be facing democratic challenges by reason of the complexity brought about by the growing inter-dependencies between territorial and societal levels of governance, within as well as beyond the nation-state. The extension of the scope of the democratic audit scholarship to consider ever more social and political institutions supports this view. From this perspective, it is more reasonable to think about democratic practices in terms of governance mode rather than in democratic ‘modelling’ terms. As argued earlier in this chapter, contemporary democratic systems tend to rely on a combination of aggregation and delegation to arrive at collective decisions, and following our theoretical arguments, deliberative procedures are or should be gaining in significance in a
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democratic framework centred on the public sphere. Giorgi extends this line of reasoning to apply to the institutional level. In turn, this means that monitoring democracy in order to assess the degree of its openness in terms of publicity must not only be carried out at different territorial levels and across different societal institutions, but also with the overall objective of establishing the extent to which different procedural modes for aggregating or integrating citizen interests are used and with what effect. This is the approach subsequently adopted in Chapter 3. Based on the results of an empirical study across several European policy domains, Ingmar von Homeyer (Chapter 3) is able to show that there is a significant variation across policy domains with regard to both the institutional opportunity structures for participation and the total intensity of participatory practice as such. However these two dimensions do not stand in an obvious direct relationship. In other words, participatory practice is not determined alone by the opportunity structures for participation, nor do the latter, when they exist, always lead to the desired democratic input in the decision process. The relationship is much more complex and needs to take into account various factors and primarily the decision procedures at work both at the European and national levels, the competencies of European institutions as compared to their counterparts at national level, the degree of felt ‘common affectedness’ of the key issues under consideration, as well as the existence of key civil society organizations with strong advocacy coalitions. Indeed, argues von Homeyer, the latter two factors carry a far greater weight than the former. In other words, participatory governance is more likely to emerge in those areas that deal with themes which are perceived as shared across Europe and where there are key civil society or other organizations that mobilize at the European level. Interestingly, the degree to which interest organizations mobilize at the European level stands often in inverse relationship to the degree of organizational embededness of these actors at the national level. In other words, the more nationally embedded institutional actors are, the less they are likely to mobilize at the European level. For instance, the degree of European mobilization of environmental organizations is far greater than that of trade unions even though social policy issues display as high a level of common affectedness as questions related to environmental sustainability. The fact that social policy themes such as employment have till recently been diverted from public attention by dealing with them through the open method of coordination corroborates the tendency of long-established interest organizations at national level to work by lobbying national governments or in concert with other national interest organizations. To this should be added that on key sensitive topics, like social and welfare policy, national governments act as gatekeepers when it comes to launching or deepening European debates. These findings lead von Homeyer to advance three principal propositions with far-reaching implications with regard to how to promote participatory governance. The first is that the issue of modifications of decision-rules or
Introduction
21
stronger EU competencies is far less important than generally thought. Modifications to decision-rules with regard to EU supra-national institutions might be necessary for efficiency purposes. They are, however, not key for participatory governance. The second proposition is that timing has an important effect on the emergence (or not) of participatory governance. From the perspective of civil society organizations, this of course means that it is important to remain always on the alert, seeking to capitalize on ‘windows of opportunity’ that facilitate specific concerns being publicized widely. From the top-down perspective of state institutions seeking to promote participatory governance – and assuming that this is indeed sincerely aspired to – it implies that a ‘reactive’ mechanism ought to be structured into consultation or participation procedures in order to encourage the articulation of concerns and demands as input to decision-making. Finally, the third proposition is that ‘Europeanization’ begins at the national level and is directly linked to the desire and ability of national actors and stakeholders to attach a European dimension to political claims. That this Europeanization of political claims is only happening at a slow pace is shown by the research reported in Chapter 4, which deals with the (European) political class. In Chapter 4, Elise Feron, John Crowley and Liana Giorgi report on the results of an attitudinal survey carried out among members of the European political class. These are persons holding or aspiring to a political office at European or national level or working in political functions for institutions dealing with European affairs. Our respondents can be distinguished between Euro-sceptics and Euro-enthusiasts, whereby Euro-scepticism is far more widespread than Euro-enthusiasm, which is mainly to be found among Swedish respondents and members of the Green and Liberal parties. At the same time, we find across the political spectrum a majority being disillusioned with mainstream representative politics. More significantly, however, we find a complete dissonance with regard to the future of the European Union and of the project of political integration. This dissonance exists within national delegations as well as within political groupings. Only a minority (less than one quarter) appear to favour some form of federalism for the EU. The rest are equally divided between a model of cooperative intergovernmentalism and a view that sees no role for either the European Parliament or national elected officials and which we have termed, following Dahrendorf, glocalism. In other words, even though debates in Europe increasingly come to display a shared policy language, as shown by von Homeyer in Chapter 3, debates about Europe have yet to find a shared political language and their representatives, as shown by Feron et al. in Chapter 4. This dissonance or the lack of a unifying European ideology across the political spectrum or of unifying European political ideologies within political parties might explain the continuing legitimacy deficit of European institutions and the European Union as a whole, which in the medium- to long-term can aggravate its democratic deficit or harm the nascent European public sphere.
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In Chapter 5, Elise Feron looks at another emerging European political actor, namely the anti-globalization movement. The future of the European Union as a political system and its policies are also central concerns for the anti-globalization movement. The set of movements that gather under the banner of ‘anti-globalization’ (or advocating a different type of globalization) are not primarily targeting the European Union through their mobilization; rather they are using EU institutions, events or policies to bring forward specific concerns. By so doing they have been both favouring and accompanying the growth of the European public sphere and have contributed to ‘renewing the old repertoire traditionally used by social movements at the European level’. Perhaps more importantly they speak for the existence of a European civil society and for its desire to take a more active role in decision-making. In Chapter 6, Liana Giorgi, Niki Rodousakis, Marisol Garcia and Martin Peterson take a closer look at the debate on the European Union as a community of values. The latter exemplifies many of the challenges and contradictions entailed in the European political integration project and in turn, explains the difficulties with ideological design. This debate, they argue, is neither new nor straightforward, yet until recently the ‘natural’ tendency within European institutions has been to relegate it to expert committees and keep it away from the public sphere, probably because it was judged as potentially explosive. Giorgi et al. argue that there are three distinct narratives on the European Union as a community of values and that the ultimate choice for one or the other narrative or, more realistically, their combination, will determine both the character and scope of European political integration as well as the disposition of the European public sphere. The first narrative links European values with democratic principles but is ultimately about the future of national sovereignty. The second narrative seeks the enlargement of European values to include social values and more, specifically, the commitment of the EU to full employment, a social market economy and the welfare state. Despite the establishment of a European social agenda and a European Employment Strategy, not much progress could be made in this respect – the main reason for this was the lack of agreement concerning the division of competencies between supranational and national institutions. Finally, probably the most explosive of the three narratives concerning the EU as a community of values, is that which attaches a cultural dimension to European values. The key question here is the extent to which European identity should and could transcend nationalist aspirations centred on cultural and religious homogeneity. In Chapter 7, the final thematic chapter of this book, Michal Illner, ˇ erma´k, Toma´sˇ Kostelecky´ and Jana Stachova´ take a look at one of Daniel C the new member states and illustrate, with reference to the referendum in the Czech Republic regarding EU accession, how overall approval for EU membership need not coincide with acceptance of the political project of European integration. Even though Czech citizens voted in favour of EU
Introduction
23
accession by a clear majority, a juxtaposition of the referendum results with electoral results and the results of attitudinal/sociological surveys carried out at around the same time shows that this ‘yes’ to the European Union was far from being enthusiastic. An equivalent amount of caution is probably called for when assessing the referendum results in France and the Netherlands regarding the Constitutional Treaty. A ‘yes’ can mean different things to different people just like a ‘no’. Perhaps more importantly, what a ‘yes’ might imply in terms of a democratic political system has still to be specified. The debate has in fact just begun.
2
Democratization and the European Union Liana Giorgi
The territorial scale and resulting complexity of trans-national democracies renders these fragile with regard to democratic standards and practices. Multi-level and flexible governance mechanisms may appear as extending the opportunity structures for stakeholder and citizen participation in decision-making, but assuring this materializes implies submitting these new institutional structures to democratic scrutiny. Social institutions in advanced democracies tend to substitute real with virtual representation and participation with technical expertise. This could lead to the transformation of advanced democracies into modern forms of guardianship. One way to avoid this is through comprehensive democratic auditing that asserts, rather than negates, the significance of mainstream criteria for democratic political systems and decision processes. A democratic assessment of the European Union political system as representing a trans-national form of democracy-in-the-making must be carried out at different territorial levels. The emergence of a supranational actor does not make national democracy (and assessment) obsolete, it rather presupposes it. Furthermore, in advanced democratic societies, like the European Union, democratic assessment must be extended to cover social institutions like civil society, the media and economic corporations, as well as policy domains. EU democratic auditing is best thought of as a nested activity that pulls together information from different sources and levels of government and concentrates on comparisons across territorial levels. Multi-level governance is, however, not the only challenge faced by transnational democracies. The focus on democratic criteria in the democratic audit scholarship has shifted attention away from one of the key concerns in democratic theory and political science, namely the conditions for democratization. Are the conditions for democratization at the national level the same as at the trans-national level, or do these also need to be adjusted? Following a brief outline of the democratic audit literature, this chapter turns to this principal question and considers it for the European Union. Subsequently, it deals with the implications of multi-level governance for the assessment of institutional democratic practices. The final section of this chapter considers the conundrum of European identity. Discussions of
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European democracy modelled on the nation-state must inevitably confront the question whether the consolidation of democracy is possible in the absence of a shared identity base. The contours of this identity and specifically the extent to which it needs to be underpinned by shared cultural representations is, however, heavily contested.
Democratic audit scholarship revisited Democratic auditing is not new. The first attempts date back to 1955, when Freedom House launched the ‘Freedom in the World Survey’ in order to assess the state of political rights and civil liberties in various countries.1 Renowned national democratic audits include the UK Democratic Audit (Beetham 1994; Weir and Beetham 1999), the IDEA Handbook on Democracy assessment, the SNS democratic audit of Sweden (Micheletti 1998; Petersson 2001), and the USAID democracy framework.2 A democratic audit was also recently launched in Australia.3 The democratic audit scholarship derives its inspiration and theoretical underpinnings from Robert Dahl’s seminal work on Polyarchy (1971). Dahl identifies inclusiveness and public contestation as central to democratic political systems. Inclusiveness refers to the provision of citizenship to all those with a legitimate stake in a polity. Civil and political rights as well as voting equality are, accordingly, key democratic criteria. Public contestation refers to the adequate representation of citizen preferences in decisionmaking. Voting is one mode of the representation of citizen preferences in decision-making, but not the only one. An assessment of democracy must therefore explore the opportunities for citizen information and effective participation in the formulation and implementation of policy in forms other than through voting. The key dimensions of inclusiveness and participation are conceptualized variably. Different scholars emphasize different components of these key dimensions depending on the purpose of their investigation or the national context. Weir and Beetham (1999) for instance, prefer to talk about public control and political equality as the main guarantors of representative democracy. These, in turn, are mediated through authorization, accountability and responsiveness. A number of ‘empirical preconditions’ such as free and fair elections, accountability in the conduct of government, and civil liberties measure the realization of the core values and mediating principles.4 The IDEA Handbook on Democracy Assessment defines the intermediate dimensions somewhat differently as comprising a guaranteed framework of equal citizen rights, institutions of representative and accountable government and a civil or democratic society. Nevertheless, a detailed examination of the individual criteria of the UK and IDEA audits reveals a significant overlap. The SNS democratic audit of Sweden comprises three dimensions and thirteen criteria. The three dimensions are popular government, constitutional
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government and effective government. The ‘popular government’ dimension reiterates Dahl’s principles of ‘public contestation’. Under ‘constitutional government’ we find many of the criteria that other audits raise under rule of law or civil and political rights, but also reference to the separation of powers within government and between the executive, legislative and judicial functions. Finally ‘effective government’ reiterates many of the issues raised under ‘accountable government’ in the UK audit with a greater emphasis on the outcomes of policies and in particular the efficiency of their implementation. Finally, the USAID democracy framework is conceptualized around strategic objectives, intermediate results and indicators. Four strategic objectives were identified as important for monitoring democracies on a regular basis: rule of law and respect of human rights; genuine and competitive political processes; a politically active civil society; and transparent and accountable government institutions. There are two novelties regarding the USAID democracy framework. The first has to do with its emphasis on political democratic culture: the USAID audit focuses on civil society organizations, political parties and the media, and taps on the latter’s internal democratic organization and its institutional capacity to represent and affect policy input. The second innovation of the USAID audit relates to its methodological framework: its framework is the first democratic audit to define indicators with quantifiable thresholds. Most other democratic audits stop at the definition of criteria corresponding to key dimensions and propose that the assessment be carried out by experts or citizens by answering generic questions. The emphasis of performance indicators in contemporary democratic audits has provided a rich source of detailed descriptive information on democratic institutional practices. At the same time, it has led to the neglect of the dynamic aspects of democracy. The original intention of Dahl’s Polyarchy book was to specify the conditions – rather than the characteristics – that may favour or impede the transformation of a regime into a competitive political system structured around political parties. This is how Dahl defines polyarchy. Democracy comes closest to polyarchy, but Dahl is careful not to equate the two terms, ‘since democracy may involve more dimensions . . . and, since no large system in the real world is fully democratized’ (Dahl 1971: 8). Necessary conditions for the emergence of democracy include historical sequences and political culture, the degree of concentration of the economic order, the level of socio-economic development, the degree of inequality, sub-cultural cleavages and the extent of foreign control. According to Dahl, democracy is more likely to emerge in societies with a recent history of competitive politics, a decentralized economy and a certain level of affluence, and where extreme inequalities and community conflicts are at a low level. Dahl’s arguments regarding democratization are reaffirmed by the more recent work of Linz and Stepan (1996) who compared democratic transition in Southern Europe,
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South America and post-communist East European countries. Linz and Stepan identify five conditions for successful democratization: the existence of state mechanisms with effective bureaucratization, of political elites prepared to uphold the rule of law, of political parties mediating citizens’ interests, of a free and active civil society, and of a regulated market economy. As a process, democratization takes place in history. Dahl distinguishes three key transformation periods regarding democratization and sees his work as relating primarily to the first and second phases, namely, the transformation of hegemonies and competitive oligarchies into near-polyarchies (during the nineteenth century) and the transformation of near-polyarchies into full polyarchies (at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century).5 The third transformation phase, which according to Dahl began in the 1960s, concerns advanced democracies and the multitude of ‘social institutions’ (1971: 11) within democratic societies. At this stage, the assessment of democratic institutions becomes more complex as it is multi-level within and across societies. Democratic audits have tended to focus almost exclusively on monitoring the observance of democratic principles and the assessment of democratic practices at the expense of paying attention to the conditions for democratization. This is problematic unless one assumes that meeting the conditions for democratization delineates an irreversible process, an assumption which is historically proven to be wrong. Furthermore, there might be additional conditions that need to be met in order to guarantee the consolidation or advancement of democracy. A related question is whether the conditions for the advancement of national democracies are the same as for democracy at the trans-national level. The answers to these questions are key for understanding and assessing the democratic life of the European Union.
Key conditions for European Union democratization Modern ‘advanced’ democracies involve increasingly complex modes of government and, at the same time, the devolution of power to different administrative or political levels. This shift from the top-down government mode to more horizontal forms of governance occurs in parallel with the devolution of power to the regional level, as well as the increasing salience of inter-governmental forms of cooperation at the trans-national level. Thus today, it is almost impossible to talk about the sustainable development of advanced democracies without considering the trans-national level. This is true for the political level and the economy as well as the civil society, and implies that the conditions of democratization, as well as the defining performance measures, of advanced or trans-national democracies must be adjusted to these new circumstances. In this section I consider what may be the conditions for the democratization of trans-national democracies like
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the European Union. The section that follows addresses how performance measures for the study of institutional democratic practices might have to be adjusted. The adjustment of democratic conditions and criteria is recommended likewise by Dahl in his book Democracy and its Critics from 1991. There, Dahl underlines the significant change of scale brought about by the extension of citizenship rights to a greater number of individuals in advanced democracies: While the first transformation had transferred the right to govern from the few to the many, the ‘many’ were in actual fact rather few while those who were excluded were in actual fact rather many. By contrast, after the second transformation was completed in democratic societies (with no little struggle), equal rights of citizenship had been extended to virtually all adults. Are we now in the midst of another dramatic increase in the scale of decision-making? And may not this change prove to be as important for democracy as the change in scale from city-state to national state? (Dahl 1991: 318) This change of scale, Dahl goes on to argue, necessitates an adaptation of the democratic idea. ‘The most obvious is to duplicate the second transformation on a larger scale: from democracy in the national state to democracy in the transnational state’ (1991: 320). Dahl sees the European Union (at the time of writing the European Community) as possibly ‘harbouring a supranational growth gene’ (ibid.). However, he is cautious about the democratic prospects of supra-national states or political systems (like international organizations).6 He thinks that such supra-national political systems bring about new problems which could lead to the demise rather than the strengthening of democracy by supporting what he calls (following Plato) ‘guardianship’ and which is elsewhere referred to as technocracy or expertocracy (Held 1996).7 His comments resonate with those made by several other scholars of social and political theory in recent years. Given this risk of technocracy, a key condition for the advancement of democracy in modern advanced societies and at the trans-national level is that democratic institutions are strengthened at all levels – at the supra-national but also the national and local levels: ‘The larger scale of decisions need not lead inevitably to a widening sense of powerlessness provided citizens can exercise significant control over decisions on the smaller scale of matters important in their daily lives’ (Dahl 1991: 321). The subsidiarity principle which is at the core of the EU experiment of political integration would appear to be in line with this recommendation. Another key condition for democratization has to do with the reduction of inequality. Given the increase of the geographical scale of trans-national democracies to cover areas with variable levels of economic development, this condition must also
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be addressed and conceptualized anew. In what follows we consider these two key dimensions for the European Union.8 The subsidiarity challenge According to the principle of subsidiarity, decisions should be taken at that level which is closest to citizens and where most information is available and relevant. In theory, subsidiarity should guarantee citizen input into decision-making as required by democratic theory. In real-life European politics, however, subsidiarity has rather been used to advance flexibility in policy formulation and implementation and, by default, inter-governmental bargaining. The question as to whether the practice of subsidiarity has had a positive impact on either policy output or citizen input and, more specifically, the institutional opportunity structures for citizen participation in decision-making, cannot be answered unequivocally. Today, a significant proportion of national regulations is based on European directives. Over the course of the last decade, the process of transposition and implementation of the Acquis Communautaire has progressed at a fast pace. This form of approximation has, for instance, guided eastern enlargement and is also used as a model in the negotiations for the accession of Turkey. The ten new member states were almost forced to become ‘fit’ for the European Union in order to ensure that their joining the Common Market would not endanger the competitiveness of older member states (Mayhew 1998). This process of approximation of legislation and policy between the different levels of the European polity did not proceed in the ‘command and control’ fashion but rather by negotiated agreement. This has left much flexibility to national and regional regulators to either postpone real implementation or tailor this to their specific requirements. In the meantime, this flexibility has been accepted as one fundamental and positive characteristic of the process of European integration (Philippart 2003; Philippart and Edwards 1999; Sapir et al. 2003; Tsebelis and Garrett 2000; Tsoukalis 1993), hence the acceptance of variable geometry and the introduction of the open method of coordination in policy areas such as employment and poverty (Vandenbroucke 2002). Judging from the lack of progress in some key policy areas such as environmental protection (Homeyer 2002) or the meeting of the Lisbon goals in terms of employment, growth and the knowledge society (European Communities 2004a), such a degree of flexibility appears detrimental in terms of policy outcomes. This is aggravated by the absence of monitoring mechanisms and autonomous agencies for overseeing implementation but is, primarily, linked to the absence of a compelling decision framework that specifies the division of responsibilities among different governance levels, in both a transparent and accountable manner. The European Commission is, however, very cautious about the use of the term ‘division’ of responsibilities and prefers to talk about the ‘sharing’ of responsibilities. This is not accidental: any explicit discussion of the division of responsibilities between
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the EU, national and regional levels in these terms introduces quasi-automatically the fundamental question regarding the constitutional contour of the European Union as a state political system and the extent to which this might be informed by federalism. Most political observers and academic scholars are very cautious about referring to the European Union as a state political system, given that key areas of state sovereignty like security and foreign policy but also welfare policy still rest primarily with the nationstate (e.g. Hix 1999). At the same time it is uncontested that the European Union is progressively taking over state functions and plays an increasing role in terms of regulation (Delanty 2000; Giddens 1998). However, as shown by the long and difficult debates on the EU Constitutional Treaty, this is not a discussion that EU member state governments wish to lead to conclusion, at least neither presently nor publicly. The Constitutional Treaty ratified by the heads of state in late 2004 fails, as a result, to make the quantum leap to structuring the European Union as a state political system. Subsidiarity fails to be used as ‘the way to construct a political order which is neither a super-state nor only a free trade area’ (Giddens 1998: 73) but, instead, remains a powerful symbolic banner for proclaiming national sovereignty and, hence, consolidating national cleavage structures.9 That subsidiarity has also done very little for strengthening the institutional opportunity structures for participation is also shown by the way in which ‘multi-level governance’ has been used to signal inclusion and participation, albeit with poor performance results. The White Paper on European Governance published in 2001 (European Commission 2001) diagnosed the EU as suffering from a legitimacy deficit related to its ‘perceived’ inability to act when essential. Even though this was, in turn, found to be related to the failure of the member states to communicate the Union to their citizens, it was also thought to be linked to a democratic deficit. Subsequently, the White Paper recommended a greater involvement of regional and local government as well as civil society organizations in decision-making processes. These recommendations were recently reiterated by the round table on the political future of the European Union set up by Romano Prodi and headed by Strauss-Kahn (European Communities 2004b). It is, therefore, not surprising to find participation and openness proclaimed today by EU sectoral policy documents, as well as national framework programmes such as the national strategies for sustainable development or the national action plans on employment and social inclusion. Ingmar von Homeyer in the next chapter reviews how participation and openness has been practised across different policy sectors at EU and national levels. The results do not warrant optimism. Despite the proliferation of advisory committees, working groups or workshops bringing together various stakeholders to deliberate on common initiatives or policy guidelines, these remain for the most part dominated by experts. Only few civil society organizations, namely those with institutional capacity and professionalized structures, gain access to these platforms. The strengthening
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of deliberative mechanisms in decision-making is furthermore complicated by a range of practical problems concerning selection procedures as well as the level (national, European, regional) or stage in the policy process (agenda setting, planning, implementation) at which consultative or deliberative forums should be organized (Giorgi and Pohoryles 2005). The key problem, however, is not pragmatic but political in nature and concerns the role attributed to deliberative democratic mechanisms in advanced democracies and their relation to representative institutions. At the European Union level, a related problem is the nebulous character of nominally representative institutions such as the Committee of the Regions or even the European Parliament. The disappointing performance of the Committee of the Regions, established at the beginning of the nineties with great furore as marking a turning point in the opening of the European institutional framework, is not unrelated to its structure and political makeup. The Committee of the Regions is an indirectly elected body, albeit only in part, and has merely a consultative role. It is meant to represent regional interests in a manner similar to regional councils in federal systems, yet not all member states are familiar with this model of decision-making, nor do all regions enjoy the same degree of political power within their national contexts; in centralized nation-states, in fact, regions represent mere statistical units with administrative responsibilities. Given this, it is not surprising that the Committee of the Regions has emerged into a lobby forum characterized by very unequal relations between regions and their representatives. That the solution to this problem does not reside alone in the introduction of direct election mechanisms is evidenced by the European Parliament. Despite the fact that the European Parliament has been directly elected by EU citizens since 1979, it continues to display a major legitimacy deficit as shown, among others, by the low electoral turnout in European Parliament elections. Feron et al., also in this volume, attribute this to the weakness of political ideology across political parties, especially insofar as the political future of the European Union is concerned. The crisis of parliamentarism in advanced democracies is not new (Benz 2004), but has deepened over the last years and the legitimacy deficit of the EP is possibly the strongest evidence for this. The change of scale in decision-making has placed ‘old’ and ‘new’ representative institutions under pressure – with regard to work habits and contents but also with regard to political visions. Like policy institutions or governance levels, representative institutions require a constitutional decision framework in order to work efficiently and effectively. This is precisely what is missing at EU level by reason of the failure to interpret subsidiarity in political systemic terms. The challenge of unequal socio-economic relations Subsidiarity as a means of constituting a political decision framework that links the various levels of government in a compelling manner and ensures
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that citizens are close to the decisions made about them, is an important but not the only condition for democratization in advanced or transnational democracies. One other key premise is the reduction and management of inequality. Large socio-economic differentials within and across societies endanger democracy by supporting fierce competition and feeding societal unrest. The social regulation of the economy in conjunction with a comprehensive welfare state policy are viewed as milestones of modern capitalist societies, and not only by social democratic liberals. The welfare state system is often thought of as the feature that most significantly distinguishes Europe from the US (Aust et al. 2000). A more differentiated view of the European welfare regimes as recommended by Esping-Andersen (1990; 2000) does not negate the stronger level of commitment to fighting inequality within the European Union, but it does relativize claims to the existence of a European social model which can underpin further economic and political integration. European welfare regimes differ with respect to the role assigned to the state as opposed to the market or the family regarding the provision of welfare as well as the scope of universal benefits. Under the liberal welfarestate regime characteristic of the UK, the market is expected to be the main provider of welfare through labour market participation; the state supplies residual welfare provision for a limited time. The conservative welfare-state regime type found in most Continental European countries (including several new member states) is characterized by a weaker belief in market efficiency and displays a comprehensive insurance system linked to employment and often managed by the state; inactive persons or persons with a limited employment history tend to be covered by the same insurance system(s) through family members or by parallel systems operating on a means-tested basis and managed by regional authorities or local governments. A third welfare-state regime model is the Nordic social-democratic system that links the universal eligibility to key welfare services like health and minimum income to macro-economic policies aiming at the creation of full or near-to-full employment. South European countries are to be found in-between the liberal and conservative welfare regimes and are primarily characterized by their continuing over-reliance on the family for the provision of welfare security. Welfare regime ideologies continue to impact on contemporary welfare policy and, especially, social policy reform narratives (Ney 2002), but there are harmonizing trends at the same time. A comparison of unemployment benefit systems between the UK and France (Clasen and Clegg 2003), and between Austria, France, Norway and the UK (Georgi 2006), reveals more similarities than differences across national environments, both with regard to the provision of benefits (and the conditions attached to these) and the organizational management of their respective systems. This harmonization is as much the result of external pressures as it is of internal pressures: the ‘external’ fiscal stability criteria introduced by
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the Maastricht Treaty have coincided with internal pressures to reform social security institutions in view of exploding welfare expenditures and the decline – at least temporarily – of the Keynesian economic paradigm for the management of economic growth and employment. At the micro-level of policy measures, harmonization has been additionally supported by the open method of coordination that has been used to coordinate member states’ policy frameworks regarding unemployment and social inclusion (the so-called ‘National Action Plans on Employment’, also discussed in Chapters 3 and 6 of this volume). The evaluation procedures followed by the European Commission comprising regular progress reports following common guidelines has supported this cross-country comparison and transfer of knowledge. Welfare policy is, however, not just about specific policy measures and related institutional practices. The European Social Model, if one comes to be realized, will have to rest on more than an agglomeration of policy measures at the micro-level. A key issue in this respect is the role of the state in welfare policy and, by extension, the role of the European Union. As Habermas (1998), following Streeck (1998), notes, the changes of the external conditions brought about by the globalization of the markets makes clear that answers to the ‘end of the working society’ cannot be given adequately at national level but must be sought at the level of supra-national institutions (Habermas 1998: 140).10 This is a debate that has just begun, as shown by the deliberations of the Working Group ‘Social Europe’ of the European Convention, established to debate the inclusion of social issues in the EU Constitutional Treaty (European Convention 2003; Føllesdal et al. forthcoming 2006). This debate is discussed in more detail in Chapter 6 of this volume. It suffices to note here that the debate has shown that despite the overall agreement among Convention members representing national parliaments, member state governments and EU supra-national institutions on the subject of the inclusion of basic social values such as equality, solidarity and justice in the EU Constitution, there remain significant national cleavages concerning key principles such as the role of the state in the promotion of full employment, the coordination of social and economic policies at the macro-level and, not least, the extension of the Union’s competencies to cover social protection. The majority of the Convention members were not convinced that successfully coping with social exclusion and inequality, as well as the stagnating levels of labour market demand, are best dealt with through the harmonization of social protection systems and the extension of the Union’s competences in this field. At the same time, there was general agreement that more or better coordination is necessary, given the negative impact of economic integration on social integration against the background of the still quite significant national and regional socio-economic differentials found within the European Union (Scharpf 2001). How this conundrum is resolved will influence not only the further economic integration of the
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Union but also determine political integration and the Union’s democratization prospects.11
Monitoring democratic practices Assuming that democratic societies fulfil fundamental criteria such as free and fair elections and the rule of law, the key objective of democratic assessment becomes the monitoring of institutional practices at policy level, and, specifically, the extent to which these reflect citizens’ preferences or are open to citizen participation. The change of mode and scale of government brought about through the European Union raises new problems also for the auditing of democratic institutional practices. These problems are well illustrated in research carried out by Lord and Beetham (Lord and Beetham 2001; Lord 2001) under the ESRC ‘One Europe or Several’ programme, on the one hand, and the author of this chapter in the context of the research project ‘European Public Sphere’ of the Fifth RTD framework programme (Giorgi et al. 2004). Both studies have faced the problem of information management but draw different analytical conclusions. We begin with an excursion into the semantic frameworks used to organize the analysis. Democratic models vs governance mode and the problem of information management ‘Euro-democracy’, according to Lord, is characterized by ‘competing ideas of what would count as an adequately democratic EU’ (Lord 2001: 645). These he classifies as competitive, consensual or participatory. For each of these ‘models’ it is possible to specify indices of democratic performance from among the pool of criteria (generic questions) included in the UK Democratic Audit. For example, the key to understanding and assessing the competitive democratic model is the scope and performance of electoral and party systems, whereas central to the consensus model are corporatist decision-making procedures. Both competitive and consensual democratic models assume a certain level of interest representation and the aggregation of these through either voting or the policy process. In contrast, the participatory democratic model emphasizes inclusive and active citizenship and prioritizes deliberation as a method for decision-making. None of the existing national democratic polities can be classified as clearly belonging to any of the above democratic families. Real democracies are hybrid constructions. This is all the more true of the European Union. Democratic standards at EU level are, therefore, said to vary around two key dimensions. The first is an institutional dimension and refers to the EU institution under investigation, i.e. the Council, Parliament or the Commission. Lord claims that these three institutions operate according to different democratic models and must therefore be assessed from different perspectives. The second dimension concerns the policy area: next to the three
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pillars, Lord considers a fourth residual category to include all those policy areas which are dealt with ‘flexibly’ and which, as a result, give rise to different procedures for decision-making and inter-institutional configurations; finally, monetary/fiscal policy is identified as a stand-alone area. The possibility of a two-way variation of democratic standards at EU-level, i.e. across both EU institutions and policy area, are not explicitly addressed by Lord. These are nevertheless possible following the above conceptual model. National democracies undoubtedly differ with regard to their normative criteria and, by extension, their institutional practices. Britain comes closest to the competitive democratic model while Switzerland is the most participatory in relying extensively on direct democratic procedures (Abromeit 2001). Post-war Austria and also the Netherlands during the same period came closest to the consensus democratic model – Austria in an attempt to balance social and ideological differences that had led to the civil war during the inter-war period and subsequently the take-over by Nazi Germany; the Netherlands in order to balance religious differences (Mol 1972). Both countries have in the meantime assumed more competitive elements (Luther and Pulzer 1998). However, a closer look at social institutions and sectoral policies within democratic societies reveals a much more differentiated picture. Participatory structures have been in place in several countries in the field of environmental policy and technology assessment. This is also the case for countries with no tradition in deliberative democracy (Joss and Belucci 2002). Wage policy has tended to also involve the social partners in countries with no tradition in corporatism. The process of European integration has supported inclusionary decision-making processes in areas such as the labour market, regional policy or infrastructure investment. In contrast, the institutional opportunity structures for participation in areas such as migration or monetary policy remain restricted even in societies with a tradition of deliberative democracy. Given the above, it is clear that differentiation is necessary when assessing democratic practices at the institutional level or policy area. The extent to which it is sensible to do this from the analytical perspective of democratic modelling is, nevertheless, questionable. The notion of a democratic model is also found in political theory (Held 1996), only there it is used rather differently as an analytical construct for making sense of key normative questions underlying democratic polities such as the role of the state, the scale of political action, the processes that make up politics, the subject matter or scope of politics, the nature of the people and the nature of political judgement. Insofar as the notions of competition, consensus or deliberation are concerned, these are better thought of as different modes of processing and aggregating citizen preferences rather than as democratic models (see Chapter 1). Applied at the level of decision-making at the policy level we should, therefore, speak instead of governance mode. This is the approach adopted by the ‘European Public Sphere’ audit which proposes a set of criteria for establishing the government mode of a
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particular policy area and recommends using these as background for judging the effectiveness of policies and the institutional practices for citizen participation. In order to establish the governance mode of a particular policy sector, Giorgi et al. (2004) propose considering the use made of command and control measures such as directives, regulations, standards as opposed to incentives, voluntary or framework agreements, the application of the open method of coordination, and the role of evaluation as well as of autonomous agencies. For establishing the characteristics of the policy process and subsequently its openness, it is proposed to inquire into the rules and practices governing policy formulation and implementation, policy reform and policy evaluation; the role of the legislative in policy decisions; and the scope and extent of inter- and intra-governmental consultation as well as of participation and consultation (with citizens, civil society organizations, experts). Thinking of policy in terms of governance mode rather than in terms of democratic model serves intellectual clarity but also ensures that we avoid the fallacy of tailoring standards to fit the model architecture rather than the underlying democratic dimensions. Even though it might be legitimate to normatively claim, for instance, that the practice of deliberation in decision-making is not generally useful from the perspective of aggregation of interests towards the identification and realization of the public interest,12 to conceptualize an assessment on the use of deliberative mechanisms only for those policy areas or institutions which are pre-defined as ‘fitting’ the deliberative democratic model is to pre-empt one’s findings. Any conclusion on the usefulness of deliberation – to remain with the same example – can only be drawn after the practice of deliberation has been assessed comparatively – spatially and temporally, as well as across policy sectors – and with regard to both citizen input and policy output: first, has deliberation been successful in ensuring and aggregating citizens’ inputs? Second, has deliberation been successful in achieving positive policy outcomes? (cf. Dryzek 2000; Miller 1999; 2000; Rokkan 2000).13 Democratic modelling is today quite fashionable, not least in view of the different opinions and value judgements on democracy and especially the future of the European Union political system. Those who are of the opinion that it is neither useful nor accurate to talk about a European democratic deficit tend to view the European Union as a technocratic regime similar to international organizations for which traditional democratic standards relating to openness, participation or transparency do not apply. Alternatively, those ideologically closer to representative democracy and federalism are more keen to point to the European democratic deficit and demand recuperative actions. Divergent views such as these are absolutely legitimate in political discussions or political analysis but are not useful in democratic auditing. Again, it is important to recall that democracy is not simply a taxonomic label but a dynamic process: the moment one begins to
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think in terms of democratization rather than in terms of one or the other democratic society at a particular point in time, it becomes obvious that it does not suffice to work with static models but that one needs underlying dimensions that are less fixed to historical particularities and are more universal. Such dimensions are readily available in earlier democratization studies as well as national democratic audits. Despite differences in coverage or the verbalization of indicators, national democratic audits are more similar than they are different. They all mention the rule of law, representative legislature, accountable government and active citizenship as key democratic dimensions. Even when national democracies differ with regard to, say, electoral law or electoral behaviour, this does not by default make indicators such as voter turnout obsolete. Similarly, participation indicators such as the frequency and scope of public inquiries or citizen juries are generically useful and not merely for the environmental policy or technology assessment sectors which display a longer institutional history in this form of deliberative democracy. What is needed is a framework that concentrates on the ‘traditional’ aspects of democracy (which are still valid) but tries to locate these in the new context of a trans-national and multi-level polity, keeping in mind that the latter still needs to achieve a consolidated state in terms of political organization and political community. The ‘interim’ character of the European Union renders monitoring of this type even more important in order to anticipate problem areas and new challenges. The main difficulty with this approach has to do with information management. It is obvious that a comprehensive assessment across different policy domains and compared across member states (and regions) and at the European level makes sense only on a continuous basis. In turn, this represents an extremely ambitious undertaking that necessitates significant input in terms of human and financial resources. This is generally the problem faced by democratic auditing and explains the over-reliance on expert panels working with reference to generic questions rather than quantitative indicators and the systematic collection of empirical information. I would, however, contend that such complex monitoring mechanisms are necessary and of increasing importance at the trans-national level. The alternative of coordinating information collection across different institutions dealing with different themes or policy sectors is a possibility but clearly a secondbest alternative. Research carried out by Garcia and Pradel (2004) on the perception and transferability of democratic audits across policy sectors cautions on the applicability of the latter institutional model. This research has shown that democratic auditing continues to be ‘foreign’ to most policy fields and not one to which administrations would easily subject themselves to. An autonomous agency entrusted with the task of auditing European democracy in the form of a ‘European Democracy Observatory’ as recommended by the Strauss-Kahn round table (European Communities 2004b) would also be useful as a platform for raising awareness among citizens, as
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much as political elites, regarding the democratic implications of the European political integration process. Democracy in diversity or different types of democratic deficit? The existing information on democratic practices at the policy level derives primarily from research on multi-level governance comprising case studies of various policy sectors (cf. Eising 2000; Heritier 2001; Jachtenfuchs 2001; 2002; Trenz 2000; 2001; 2002; Richardson 1996). A first comparative assessment is provided by Ingmar von Homeyer in this volume (Chapter 3). This research illustrates the diversity of institutional arrangements on political participation, on the one hand, as well as with regard to mobilization and civil society organization, on the other. There are policy fields characterized by open institutional arrangements supporting citizen participation and where we can indeed observe citizen mobilization and interest formation. But there are also fields where both citizen mobilization and open institutional arrangements are absent. A European public sphere in the form of a pool or reservoir of public opinion interested in European matters exists but is fragmented across countries or policy institutions, not least as a result of the protracted European policy decision processes. This diversity underlines claims such as those of Imig and Tarrow (2001) that the European polity is ‘a composite polity of variable geometry’ (191) which is more complex than either network governance or a multi-level polity. In view of this diversity, the question arises as to whether and to what extent we can realistically expect democracy to consolidate at the trans-national level. This appears all the more difficult given that in such a composite polity framework the power of national governments as interest brokers increases – a worrisome development considering that this role of interest mediation was traditionally that of political parties, social interest organizations and representative institutions. There are two levels to this discussion and these tend to be confounded in relevant analyses. The first concerns the variable geometry of institutional arrangements regarding decision-making rules as well as rules of political participation across policy sectors and territorial levels. The second dimension concerns the variation of interest mobilization and citizen participation. From the latter perspective, the absence of active citizen engagement, say, in fiscal policy is not only the result of closed opportunity structures for participation but equally, if not more, the result of lack of interest or mobilization on the part of citizens. The contemporary democracy crisis faced by advanced societies but also the European Union is located at both levels independently and at their interfaces. We can accordingly distinguish three types of democratic deficit: First, there is the democratic deficit that emerges out of what Giddens (1998) calls the democratization of democracy or Keane (1998) the ‘tendency for public spheres to spread into areas of life previously immune from controversies about power’ (182). In this case we
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find increased civil society mobilization that demands that previously closed opportunity structures for participation are opened. The second case delineates situations where there is no citizen interest in participation but this lack of interest is the result of an information deficit – this is the case considered by media or communication studies that focus on the European Union (Koopmans and Erbe 2004, Statham and Gray 2005). The third type of democratic deficit is that which revolves around a genuine lack of interest – the low voter turnout at European Parliament elections is often considered to be of this type and, hence, linked to a legitimacy deficit (see also the discussion in Chapter 4). Insofar as the causes of these three types of democratic deficit differ, it is not possible to deal with them in a uniform way. The first type of democratic deficit can only be dealt with through more openness and participation, to reiterate one of the central demands of the White Paper on European Governance (European Comission 2001). The second type of democratic deficit necessitates a more active information policy on behalf of supra-national EU institutions, national governments and other political actors. Finally, the third democratic deficit type that is linked to a legitimacy deficit can only be addressed through structuring processes such as those discussed in the first section of this chapter. A democratic assessment of the European Union in the form of an audit can help identify the source of democratic deficit in any particular case in order to deal with it in the most appropriate way.
And what about European identity? Institutional issues concerning citizen participation are frequently judged as irrelevant, at this stage, because of the absence of an awareness of or identification with the European Union as a political community. What good are institutional mechanisms of participation if there are no citizens to participate? How true is this claim? The significant difference between national and trans-national democracies is that the latter can rely less on a quasi-automatic identification with a political community facilitated through the familiarity and solidarity that results from sharing a common language and tradition. It is in this connection that post-nationalists stand in opposition to those still insisting on the necessity to maintain the nation-state as the locus of democratic organization. For the latter, the absence of a political identification rooted in non-political elements is a serious obstacle to the constitution of the European polity and, by default, the realization of European democratic structures that are so in substance and not only in name (Miller 2000). For the post-nationalists this tradition need not pre-exist but can be constructed; more importantly, it can or should be based on political participatory elements – the more Europe assumes form as a political system and the more European citizens become aware of this and get to participate in
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its making, the more they will identify with Europe as one nexus of their political identity (Habermas 1998). This is also the key disagreement between those in favour of cosmopolitan citizenship and those who think this naı¨ve or impossible to realize (cf. Delanty 2000; 2005; Vertovek and Cohen 2002). There are, of course, also those, like Siedentop (2002), who speak in favour of a European identity based on cultural and religious homogeneity (see also discussion in Chapter 6). Of course this is a short and somewhat crude presentation of what could be said to be the most written-about cleavage among political theorists and students of European issues over the last several years. However, it captures the core substance. It should perhaps be added that the majority of those who insist on the significance of nationality as the primary focus of political identification are well aware of the negative implications of nationalism (as opposed to nationality).14 Similarly, many of those favouring transcending the nationstate as a form of political organization are not necessarily of this opinion because they view the nation-state as an intrinsically ‘bad thing’. The opposition is thus less than what it appears or is made to appear. The key question is rather whether and to what extent it is possible to democratize the European Union where there does not (yet) exist a strong sense of political identification. The discussion in the previous sections suggests that the problem is perhaps less that no political community leaning towards the European dimension or level of decision-making exists, but rather that this political community is still quite small or fragmented. Strengthening this sense of political community, in turn, necessitates coming to terms with at least three types of democratic deficit – that relating to institutional opportunity structures for participation, that of an information deficit and that of the legitimacy deficit. Furthermore, this last type of deficit, the legitimacy deficit, will not be resolved without a proper treatment of the difficult issue of subsidiarity and the strengthening of the European social agenda. The democratization of the European Union and the consolidation of a European citizenship will fundamentally depend on how these challenges are dealt with in the coming years. Notes 1 See Freedom in the World Survey 2003 by Freedom House at http://www.free domhouse.org/research/index.htm 2 Detailed information on these audits is also available on the following websites: IDEA (http://www.idea.int); SNS (http://www.const.sns.se/dr/english/); USAID (http://www.usaid.gov/our_work/democracy_and_governance/). 3 See http://democratic.audit.anu.edu.au/ The Australian democratic audit builds on the experiences of the UK Democratic Audit and IDEA but seeks adaptations to reflect Australia’s federal system and inter-governmental system of decision-making. The Research School of Social Sciences of the Australian National University that initiated the Australian democratic audit also promises to evaluate how representative government institutions may limit the scope for popular
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5 6
7
8
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control and effective participation. The quality of public debate and discussion, i.e. the degree to which debates and discussions can be distorted by manipulation, strategizing, deception and restrictions on ‘allowable’ communication represent another key focus of the research (cf. Dryzek 2000). The Australian democratic audit promises to be of particular interest for the European Union for its focus on federalism, inter-governmental decision structures and democracy beyond the (liberal representative) state. In order to facilitate international comparisons, Beetham subsequently extended the list of empirical preconditions to include citizenship, law and rights, participation and governance responsiveness and democracy beyond the nation-state (Lord 2001). See Rokkan (2000) for a more detailed and comparative assessment of the democratization process on the European continent. Dahl and many other political scientists writing about Europeanization tend often to use the terms ‘trans-national’ and ‘supra-national’ interchangeably. I opt here to refer to the European Union as a trans-national political system in-themaking comprising, among others, supra-national institutions, like the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council of Ministers or the Intergovernmental Conference. The reader is also referred to the introductory discussion of Chapter 6. Dahl presents the guardianship thesis through a modern account of a Socratean dialogue between a modern democrat and a contemporary advocate of guardianship (59–64). He then goes on to criticize the guardianship vision by discussing knowledge (character and access to) and public goods. The other conditions for democratization (at national level) mentioned by Dahl, namely the market regulation towards the avoidance of either rampant capitalism or capital concentration and the pre-existence of competitive party political structures, are secondary to those of subsidiarity and control of inequality as the discussion that follows shows. In brief, the regulation of the market relates to the management of inequality, while political party structures – already pre-existing in Europe – face new challenges in the subsidiarity context. The issue of community conflicts emerging as a result of cultural differentiation emerges in the European Union context dressed up as a debate on the meaning, scope and, primarily, necessity of a European identity. This is discussed in the final section of this chapter. I use ‘structuring’ here in Rokkan’s sense, who understands structuring as a process relating to functional and territorial differentiation and their interplay to describe institutional development in democracies. Structures emerge out of these developments and delineate institutionalized differences or cleavages. And he continues: Wenn nun die Mitgliedstaaten infolge der Wa¨hrungsunion und auf der Grundlage einer einheitlichen europa¨ischen Geldpolitik weitere makroo¨konomische Steuerungsmo¨glichkeiten verlieren, wa¨hrend sich der innereuropa¨ische Wettbewerbe nochmals versta¨rkt, sind Probleme einer neuen Gro¨ßenordnung zu erwarten. La¨nder mit hohen sozialen Standards fu¨rchten die Gefahr einer Angleichung nach unten; La¨nder mit einem vergleichsweise schwachen Sozialschutz fu¨rchten, durch die Einfu¨hrung ho¨herer Standards ihren Kostnvorteile beraubt zu werden. Europa wird vor der Alternative stehen, entweder den Problemdruck u¨ber den Markt – als Wettbewerb zwischen sozialpolitischen Regimen, die in nationaler Zusta¨ndigkeit bleiben – abzuwickeln oder dem Problemdruck politisch zu begegnen mit dem Versuch, in wichtigen Fragen der Sozial-, Arbeitsmarkt- und Steuerpolitik zu einer ‘Harmonisierung’ zu gelangen.
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12 13
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The next question to ask is of course what principles should guide this harmonization. Miller (1999) referring to Rawls (1971; 1993), recommends reflecting on such issues in the context of social justice. Discussing environmental goods especially (although the same argument can be made regarding welfare), he proposes to distinguish between primary goods, i.e. features that are really essential to a sustainable human existence; goods that indirectly contribute to the distribution of primary goods; and goods which neither count as essentials of human existence nor affect the share of primary goods. Harmonized standards (or thresholds) are needed for primary goods and possibly also for the second category of goods affecting the distribution of primary goods. The third category of goods, on the other hand, can be regulated through political deliberation and vary according to region or country. Interestingly, this is better understood with respect to globalization – probably because of the greater socio-economic differentials between developed and developing countries as well as the mobilization of trans-national non-governmental organizations such as ATTAC. For a good review of the theoretical/normative as well as empirical arguments for or against deliberation as a democratic procedure or deliberative democracy more generally, see Miller (1999) as well as Dryzek (2000). Rokkan does not deal explicitly with deliberation but underlines that the study of democratization must be comparative (temporally and spatially) and entail a closer look into how institutional rules on political participation (what he refers to as output) change in response to pressures and mobilization from below and, specifically, the social, cultural and economic spheres (what he calls input). On the distinction between nationality or national identity, on the one hand, and nationalism, on the other, see also Keane (1998). That nationalism is a pathological form of national identity, argues Keane, is shown not least by the experience of the French Revolution.
3
Participatory governance in the European Union Ingmar von Homeyer
Participatory governance is seen as an important component – actual or potential – of the European Union’s (EU) democratic legitimacy. Articles 44–6 of the draft Constitutional Treaty state that, in addition to the principles of equality and representation, the EU is based on the principle of participatory democracy. Along similar lines, the European Commission’s 2001 White Paper on European Governance (European Commission 2001) stresses the need to improve participation to increase the EU’s democratic legitimacy. For example, the White Paper acknowledges that there ‘is currently a lack of clarity about how consultations are run and to whom the institutions listen’. To address this, the Commission promises to ‘reduce the risk of the policy-makers just listening to one side of the argument or particular groups getting privileged access on the basis of sectoral interests or nationality, which is clearly a weakness with the current method of ad hoc consultations’ (ibid.: 17). The White Paper also emphasizes the need to increase openness of policy-making: the ‘aim should be to create a transnational ‘‘space’’ where citizens from different countries can discuss what they perceive as being the important challenges for the Union. This should help policy makers to stay in touch with European public opinion’ (ibid.: 12). The statement in the draft Constitutional Treaty and the Commission’s statements suggest that participatory governance may be more relevant in theory than for the practice of EU policy-making. This chapter presents and analyses the findings of three case studies in different areas of EU policy-making with the aim of throwing light on the extent, and important aspects, of participatory governance as well as the factors that influence participation in the EU multi-level governance system. The Commission’s White Paper discusses some of these aspects of participatory governance, such as openness and public debate. However, as argued below, the level of mobilization of non-state actors, as well as the responsiveness of policymakers, are additional dimensions of a comprehensive concept of participatory governance. Factors that may affect participation include (a) the extent to which specific issues are thought to be of European (rather than only national or sub-national) relevance – what I refer to as the level of panEuropean common affectedness; (b) certain organizational characteristics of
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important non-state actors (organizational embeddedness); (c) the transfer of competences and powers to the EU level; and (d) the decision-making rules at national and EU levels. I elaborate on each of these factors in the subsequent analysis and exemplify them in the presentation of the three case studies. The three case studies presented in this chapter reflect the diversity of EU policy-making, which is characterized by strong variation in EU competences and powers among policy areas. The first case concerns the revision of the EU Directive on the Deliberate Release of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) into the Environment. This case – hereafter referred to as the ‘DRD case’ – is loosely treated as a ‘benchmark’ case because of the presence of many of the factors that would suggest a high level of participation. In contrast, the two other cases considered here were characterized by less favourable conditions for participatory governance. The second case study concerns the 1999/2000 European ‘sanctions’ against the then new Austrian government and the closely related subsequent revision of Article 7 TEU. The third case is that of the implementation of the European Employment Strategy (EES). The first part of the chapter introduces the dimensions of participatory governance and the factors assumed to influence these. It also presents expectations with regard to the level of participatory governance that may be found in the three policy-making areas. These expectations are based on a preliminary attribution of the four factors influencing participatory governance in the three cases. The next three sections present the three case studies in detail – the DRD case, the ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case and the EES case – focusing on the extent and scope of participatory governance in each. This is followed by a section which summarizes the case study findings, and looks at how and to what extent participation was influenced by the factors initially assumed to affect participation. The conclusion highlights some of the findings and presents four hypotheses concerning various aspects of participatory governance at EU level.
Dimensions and factors of participatory governance Four key dimensions Participatory governance is a multi-dimensional concept. Four dimensions are particularly relevant for understanding and analysing it. These are described below. Mobilization concerns the degree to which non-state actors – in particular citizens and citizen-oriented organizations, such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), political parties and trade unions – but also regional and local actors – mobilize resources in response to EU activities or perceived European challenges. Relevant resources are manifold,
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including technical expertise, financial means, permanent and professional staff, extensive and committed membership, as well as networking and communication capacities. Resources can be used to influence decision-makers through persuasion, pressure and bargaining. Public political communication and debate primarily occurs in the mass media. However, other forms of public contestation, such as public protests, open letters, public relations activities or parliamentary debates, are also relevant. As with the other dimensions of participatory governance, public debates and communication are (partly) European or Europeanized if they involve, react to, or address the European institutions or issues of EU policy-making. The degree of openness of decision-making relates to the opportunities for non-state actors and citizens to both obtain information on, and to directly feed information into the EU policy-making process via the EU institutions and member state governments. These opportunities may result from formal or informal rules and practices, for example formal consultation or informal contacts between non-state actors and decisionmakers such as various lobbying practices. Responsiveness refers to the extent to which policy-makers accommodate the positions and demands of societal actors. This is not only an issue of individual political will but also, more importantly, of the strength of overriding structural constraints. Positions articulated by non-state actors, such as NGOs, the media and public opinion, are particularly relevant from the perspective of an analysis focussing on participatory governance. As is repeatedly underlined in this book, democracy at the EU level is closely linked to democratic institutions and practices in the member states. The same holds for participation (cf. Imig and Tarrow 2001: 47). Therefore, the analysis of participatory governance must consider both levels, i.e. the EU and the national levels. Four impacting factors There are several factors that may influence the intensity of EU participatory governance. Four of these are of particular importance: the level of pan-European common affectedness; the embeddedness of non-state actors in their (national) environments as measured by the number and quality of links among them and with state actors; the extent to which competences and powers have been transferred to the EU level; and, related to this, the decision-making rules on policy at national and EU levels. Each of the four factors is limited to a particular theoretical perspective Neo-functionalist analyses of European integration have long argued that political integration will follow economic integration because the consequences of economic integration will increasingly affect national-level non-state actors, such as political parties and the social partners. This common
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affectedness will, in turn, ultimately increase the participation of non-state actors in EU policy-making (cf. Haas 1958). Stressing organizational embeddedness, some neo-institutionalist authors support a more cautious view; they argue that the Europeanization of non-state actors is path dependent and will lead to different outcomes depending on the degree and exclusivity of the organizational embeddedness of those actors in certain contexts, in particular national ones. For example, trade unions are strongly embedded in national structures. Therefore they seem less likely to react to European challenges and opportunities than environmental NGOs which have evolved more recently in parallel to the process of European integration (Tarrow 1994). From a perspective focussing more on the symbols and ‘spectacle’ of policy-making, the mere transfer of important competences and state activities to the EU level – for example, holding regular ‘high-politics’ European Council meetings of heads of state or the creation of highly visible European institutions such as the European Central Bank (ECB) – may be sufficient to focus the attention of non-state actors, in particular the mass media, on the emerging European political ‘stage’ (cf. Koopmans and Erbe 2004: 29). However, a more rationalist theoretical point of view suggests that a transfer of competences and policy-making to the EU level alone is unlikely to attract the attention of non-state actors, if decision-making rules at EU and national levels do not offer opportunities for these actors to influence EU policy-making. Expected levels of participation in three cases As mentioned above, many of the factors suggesting a high level of participation were evident in the case of the revision of the DRD. The EU has strong competences in this field because the DRD is based on EU Treaty provisions for the Internal Market. The same provisions also govern the decision-making procedure used to revise the DRD. The co-decision procedure is the main EU legislative procedure and formally establishes the European Parliament (EP) as co-legislator besides the Council of Ministers. Because the EP is commonly considered to be very open to input by nonstate actors, the co-decision procedure speaks in favour of a relatively high level of participation. There also appeared to be a considerable level of common affectedness relating to the common market and the potential risks posed by genetically modified (GM) crops/food. As illustrated further below, the coincidence of the first US shipments of GM agricultural bulk products (soy beans) to the EU during the EU-wide BSE crisis heightened the sense of common affectedness. Finally, environmental NGOs emerged as important non-state actors in this field. They found it relatively easy to operate on a pan-European scale and were not particularly constrained by traditions and national embeddedness. All of these factors led us to expect a high level of participation in the DRD case.
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The conditions for participation were less favourable in the two other cases. In the ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case, the EU lacked powers to take measures against the Austrian government because the respective Treaty provisions did not allow for preventive action, and an actual breach of European values had not occurred. Consequently, there was also no clearly applicable decision-making procedure. All relevant decisions taken by the fourteen member states (EU-14) in respect of the ‘sanctions’ resulted, in fact, from high-level intergovernmental negotiations. The subsequent revision of Article 7 TEU was also based on intergovernmental negotiations, albeit formalized as an intergovernmental conference (IGC). High-level intergovernmental negotiations are generally not considered to be conducive to participation. Yet, what spoke in favour of participation was that the rise of extreme rightwing parties was a phenomenon affecting many member states – in other words, there was a high level of common affectedness. Finally, even though some relevant non-state political actors, for example political parties, were strongly embedded in national traditions, this was not the case with others, such as many civil rights and anti-racism groups. The latter could, therefore, be expected to quickly perceive or highlight the European dimension of the debate. The European Employment Strategy (EES) operates on the basis of the non-legislative, information/learning-based ‘open method of coordination’ (OMC). The EU has a coordinating role in this framework, but its position remains relatively weak because it lacks the power to make decisions which are legally binding on the member states. The level of EU competences, therefore, seems to be only moderately conducive to participation. At least in theory, the OMC is ‘open’ to participation by non-state actors. Decisionmaking rules would therefore appear to be more favourable to participation than competences. Although unemployment is a serious problem in many member states, the level of common affectedness appears to be only moderate. This reflects differences in national labour markets. For example, in 2002 the unemployment rate in Austria, Sweden and the UK was about five per cent or less, whereas the Spanish unemployment rate was more than 11 per cent. Similar differences existed, for example, with respect to trends between 1997 and 2002, with a sharp decline in unemployment in Sweden, but a much less dynamic trend in Germany and Austria. Finally, the social partners are key non-state actors in the field of employment policy. However, the roles of trade unions, and industrial relations more generally, are often deeply embedded in national political contexts. This is likely to have a negative effect on participation in EU decision-making – at least participation beyond the ‘national route’ which relies on influencing the national government in order to affect EU policies. Table 3.1 roughly summarizes the expected levels of participation in each case, based on the four impacting factors: common affectedness, organizational embeddedness, EU competences and decision-making rules. The plus (+) and minus () signs indicate favourable and unfavourable conditions, respectively. Zero (0) indicates neutral conditions. For the ‘sanctions’/Article
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Table 3.1 Case specific overview of conditions for participation Common Organizational Competences Decision-making affectedness embeddedness rules DRD + ‘Sanctions’/Article 7 + EES 0
+ 0 –
+ –/+ 0
+ – +
7 case, the ‘/+’ sign indicates that the EU had no competences to impose sanctions on Austria (minus sign), but had competence to revise the related Article 7 (plus sign). The table suggests that, as noted earlier, the conditions for participation were very good in the case of the revision of the DRD. Conditions were much less favourable in the ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case; nonetheless, they were moderately positive, at least with respect to the revision of Article 7. For the EES, the conditions were neither particularly favourable, nor unfavourable. So one would expect high participation in the DRD case and moderate participation in the other cases. The analysis of the case studies will show to what extent the observed actual levels of participation in the three cases correspond to the expectations based on the four factors. Methodology The analysis reported in this chapter is based on the work carried out by a multi-national team of researchers in Austria, Germany, France, the UK, Spain, Sweden and the Czech Republic.1 Coverage of these countries means that the countries studied for the case studies account for about two thirds of the population of the EU-15 and more than half of the population of the EU-25. Although the emphasis was on Western and Central European countries (Austria, France, Germany, the UK), the sample also included an Eastern European (the Czech Republic) and a southern and northern EU member state (Spain, Sweden). Each country team was instructed to carry out a review of policy-making and public debates for each of the three areas under investigation, and to conduct interviews with the relevant actors. More than 200 face-to-face and telephone interviews, relevant scientific literature, a broad range of documents, and analysis of media reporting (mostly newspapers) served as sources of information. The debates at the EU supra-national level were studied separately and provided the framework for the analysis of the national debates.
The revision of the Deliberate Release Directive The adoption of the original Deliberate Release Directive in 1990 was not accompanied by any significant public debate. Concerns about the potential
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environmental and health risks of genetic engineering had led to public controversies only in a few countries, notably Germany and Sweden. In 1993 the European Commission announced plans to review and possibly revise the Deliberate Release Directive only three years after its original adoption. The European Commission’s intention was to loosen the restrictions entailed by the Directive in response to complaints by large chemical companies and some member state governments about exaggerated regulation. Against that background, the year 1996 marked a political turning point. The concurrence of the arrival of the first GM crops in Europe with the BSE (‘mad cow disease’) crisis provided new political opportunities for actors demanding stricter regulations. The BSE crisis triggered a sharp decline of public trust in regulators’ assurances that oversight of ‘industrial’ agriculture and the food chain was sufficient. Environmental NGOs which could rely on trans-national organizational structures – in particular Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth (FoE) – used this opportunity to increase the resonance of their protests against GM crops/food. Reacting to intensifying debates, several member state governments began to come out in support of stricter EU regulations and imposed national moratoria and bans of GM crops. In 1999, the EU Council of Ministers of the Environment imposed a ‘de facto’ moratorium on the authorization of new GM crops, which lasted until 2004. Simultaneously, the Council replaced the Commission’s proposal for an amendment of the original DRD with a new, more restrictive draft directive. The European Parliament supported many of the Council’s proposals and in some cases went even further, demanding additional restrictions. In contrast, the European Commission was more cautious and having initially supported weaker regulations only supported a moderate tightening of the Directive after 1996. Mobilization The revision of the Deliberate Release Directive was accompanied by strong, trans-national mobilization of NGOs and significant, though not simultaneous, public debates across several countries. This successful mobilization was instrumental in generating public debates and influencing decision-making. NGOs mobilized considerable resources to protest against GM crops/food and, thus, effect the introduction of restrictive criteria in the revised Deliberate Release Directive. Trans-national mobilization benefited from two main factors, namely the concurrence of the BSE crisis with the arrival of the first GM crops on the European market, and the organizational characteristics of environmental NGOs. Although the BSE crisis originated in the UK, it quickly acquired a strong European dimension as a result of the common market. First, the common market created the conditions for British beef/cattle to be sold throughout the EU. Second, regulatory oversight had been Europeanized, making it difficult for individual member state governments to restrict
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imports on health or environmental grounds. Despite repeated warnings, British and EU regulators had failed to recognize the BSE threat in time to prevent serious harm. The resulting decline of public trust in government oversight quickly transcended the UK borders, as well as the boundaries of the farming and meat industries. Like British meat, imports of GM crops authorized under the DRD could be sold throughout the EU. The fact that the BSE crisis unfolded at the same time as GM soy bean imports began, and the fact that both meat and GM soy bean imports were linked to the themes of ‘industrialized’ agricultural production and food safety, gave NGOs the opportunity to exploit the decline in public trust and attack the credibility of safety assurances for the GM soy bean imports and GM crops/food more generally (Ansell et al. 2003: 12–13). The high level of mobilization also benefited from a second factor: environmental NGOs were well prepared to exploit the ‘window of opportunity’ created by the BSE crisis and the GM soy bean imports on a European scale. The role of Greenpeace, which has branches in almost all EU member states and in Brussels, was particularly instructive. Greenpeace has a trans-national, centralized organizational structure and relatively large financial and personnel resources. These organizational characteristics allowed Greenpeace to launch a successful Europe-wide campaign. Building on a small ongoing campaign, Greenpeace launched its major European anti-GMO campaign with a series of highly publicized attempts to block early EU imports of GM soy beans in 1996 (Behrens 1997: 79). In addition, Greenpeace lobbied member state governments and other policy-makers at national and EU levels, for example before and during meetings of the Environment Council. In subsequent years, Greenpeace used the momentum gained in 1996/7 to intensify its national-level involvement. More specifically, in Austria and the UK large parts of the influential tabloid press joined in the anti-GMO campaign. In both countries, Greenpeace also aligned itself with other actors. As early as 1996, Greenpeace Austria and Global 2000, the Austrian member of FoE, joined forces with a broad coalition of actors, including religious and animal rights groups, mountain farmers and retailers. Their call for a referendum on agricultural biotechnology, and the accession of Austria to the EU at the time, fuelled mobilization even further (Torgersen and Seifert 1999: 8). In the UK, protests emerged significantly more slowly. In 1997, the Soil Association (organic farmers) decided that GMOs were incompatible with its agenda. Subsequently, other NGOs became more active and the retailer Iceland decided to ban GM products from its shelves. In France, Greenpeace found effective national allies in ECOROPA and, more importantly, the Confe´de´ration Paysanne (CP) – a radical, left-wing small farmers’ association led by the popular figure Jose´ Bove´. The CP linked GM crops/food to broader concerns about globalization, such as alleged (US) threats to the ‘French way of life’ and (food) culture. This increased the appeal of opposition significantly (Boy and Cheveigne´ 2001: 182). At the same time, ECOROPA functioned as the main provider of
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alternative views from the French scientific community. Mobilization also benefited from common legal action by these groups. As in the UK and France, German protests, likewise led by Greenpeace, climaxed in the destruction of experimental fields planted with GM crops. However, mobilization in Germany, and similarly in Sweden and Spain, was less intense than in Austria, France and the UK. This may partly be attributed to the behaviour of the government and industrial producers which, unlike in the early 1990s, adopted a ‘duck and cover’ strategy in an effort to avoid public conflicts. Significant but short-lived mobilization in Sweden did not fully reflect more entrenched popular opposition to GM crops/food because the government had successfully co-opted important non-state actors, for example the National Farmers Organization (LRF) and the SKIS consumers association, as well as opposition parties. More radical NGOs, such as Greenpeace, were marginalized as a result (Fjaestad et al. 2001: 269). Although Greenpeace also headed protests in Spain and the Czech Republic, relatively low mobilization in both countries may be partly explained by exceptionally high (though decreasing) acceptance of GM crops/food in Spain and the fact that the Czech Republic – at the time not yet an EU member state – was less affected by the 1996 BSE crisis/GM soy bean imports than EU member states. Public debate The revision of the Deliberate Release Directive took place in the context of a high level of public debate. First, what could be called a ‘sectoral public space’ relying on highly specialized media – for example, commercial industry news services, NGO newsletters, websites operated by stakeholders and EU institutions, and email lists – had emerged in the late 1990s. In addition, the most important relevant events were covered by media with a strong focus on the EU, such as the European Voice and the Financial Times. This primarily improved the availability of information and opportunities for debate on the revision of the DRD and related events, for actors with a prior interest in these issues or in EU policy-making more generally. Second, and perhaps most importantly, Greenpeace protests in many EU member states and at the EU level succeeded in their main aim of attracting mass media attention. In particular, the 1996/7 shipments of GM soy beans to Europe provided Greenpeace with opportunities to stage confrontations with public authorities that led to arrests, the impounding of Greenpeace ships and legal action. Greenpeace also protested at the sites of multinational food producers such as Unilever and Nestle´, large wholesalers and retailers. These protests succeeded in stepping up pressure on these actors to remove GM food from supermarket shelves and support segregation of conventional and GM crops. Strongly reliant on symbols and symbolic actions, the Greenpeace campaign appears to have been particularly successful in attracting television
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coverage. Widely recognized visual symbols and ‘dramatic’ actions transcended language barriers and were understood by a Europe-wide audience. Examples included activists climbing huge office buildings and chasing cargo ships with rubber boats (David vs Goliath symbols), as well as the ‘X’ campaign logo that sought to associate GMOs with fear of the unknown, referring to the popular X-Files American TV series. Leading Greenpeace staff, including the coordinator of the European GMO campaign, had a professional background in journalism, and Greenpeace’s effective approach to the media led to wide coverage of protest events. For example, well timed press releases on protest events and other activities provided reporters with helpful information and additional material, sometimes including pictures and videos of these events. Public debates were particularly intense in member states with high levels of mobilization, i.e. in Austria, France and the UK. In Austria there was a major public debate as early as 1996/7. This was made possible, not least, through the support of the anti-GMO campaign by the Kronenzeitung, the most widely read Austrian tabloid (Torgersen et al. 2001: 135). Furthermore, GMO opponents were successful in organizing a referendum on the issue which emerged as a focal point for the debate and thus increased media attention more generally. For example, in 1997 two ‘quality’ newspapers, Die Presse and Der Standard, published about three times as many articles on biotechnology as they had in the previous year, while coverage in Die Presse and the weekly Profil quadrupled compared to the previous year (Wagner et al. 1998: 19). Democratic accountability became the dominant frame of reference (Torgersen et al. 2001: 135) and most articles tended to be critical of biotechnology. The early 1997 Austrian ban of a Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis) GM maize variety seems to have inspired the French debate. Following the Austrian ban, the French government made a political U-turn and banned cultivation of the maize. In other words, and in contrast to Austria and other member states, the government rather than NGOs triggered the French public debate. This and subsequent government decisions and preparations for a consensus conference in June 1998 provided opportunities for NGOs to mobilize and attract media coverage. The Confe´de´ration Paysanne (CP) campaign was especially successful in this regard, appealing to broader concerns and organizing protest events which led to confrontations with state authorities – for example, the destruction of GM plants and of a McDonalds fast food outlet under construction. Coverage also benefited from a high degree of personalization. Attention focussed on CP leader Jose´ Bove´. The newspaper L’Humanite´ described Bove´’s journey to serve a prison sentence as follows: Sitting on his old red tractor, with two police motorcycles clearing the road ahead, and followed by several other old tractors driven by the ten perpetrators of the McDonald’s destruction, while trucks belonging
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to the Compagnons d’Emmau¨s, and press cars and motorcycles followed at the rear . . . [Jose´ Bove´] enjoyed, at an average speed of around 30km/h, and in an atmosphere reminiscent of the Tour de France, a little public tour through the villages on the way.2 There was a more gradual build-up to the UK debate, which culminated in early 1999 after Arpad Pusztai, a renowned food scientist, lost his research job because he had revealed in a BBC broadcast that his research indicated that GM potatoes might have negative health effects on rats. A public protest letter which had been orchestrated by environmental NGOs and bore the signatures of several scientists (Gaskell et al. 2001: 299) sparked a ‘media storm’ (Durant and Lindsay 2000: 8) led by the tabloid press. For the following eight to ten days, GM food was the lead story in the national press and broadcasts. In contrast to previous media coverage, the broadsheet and tabloid press reported extensively on GM food and many adopted an anti-GM food/crops stance. Media coverage and campaigning was partly fuelled by the large gap between negative public opinion and the government’s strong support for GM crops/food, which newspapers tried to exploit in the highly competitive market (ibid.: 22–3). In contrast, a publicity campaign by biotechnology company Monsanto had little effect (Levidow and Carr 2000: 262). Public debates in Germany and Sweden had a more ‘routine’ character than in Austria, France and the UK (Fjaestad et al. 2001: 74). The fact that debates had previously taken place in both countries seems to have had a dampening effect in the second half of the 1990s. Significant coverage, but a low level of media campaigning, may have reflected a lower ‘news value’ of the concerns associated with GM food/crops. In addition, reactions to protests by the German government (‘duck and cover’) and the Swedish governments (co-optation/marginalization) reduced the potential for public debate. Reflecting relatively low public concern in Spain and the Czech Republic – and, in the case of the Czech Republic, low affectedness by the BSE crisis/GM soy bean imports – debates and reporting in these countries remained sporadic at best. Openness The degree of openness of decision-making concerning the revision of the DRD was significantly lower than the levels of mobilization and debate. However, starting from low levels at agenda-setting stage, openness increased over the course of the decision-making process. In particular, the sensitivity of member state governments to growing NGO protests and public debates gradually improved the conditions for skilful NGO lobbying. A formal review of the original DRD, which had been announced in the Commission’s 1993 White Paper on Competitiveness, Growth and Employment initiated the revision process. Reacting to pressure from major producers
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and some governments, the Commission had inserted a biotechnology chapter in the White Paper in a secretive process involving the Commission’s Secretary General, the German Industry Commissioner, and selected staff from DG Industry. Framing the issue in terms of competitiveness, this emerging policy community set the basic agenda for the revision of the DRD (cf. Homeyer 2002: 214–15) and, subsequently, further consolidated its influence as de facto authority for the review of the DRD shifted from the formally competent DG Environment to the newly established Biotechnology Coordination Committee (BCC) – an inter-service committee chaired by the Commission’s Secretary General – and a small group of specifically seconded national experts. The way in which the Commission had organized the review process meant that environmental NGOs perceived subsequent broader consultations, which went beyond the community of industrial policy-makers and its clientele, as ‘window-dressing’ (Friends of the Earth Europe 1997: 1). Around the beginning of the second half of the 1990s, decision-making started to open up as the Council and the European Parliament (EP) became involved in the legislative process. Application of the co-decision procedure meant that the EP had a significant formal role. The Parliament’s rapporteur – perhaps the most important single MEP in the legislative process – consulted numerous institutions and persons, including producers and environmental NGOs. Non-state actors intensively lobbied MEPs. Taking a special interest in the regulation of GM crops/food, the Green Party group organized hearings. During the final stage of the legislative process, some MEPs provided information on the state of play of the negotiations in the (non-public) conciliation committee to non-state actors. However, the actual political impact of the EP’s openness on decisionmaking remained limited because the majority of MEPs broadly supported the Council’s common position on the revision of the DRD. During the legislative process the Commission’s openness gradually increased as de facto authority began to shift away from the BCC back towards DG Environment. This provided environmental NGOs – many of which have routine contacts with DG Environment – with better access. This internal re-balancing reflected an adaptation to the Council’s shifting position which was, in turn, a reaction to the increasing protests and public debates. Openness further increased in the late 1990s. The Council’s increasingly entrenched position – including adoption of the de facto moratorium on the approval of new GM crops – required further adaptation by the Commission. In addition, rival Commission services leaked information to non-state actors to reinforce their influence in inter-service negotiations on the formulation of new legislation implementing and complementing the revised DRD, for example on thresholds for GMO content. At the national level, openness tended to increase as a result of public debates. In Austria, the 1997 genetic-engineering referendum – ‘the second most successful of its kind ever’ (Torgersen et al. 2001: 133) – provided a
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major opportunity for citizens to form and voice an opinion. In addition, the Austrian Genetic Technology Commission, which advises the government on regulatory issues, had a broad membership, including environmental and other NGOs, as well as experts with diverse backgrounds. The French Parliamentary Office for Technology Assessment held extensive public hearings and a consensus conference in 1998. The government also created the ‘Comite´ de Biovigilance’ to provide advice on the regulatory framework. Half of the committee members were non-scientists, and included representatives from Greenpeace, the CP, and industry. Representation in the government’s scientific advisory committee, the Commission du Ge´nie Biomole´culaire (CGB), was also broadened (Roy and Joly 1999: 9; Marris 2000: 19). Perhaps more than in some other member states, government departments in the UK offered opportunities for informal consultation and lobbying. Drawing on a broad range of witnesses, a House of Lords committee carried out a public inquiry into agricultural biotechnology in 1998. Although the government’s Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE) was a scientific committee, membership included a non-scientific expert on wider environmental/agricultural issues. More importantly, in June 2000 the government established the Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission (AEBC). Among other things, the AEBC gave advice on the development of the regulatory framework and consulted the public. Its members included, inter alia, producers and ‘moderate’ environmental NGOs. In 2001, the AEBC proposed to hold a major public debate on agricultural biotechnology which was concluded in 2003. As the German government kept a low profile, the national competent authority for the implementation of the original DRD – the Robert-KochInstitute (RKI) – had the opportunity to strongly influence the German position at the EU level. Although the RKI followed the German tradition of independent administration, it was easier in practice for producers than for environmental NGOs to access the RKI, for example via the RKI’s engagement in the Gespra¨chskreis Gru¨ne Gentechnik (GGG), an influential discussion forum close to industry in which the RKI participated (Dreyer and Gill 1999: 11–12; Dreyer and Gill 2000: 221, 224). In 2001/3 the government held a series of public hearings on agricultural biotechnology (Diskurs Gru¨ne Gentechnik). In Spain openness was low. The government’s scientific advisory committee – the Comisio´n Nacional de Bioseguridad (CNB) – had acquired a de facto policy-making role (Todt and Luja´n 1999). As a technical body it was unfamiliar with widespread consultation. The government did not involve the official consultative body for environmental issues, the Consejo Asesor de Medio Ambiente (CAMA), due to unrelated differences with environmental NGOs and others about CAMA’s composition. In 1999, a special parliamentary commission whose remit was to investigate the wider
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implications of GM food was set up. Although that commission failed to publish a report, a relatively large range of actors participated in the public hearings. Openness in Sweden aimed more at consensus-building than exchange of information. As mentioned above, the government co-opted moderate opponents of GM crops/food via the establishment of a parliamentary commission on biotechnology, public hearings and a consensus conference, thereby excluding more radical opponents from access to the debate (Lassen et al. 2002: 300). Finally, membership of the Czech GMO advisory commission was relatively broad, including government officials and members of NGOs opposing GM crops/food (environmental NGOs, the Society for Sustainable ˇ SOP)) and Living, the Czech Association of Nature Conservationists (C NGOs promoting them (Biotrin). Although Greenpeace refused to join the commission, the group participated actively in consultations on a wide range of issues, including transposition of the DRD into Czech law. Responsiveness Member state governments were considerably more responsive to citizens’ demands/public opinion than the European Commission. This was evident in the Council’s role in the legislative process and, perhaps more importantly, in member state decisions to block the authorization of GM crops. These decisions changed the balance of power among actors in favour of those calling for stricter legislation. Two Council decisions had a strong impact on the balance of power in the legislative process. First, in June 1996 a vast majority of member states voted against a Commission proposal to authorize a GM maize variety produced by Ciba-Geigy (now Novartis). Nevertheless, having obtained the support of its scientific advisory committees, the Commission proceeded to authorize the maize. In 1997 Austria, Luxembourg and Italy reacted by imposing national bans. Even France, which had submitted the original application and was the only country that had voted in favour of authorization, now refused to authorize import and cultivation on its territory. Although the Commission’s scientific advisory committees criticized these bans, the Commission refrained from taking legal action against the offending governments, fearing a political backlash. The episode exposed the Commission’s political weakness, and appears to have had a strong impact on its 1998 legislative proposal for the revision of the DRD. In contrast to earlier intentions, the proposal was stricter than the original DRD. The 1999 de facto moratorium accompanying the Council’s Common Position was the second important Council decision. To lift the moratorium, the Commission (and producers) were forced to agree to an increasingly strict regulatory framework, including complementing and implementing legislation.
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To a large extent the rejection of the GM maize and the de facto moratorium reflected member states’ responsiveness to public protests and debates. Against the background of the BSE crisis and the early protests against the GM soy bean imports, Greenpeace and others had also staged protests at the June 1996 Environment Council meeting, intensively lobbying governments to reject the GM maize. The crucial 1999 Environment Council meeting was accompanied by similar protests. Perhaps more importantly, in the run-up to the meeting Greenpeace successfully lobbied the Greek environment minister to formally propose the moratorium. Protests and skilful lobbying at the EU level complemented member state governments’ responsiveness to national debates. However, no government was ready to completely abandon agricultural biotechnology in response to protests. In Austria the government adopted tighter regulations, but the 1998 revised genetic engineering law stopped short of implementing the referendum’s call for a general ban of GM crops/food. Instead, confrontations with the Commission resulting from the national ban provided a welcome opportunity for the government to demonstrate its commitment to ‘the people’s will’ (Torgersen et al. 2001: 132). In response to protests and debates, the French government organized a major consensus conference which, however, had little direct influence on regulatory decision-making. Nonetheless, important decisions, such as strong government support for the de facto moratorium, increasingly reflected ‘highly publicized opinions and the massive NGO-supported movement against [GM] products’ (Glidas Le Bozec, French Ministry of Agriculture, quoted in Brillet 2002: 6). Given the intensity of the debate in the UK, the government as a whole displayed comparatively low responsiveness. In absolute terms there was, however, significant responsiveness as demonstrated by the introduction of the programme of ‘managed development’ of GM crops, the establishment of the AEBC, and the 2003 ‘GM Nation’ public debate. Because the debate in Germany was less intense than in the UK, direct pressure on the German government remained moderate. In 2000, the government nevertheless banned a GM maize variety which had been authorized at the EU level. Demonstrating the potential for more proactive responsiveness if the debate intensified, Chancellor Gerhard Schro¨der preventively cancelled talks with producers on ‘managed development’ of GM crops/food when several cases of BSE were discovered in Germany in 2001 (Verbraucherinitiative 2003). Although the debate in Sweden was short-lived, the establishment of parliamentary inquiry committees, public hearings and a consensus conference demonstrated high responsiveness towards moderate critics of GM crops/food. This contrasts, however, with low responsiveness towards more radical groups. As GM crops/food were not widely debated in Spain and the government maintained few contacts with environmental NGOs, pressure on the government to demonstrate responsiveness was low. Reacting to sporadic protests in Spain and debates in other member states and at the EU level, the government nevertheless supported some proposals for tightening
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the DRD. Given that the Czech Republic had not yet joined the EU, the government’s scope for responsiveness was limited. However, within these confines good relations between the environment ministry and NGOs might indicate relatively high responsiveness.
The ‘sanctions’ against Austria and the revision of Article 7 TEU Following the formation of a new Austrian government in February 2000 ¨ ), the remaining which included the extreme right-wing Freedom Party (FPO member states (the ‘EU-14’) imposed diplomatic ‘sanctions’ on Austria. Subsequently, the EU revised Article 7 TEU which establishes procedures to ensure that member states adhere to the Union’s basic common values, such as human rights, the rule of law, and democracy. In institutional terms, the imposition of the ‘sanctions’ and the revision of Article 7 constituted two distinct events: the EU-14 adopted the ‘sanctions’ outside the formal framework of the Treaties, whereas, in contrast, the revision of Article 7 was part of the 2000 EU Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) which led to the adoption of the Nice Treaty. However, in terms of substance and timing, the two events were closely linked in that the political failure of the ‘sanctions’ largely set the agenda for the revision of Article 7. Despite this link, participation in decision-making with respect to the ‘sanctions’ was much more intensive than with respect to the revision of Article 7, where participation was virtually absent. ¨ gained 27 per cent of the vote in the Austrian In late 1999, the FPO ¨ joining the government parliamentary elections. The prospect of the FPO led to widespread protests and public debates in Austria and also to a lesser extent in other EU member states. In January 2000, the EU-14 warned that they would seriously downgrade diplomatic relations with Austria if the ¨ joined the government. Nonetheless, a few days later a new Austrian FPO ¨ . As the EU ‘sanctions’ government was sworn in which included the FPO ¨ had failed to prevent the FPO from entering the government, and public opinion in Austria and certain other member states increasingly turned against the ‘sanctions’ in the following weeks, in June 2000 the EU-14 governments agreed on an ‘exit strategy’: they commissioned a ‘Wise Men’s’ report on the Austrian government’s commitment to European values, the ¨. situation of refugees and minorities, and the ‘political nature’ of the FPO In accordance with the report’s recommendations, the ‘sanctions’ were lifted in September 2000. A few weeks after the ‘sanctions’ had come into effect, their apparent failure triggered discussions at the highest political level on the revision of Article 7 TEU. The EU agreed on a revised, more preventative Article 7 which provides for monitoring of member states found to be at risk of breaching European values. The revision of Article 7 was decided through diplomatic channels without participation of civil society or public debate.
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Like the revision of the DRD, the ‘sanctions’ were accompanied by intensive mobilization and public debate, primarily in Austria, but also beyond. However, while in the DRD case weak participation in the earlier stages of policy-making preceded intensive participation later on, the reverse applied to the ‘Austrian case’: the initial intense participation with respect to the ‘sanctions’ contrasted with very weak participation in the subsequent, related revision of Article 7 TEU. Openness of decision-making was low. Whereas it seems likely that the ‘sanctions’ – both their imposition and their removal – at least partly reflected public protests and debates, such responsiveness was largely absent with respect to the revision of Article 7. Mobilization Mobilization of citizens and civil society occurred primarily in Austria, although there was also some measure of mobilization in other member states. In the three months from the elections to the new Austrian govern¨ joinment’s first days in office, numerous demonstrations against the FPO ing the government took place in Austria, with the largest attracting an estimated 200,000–400,000 protesters. Protests continued thereafter on a reduced scale. One year after the elections, the total number of so-called ‘Thursday demonstrations’ had reached 217. Additional protests complemented the demonstrations. For example, protesters occupied the head¨ VP) – the FPO ¨ ’s conservative quarters of the Austrian Peoples’ Party (O coalition partner – for nearly 24 hours. The protests were organized by a range of initiatives, some of which – for example the Democratic Offensive (German: Demokratische Offensive) – ¨ ’s strong performance had been established specifically in reaction to the FPO in the elections. Others, such as the Republican Club (Republikanischer Club) or Political Potential (Politische Potentiale, or popo), had been established earlier, among other things in protest against former Austrian President Kurt Waldheim and the government’s treatment of asylum seekers. These groups cooperated with initiatives against racism, xenophobia and ¨ , they anti-Semitism. Although the trade unions were opposed to the FPO refused to assume a leadership role in the protest movement – perhaps not least because a disproportionately high share of their constituency had voted ¨ (47 per cent of workers). Given the unions’ significant political for the FPO influence in Austria, their relatively weak engagement deprived the protest movement of a strong organizational basis.3 ¨ , there were also protests In addition to demonstrations against the FPO against the EU-14 ‘sanctions’. For example, in March 2000 a group of renowned persons including Simon Wiesenthal and Karl Schwarzenberg, who had been engaged in promoting human rights, published a declaration warning that the ‘sanctions’ had counter-productive effects. Similarly, in April 2000 a group of citizens travelled to Brussels and published a manifesto4 calling for the lifting of the ‘sanctions’. The majority of Austrians
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also opposed the ‘sanctions’: in late March 2000 survey results indicated that 66 per cent of respondents strongly disapproved of the ‘sanctions’. Public debate Europe-wide public debates characterized the ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case, with by far the most intense debate taking place in Austria. In addition to intensive media coverage, there had never been ‘so many discussions on politics across all social groups and age groups’ in Austria (Ludwig Adamovich, President of the Austrian Constitutional Court, quoted in Hummer and Pelinka 2002: 272). The Austrian debate was strongly Europeanized as issues such as ‘European values’ and the ‘sanctions’ received widespread attention. In addition, there was considerable media coverage in other member states of debates on the political situation in Austria, the ‘sanctions’, and discussions at EU level. Despite Europe-wide public debates on both the ‘sanctions’ and the DRD cases, the two cases differ in several respects. In contrast to the more sequential controversies surrounding the revision of the DRD, debates in the ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case lasted only a few months and occurred simultaneously across countries. In addition, although NGOs were involved, at least in the non-Austrian debates leading politicians and the media played a more important role. Finally, whereas the intensity of debates on GMOs varied strongly across countries, it was relatively ‘even’ across counties in the ‘sanctions’/ Article 7 case (obviously with the exception of the Austrian debate). Despite the relatively ‘even’ intensity of debates in the ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case, substantive national foci differed significantly. Reflecting the important role of politicians and the media (with their political allegiances), the government/opposition divide appears to have had the biggest impact on most debates. Against the background of ‘cohabitation’ of a socialist government and a Gaullist president in France, the broadly similar political ¨ and the extreme right French Front National challenges posed by the FPO party, as well as French President Jacques Chirac’s active support for the ‘sanctions’, the French public and media mostly endorsed the ‘sanctions’. German chancellor Gerhard Schro¨der faced a more critical debate. In particular, the influential conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper opposed the ‘sanctions’ and devoted considerable coverage to the issue. The breadth of the debate is illustrated, inter alia, by the fact that the ‘sanctions’ debate was even considered worthy of discussion by the major German tabloid Bild. Spanish right-leaning papers tended to support the position of the conservative government, which was in favour of the ‘sanctions’, whereas left-leaning papers opposed the ‘sanctions’. In the UK, the issue was primarily discussed by the left-leaning and liberal press, while coverage in other papers, in particular the tabloid press, was significantly less intense. Although the positions in the debates in France, Germany, Spain and the UK largely reflected the government/opposition divide, the debates were
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Europeanized to a significant extent in that they focussed on whether or not the ‘sanctions’ amounted to an effective and appropriate European response to the political situation in Austria. In contrast, debates in Italy, Sweden and the Czech Republic had a stronger national focus. In Italy, the ‘sanctions’ were primarily seized upon as an opportunity to discuss the level of ¨ . In similarity between right-wing and populist Italian parties and the FPO Sweden and the Czech Republic, the debates were strongly influenced by bilateral perspectives and, in the case of Sweden, compatibility of the ‘sanctions’ with the ‘Swedish political style’. Openness The decisions on the ‘sanctions’ and the revision of Article 7 were characterized by a low degree of openness and transparency. This may be attributed to two main factors. First, decision-making took place outside the legal framework of the EU and was only loosely constrained by EU decision-making procedures. Consequently, the European Parliament and competition among Commission services which contributed to increasingly open decision-making in the DRD case had, if anything, only a very small impact. Second, the institutional context of decision-making, as well as actual policy content, had a much stronger diplomatic, ‘foreign-policy’ character than, for example, decision-making on the revision of the DRD. Foreign policy-making is traditionally more detached from parliamentary and public scrutiny than domestic policy-making. The imposition of the ‘sanctions’ was essentially agreed in talks between a small group of EU heads of state. In late January 2000, the Belgian government formally requested Portuguese Prime Minister Anto´nio Guterres, who was holding the rotating EU Presidency, to arrange for a joint reaction ¨ into the Austrian govby the EU-14 to the impending entry of the FPO ernment. After talks between German Chancellor Schro¨der and Guterres, and phone calls with French President Chirac and Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, the German Chancellor and the French President jointly proposed a range of diplomatic ‘sanctions’ against Austria which were for the most part accepted by all the EU-14 and officially announced by Guterres on 30 January 2000. Although the Commission declared that the ‘working of the European institutions’ was not affected by the ‘sanctions’,5 the fact that the Council President had announced them meant that the ‘sanctions’ were widely perceived as EU measures. The lifting of the ‘sanctions’ represented a more open decision-making process than their adoption, albeit only with respect to Austrian actors. Following high-level political discussions in spring 2000 and at the June Feira European Council, the EU-14 agreed on a procedure that could lead to the lifting of the ‘sanctions’. The President of the European Court of Human Rights, Luzius Wildhaber, was asked to select three ‘Wise Men’ to ¨ and the Austrian government’s commitment to prepare a report on the FPO
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common European values. This procedure to some extent opened up the decision-making process. The ‘Wise Men’ – a German and a Spanish academic and a former President of Finland – met with a wide variety of actors on two days in late July and August 2000. The first meeting, with ‘established’ representatives of the Austrian government, political parties, religious groups and trade unions, took place in Vienna. A broad range of Austrian NGOs, in particular civil rights groups, participated in the second meeting in Heidelberg, Germany. In early September the final report, which recommended the lifting of the ‘sanctions’, was submitted to Jacques Chirac, the new EU Council President. While the debate on the ‘sanctions’ led to a certain opening-up of the decision-making process regarding their lifting, the reform of Article 7 TEU was, once again, a process characterized primarily by diplomatic interactions among member states in the framework of the 2000 IGC, which resulted in the adoption of the Nice Treaty in December 2000. The revision of Article 7 was only a minor aspect of the Nice Treaty, which aimed more broadly to adapt the EU institutions to the then-imminent accession of ten new member states. Soon after the imposition of the ‘sanctions’, Austrian President Klestil raised the issue of creating a procedure allowing the EU to react to an anticipated violation of Article 6(1) TEU. Subsequently, various member states submitted concrete proposals. The revised Article 7 that was eventually adopted in Nice was a compromise between the various proposals and included a ‘Wise Men’ procedure similar to the one that had been used to lift the ‘sanctions’ against Austria. In a very limited sense, the revision of Article 7 was in fact somewhat more open than the imposition of the ‘sanctions’, because all member states had an opportunity to participate in the discussions that led to the revision. In contrast, only a few member states had actively participated in the decision-making process leading to the adoption of the ‘sanctions’; other member states, in particular Finland and other Scandinavian countries, had been confronted with a fait accompli. This appears to reflect the fact that the ‘sanctions’ were not adopted on the basis of formal EU procedures, whereas the revision of Article 7 was dealt with in the framework of the 2000 intergovernmental conference. It is worth noting that following the adoption of the ‘sanctions’, the Austrian government announced that it would hold a referendum addressing the issue if no progress towards the lifting of the ‘sanctions’ was made. If anything, a referendum in Austria would have resulted in a very limited increase in openness, because Austria was not officially part of the EU-14 decision-making process and no similar referenda were planned in other member states. Responsiveness The degree to which the adoption and subsequent lifting of the ‘sanctions’ reflected member state governments’ responsiveness to societal demands is
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¨ joining the Austrian governdifficult to establish. The prospect of the FPO ment and the resulting protests in Austria were widely debated in the media and even led to protests in other member states. The adoption of the ‘sanctions’ could have been motivated by these protests and debates. Leading political actors, for example Chancellor Schro¨der of Germany, Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema, and the European Parliament, fre¨ quently cited the danger which extreme right-wing parties such as the FPO posed in terms of European values, in order to justify the ‘sanctions’. Insofar as these values also motivated societal debates and protests, this might suggest that the adoption of the ‘sanctions’ was, at least partly, a reaction to values upheld in society. However, a more self-interested political calculation is likely to have played an important role, too. The rise of populist extreme right-wing parties was not limited to Austria, but also concerned some of the countries home to leading advocates of the ‘sanctions’, such as Belgium and France. It seems likely that one of the main purposes of the ‘sanctions’ was their domestic impact on these countries. In particular, the ‘sanctions’ were designed to deter the formation of coalitions between conservative forces and extreme right-wing parties (Karlhofer and Sickinger 2001). Once imposed, the sanctions were viewed by the media and many Austrians in an increasingly critical light. It seems likely that member state governments were, to a large extend, acting in response to these perceptions when they decided to lift the ‘sanctions’. But other factors were also relevant. The ‘sanctions’ had failed to achieve their declared main objective, to ¨ in the Austrian government. In addition, prevent the inclusion of the FPO member state governments such as that of Finland, which had only reluctantly agreed to the ‘sanctions’ in the first place, increasingly pushed for the lifting of the ‘sanctions’ after they had been imposed. While responsiveness appears to have had an impact on decision-making regarding the ‘sanctions’ – in particular on the lifting of the ‘sanctions’ – it seems to have been largely irrelevant for the revision of Article 7. This is hardly surprising, given that non-state actors showed little interest in the revision of Article 7, and that there was no public debate.
The European Employment Strategy The Extraordinary European Council of November 1997 created the socalled Luxembourg Process which is based on the European Employment Strategy (EES). In terms of decision-making, the EES relies on the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) – a term coined later by the 2000 Lisbon European Council. In contrast to EU legislative procedures, the OMC does not directly result in legally binding commitments, such as EU directives or regulations, but represents an effort to introduce a ‘management by objectives’ style of policy-making. Use of the OMC reflects the fact that, on the one hand, member states are not willing to endow the EU with significant
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legislative power in an area of high political sensitivity characterized by marked differences among member states and deeply entrenched national traditions. On the other hand, however, it shows that member state governments have recognized the need to intensify EU coordination to increase the effectiveness of national employment policies and strengthen employment policy concerns in the face of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). EU employment policy based on the OMC unfolds as an annual cyclical process of EU-level guideline development (employment guidelines), preparation of National Action Plans (NAPs) on employment at the national level, monitoring and evaluation of the NAPs, and review of the European employment guidelines.6 More specifically, each year, the European Council adopts conclusions on the employment situation which provide the broad political perspective for the adoption of the employment guidelines. On this basis, the Commission prepares a proposal for the employment guidelines which is adopted by the Employment and Social Affairs Council. The European Parliament, the Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC), the Committee of the Regions (CoR), and the Employment Committee (EMCO) are consulted on the employment guidelines. Staffed with national and Commission officials, EMCO has a strong influence on the formulation of the guidelines and the EES in general. Each member state prepares a NAP which reports on its employment policy in light of the employment guidelines. An evaluation of the NAPs by the Employment and Social Affairs Council and the Commission forms the basis for the European Council’s subsequent conclusions on the employment situation. In contrast to the revision of the DRD and the ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case, the EES failed to trigger strong mobilization or, in particular, extensive public debates in the period between 1997 and 2003. While non-state actors mobilized to some extent, even the modest public debates that accompanied the launch of the EES died down in subsequent EES cycles. On average, openness seems to have been higher in the EES than in the DRD and ‘sanctions’/Article 7 cases. However, there was strong variation among member states and to some extent also among institutions at the EU level. This variation could furthermore be observed with respect to responsiveness. But the average level of responsiveness was lower than in the DRD and the ‘sanctions’/Article 7 cases. Mobilization The main EU-level associations of social partners are the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), the Union of Industrial and Employers’ Confederations (UNICE), and the European Centre of Enterprises with Public Participation and of Enterprises of General Economic Interest (CEEP). Mobilization of these actors in response to the EES was at best
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moderate. For example, although engaging in informal lobbying of EMCO, the EU-level associations usually adopted written opinions on the employment guidelines only after EMCO had reached agreement on the guidelines (De la Porte and Pochet 2005: 365). As far as the ETUC is concerned, the only moderate mobilization may partly be explained by ‘agenda mismatch’ – i.e. the fact that the EES does not address ETUC’s main ambition, which is to establish a European layer of collective bargaining (ibid.). UNICE initially adopted a critical position on the EES. However, UNICE strongly supports the EU Lisbon Strategy to make the EU ‘the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world’ and abandoned its criticism of the EES when the EES was integrated into the Lisbon Strategy in 2000. Mobilization at the national level in response to the NAPs also remained moderate. It generally followed one of two patterns. In countries with a tradition of social partnership involving trade unions, employers and the state, the social partners to some extent contributed to the formulation of the NAPs using established channels of communication with the government. This applied to Sweden, Germany and Austria. As mentioned above, the 1999 general elections in Austria resulted in a new conservative govern¨ ) which ment that included the extreme right-wing Freedom Party (FPO opposed the tradition of tri-partite negotiation. Demonstrating the resilience of the established tri-partite channels of communication, these were weakened but not closed under the new government. Alternatively mobilization occurred in a more confrontational manner in countries which lacked a tradition of social partnership and in which governments tried to reduce the influence of trade unions on policy-making. This was the case in Spain and the UK. In Spain, trade unions blamed the government for failing to commit to the EES to reduce unemployment. In contrast, the UK Trades Union Congress (TUC) saw the EES in the broad context of the government’s refusal to grant the trade unions greater influence on policy-making. Given the government’s lack of openness to trade union input in general, and the EES claim of being an open process, the TUC perceived the OMC as a smokescreen. However, British regional and local bodies and social NGOs took a more constructive position. Finally, the Czech Republic was a special case in that the government adopted measures to encourage mobilization by a broad range of actors, in particular at the regional level and with respect to implementation. While the social partners refused to assume responsibility for implementation of the NAP, which they regarded as a government task, they adopted a constructive position towards the NAP and provided comments. Although the Czech trade unions’ refusal to participate in implementation seems extreme and in part a result of the post-communist transition process in the Czech Republic, it also seems to reflect some of the main reasons for moderate to low mobilization more generally. First, like the EES at the European level, the NAPs did not directly address the social partners’
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main focus on collective bargaining. Even in those countries in which the trade unions seized on the EES as an opportunity to attack the government, the intensity of protests remained weak, only involving trade union representatives (rather than larger sections of membership). Second, despite Commission and Council declarations supporting involvement of the social partners and other societal actors in the EES, the Commission and national governments refused to partly transfer ‘ownership’ of the ESS and the NAPs to the social partners. More specifically, the Commission hesitated to abandon a ‘top-down’ approach and to give more influence to national and regional actors, and even those governments which used tri-partite channels of communication continued to regard the EES and the NAPs as primarily a governmental responsibility. Finally, the formulation of the NAPs is more a reporting exercise than a strategic exercise, because the main function of the NAPs is to provide information on measures taken at the national and regional levels to implement the employment guidelines. The weakness of the strategic dimension reduced the social partners’ interest in the NAPs. Some NGOs – for example groups focussing on poverty reduction or representing the interests of handicapped people – mobilized in response to the EES. At the EU level, the European anti-poverty network (EAPN) sought to be involved in the EES and published reports and opinions on those aspects of the EES relevant for poverty reduction. At national level, social NGOs were involved in the preparation of the regional English NAP. The NAPs also led to moderate mobilization of regional actors in some member states, in particular following the Commission’s 2000 communication on Acting Locally for Employment (European Commission 2000). For example, Swedish regions delivered input into the NAP, and some regions, for example in Sweden and Spain, developed local employment strategies. In the UK, each region (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) prepares its own NAP. In England, the newly created regional development agencies play a significant role in the formulation and implementation of the NAP. In contrast, the German Bundesla¨nder have mostly adopted a critical position towards the EES, fearing that it might encroach on their employment policy competences. Nevertheless, the Bundesla¨nder are actively involved in the preparation of the NAPs. Public debate In contrast to both the revision of the DRD and the ‘sanctions’ case, public debate on the EES and the NAPs was very weak. National parliaments treated the NAPs as a minor issue that was often not even raised in debates in the plenary. More importantly, media attention remained very low, although it was somewhat higher after the Luxembourg Summit at which the EES was adopted and following the conclusion of the first EES cycles in 1998 and 1999. While there was some newspaper reporting in countries
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such as Austria, Germany and Spain, the EES was hardly covered by the UK media. Openness Openness appears to be the only dimension in which the EES performed better than the other two cases. However, the openness of the EES varied strongly in two ways: first, it was reasonably high with respect to EU-level social partnership organizations, but low for other EU-level NGOs; second, openness varied strongly along national lines with respect to social partners and NGOs, given that access by these organizations largely depended on national channels. These mixed findings contrast with calls by the Luxembourg European Council in 1997 for involvement of the social partners at all stages of the EES, and calls by the 1999 Cologne European Council to expand the spectrum of actors to include NGOs. In addition, the Commission has pushed, in particular, for better involvement of the social partners and local and regional authorities. EU-level agreement on the employment guidelines is largely facilitated by the Employment Committee (EMCO) comprising member state and Commission officials. There are three principal ways of influencing EMCO: first, EMCO is legally obliged to ‘establish contacts with the social partners represented in the Standing Committee on Employment’7 (which was later dissolved – see below). Second, national EMCO representatives can be lobbied informally. Third, the Commission can be lobbied either informally or by representatives of the social partners and NGOs in a number of related Commission advisory committees. A closer look at these options reveals, however, that they are far from open to all relevant actors. With respect to formal consultation, EU-level social partner organizations were represented in the Standing Committee on Employment. Similarly, participation in the Tripartite Social Summit, which takes place at least once a year before the European Council’s annual spring review of the Lisbon Strategy (including the EES), is limited to EU-level, cross-sectoral social partner organizations, with ETUC and UNICE enjoying a privileged position. When the Social Summit was formalized in 2003, the Standing Committee on Employment was abolished. Sectoral and national social partner organizations, NGOs and local and regional bodies do not participate in the Social Summit. As to EMCO consultation practices, member states have in fact resisted efforts to involve representatives from local and regional bodies and from social NGOs – in particular of EAPN – in the formulation of the employment guidelines. Participation in the EES may also occur by exerting influence over the Commission, which has the formal right to propose the employment guidelines and is an EMCO member. In particular, the Commission consults the Labour Market Group of the Social Dialogue Committee on its initiatives with respect to the EES. EU-level social partners and the
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national member organizations of ETUC, UNICE and CEEP are represented in the Social Dialogue Committee. Where appropriate, the Commission also involves one or more of twenty-six sectoral social dialogue committees and the Platform of European Social NGOs, as well as the European Conference of Cooperatives, Mutuals, Associations and Foundations in its consultations on employment policy. Finally, there are frequent informal consultations and contacts between the Commission and the social partners and other relevant non-state actors. The Commission has also pushed for stronger involvement of local and regional actors at all stages of the EES. Although the Commission’s consultation practice privileges the social partners, the Commission seems to be more open than EMCO. A third way of influencing the employment guidelines – and the NAPs – is through national governments and their EMCO representatives. Openness varies widely among member states. As with mobilization, there are major differences between countries with and without a tradition of tri-partite negotiation. In Sweden, Germany and Austria, the social partners can have recourse to the established tri-partite channels of communication. There is also some participation by regional bodies, for example through the Bundesrat in Germany. While this provides the social partners with good access, other actors, in particular NGOs, are largely excluded – not least because the social partners oppose participation by additional non-state actors. In contrast, the EES has favoured more openness in the UK. As mentioned above, the regions – and in England also the regional development agencies – formulate their own employment strategies. A relatively broad range of actors, including NGOs, professional groups and other organizations, are consulted in this process. However, the trade unions reject this approach because they feel that their role is too weak. Despite the involvement of the autonomous regions in Spain, the formulation of the NAPs in practice is much more centralized than in the UK. While the government does not engage in exchanges with the social partners and NGOs, it submits the draft NAP for comments. In the Czech Republic, the general public was asked for comments on the draft NAP, which was posted on the internet. As mentioned above the government also engaged in futile efforts to involve the social partners and NGOs in the process of implementing the NAP. Responsiveness While overall responsiveness in the case of the revision of the DRD was clearly higher than with respect to the EES, responsiveness in the EES care was, if anything, only slightly lower than in the ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case. More specifically, responsiveness tended to be low or moderate, depending on the actor. At EU level, the Commission appeared to be fairly responsive. On the one hand, the EU lacks legislative competences for employment policy, and the Commission is therefore keen on mobilizing support by non-
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state and regional and local actors for EU employment policy. Being responsive to proposals from these actors is one way of building support. On the other hand, the Commission’s responsiveness is constrained by the fact that its proposals need to be accepted by EMCO and the Council. In addition, pressure on the Commission to accept specific proposals is relatively low due to only moderate mobilization of the social partners and other organizations. In contrast to the Commission’s moderate responsiveness, EMCO appears to be unresponsive. This may partly reflect EMCO’s weak consultation practice. At national level, those member states with a tradition of tri-partite negotiation generally seemed to be more responsive than those lacking such tradition. For example, in such countries contributions by the social partners were more frequently integrated into the NAP, rather than only being annexed to it. Two factors may explain this: first, in Austria, Germany and Sweden consultation focussed primarily on the social partners, whereas it covered a broader variety of non-state actors in the UK. A low number of main actors involved in consultation is likely to reduce the number of conflicting positions and makes the consultation process easier to manage. Second, and perhaps more importantly, interactions in those countries with a tri-partite tradition tended to take the form of an exchange among the parties rather than a mere submission of comments. For example, in Germany the social partners submitted comments which had been mutually agreed, as well as individual comments. In Spain and the UK responsiveness appears to have been low, not least as a result of the more general confrontational climate between the government and trade unions in these countries. However, the decentralized approach in the UK may have allowed for higher responsiveness at the local levels. Although the Czech government attempted to consult broadly, the response by the social partners and other organizations appears to have been very weak. Consequently, an assessment of that government’s responsiveness is not possible.
Levels and factors of participatory governance The analysis of the three cases broadly confirms expectations regarding the level of participation presented at the beginning of this chapter. Based on the embeddedness of civil society organizations in their environments, the level of common affectedness, applicable decision-making rules at national and EU levels, and the degree to which competences have been transferred to the EU, a high level of participation could be expected regarding the revision of the DRD; much lower participation could be expected in the EES and in the ‘sanctions’/Article 7 cases. However, the analysis also suggests that some of the factors which were assumed to influence participatory governance had a significantly stronger impact than others: organizational embeddedness and common affectedness appear to have been more determinant than competences and decision-making rules.
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In the DRD case the levels of mobilization, public debate and responsiveness were high. With respect to mobilization, Greenpeace played a key role because, among other reasons, Greenpeace was able to mobilize resources quickly to react to the concurrence of the BSE crisis with the GM soy bean shipments. Mobilization occurred both at EU and national levels, where Greenpeace formed alliances with national NGOs. The professionally organized Greenpeace campaign, which was mostly directed at the media, was also an important factor in framing public debates. In Austria and the UK, leading tabloids were sympathetic to the Greenpeace campaign and played an important role in stirring public controversy. In France, Greenpeace cooperated with the Confe´de´ration Paysanne, which associated GM crops/food with popular, more general concerns. This heightened media interest in the issue. In contrast to the other dimensions, openness was only moderate. Against the background of pressure by large producers, a small and secretive circle of high-level policy-makers set the original agenda for revision of the DRD. Openness increased to reach modest levels once the Commission’s proposals for revision of the DRD reached the European Parliament, and the Commission came under strong political pressure from the Council’s de facto moratorium. The moratorium was particularly important with respect to high levels of responsiveness. First, the moratorium itself was evidence for responsiveness because its adoption reflected protests and public opinion in many member states. Second, the moratorium provided perhaps the most powerful political leverage in support of the adoption of a strict revised DRD and strict complementary and implementing legislation. This was particularly significant given the Commission’s low responsiveness. Organizational embeddedness partly explains the strong impact of the Greenpeace campaign. Reflecting its tradition as a trans-national organization, Greenpeace had an organizational structure which enabled it to lead a Europe-wide campaign at national and EU levels, combining activities aimed primarily at the media with skilful two-level lobbying, for example for the adoption of the moratorium. Common affectedness appears to have been another important factor: because the common market ensured that the GM soy bean imports could end up in any one member state, Greenpeace (and others) was able to use similar arguments in all member states. But the impact of common affectedness also reflected the concurrence of the GM soy bean shipments with the BSE crisis, which reinforced public distrust of official safety assurances and provided a dramatic, widely publicized illustration of common affectedness in a related field. It seems likely that the impact of common affectedness would have been much lower in the absence of these coincidental circumstances. Strong EU competences for regulating GM crops/food also contributed to common affectedness and Europe-wide (though not simultaneous) public debates. It seems unlikely that Greenpeace would have organized a two-level European campaign in the absence of strong EU competences. Similarly, the media would have
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focussed less on the EU and other member states as major players. In addition, in the absence of strong EU competences, EU-level responsiveness would have been weaker, reflecting a weaker effect of the de facto moratorium on the commercialization of GM crops/food. Interestingly, EU decision-making rules appear to have had the least significant impact on participatory governance. The co-decision procedure contributed to an increase in openness once the European Parliament and the Council were involved in the decision-making process, but its overall impact was limited because openness only increased to moderate levels and trailed significantly behind the levels of mobilization, public debate and responsiveness. The ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case was characterized by a strong contrast between significant mobilization and, in particular, public debate on the ‘sanctions’, and the virtual absence of participatory governance with respect to the revision of Article 7. In addition, openness and responsiveness were significantly lower than mobilization and public debate. Social NGOs, civil rights groups, political parties and trade unions primarily mobilized in Austria, but there was also some mobilization in other countries. The same pattern applied to public debates, but debates tended to be more intense than mobilization, in particular in member states other than Austria. The relatively high levels of mobilization, and in particular of debate, contrasted with very limited openness. Before the EU-14 announced the ‘sanctions’, they were informally agreed by the heads of government of France and Germany and a few other member states without civil society involvement. While a broad range of Austrian state and non-state actors was subsequently involved at least to some extent in the process of lifting the ‘sanctions’, this was not the case with non-Austrian non-state actors. The level of responsiveness is difficult to judge. Given the intensity of public debates, the imposition of the ‘sanctions’ and their subsequent lifting was probably partly inspired by these debates. But other motives may have been more relevant – in particular the desire of governments and established political parties to contain the rise of extreme right-wing parties across the EU and ¨ out of government. the ineffectiveness of the ‘sanctions’ to keep the FPO The mixed findings with respect to participatory governance in the ‘sanctions’ case contrast with the absence of participation in decision-making on the revision of Article 7. Article 7 was only a small item on the agenda of the 2000 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC). As an intergovernmental process aiming primarily to adapt the EU to enlargement, the IGC offered very few opportunities for mobilization, public debate, openness and responsiveness with respect to the revision of Article 7. Common affectedness appears to have been the most important factor behind widespread public debate and significant mobilization in the ‘sanctions’ case. Public debates reflected the fact that the rise of extreme rightwing parties affected many member states, and it was not clear if, and how, the EU should or could react. It is difficult to explain the fact that despite being partly Europeanized, debates tended to be structured along the
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national government/opposition dimension. This may either indicate a certain lack of deeper, genuine concern for the ‘sanctions’, i.e. if the issue was merely used as a hook to attack or support the government. But it might equally well indicate a genuine concern for the European dimension of the problem, which did not easily fit with standard solutions according to the left/right dimension. Organizational embeddedness appears to have had a significant, but somewhat smaller effect than common affectedness. Given that most non-state actors who engaged in protests and debates were national-level actors, organizational embeddedness in national contexts explains the different levels of mobilization and debate in Austria and the other member states. Perhaps more importantly, national embeddedness of the main organizations participating in the ‘sanctions’ debate may partly explain why these groups were not active at the EU level regarding the revision of Article 7. In contrast to common affectedness and organizational embeddedness, EU competences appear to have had only a small impact on participatory governance: both the absence of EU competences for imposing ‘sanctions’ on Austria and the existence of competences for the revision of Article 7, do not seem to have had significant effects on the levels of mobilization, debate and responsiveness. However, decision-making rules had significant negative effects on participation. Intergovernmental interactions characterized decision-making concerning the ‘sanctions’ and Article 7. In addition, decision-making regarding the ‘sanctions’ took place outside the formal EU framework, while the revision of Article 7 was only one item on the much larger agenda of the 2000 IGC. Intergovernmental decision-making rules combined with a lack of a formal process, or embedded in much larger negotiations, rendered decision-making highly nontransparent. Consequently, there were few opportunities for participation. The overall level of participation in the EES was low – at least if measured by official commitments to involve a broad range of actors. But low overall participation must be partly attributed to the near absence of public debate – a dimension of participatory governance which was not included in official commitments to participation. Participation also suffered from what was at best moderate mobilization by the social partners. EU-level social partner organizations – in particular ETUC, UNICE and CEEP – and national-level social partners in member states with a tradition of social partnership – Austria, Germany and Sweden – discussed the NAPs and provided comments. This moderate, expert-level mobilization contrasted with lower mobilization in the UK, Spain and the Czech Republic. In fact, it seems ironic that mobilization by the EU-level social NGO EAPN was at least as visible as mobilization by the social partners. The relatively low overall level of mobilization is surprising because openness was at least moderate. Openness was higher than in the DRD and ‘sanctions’/Article 7 cases, which, however, were nevertheless characterized by more mobilization and public debate. In the EES case openness varied strongly among EU bodies and among member states. The Commission was particularly open
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to input from a broad range of actors, including social NGOs. This contrasted with the Employment Committee (EMCO), where member states opposed consultation of regional and local bodies and social NGOs. At national level, openness in member states with a tradition of social partnership was moderate: the social partners used established channels of communication with governments, but the NAPs essentially remained government documents, and other non-state actors, in particular social NGOs, tended to be excluded. Reflecting tensions between the government and trade unions in Spain, the latter were hardly involved in the formulation of the NAPs. In the UK a broad range of actors was consulted, but trade unions remained highly sceptical of the EES. The Czech government had only limited success in its efforts to encourage involvement of the social partners and other actors, in particular in the implementation of the NAPs. Responsiveness varied in similar ways to openness among EU institutions and member states, but remained lower overall, hardly reaching moderate levels: the Commission and member states with a tradition of social partnership tended to be moderately responsive; responsiveness in other member states was lower. Organizational embeddedness appears to have had the strongest impact on participation in the EES. Perhaps most importantly, embeddedness – in this case primarily the availability and quality of established national channels of tri-partite negotiation – explains why participation by the social partners was much higher in member states with a tradition of social partnership than in countries lacking such a tradition. However, paradoxically, there was more participation from social NGOs where they were less embedded. In this case, relatively low national embeddedness seems to have contributed to mobilization, as social NGOs hoped to be hindered less at the EU level by the privileged position of the social partners. Yet organizational embeddedness also limited participation in several ways. The presence of established tri-partite channels of communication in some countries appears to have reduced trade unions’ willingness to engage with the EES – some might even have perceived the EES as potentially undermining national social partnership. Similarly, the social partners at national and EU levels tended to oppose participation in the EES by additional non-state actors. A low to medium level of common affectedness which reflected, among other things, considerable variation in national unemployment rates, appears to have had a significant effect on participation in that it provided only limited incentives for mobilization and Europeanized public debate. In fact, it seems reasonable to assume that debates would have been much more intense if the social partners had mobilized to a greater extent in response to the EES. The lack of legislative EU competences for employment policy seems also likely to have contributed to the near absence of debates and only modest mobilization. In addition, it also contributed to openness insofar as the Commission tried to compensate for its lack of legislative
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competences under the OMC with openness towards non-state actors. But the ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case suggests that the role of weak EU competences should not be overstated: in contrast to the EES, the ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case featured significant mobilization and public debate, despite the absence of EU competences. Moreover, the integration of the EES into the Lisbon Strategy, which was similar to a strengthening of EU competences in that it led to a political upgrading of the EES, increased neither mobilization nor public debate. Decision-making rules appear to have had, at best, a moderate impact on participation. In particular, decision-making rules reduced the Commission’s responsiveness to non-state actors, because the Commission had to give priority to the accommodation of national governments to ensure adoption of its proposals. Summary: which factors matter for participatory governance? The levels of participatory governance observed in the three cases broadly correspond to our expectations, formulated on the basis of the factors which were assumed to influence participation (see Table 3.1). The only partial exception is the ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case. In this case, only the level of participation with respect to the ‘sanctions’ corresponded to expectations, whereas participation in the revision of Article 7 clearly remained below expectations. Broad correspondence between the initial expectations and the observed levels of participatory practices suggests that the factors which were expected to influence participatory governance did in fact do so. However, a closer analysis of the impact of the four factors only partly supports this conclusion. More specifically, organizational embeddedness and common affectedness appear to have had significantly stronger effects on participatory governance than competences and, in particular, decision-making rules. Table 3.2 gives an overview of the impact of the four factors on participation for each of the three cases: a plus sign (+) indicates a strong impact on participatory governance; zero (0) and the negative sign () indicate moderate and a weak impacts. Table 3.2 shows that organizational embeddedness and common affectedness had a strong impact in almost all cases, whereas competences and decision-making rules only had moderate, and in some cases even weak effects. Two caveats only slightly affect this overall Table 3.2 Effects on participation
DRD ‘Sanctions’/Article 7 EES
Embeddedness
Common affectedness
Decision-making rules
EU Competences
+ 0/+ +
+ (0) + +
0 0 0
0 – 0
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picture. First, reflecting the effects of the BSE crisis and the GM soy bean shipments, the strong impact of common affectedness in the DRD case was partly coincidental. This is indicated by a zero in the table. Second, organizational embeddedness had only moderate effects on participation with respect to the ‘sanctions’, although it had a strong impact on the revision of Article 7. This is indicated by 0/+ in the table. In sum, the analysis suggests that organizational embeddedness and common affectedness are key factors influencing participatory governance. The existence and strength of EU competences and national and EU decision-making rules are also relevant, but appear to be secondary.
Conclusions The three case studies offer a large amount of information which is relevant for studying participatory governance in the EU. The main focus of the analysis was on the impact of the four factors which were presumed to influence participation. This analytical focus produced important insights into the significance of these factors. However, it necessarily meant that other options for analysing the case studies had to be abandoned. Before concluding the analysis with tentative hypotheses derived from the assessment of the role of the four factors, it seems appropriate to at least hint at one other aspect of EU participatory governance that emerges from the case studies but was not analysed in detail. This aspect concerns the legitimacy dilemma resulting from the apparently limited capacities of the EU to cope with strong mobilization and intensive public debate. Although the levels of mobilization and public debate observed in the DRD case and regarding decision-making on the ‘sanctions’ may not be typical for EU policy-making, the DRD case in particular suggests that if there are high levels of mobilization and debate, member state governments are often responsive, but may resort to decisions that tend to subvert EU law. In contrast, the Commission remains largely unaffected by mobilization and public debate. This may further increase pressure on member state governments to show responsiveness. In this way, the Commission may indirectly also contribute to the subversion of EU law. The de facto moratorium adopted by member state governments in response to protests and public debate provides a clear illustration. The moratorium undermined the original DRD, which was still in force and required case-by-case decisions on the authorization of GM products. A general moratorium was incompatible with this key requirement. Although the Commission made tactical adjustments to its position in reaction to protests and debates, its basic position remained unchanged. It seems highly likely that the Commission’s intransigence further intensified protests which, in turn, increased pressure on member state governments to adopt and maintain the moratorium. With respect to the ‘sanctions’, the EU-14 undermined Article 7 TEU by sidelining it and instead taking measures outside the formal EU legal
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framework. In this case, the role of the Commission was less significant, partly because the Commission was also sidelined by the shift away from the EU legal framework. What can be concluded from the analysis of the case studies in terms of the four factors that were assumed to influence participation? Before outlining some hypotheses, it seems useful to stress that the three case studies do not constitute a representative sample of EU policies. In addition, the independent and dependent variables used in the analysis – the factors influencing participation, and the dimensions of participatory governance, respectively – were only broadly specified. These issues reduce the reliability of the findings. However, these limitations are not easily overcome. In fact, it would be extremely difficult to construct a genuinely representative sample of EU policies. In addition, the three cases analysed in this chapter cover a very wide spectrum of EU policy-making, ranging from regulatory issues in the DRD case, to employment policy with its links to distributive polices, and issues related to fundamental political attitudes and values in the case of the ‘sanctions’/Article 7. Given the case studies’ wide coverage and the level of detail in which the cases were analysed, it seems justified to at least formulate hypotheses on some of the wider implications of the findings for participatory governance in the EU. The case studies illustrate that participatory governance in the EU varies strongly: the revision of the DRD was characterized by a high level of participatory practices, whereas participation was absent in decision-making on the revision of Article 7. It is tempting to attribute this variation to the different decision-making rules that were used: the revision of the DRD was based on the co-decision procedure which formally established the European Parliament as co-legislator. The Parliament is commonly seen as very open to input by non-state actors. In contrast, the revision of Article 7 was part of the 2000 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC). The revision was a typical example of intergovernmental decision-making, with only a very small role for EU institutions such as the European Parliament and the Commission. But a closer analysis shows that explaining the variation among the cases primarily in terms of decision-making rules or EU competences would not only be too simplistic, but would also be misleading: analysis of the cases suggests that decision-making rules and competences only had a moderate impact on participatory practices, whereas organizational embeddedness and common affectedness were consistently more significant factors. This finding is likely to have implications for studying and promoting EU participatory governance: Hypothesis 1: If participatory governance in the EU depends primarily on organizational embeddedness of relevant actors and the level of common affectedness, then efforts to increase participation which principally rely on modifications of decision-making rules or stronger EU competences are likely to have only a limited impact.
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While chances to strongly increase participation via a modification of decision-making rules appear slim, analysis of the case studies also suggests that at least moderate levels of participatory governance are possible (though by no means guaranteed) in areas where ‘open’ decision-making is absent. This is exemplified by participatory practices with respect to decisionmaking on the ‘sanctions’. As for EU competences, they have certainly contributed to some extent to mobilization and other dimensions of participatory governance in the DRD and even in the EES case (although EU competences for employment policy are relatively weak). However, the strongest effect of EU competences may be indirect and delayed, and was therefore not explicitly covered in the analysis. As demonstrated in the DRD case, common affectedness may rise as a result of EU competences which lead to the establishment of, in this case, a common market and common safety standards for particular products. In turn, common affectedness may have significant effects on mobilization and public debate. Of course, whether EU competences will have effects on common affectedness depends on the kind of measures adopted on the basis of the competences. In addition, if there are effects of competences on common affectedness, these tend to be delayed because measures must be adopted and may need to have effects ‘on the ground’ before they can produce stronger common affectedness. Hypothesis 2: The analysis also suggests that timing – for example, the existence of a ‘window of opportunity’ or a ‘critical juncture’ – may have an important effect on the emergence (or not) of EU participatory governance. This appears to be particularly relevant with respect to common affectedness. The concurrence of the BSE crisis with the shipments of GM soy beans to the EU significantly increased common affectedness in the DRD case. It seems likely that the impact of common affectedness on the revision of the DRD would have been considerably lower in the absence of this coincidence. Similarly, the impact of common affectedness on the revision of Article 7 was small partly because its timing meant that the revision was – unlike the ‘sanctions’ – not a measure with consequences for clearly identifiable political actors. In contrast, the controversial government formation process in Austria offered a window of opportunity for mobilization and public debate on the fundamental political values of the EU in Austria and, crucially, also in other member states. In the absence of this ‘window of opportunity’ the rise of extreme-right wing parties in Europe appears unlikely to have led to similarly Europeanized debates. Hypothesis 3: Of the four factors influencing EU participatory governance, organizational embeddedness – and, in particular, strong national embeddedness – may be the most useful predictor of participation.
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Analysis of the case studies suggests that the impact of organizational embeddedness on participatory practices was similar to the impact of common affectedness and stronger than the impact of competences and decision-making procedures. However, as argued above, timing and events which are difficult to predict in the medium- and long term – for example the results of the elections in Austria and the concurrence of the BSE crisis with the GM soy bean imports – seem to have a significant effect on the impact of common affectedness. In contrast, organizational embeddedness is usually not subject to relatively sudden changes. The strong impact of organizational embeddedness on participatory governance and its constancy seems to render the exploration of this factor a particularly suitable starting point for future empirical analyses of EU participatory governance. Notes 1 Specifically, the work reported here relies on three case study reports (Garcia et al. 2003; Rodousakis and Giorgi 2003; Homeyer 2003) carried out in the framework of the EUROPUB project. Research teams from the following institutions contributed to the case studies: University of Barcelona – Research Centre for Citizenship and Civil Society, Barcelona, Spain (project leader: Marisol Garcia); University of Go¨teborg – Inter-European Research, Go¨teborg, Sweden (project leader: Martin Peterson); Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London – Department of Politics, London, UK (project leader: Wayne Parsons); The Academy of Sciences – Institute of Sociology, Prague, Czech Republic (project leader: Michal Illner); Le Centre Interdisciplinaire de la Recherche Comparative, Paris, France (project leader: John Crowley); The Interdisciplinary Centre for Comparative Research in the Social Sciences, Vienna, Austria (project leader: Liana Giorgi); Ecologic, Institute for International and European Environmental Policy, Berlin, Germany (project leader: Ingmar von Homeyer). 2 Laurent Flandre, ‘Bove´ a gare´ son tracteur devant la prison’, L’Humanite´, 20 June 2002. http://www.humanite.presse.fr/journal/2002-06-20/2002-06-20-35823 (accessed 18 January 2005). 3 Interview with a popo activist, 30 October 2002, in Rodousakis and Giorgi (2003: 15). ¨ sterreich in Europa von Bu¨rger/-innen O ¨ sterreichs, vom 15. April 4 ‘Manifest O ¨ sterreichs und seiner Bevo¨lk2000 – Verurteilung der derzeitigen Behandlung O erung’, published in Die Presse, 15 April 2000, p. 10. 5 European Commission (2000), Bulletin Quotidien Europe No. 7646, p. 3, IP/00/ 93, Brussels. 6 In the context of the 2005 revision of the Lisbon Strategy, the employment guidelines were integrated with the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines (BEPGs). 7 Article 5, para. 1 of Council Decision 2000/98/EC, of 24 January, establishing the Employment Committee (OJ L 29, 4.2.2000, p. 21).
4
The emergence of a European political class Elise Feron, John Crowley and Liana Giorgi
In public debate, it is often taken for granted that the European democratic deficit derives from the insufficiently democratic character of the European Union and of its characteristically supranational institutions, primarily the Commission. Such a picture is in fact highly misleading. The European polity (assuming at this stage that it actually exists or is emerging) is not and cannot be coextensive with the European Union supranational institutions. Insofar as the Union is, among other things, a union of democratic polities, the European polity has an irreducibly multi-level character. As shown by the previous chapter, this is a very familiar point with respect to patterns of policy-making. It however tends to be neglected when discussing democratic legitimacy. It follows that the democratic character of the European polity requires assessment from three perspectives – each member state, the EU supranational institutions, and the relations between the 25+1 political entities (see also Giorgi in Chapter 2). Whether or not there is a distinctively EU institutional dimension to the deficit, or to perceptions of it, it is clear enough that the politics of Europe within member states, as well as the politics of multi-level European relations, raise equally important problems of democratic legitimacy. The tendency to conflate the European polity with the EU supranational institutions is reflected in the common usage of the word ‘Europe’ to refer to the European Union or Community as such. Nonetheless, there are strong grounds to consider that while what pertains to the EU supranational institutions is undoubtedly European, what is European may have only a distant or non-existent relation with these institutions. Empirically, a range of fairly trivial observations underline that Europe as a trans-national space has features unrelated to the EU supranational institutions as a focus for political integration. Thus music, sports, fashion, and other aspects of culture, especially youth culture, relate Europeans to one another, and undoubtedly reshape the scope and meaning of nationhood, but are, however, weak in terms of distinctive ‘Europeanness’: on the one hand, they refer as much to globalizing trends as they do to anything specifically continental; on the other hand, even intensive trans-national consumption is entirely compatible with indifference or hostility to the EU supranational institutions.
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From a functionalist theoretical perspective, it would not be correct to argue that any form of societal integration that blurs distinctions between national societies within Europe underwrites European integration in the specifically EU-oriented sense in which the phrase is generally used. For the conclusion to follow, it would be necessary to show, further, that the relevant forms of societal integration are distinctively European, and not aspects of global trends that operate in essentially the same way in Seattle, Sa˜o Paulo or Shanghai as they do in Sunderland. With respect to consumer culture, as mentioned earlier, this is improbable; with respect to economic trends in systems of production, it is manifestly untrue. But what about policy and politics? Is there perhaps evidence that at these two levels there are debates and forms of participation which are distinctively European by being both trans-national and relating to the EU institutional framework? Such evidence would suggest that despite the absence of a distinct European profile in terms of lifestyle or the economy, as well as the institutional fragmentation inherent in a multi-level governance framework, there is a shared language of a political discourse that warrants speaking – at least cautiously – of the emergence of a European polity and a European public sphere which, in turn, can claim democratic legitimacy. Much of the research reported in this volume deals with this question. We have looked at debates and participation relating to specific policy issues such as employment and environment (Chapter 3); and have traced debates on highly contested political issues such as the ‘sanctions’ imposed on Austria, migration or social values (Chapter 6). In the research we report on in this chapter we took another, albeit complementary, perspective, namely that of the characteristics of political personnel active at European level and, in particular, their views of what the EU is and how it should evolve. Analysis of these two dimensions and of the relations between them makes it possible to specify more precisely how patterns of professional activity contribute to the democratic deficit and its possible alleviation. The empirical objective of our research has been to produce systematic empirical data on the political class active at the European level with a view to answering the following questions, which as discussed earlier, must be regarded prima facie as clearly distinct: First, what are the sociological characteristics of people professionally active in politics at European level? Are there common characteristics? Second, what is the significance of European positions and activities within political career paths? Third, what do ‘Europe’ and the European Union supra-national institutions mean for the members of the European political class? What are their attitudes towards Europe and what are their motives for commitment?
A conceptual map of the European political class One of the aims of our work was to identify the sociological characteristics of the members of the political class who are active at the European level.
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An initial problem is that the term ‘political class’ has a weak conceptual basis. It is not a notion or a concept with a clear history or wide usage, unlike the concept of ‘social class’. Max Weber for instance does not so much talk about a ‘political class’ as about politics as a profession or vocation (Beruf) and is more interested in how it has changed over time (Lassman and Speirs 1994). The ‘elective’ element of a politician – whether he or she is directly or indirectly related to citizens’ choice – is of less interest to him. Weber instead underlined and regretted that politics c.1919 had become an arena primarily for party apparatuses and (party) civil servants. The political class today is not what it was thirty, fifty or eighty years ago. A diachronic comparison of what it was like in the 1920s, 1950s, 1970s and 1990s may mirror a stark change of political reality, which is what should be expected. The political class of the early twenty-first century appears narrower and more cohesive than it has been in previous periods, and it eagerly and vigilantly guards and protects its interests. The previous relation of relative trust between the electorate and its representatives seems now to be, in many instances, one of distrust. Just to assess the very process by which this has come about is decisive for the determination of what the political class actually stands for, and how its range of possible manifestations cause it to perform different roles within changing polities. One thing that is qualitatively new is the gradual disappearance of the organized working class as a counter-society within which sharply distinct forms of political recruitment and activity occur. Weber himself observed and commented on the early stages of this process, covering much of the same ground as his contemporary Roberto Michels. From the perspective of the early twenty-first century, the disappearance of the organized working class now appears definitive and largely complete. Another qualitative change is the gradual incorporation of the civil servant class – at least in its higher echelons, and with significant variation among different countries – into the political class. Civil servants still claim they act in the Weberian sense. However, since decision-making requires rational organization and a higher tempo than before, every political decision has to be well prepared by civil servants who acquire the same vested interests as the elected representatives. New and tight loyalties and dependencies are cemented between politicians and civil servants, not only for political expediency. Furthermore, career paths have evolved to blur some of the distinctions between the civil service and professional politicians. Together they constitute a fairly cohesive group, which stands for certain well entrenched institutionalized interests against the interests of numerous and varying social and professional groups. During the 1960s and 1970s, when neo-corporatism shaped much of the economic and social policy of European states, the structure of national polities also assumed a fairly segmented character. This implied that, for instance, the sector of food and agriculture consisted of farmers and
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farmers’ organizations, including producer cooperatives, the responsible ministry, representatives of the food producing and retailing industries, the labour unions involved, etc., which all pulled the sectoral interests in much the same direction for the sake of maximizing benefits for the entire sector. Today neo-corporatist and segmented structures have largely been replaced by the machinery of lobbies. Hence, the political field and consequently the political class have narrowed considerably, while at the same time their edges have become somewhat blurred. The political class has acquired a more defensive stance since it is not conceived as representing either private sector or wage earner interests. It is conceived as representing precisely those who retain an exclusive influence over the public sphere, if not in terms of opinions at least in terms of decision-making, and who want to keep it that way. The political class as defined here is strictly a phenomenon of the nationstate. It cannot easily be translated into a trans-national context. But as Stolz points out, European and national political careers could from now on be tightly intertwined, and it might become impossible to study national political classes within member states without taking the European level into account: The emergence of new international and supranational institutions (i.e. the European Parliament) opens up new career opportunities beyond national borders. . . . Career paths contained within the national arena and directed towards the central (national) level can thus be seen as a precondition to and a reflection of an integrated national political class with common interests and a collective identity. However, the emergence of a multi-level Europe, which involves professionalization and institutionalization processes on the regional and supranational level, is likely to undermine not only the dominance of nationally orientated career patterns, but also the notion of a nationally integrated class. (Stolz 2001: 4) Studying the emergence of a European political class seems therefore crucial if we want to understand processes and changes that are at play at national levels as well. Considering the lack of clarity of, or the absence of a theory with regard to the notion of a ‘political class’, especially at European level, we have not sought to define it extensively. Such an approach is particularly unhelpful when talking about Europe and the European Union, a political system that is at the same time intergovernmental, trans-national and supranational. In fact, the interesting question for present purposes is whether there is a category of people (or categories of people) who share and actively pursue a common interest(s) – not necessarily intentionally – which might revolve around the strengthening of the European polity.
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Consequently, we have decided to look at the various institutions with a European profile and mission, but also at the interfaces at national and regional levels, in order to determine whether their ‘members’ or ‘professionals’ share a European ideology; this ideology most likely shares a core – the character of which will have to be established – but otherwise varies. Our hypothesis for empirical work was that the core of a political class includes all those who occupy a political position (whether elected or not), or are prospective candidates for these positions. Their power is defined primarily by its nature, that is, to be political. In other words, we do not equate political power with the influence some people may have on policy processes. Accordingly, this implies that all those individuals (e.g. high finance, industrials, interest organizations) who may have influence on decisions taken at European level, but who do not actually participate in the political process, are not to be considered as belonging to the core European political class. Moreover, we thought it important to keep in mind the distinction between the political class and the political field. The political class is an important structuring factor for the political field, but not all actors involved in the political field are part of the political class (e.g. lobbies, interest organizations, etc.). One of the distinctions between the members of the political class and other actors in the political field, apart from the legitimacy provided by citizens’ choice, rests on the fact that the members of the political class ‘do politics’ as professionals, whereas the others intervene in the political field, and may have some influence on policy, yet only on issues relating to their own interests (e.g. professional interests). The group of actors who have an influence in/on the political field is therefore much broader than the political class itself. Another important question for the study of an emerging European political class concerns what counts as ‘European’. Europe is a multidimensional notion that cannot simply be equated with the supranational institutions of the European Union, even if the latter constitute the core of European processes, as shown for example by the enlargement process. Our focus on the institutions of the European Union is purely due to practical reasons and not to a priori conceptual determination. When possible, we have included these enlarged European spheres in our study. We have used the following guidelines for our empirical work: One of the most important criteria for membership of the European political class is the holding of an official political position (whether by election or nomination), or by applying for such a position. One of the specificities of the European political system is that it is intergovernmental, supranational and trans-national at the same time. The supranational level is the level of the Union, while the intergovernmental level may be much broader (e.g. European Council). At the same time, some processes may fall within neither of these two categories: that
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is what we call ‘trans-national’ activities (e.g. activities of NGOs). The members of the European political class may therefore primarily be engaged in national activities or have national mandates, but their activities should transcend national boundaries. Thus, we do not postulate that these members of the European political class must exclusively participate in European activities, but that these activities should primarily relate to European political processes, whether at the intergovernmental, supranational or ‘trans-national’ level. The European political class cannot be equated with the juxtaposition, or the sum of the various national political classes. Therefore, membership of one of the national political classes does not imply membership of the European political class. The ideal ‘Identikit’ of the member of the European political class is thus a person who has occupied/is occupying/is likely to occupy various political positions in various countries, or, on the contrary, a person who has never occupied any political position, apart from a European one. We can list a number of people who may belong to the European political class, and whom we have consequently included in our sample: 1 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs). 2 Members of national governments, as well as members of the Council of Ministers. 3 Members of the European Commission. 4 Members of the European federations of parties. 5 Rapporteurs for European issues in the national parliaments; some of them seem to have a purely administrative role (e.g. reporting on financial matters), while others intervene directly in the political debate. This position is apparently linked to the existence of strong national cleavages on European questions. 6 Members of the Committee of the Regions, but also study members of the permanent delegations of the regions in Brussels. Some of these delegations are very small and not very active, while others are quite powerful, like the Scottish delegation in Brussels, which works closely together with the United Kingdom permanent delegation. 7 In the same way, members of the permanent delegations are part of our sample. A large part of their work seems to be of administrative nature, but they can also act as an interface between administration and politics. 8 Members of the Economic and Social Committee of the European Communities. 9 Members of the European Trade Union Confederation. 10 Members of the committees of the other EU institutions (including decentralized community agencies; Court of Justice of the European Communities; European Court of Auditors, European Central Bank; European Investment Bank; European Investment Fund; European Ombudsman).
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11 Activists of NGOs operating mainly at the European level. 12 Members of the national political classes who do not belong to the other categories, and whose actions or discourses give structure to the European debate in their respective country. Taking these various categories into account, we have tried to ‘map’ the existence of a European political class, using the following conceptual map (Figure 4.1): There are three axes: the axis ‘whence?’ deals with the source of legitimacy or with the nature of the position occupied; ‘non-elective’ stands for positions acquired through other processes rather than through competitive
Figure 4.1 Map of the European political class
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elections. The axis ‘where?’ deals with the general level of activity, national for mainly national activities, European for activities conducted mainly at the European level. The axis ‘what?’ deals with the type of activity, whether political or technical.
Methodology In order to answer our research questions, three main methods of data collection were employed, namely a survey of members of the European political class using a web-based questionnaire, face-to-face interviews, and biographical analysis. Survey The questionnaire comprised two parts and about fifteen questions. The first section inquired about the professional, educational and political background of the respondent. The second part included a series of attitudinal questions on the European polity and its institutions. The questionnaire was available on the web and distributed mainly electronically to the following categories of persons: Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) of the seven countries covered by our survey (Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom); National MPs of the seven countries covered by our survey; Candidates for the 1999 European elections for the seven countries; Regional delegations in Brussels, originating from the seven countries; Officials of European federations of parties; Persons in charge of European and/or international affairs in the national political parties of the seven countries; Persons in charge of European affairs inside the trade unions which are members of ETUC, for the seven countries covered; For ATTAC, Greenpeace and Amnesty International: persons in charge of European and/or international affairs, for the seven countries covered; The group of policy advisers for the European Commission (sixteen members in various policy sectors). Overall the questionnaire was distributed to around 4,000 persons. The general response rate for the questionnaire was moderate (12 per cent) with 506 usable answers received. A great part of these answers came from Spain, where the response rate was very good, with 180 answers. The response rate was also very satisfactory in Sweden, with 93 completed questionnaires received. The answers then came from Austria (with 53 respondents), from Germany (50), the UK (48), the Czech Republic (44) and France (28). For ten respondents information on nationality is missing.
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For some countries, the response rate was thus rather unsatisfactory (Austria and the Czech Republic with less than, or around 10 per cent), and not satisfactory at all in some others (Germany, France and the UK, around 5 per cent), despite the individual and collective efforts of each national team. In view of this context, statistical information as discussed below should be regarded as indicative and as a marker for future research. Conversely, however, the objective as described above was not to conduct an exhaustive survey of persons active in European politics, but to add some empirical detail to the conceptual mapping of the European political class and to clarify some indicators of its emergence. From this perspective, the statistical demands on the data are reduced. Comparison between the reference population and the sample reveals that we were able to reach our main objectives. We argued that one of the most important criteria for membership of the European political class is the holding of an official political position (whether by election or nomination), and 74 per cent of respondents hold an elected position, and 65 per cent an official (non-elected) position. The two categories ‘elected position’ (present or past) and ‘official position’ (present or past) are clearly not exclusive by reason of multiple functions or mandates. More specifically, our sample includes the following categories of respondents originally targeted: 93 current or previous MEPs (18 per cent of sample) where ‘current’ refers to the fifth term of the European Parliament (1999–2004); 278 current or previous national MPs (55 per cent of sample); 120 current or previous regional delegates (24 per cent of sample); 213 current or previous local delegates (42 per cent of sample); 115 holding or having previously held an official national government position (23 per cent of sample); 233 respondents currently holding, or having previously held an official position in a national political party (46 per cent of sample); 77 respondents currently holding, or having previously held an official position in a NGO (15 per cent of sample); 55 respondents currently holding, or having previously held an official position in a trade union (11 per cent of sample). It becomes clear from the above list that another key characteristic of our sample and possibly of the emerging European political class is diversity of experience, even if multiple mandates are not held at present. To this we return to later in the chapter. In terms of gender, the sample also appeared to reflect the reality of contemporary politics, with 70 per cent male respondents and 30 per cent female respondents. With regard to political affiliation and with reference to the European political party families, the two largest groups are the European Socialists (PES) and European Peoples’ Party (EPP) with 38 and 33
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per cent of the sample respectively. Nine per cent of the respondents identify with the Greens, 7 per cent with the United Left/Nordic Green Left political group, 6 per cent with the Liberals, while 6 per cent are non-attached. At the analysis stage, our first task was to produce a systematic codification of answers, as well as a general description of the sample. We then proceeded with cross-tabulation of questions concerning the demographic, sociological and professional background of respondents. Our aim was to study the sociological characteristics of people active at the European level, as well as the professional background and socialization of those holding or potentially holding political office in the European Union. The third stage was to cross-tabulate questions regarding career paths of respondents, in order to assess the significance of European positions and activities within their political career paths. Finally, we analysed answers to opinion questions and those dealing with attitudes towards Europe using cross-tabulations, as well as two-way analyses of variance and factor analyses. The statistical package SPSS 9.0 for Windows was used for this purpose. For purposes of analysis and in order to increase its strength in terms of statistical significance checks, we re-grouped the following background variables when exploring the effects of nationality and political affiliation on sociological as well as attitudinal variables: In terms of nationality we distinguish five groups: Spanish; Swedish; Continental Europe (to include Austrian, German and French respondents); and others to cover the UK and the Czech Republic. In terms of political affiliation we distinguish between three groups: the left to include members of the Party of the European Socialists (PES), the right to include members of the European Peoples’ Party (EPP); and Greens/ Liberals to include members of the Greens, Nordic Green and Liberal Party. The regroupings were done after controlling for the homogeneity within the new groups in terms of key sociological and attitudinal questions. Thus, for instance, the Greens/Liberals were placed together after an examination of the answers that showed that these two groups were more similar to each other than to the left (for the Greens) and the right (for the Liberals) respectively. Likewise, the Czech respondents presented a profile which was closest to that of the UK respondents. Face-to-face interviews The aim of the face-to-face interviews was to complement the questionnaire survey by better identifying the reasons for European engagement, possible generational shifts, differences between countries and/or parties and the impact, if any, of changing institutional structures. We decided to concentrate mainly on MEPs, and due to time constraints and the linguistic skills of available research staff, we were able to cover only Austria, France,
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Germany, and the UK. The failure to cover Sweden and Spain is to some extent mitigated by the high response rate to the questionnaire for these two countries. Considering the fact that MEPs are quite difficult to contact and to arrange meetings with, we also included several other categories of people active at the European level. Our sub-sample therefore included primarily MEPs who had not already answered the questionnaire, members of the Committee of the Regions, and members of the group of policy advisers of the European Commission. Some twenty-five interviews were conducted, of which nine were with MEPs, five with members of the Committee of the Regions, and four with advisers for European affairs in national governments. Two interview grids were prepared, one for MEPs, the other for non-MEPs. These grids included questions on biographical data, the current position and mandates of each interviewee, previous positions and mandates, as well as questions on the nature of their work at the European level. One of our aims with these questions was to fill an identified gap in existing research: Basically [usual] descriptions of the MEPs include mainly two dimensions. The first dimension is the sociodemography of the MEPs. . . . The second dimension is the career of the MEPs in terms of candidacy and offices held outside the EP, i.e. in relation to local, regional and national legislatures. At first sight it looks rather peculiar that the description of the MEPs is based on their political past (former experiences at other levels) and their political future (which levels are target of their political ambition?) instead of their political present (their European office). (Kjaer 2001: 3) These questions were therefore intended to provide us new and exclusive information about this political present of MEPs, but also of other members of the European elites. In order to transcribe these interviews, we systematically used analysis grids, built around the various categories of questions (warm up and biographical data; current position and mandates; previous positions and mandates; nature of work at European level). These grids allowed us to keep the most important and meaningful elements of answers, question by question, and to carry out comparative analysis. Analysis of biographies The third method used was analysis of biographies, as obtained from two main data sources: First, biographical fiches collected during interviews done for the policy case studies reported in Chapter 3. In addition to biographical information,
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these fiches also included questions about professional career paths, as well as additional questions on respondents’ opinions about their work at European level. Second, various websites where biographical data on MEPs, as well as on other members of European elites was available. Apart from personal data on age or educational background, this research proved very useful with respect to information on career paths and other mandates and positions held by MEPs and other persons active at European level. In order to transcribe and code data collected through these biographical fiches and CVs, we used grids systematically reporting age, sex, nationality, career paths, and mandates held and positions occupied. The above methods of data collection provided a range of interesting information, divided for present reporting purposes into three main categories, namely, sociological profiles, career patterns and opinions and attitudes towards Europe. Our findings with regard to these themes are reported in the subsequent sections.
Sociological profiles Representativeness of political elites has already been the focus of many studies, which have shown how members of national political classes are usually drawn from privileged segments of societies (cf. Birnbaum 1994; Dahl 1969; Dogan 1989; Suleiman 1979; Wright Mills 1956). Recent research suggests that such a sociological gap exists at European level too: The sociodemography of the MEPs . . . has lead to the conclusion that in terms of age, gender, occupation, etc., the European Parliament does not make up a perfect resemblance of the public at large. This conclusion is, of course, almost trivial since studies of this kind of ‘sociological representation’ have always found that the political elite is drawn disproportionately from the different segments of society. (Kjaer 2001: 3) Indeed, our sample of members of the emerging European political class is sociologically quite homogeneous in terms of educational background and previous occupation. Thus the majority of our respondents (91 per cent) has had at least two years of higher education with 40 per cent reporting between four to five years of higher education (an equivalent of at least a Master’s) and a further 20 per cent have completed a Ph.D. This is consistent across gender, nationality and political affiliation (see Tables 4.1a to 4.1c). Only in terms of nationality can we observe some statistically significant differences, with Swedish respondents tending to be more evenly distributed across educational categories and very few of them holding a Ph.D. In
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contrast, Spanish respondents are more likely to be concentrated among the highest echelons of educational achievement. If homogeneity in terms of educational background is taken to also imply a lack of representativeness of political elites, i.e. a closed political field, then it is more closed in Spain and less so in Sweden. Overall, however, this ‘closedness’ is a characteristic of all modern democracies and not only of the European level of governance. In terms of age, the median of our sample is fifty, i.e. 50 per cent of all respondents are below (or above) fifty years of age. However, our sample is in fact skewed to persons above forty years of age with an almost equivalent Table 4.1a Educational background of respondents by gender, by percentage
1 Secondary education 2 Up to two years of higher education 3 Three years of higher education 4 Four to five years of higher education 5 Ph.D. Total
All
Men
Women
9 10 21 40 20 497
9 9 20 41 21 349
9 15 22 37 17 148
Note: Due to the missing values, the group totals may not entirely correspond to the population or sub-population totals. Chi-square test: 0.247 (not significant) Table 4.1b Educational background of respondents by nationality, by percentage
1 Secondary education 2 Up to two years higher education 3 Three years higher education 4 Four to five years higher education 5 Ph.D. Total
All
UK and CZ
Continental
Sweden
Spain
9 11 21 40 20 487
5 12 16 49 18 90
9 11 12 46 22 129
24 15 23 32 6 91
3 6 28 35 28 177
Note: Due to the missing values, the group totals may not entirely correspond to the population or sub-population totals.Chi-square test: 0.000 (significant). Table 4.1c Educational background of respondents by political affiliation, by percentage
1 2 3 4 5 Total
All
PES
GUE/NGL
ELDR
Green
EPP
NI
9 11 21 40 20 450
10 11 20 34 25 170
19 (9) 19 40 13 32
(7) (7) 28 48 10 40
(8) (12) 22 35 23 40
7 10 20 43 20 147
(3) (6) (13) 56 22 32
Note: Due to the missing values, the group totals may not entirely correspond to the population or sub-population totals.Chi-square test: 0.605 (not significant).
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proportion falling under the 41–50, 51–56 and 57+ age groups, and only 23 per cent being forty or younger. Younger persons are over-represented among the Green and Liberal parties (32 per cent as compared to 23 per cent group average), as well as in the three Continental European countries, namely Germany, France and Austria (36 per cent as compared to 23 per cent group average). Again, however, the results are not statistically significant. The majority of our respondents were men (70 per cent). Only in Sweden were women more likely to be represented in the political class – 40 per cent of our Swedish respondents were female compared to around 30 per cent in all the other countries (the difference is, however, not significant at the statistical level). Male dominance is greater in the conservative political spectrum than in the left; again, however, the differences are not very relevant and statistically insignificant: thus 74 per cent of our respondents who identified as leaning towards the right (EPP) were men compared to 65 per cent of those belonging to either the Green or Liberal parties, and 68 per cent belonging to the left (PES). Our face-to-face interviews suggest that women are more likely to be politically active at the European rather than the national levels, at least in some countries. This is particularly evident in countries like Ireland, Luxemburg and France, which proportionally send at least twice as many women to the European Parliament as to their national parliaments. France is the most striking example, with the highest proportion of women in its national delegation (more than 45 per cent), and one of the poorest representations of women at national level, with only approximately 12 per cent. Even a country like Finland, which is well known for its good representation of women in politics, sends proportionally more women to the European Parliament than to its national parliament (43.75 per cent and 37.5 per cent respectively). While it could be argued that the European political field is more open than the national level, perhaps in part because it remains less prestigious and offers less prospect of power (the EU may, in other words, lie below the ‘glass ceiling’), this hardly suffices as an explanation. Insofar as there are cultural, institutional or traditional barriers to the participation of women, the gatekeepers who implement them have no palpable reason to relax them for European purposes. Katz (2003: 15) suggests that because the European Parliament is a newer institution, the patterns of recruitment are more weakly defined and therefore more open to women. A related question which has not really been addressed by research so far, is whether European elites have sociological characteristics similar to those of national elites, or if there is a real specificity of this ‘new’ political class. All of the respondents we interviewed are involved directly or indirectly in European politics; however, our questionnaire allows us to distinguish between those with direct experience in European politics as members of the European Parliament, and those whose experience involves mainly the national, regional or local levels.
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The only evidence we found of distinctiveness concerns international profile. In order to assess this, we asked questions about respondents’ potential familiarity with countries other than their own in terms of studies and work, as well as languages spoken. Those politically active at the European level as members of the European Parliament reveal a more international profile than their counterparts at the national level. Table 4.2 displays the share of persons with experience as members of the European Parliament (MEP) who studied abroad, in comparison with members of the national parliaments (MP), regional delegates (RD) and local delegates (LD). These findings are statistically significant at the 0.05 level. This trend is repeated with regard to experience working abroad (also Table 4.2). In accordance with the above findings, language skills are equally discriminating: among MEPs, we only find 22 per cent with proficiency in one language only; this compares with 42 per cent among MPs, 38 per cent among regional delegates and 44 per cent among local delegates. Among MEPs the relative majority (46 per cent) speaks three or more languages. On the whole, therefore, MEPs do seem to form a distinctive group which is much more internationalized than the other elected representatives, whether at national, regional or local levels. Whether it is this internationalized profile that explains the wish to engage in European politics, or the other way round – the fact of being active at the European level explaining, for instance, increased language skills – is unclear; however, interviews showed that commitment at the European level often derived from a real inclination and interest in this sphere of politics. For example, one of the British MEPs we interviewed stated: I grew up with an internationalist outlook on life, that’s why I have always been more interested in the European Parliament than in the national parliament. while a French MEP insisted: I have been a Euro-enthusiast since 1948 . . . I understood at once the importance of the European project. Table 4.2 Experience studying and working abroad, by percentage
MEP MP RD LD Total
Studied abroad
Worked abroad
N
43 28 24 22 33
61 23 33 23 34
91 272 116 208 495
Note: Due to the missing values, the group totals may not entirely correspond to the population or sub-population totals.
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Our survey thus suggests that there is a real specificity of MEPs on the question of internationalization; in other words, our findings go against the commonly held idea according to which basically anyone – namely, any politician who can claim the support of a national political party – can be elected to the European Parliament; interest and internationalization seem to be important criteria as well. Otherwise, however, MEPs do not differ significantly from other political actors. This is interesting insofar as it points to a certain homogeneity of the political class across national boundaries, at least in terms of sociological profile. As the next section shows, this appears also to be the case in terms of career paths.
Career paths The European Parliament and European institutions in general are usually seen as part of a larger inter-polity career system. Therefore, recruitment to these institutions can be considered an aspect of a broader process of recruitment to the polities in a multi-level Europe. In some countries for instance, the European Parliament is used as a ‘stepping stone’ to enter the national parliament (Britain for instance, as shown by Westlake 1994), whereas in some others it is the other way round (Denmark for instance, as shown by Kjaer 2001). More specifically, Scarrow (1997: 260) identifies three different types of MEPs on the basis of their sequence of national and European political careers. According to her, some MEPs are ‘European careerists’, serving in the European Parliament for an extensive period of time without serious intentions of utilizing their political involvement for a national political career. Others serve in the European Parliament for a limited period of time and then return to their home country to take a seat in the national parliament – these MEPs could be labelled ‘domestic careerists’. Finally, there are MEPs who serve in the European Parliament for a short period of time without returning to domestic politics. For these people, the European Parliament turns out to be a ‘political dead-end’. Our survey confirms this diversity of career paths, and suggests a real intertwining and interconnection between European and national political settings. Indeed, one of the most important findings of our survey is that there is no real disconnection between European and national political settings. This can be traced by three elements: first, the holding of multiple mandates; second, past and/or future activities with reference to the holding of specific mandates; and third, having frequent contacts with national governments, national parliaments and national political parties. Multiple mandates It is not uncommon for persons active at the European level to also hold national, regional or local mandates. However, it is striking to see that
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multi-positionality is rare at the European level itself. In other words, it is very unusual to hold two European positions at the same time, whereas it is quite common at the national level. Mobility at the European level, as well as ‘multi-positioning’ (e.g. being a MEP and a member of the Committee of the Regions at the same time), are therefore a lot less developed than at the national level. Table 4.3 displays the share of those with multiple mandates (two or more) among those holding elected positions at present. The differences between MEPs and MPs are in fact not statistically significant, but when we compare the present and past experience with multiple mandates it would seem that while this is on the decline at the European level it is on the increase at the national level. By far the greatest degree of multi-positioning can be observed among regional and local delegates, the absolute majority of whom have more than two mandates. The decline of multiple mandates among MEPs has also been suggested by previous research. As Pedersen has shown, the number of doublemandates is currently decreasing, in particular for those MEPs who were MPs at the same time: The use of ‘double-mandates’ in the European Parliament and in the national parliament is a disputed, but often used means of coordination [between National and European levels], even if the frequency of such double-mandates have decreased over the years. It can be quite efficient, but may sometimes not be so, because the strain on the representatives may force them to downgrade one or both activities. Other, less conspicuous and less burdensome, types of double-mandates are also in use. Thus many MEPs are active in regional politics for their parties. They may also serve in various non-elective capacities in the national headquarters. (Pedersen 1995: 33) This was also revealed by our face-to-face interviews. As some of our interviewees stated, working as a politician at the local or regional level is a completely different task than being a MEP. Some MEPs we interviewed stressed that being a MEP is a full-time job, whereas one can be elected at the local level, and even hold several local mandates at the same time, Table 4.3 Multiple mandates and current position, by percentage
MEP current MP current RD current LD current Total
2+ mandates present
2+ mandates past
N
33 29 64 72 16
37 21 28 19 18
78 241 39 83 506
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without leaving one’s professional occupation. In other words, an electoral mandate at the European level requires experienced politicians, while experience is not always required to obtain a local mandate: If you want to be elected at the European Parliament, you have to have been confronted with reality in the past; otherwise, if you have only proven your abilities in a political party, you are an apparatchik. One French MEP we interviewed even insisted on the fact that being a MEP and being a MP were different jobs . . . because MEPs have more relationships with professional networks as well as with business. Being a MEP thus seems to require specific skills, as well as a lot of time, a fact that explains that not all MEPs hold other types of electoral mandates. Indeed, only a third of the MEPs who answered the questionnaire hold another concurrent elective mandate. Of course many had been elected at national, regional or local level in the past, but it is striking that most them seem to concentrate on their current European mandate. The number of triple or even quadruple mandates (European, national, regional and local) is very low, with for instance only five per cent of current MEPs occupying a national and a regional seat at the same time. Past vs future activity One cynical view regarding the obvious decrease of multiple mandates among members of the European Parliament is, according to Scarrow (1997), that some of these MEPs are former national politicians, who see the seat in the European Parliament as a ‘consolation prize after retirement from national elected office’ (ibid.: 259). However our findings speak against this claim. Table 4.4 brings together two sets of findings. It compares the share of persons with no previous mandate among those currently holding elected Table 4.4 No mandate in the past or future, by percentage
MEP current MEP past MP current MP past RD current RD past LD current LD past
No mandate earlier
No mandate after
N
29 – 36 – 38 46 –
– 11 – 8 – 15 – 15
78 27 241 93 39 88 83 159
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office with the number of those with no mandate at present and holding elected office in the past. There are two interesting conclusions to draw from the above findings. The first relates to the progressive ‘closedness’ of the political field the ‘higher’ the level of governance. Persons taking on elected positions at the local level are significantly more likely to have previously held no mandate as compared to persons assuming elected positions at the European level. From this perspective, our research confirms that becoming a member of the European Parliament comes later rather than earlier in a political career. However, entering the European Parliament does not signify the end of a political career. This is the second conclusion. As can be seen from the second column in Table 4.4, of those who held an elected position at the European Parliament in the past, only 11 per cent held no mandate subsequently, a figure that is comparable for the national parliament or regional and local mandates. This finding is also corroborated by our interviews which suggest that many MEPs would like their position to be renewed: all nine MEPs we interviewed in person told us that they wished to be candidates in 2004. In fact, we observe a high rate of re-election. Comparing the elected members of the European Parliament of the sixth (2004–9) and fifth (1999–2004) terms in select countries, the following can be observed (Table 4.5). In all of the above countries we find at least 30 per cent of MEPs being re-elected to their positions. This proportion exceeds 70 per cent in the UK and Austria, and reaches 53 per cent in Germany. These are considerably high re-election rates considering that the above figures comprise only elected MEPs (i.e. exclude unsuccessful candidates) and take the shifts in number of seats into account between political parties that took place as a result of the 2004 European Parliament elections as well.1 These findings are also valid for all other EU member states. Frequent contacts with national level The link between the European political scene and the national one is ensured by the fact that, as Table 4.6, shows, working at the European level Table 4.5 Re-election rates among elected MEPs following June 2004 elections
Germany France UK Spain Czech Republic Sweden Austria
6th term mandate (N)
Share having had also a 5th term mandate (%)
99 78 78 54 24 19 18
56 36 73 37 30 32 72
Source: Own analysis of MEP lists available at European Parliament website
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Table 4.6 Share of holding official positions at national level, by percentage
MEP current MP current RD current LD current
At least one
Party official
N
51 58 64 53
33 47 44 41
78 241 39 83
Note: Official position = government, party, trade union, NGO, other.
implies frequent contacts with the national level by reason of holding official (non-elected) positions in national political institutions, like political parties, trade unions, non-governmental organizations or indeed governmental posts. Even though the linkages as measured by this indicator are somewhat weaker for MEPs than they are for MPs, and even more so for regional delegates, the differences are not considerable. It is further indicative that MEPs appear to occupy the same position visa`-vis the national level as do local delegates, with regional delegates displaying the most extensive degree of embeddedness in national political culture. A lot of research has already been done on relationships between European elites and national political parties, showing a gradual institutionalization of contacts between both sides (Raunio 2000). Corbett et al. (2000: 87–9) have illustrated that though many MEPs belong to a political party, their status compared to MPs is rather weak, a status summed up by Raunio (2000: 212) as ‘one of distance and low status’. However, since candidates to the European Parliament are still selected by national political parties, a genuine link remains between them. This is unlike the situation of persons holding technical or political functions within the European Commission: when asked how they came to occupy their current position at European level, many unelected interviewees (members of the Committee of the Regions, members of the Group of Policy Advisers for the European Commission) mentioned that they were delegated by a national, regional or local institution rather than by a political party. On the contrary, because they were often elected on a party’s list, MEPs tend to stress their relationship with a national political party, especially when talking about contacts with members of parliament of their own country. Of course inside the European Parliament, MEPs work within political groups most of the time rather than with national delegations, but political coordination with the national level mostly operates through national political parties. As Johansson puts it: Structural factors emanating from the national level will continue to restrain the prospects for transnational representation. Political representatives do not float freely in multi-level Europe. They wear two hats, one with a view to their own country, and constituencies there,
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and another to the EU and its common concerns. They are responsible to multiple constituencies, including electorates and parliamentary parties. (Johansson 2002)
Diversity of career paths The fact that our survey is consistent with the three main career-paths as described by Scarrow (1997) does not mean that career paths at the European level are easy to trace and categorize. On the contrary, because opportunity structures at the European level seem quite open, there is a great diversity in career paths. As we have already seen, most MEPs had a national political career first, and then proceeded to Europe. For others the two levels coexist, whereas very few have an exclusively European political career. Some ‘entered’ Europe through membership of an NGO (12 per cent of MEPs are also active in an NGO), or, less likely, of a trade union (only 4 per cent of MEPs are also active in a trade union). What is also interesting (confirming the idea mentioned above) is that while more than 37 per cent of MEPs have been MPs in the past, fewer than 5 per cent of current MPs have been MEPs in the past. Because there are of course proportionally fewer seats available at the European level, one is less likely to be elected at the European level than at the national one. However, this very low figure seems to show that one ‘goes to Europe’ after having accumulated experience at the national level, rather than the other way round. In any case, we did not find any evidence of the widespread idea according to which many MEPs are in fact members of national political classes who have become too old or are only looking for a fallback solution when not elected at the national level. In fact, the interviews provided us with only one or two examples, which can clearly be seen as exceptions, in which European commitment could be partly explained by difficulties encountered at the national level. In any case, the fact that most of the people involved in European politics are also major figures in national or sub-national politics clearly contradicts this stereotype. The great diversity in career paths also derives from differences in the modes of selection or recruitment used in each country. For instance, French members of the Committee of the Regions are not necessarily important personalities at the regional or national level, and tend therefore to be disconnected from the national political scene, which is not the case for most MEPs: French members of the Committee of the Regions are indeed not chosen because they are prominent figures in regional politics, but rather important figures in local politics, which makes a big difference. Most of the time, at least half of the French members of the Committee of the Regions are nominated as mayors or presidents of de´partemental councils. This is of course less the case for regional delegates of countries like
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Austria or Germany, where regions play a much more important role in national politics. For reasons of statistical credibility, however, the low response rate to our questionnaire in some ‘big’ countries like France, Germany and the UK prevents us from exploring these trends in more depth.
Opinions and attitudes towards Europe Research on elites’ opinion on Europe has so far concentrated on the Euroscepticism/Euro-enthusiasm cleavage, specifically inside the European Parliament. Faas (2002) has for instance shown that MEPs’ votes, although pushed by national political parties, especially for ‘crucial votes’ in sectors such as economy and agriculture, depended increasingly on opinion rather than nationality. This means that European political groups have become increasingly important in structuring opinions and cleavages, at least inside the European Parliament: The party groups in the European Parliament, especially the larger ones, still display a very high level of party group cohesion. Hence, the default type of voting in the European Parliament still seems to be along party group lines (and not along national lines). (Faas, 2002: 16) These results have been confirmed by our interviewees, who insisted that trans-national debates indeed take place among political groupings, but only following debates inside the national delegations. For instance, one of our interviewees, who is a delegate to the European Committee of the Regions, explains that at the beginning of each afternoon, a meeting between delegates of each nation takes place. . . . All this is still very ‘national’, everybody trying to defend their own national interest. Another interviewee agrees: trans-national debates take place in the framework of European political parties rather than inside assemblies. This seems to indicate that political cleavages are gradually forming at European level, though not following the same patterns as at national level: [European] legislators vote more and more according to their political party affiliation. On the one hand, the cohesion of party-based coalitions is increasing; on the other hand, parties are becoming more polarized. This in turn indicates that the European Parliament is becoming more like a normal European legislative body in which
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the main actors are European-wide political groups and not national delegations. (Noury 2002: 55) Apart from political cleavages, we also find a generation or age cleavage. In other institutions aside from the European Parliament, linguistic skills and age, rather than political orientation, influence whom one associates with. For instance, a former French Minister for European Affairs stated: Friendships develop according to age or linguistic affinities, and not according to political opinions . . . representatives from the northern countries are often seen together, as are those from the south. Concerning opinions and attitudes towards Europe, our survey revealed that European elites held a great variety of views, a diversity which excludes any hegemonic way of thinking or any common ‘European ideology’. Some of our interviewees and respondents to our questionnaire can really be called ‘Euro-enthusiasts’, even if that does not mean that they are uncritical of the current institutional shape of the European Union, and of European policies. For this first category of people, the commitment at European level derives from their interest in European affairs. One German MEP explained for instance that she was at all times really interested in the European Union and its development. Even in regional policy you can feel the influence of the European Union, so for me it became important to be able to take part in its shaping. Some others can instead be called ‘political’, in the sense that they were nominated or elected not because they were particularly interested in European politics, but because of their involvement in politics in general. This is, for instance, embodied in the sentence ‘someone had to go to the European Parliament’. Their commitment to Europe is therefore, at least at the beginning, purely instrumental. Of course as some of them stressed, interest in European affairs often evolved at a later point. Finally, some seem to be there by pure chance, especially people holding non-elected positions, like in the Committee of the Regions. They were nominated without necessarily having a strongly positive or negative opinion on the European Union. This is particularly interesting, since the belief that persons holding ‘technical’ positions are more interested in Europe compared to politicians who are only interested in holding positions of power, is widespread. For instance, a German MEP told us ‘someone from the Greens who comes from East Germany had to be in the Parliament’. But what is striking is that even those who show a very weak interest in European affairs seem to understand and even stress the importance of
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Europe for the protection of the other interests they are defending, especially in the case of regional delegates. There is thus a general feeling that Europe is and will remain the place to be. This is maybe one of the reasons why all the people we interviewed, even those who were involved in Europe only ‘by chance’, want their current position to be renewed, and have a rather positive opinion of it. For instance, there seems to be wide consensus on the fact that positions held at the European level are as ‘political’ as positions held at the national level, and that these positions are not more technical, even in bodies like the Committee of the Regions that have less power and influence. Building on the previous elite attitude research, the third key objective of our research on the emerging European political class was to tap on the latter’s views regarding contemporary developments and, especially, their views regarding the European polity and European political institutions. We presented our respondents with a list of statements and asked them to specify whether they tended to ‘strongly or rather agree’, ‘neither agree nor disagree’ or ‘rather or entirely disagree’ with the respective assertion. The statements were as follows: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
Today all big decisions are taken at European level. Politics should be a vocation. European institutions should listen more to European social movements. Increasingly, NGO activists and lobbyists have more influence than parliamentarians. We may talk about Europe, but national parliaments still run the show. Elections are when the people make major national decisions. NGOs and lobbyists now have more legitimacy than parties in speaking for the public. The European political parties are representative of European public opinion. The European Parliament should have more influence in the process of European public opinion. The EU is bureaucratic and unaccountable. Environment and quality of life are now the major political issues for Europe. The economy and the non-profit sector should be better represented in politics. Nowadays, political parties are more interested in winning office than in the needs of citizens. The European Union’s vital role in social and economic regulation will gradually increase its credibility in the eyes of European citizens. The European Union risks being diluted by enlargement. Citizens will identify more with the EU if they better understand what it does. People holding national elected positions should have more influence in the process of policy-making at the European level. We should aim at harmonizing policies at European level.
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Certain pairs or groups of questions were designed to correlate or be uncoupled from the perspective of standard aggregate perceptions of the EU and its place within European democracy, specifically in terms of ‘pro’ and ‘anti’-European common sense. Thus one would expect responses to statements 1 (‘Today, all big decisions are taken at European level’), 10 (‘The EU is bureaucratic and unaccountable’) and 17 (‘People holding national elected positions should have more influence in the process of policy-making at the European level’) to correlate in terms of subscription to, or dissent from, standard ‘Euro-sceptic’ common sense. Similarly, one would expect there to be a positive relation between responses to statements 3 (‘European institutions should listen more to European social movements’), 7 (‘NGOs and lobbyists now have more legitimacy than parties in speaking for the public’), 12 (‘The economy and the non-profit sector should be better represented in politics’) and 13 (‘Nowadays, political parties are more interested in winning office than in the needs of citizens’); and a negative relation between these and statements 4 (‘Increasingly, NGO activists and lobbyists have more influence than parliamentarians’), 8 (‘The European political parties (such as EPP and PES) are representative of European public opinion’) and 9 (‘The European Parliament should have more influence in the process of European policy-making’). In fact, the findings do not meet expectations. First, despite the symmetry built into the questions and the use of randomized question sequences to avoid spurious clustering, there is a distinct bias towards disagreement with the set of statements as a whole. Only three questions (7, 13 and 15) obtained a majority agreement, while in two cases the majority is not statistically significant. Conversely, there are strongly dissenting majorities with respect to seven of the statements. Many spurious features may of course explain this bias, though it should be noted that ‘don’t knows’ and nonanswers were very low (unweighted average 3 per cent, minimum 1.5 per cent, maximum 5.6 per cent). Second, and more importantly, responses show a high level of scattering. Using the total of moderate and strong disagreements with each statement as an indicator, the unweighted average paired concordance (simultaneous disagreement with both statements) is 52 per cent, consistent with the bias towards disagreement noted earlier. However, what is striking is the low proportion of pairs showing high correlation or non-correlation. Of the 153 paired concordances, only eleven are below 20 per cent (ten of which relate to statement 7, which is not correlated to statements 8 to 12 and 14 to 18). Statement 7 (‘NGOs and lobbyists now have more legitimacy than parties in speaking for the public’) is, as noted earlier, the only one with which a significant majority of respondents agree. Conversely, only seven paired concordances are above 80 per cent. There is thus significant scattering even among statement groups that might have been expected to form a cluster. For the reasons given earlier, one would expect statements 1, 10 and 17 to show high positive correlation.
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In fact, the paired concordances are 42 per cent (1 and 10), 40 per cent (1 and 17), and 54 per cent (10 and 17). The three-way concordance is only 27 per cent (i.e. 27 per cent of respondents disagreeing with 10 also disagreed with both 1 and 17). Similarly, one would expect statements 4, 8 and 9 to correlate positively. In fact, the paired concordances are 34 per cent (4 and 8), 34 per cent (4 and 9), and 38 per cent (8 and 9). The three-way concordance is, again, only 27 per cent (i.e. 27 per cent of respondents disagreeing with 8 also disagreed with both 4 and 9). Systematic cluster analysis and differentiation of responses according to sample stratification remain to be conducted. However, it is at least clear as a preliminary conclusion, that patterns of attitudes towards Europe, even within a group of professionals with better information, higher awareness and stronger commitment than average, are both more complex than some of the terms of public debate and less determinate than one might have expected. Similar indications emerge from preliminary analysis of the breakdown of responses to particular questions. For instance, more than 67 per cent of respondents disagree with the idea that ‘We may talk about Europe, but national governments still run the show’, and 40 per cent agree with the idea that ‘today all big decisions are taken at European level’. Yet the fact that the importance of Europe is clearly recognized does not mean that a majority has become ‘Euro-enthusiast’: 65 per cent and 64 per cent respectively disagree with the ideas that ‘we should aim at harmonizing policies at the European level’, and that ‘the European Union’s vital role in social and economic regulation will gradually increase its credibility in the eyes of European citizens’. It is also striking that most of the respondents are against the strengthening of the European Parliament, a trend which goes against recent incentives of the European Convention: more than 77 per cent actually disagree with the idea that ‘the European Parliament should have more influence in the process of European policy-making’. The answers to the above questions were subsequently cross-tabulated against the respondents’ nationality and political affiliation, and a two-way analysis of variance was carried out in each case to find out which of these two factors played a stronger role. The results suggest that the statements can be classified into three categories: Statements that display no strong effect either in terms of the nationality of the respondent or his/her political affiliation – this is the case for statements 4, 12 and 17 that deal with the role of NGOs/lobbyists, the economic sector and national political actors respectively in (European) politics. Responses to these statements tend to be divided across the response categories with no clear relative majority emerging on either side. Statements that display a strong national perception bias. These are statements 1, 2, 6, 10, 11 and 15. These could be described as issues that express fundamental worldviews on the nature of politics or the state of
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contemporary politics. Respondents’ understanding and reaction to these ‘worldviews’ are significantly affected by their national political culture background. Finally, there are statements which display both a strong nationality and political affiliation effect, and/or interaction effects. In this category we find all the remaining statements which indicatively deal with the European polity or European institutions. Views on politics influenced mainly by nationality The statements that are significantly influenced by nationality are the following: Today, all big decisions are taken at European level (1): across our sample, views on this statement are divided with 40 per cent expressing agreement and 41 per cent disagreeing. Among Swedish respondents there is however a clear majority who agree with this statement (71 per cent), whereas in Continental Europe, namely, Austria, Germany and France, those agreeing with this statement are clearly in the minority (25 per cent). Politics should be a vocation (2): taken together, the majority (59 per cent) disagrees that politics should be a vocation. This view is especially strong in Spain where 88 per cent of the respondents represent this position. On the contrary, in Austria, Germany and France we find a majority (54 per cent) in favour of this view. Elections are when people make major political decisions (6): two out of three respondents disagree with this statement. In Spain the ratio is nine out of ten and in Central Europe eight out of ten. This view is significantly relativized in the UK and the Czech Republic, where we find only one out of two respondents disagreeing with this statement. Environment and the quality of life are now the major political issues for Europe (11): opinions on this question tend to be divided, with 31 and 47 per cent agreeing and disagreeing, respectively, that environment and the quality of life are now the major political issues in Europe. Among Spanish respondents we find a very weak minority (16 per cent) agreeing with this statement, whereas in Sweden as in Austria, Germany and France, nearly one out of two respondents believes this to be the case. The European Union risks being diluted by enlargement (15): 57 per cent of the respondents agree with this statement. The potential danger enlargement poses to EU institutions is felt especially strongly in Sweden (75 per cent) and Spain (63 per cent); it is a far lesser concern for the UK and Czech respondents (of whom only 32 per cent give an affirmative answer to this statement). The European Union is bureaucratic and unaccountable (10): opinions on this statement are divided, with 40 per cent agreeing and 44 per cent
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disagreeing. However, the level of agreement is significantly higher in Austria, Germany and France (63 per cent) and much lower in Spain (26 per cent). There is no clear explanation for the national patterns of the above statements, but our findings suggest that on key issues regarding the future, like sustainable development (11), enlargement (15), the degree of centralization of decision-making at EU level (1) or the extent to which the EU is bureaucratic and unaccountable (10), there remain strong national or regional bloc traditions of political culture that might explain both the slow progress and implementation deficit regarding some policies or political decisions. The national variation on items that tap on fundamental ideologies regarding politics, like the question of politics as a vocation (2) or the role of elections in modern democracies (6), suggests that the variation in democratic traditions is still active at the normative level and might explain the difficulties with finding an appropriate ‘state model’ for the European Union. Nonetheless, these differences are also not as pronounced as might have been expected from a historical analysis. Political attitudes What does Europe mean for members of the political class? An answer to this question can be provided by examining the statements belonging to the third category identified by our analysis, namely, statement nos. 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 16 and 18. These statements display either both a strong nationality and political affiliation effect, and/or a strong interaction effect. A factor analysis of these issues gives rise to three factors that together explain 45 per cent of the variance. Factor 1 affects statements 8, 9, 14, 16 and 18, the most significant impact being on 14, 16 and 18.2 This could be described as a factor that delineates an idealistic and enthusiastic conception of the EU as a polity which strives for welfare maximization in economic and social terms (14) through the gradual harmonization of policies (18), where citizens feel attached to the EU as a political community and by reason of knowledge (16), and where the European political parties are representative of public opinion (8), and the European Parliament accordingly has great influence on policy-making (9). Factor 2 affects statements 7 and 13, the most significant effect being on 13.3 This is a factor of new politics – characterized by discontent with mainstream representative politics (through political parties) and instead an attraction to the virtual/activist type of politics practised by NGOs or lobbyists. Items 3 and especially 5 are complex issues displaying a moderately strong effect on both factors.4
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Let us first examine the Euro-enthusiasm vs Euro-scepticism factor. This was constructed on the basis of the respondents’ scores on the key issues underlying this factor. 43 per cent of our respondents can be classified as Euro-sceptics agreeing with none of the themes that have an impact on this factor. They are mostly to be found in Spain (62 per cent) and least in Sweden (17 per cent). Members of the Green parties or the Liberal party, on the other hand, are significantly more likely to be Euro-enthusiasts. Direct experience with the European Parliament does not appear to make any significant difference with regard to this dimension. In fact, local delegates (33 per cent as compared to 41 per cent among regional delegates, 45 per cent among MPs and 47 per cent among MEPs) are least likely to be Euro-sceptics. A Euro-enthusiasm index was constructed on the basis of scores on the Euro-enthusiasm vs Euro-scepticism scale by subtracting the number of those expressing extreme Euro-sceptic views from those expressing very Euro-enthusiastic views. The index runs from 100 to +100. The closer the index is to +100, the more Euro-enthusiastic a certain group can be considered being; the closer to 100, the more Euro-sceptic. The results are summarized in Table 4.7. The second dimension which correlates only weakly with the first and which we have referred to as ‘new politics’ taps – as already stated – on disenchantment with mainstream politics conducted by political parties. Thirty-nine per cent of our respondents are represented in this category and agree with both of the two elements that make up this factor. This ground
Table 4.7 Euro-enthusiasm (or Euro-scepticism) index
All Nationality UK and Czech Republic Austria, France, Germany Sweden Spain Political affiliation Left Greens and Liberals Right Type of elected office European Parliament National Parliament Regional Delegate Local Delegate
Index
N
17
506
5 18 25 53
92 131 93 180
37 14 29
172 103 148
30 23 21 2
93 278 120 213
Note: Index constructed as follows: let x describe ‘share of persons holding very Euro-enthusiastic views’ and y ‘share of persons holding very Euro-sceptic views’. Then index score = 100* ((x–y)/N).
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is equivalently strong in Sweden and Spain (with 45 and 48 per cent, respectively) and mostly weak in the UK and the Czech Republic (24 per cent). Disenchanted politicians are otherwise also found in almost equal numbers among all political parties, the tendency being weaker among the Greens and the Liberals (37 per cent as compared to 45 per cent within the left and the right party spectrum). Being an MEP or an MP is associated with higher than average disenchantment with mainstream politics compared to regional or local delegates. These results are summarized through the ‘political disenchantment’ index constructed in the same way as the Euro-enthusiasm index (Table 4.8). Both Euro-scepticism and disenchantment with mainstream politics is quite widespread among members of the emerging European political class. Political attitude surveys (such as the regular Eurobarometer surveys which include questions on trust in political institutions or acceptance of the European Union) suggest that these views are equally widespread among citizens. The only interesting deviation would appear to be that of political elites in the UK and Sweden – unlike citizens in these two countries who tend to be the most Euro-sceptic, political elites here are less so. In general, however, the extent of correspondence of political attitudes between citizens and political elites while ‘comforting’ from the view of representation of public opinion by political elites, at the same time undermines the view that the cause of the contemporary crisis in politics is alone to be sought in the citizens’ alienation from mainstream politics or the project of European political integration – at least as it is presently unfolding.
Table 4.8 Political disenchantment index
All Nationality UK and Czech Republic Austria, France, Germany Sweden Spain Political affiliation Left Greens and Liberals Right Type of elected office European Parliament National Parliament Regional Delegate Local Delegate
Index
N
19
506
5 7 34 62
92 131 93 180
29 8 33
172 103 148
31 34 23 22
93 278 120 213
Note: Index constructed as follows: let x describe ‘share of persons believing in mainstream politics’ and y ‘share of persons disenchanted with mainstream politics’. Then index score = 100* ((x–y)/N).
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European Union ideologies in the making? Much of the contemporary discussion regarding the European Union revolves around the question of the future of the project of European political integration and the political system model to be assumed by the new polity. In our survey we avoided asking direct questions regarding the project of European integration. However, the answers to our statements provide some first indications on this subject. Based on the analysis reported above, answers to two key statements were combined to construct a political class ideology variable. These statements were no. 9 on the role of the European Parliament and no. 17 on the role of the national level of government. The reader will note that whereas statement no. 9 belongs to the category of statements for which both the nationality of the respondent and his/her political affiliation play a role, and is moreover the statement that addresses the Euro-enthusiasm vs Euro-scepticism dimension most strongly, no. 17 belongs to the category of statements which display no significant association with either nationality or political affiliation. Responses to these two statements in combination provide the following fourfold typology: Federalists with strong emphasis on subsidiarity. These are respondents who favour both a strengthening of the European Parliament and a strengthening of the role of the national level of government, including the national parliaments – these respondents make up 7 per cent of our sample. Federalists with less emphasis on subsidiarity. These are respondents who favour a strengthening of the European Parliament like the previous group, but who are less convinced about the role of the national level of government – this ideology is represented by 17 per cent of our respondents. Cooperative intergovernmentalists are respondents who do not favour an increase of the powers of the European Parliament, but see a greater role for national governments and subsidiarity in EU policy-making – 38 per cent of our respondents are to be found in this group. Glocalists are respondents who neither favour the European Parliament nor a greater role for national elected officials – 38 per cent represent this ideology. Tables 4.9a and 4.9b present the diffusion of these ideologies among our respondents from different countries and different political affiliations. Surprisingly, the greatest share of federalists are to be found in Sweden, but also in the UK and the Czech Republic.5 Even though this could be indicative of a certain bias in our sample, especially in the UK and the Czech Republic where the official ideology is certainly not pro-federalist, we must also call to mind that we are not talking about clear and explicit
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Table 4.9a European political ideologies by nationality of respondent, by percentage
Federalists I Federalists II Coop. Intergovernmentalists Glocalists Total
All
UK and CZ
DE and AT and FR
SE
ES
7 17 38 38 483
14 22 30 34 86
4 7 43 46 129
10 42 35 13 88
4 8 38 50 172
Note: Due to the missing values, group totals may not entirely correspond to the population or sub-population totals.Chi-square test: 0.000 (significant). Table 4.9b European political ideologies by politics of respondent, by percentage
Federalists I Federalists II Coop. Intergovernmentalists Glocalists Total
All
Left
Green and Liberal
Right
7 17 38 38 483
5 13 39 43 168
3 23 43 30 99
9 18 30 44 141
Note: Due to the missing values, group totals may not entirely correspond to the population or sub-population totals.Chi-square test: 0.025 (significant).
ideologies, but rather possibly emerging ideologies established with reference to respondents’ views about the role of the European Parliament on the one hand, and national elected officials on the other. By far the strongest group across all countries is that of cooperative intergovernmentalists, which even in Sweden (where we find the most federalists and the least glocalists) has a share of 35 per cent and which is also strongly represented among Greens and Liberals (Table 4.9b), the political group which otherwise displays the largest number of federalists. The numerical strength of this group across all nationalities and political groupings suggests that this is probably at present the most robust European political ideology. The majority of MEPs (59 per cent) are also to be found in this category. The strength of the ‘glocalist’ group appears in part to derive from the concentration of political elites within this group who are disenchanted with politics. This group scores 26 on the disenchantment index as compared to 17 among the two other groups. Otherwise, it is telling that none of the background sociological or career path variables is discriminatory with regard to adherence to one or the other above-stated European political ideologies.
Conclusion The picture that emerges from our research is not one of a European political class that is intrinsically different from the various national political
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classes and stands above or on top of them. On the contrary, there seem to be numerous links between the European, national, regional and local levels of power and political activity. In other words, there is nothing like an independent ‘EU’ political class with distinctive characteristics or career paths. The European Union to this extent, is a component of a broader system of European democracy that remains primarily national but is less exclusively so than in the past. Nonetheless, participants in European politics at the EU level have some distinctive characteristics: they are generally more experienced than national or sub-national politicians, and above all more internationalized, especially MEPs. This may not be surprising, but it is worth noting that it clearly contradicts the commonly held view that people get involved at the European level only because they are not successful at the national level. On the contrary, there is a real commitment to Europe, especially amongst people holding elective mandates. Several characteristics of this European political class seem to emerge: it is composed of people often holding other national, regional or local mandates and positions; these delegates have frequent contacts with national governments, national parliaments and national political parties; finally, they have often been active at national level in the past, and/or are likely to be so in the future. These characteristics have helped us identify several types of career paths and attitudes towards Europe, a diversity of points of view which precludes the existence of any common ‘European ideology’ and reflects the EU’s position within a wide-ranging process of political reconfiguration. Some can be called ‘Euro-enthusiasts’, even if that does not mean that they are not critical of the current institutional shape of the European Union, and towards European policies. For this first category of people, the commitment at European level derives from their interest in European affairs. Others can instead be referred to as ‘political’, in the sense that they were nominated or elected not because they were particularly interested in European politics, but because of their involvement in politics in general. Their European commitment is therefore, at least at the beginning, purely instrumental. Finally, some seem to be there by pure chance, especially amongst people holding non-elected positions, like in the Committee of the Regions. They were nominated without necessarily having a strongly positive or negative opinion on the European Union. But what is striking is that there is, among all of them, a general feeling that Europe is and will remain the place to be. Despite this strong recognition of the significance of Europe as the place to be, the attitudinal data shows a remarkable lack of coherence, even within particular sub-categories, such as MEPs, and an equally remarkable lack of consistency. Apparent inconsistencies between answers to deliberately paired questions (put in randomized order) might be interpreted as the result of failure to understand the statements, lack of interest in the exercise and other spurious factors. While room needs to be made for such factors,
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it is implausible to attribute the observable scattering of the responses entirely to them. Quite apart from general methodological considerations of interpretative clarity, some of the obscurities fit well with the familiar view that there is a contemporary fluidity, or even crisis, of fundamental political perceptions. The European Union concentrates this fluidity or crisis insofar as it sits at the focal point of the various pressures combining to challenge or ‘hollow out’ the nation-state, and furthermore has deliberately promoted consideration of alternatives to traditional modes of democratic organization, particularly through its deployment of the notion of ‘governance’. In other words, there are good reasons – based both on theory and other research – to expect profound uncertainty among political professionals, especially perhaps those active at European level, with respect to the practical viability and normative defensibility of party-based representative government and to the possibility of a competing model of democracy based on ‘civil society’. Assuming the pattern of responses to the questionnaire survey is not spurious, it certainly meets this expectation. Our survey points to a fairly broad consensus on the current importance of the European Union, especially when compared to national governments. It also shows that there is no real enthusiasm amongst European elites about the European project in itself – despite the fact that some of our interviewees seemed really convinced by its necessity – or about the European Parliament, the only institution directly elected by European citizens. Indeed, most respondents take it for granted that the EU is unpopular and likely to remain so. The enlargement process is also viewed with some suspicion, especially because some fear that it might ‘dilute’ the European Union. Our survey also revealed that many respondents hold a very disenchanted view of politics, which is not necessarily considered a vocation, and above all involves politicians who are more interested in their own interests than in those of citizens. In short, some homogeneity, as well as some homogenization trends are perceptible amongst European elites. One of our first hypotheses was that a European political class could only be said to exist or to be emerging if those holding political office shared a professional background in terms of either education or political career. Here we can answer positively, at least in terms of professional background and socialization; concerning career paths, there is some diversity, but with clearly convergent tendencies. In particular, our research does not support the idea that European political activity is simply an adjunct to national politics. Undoubtedly, this is correct in a number of respects, but the diversity of career paths suggests that there is also reciprocal influence, as well as some scope for autonomous activity. This tends to counter the thesis that European politics is simply nationally segmented, and qualitative data from interviews conducted confirms this. We were also interested in the various institutions with a European profile and mission, in order to see whether their ‘members’ or ‘professionals’
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shared a European ideology; we expected this ideology to be similar in the core but variable otherwise. Here again we can answer at least in part positively, as we have found a relatively broad consensus on some core questions concerning the process of European construction. However, this does not mean that some questions did not give rise to sharp cleavages, but which interestingly seemed to divide each category of respondents into fairly even parts. It is especially with regard to the future of the European Union and that of the project of political integration that we find almost complete dissonance. This dissonance exists within national delegations as well as within political groupings. Only a minority (24 per cent) appears to favour some form of federalism for the EU. The rest are equally divided between a model of cooperative intergovernmentalism and a view that sees no role for either the European Parliament or national elected officials and which we have termed, following Dahrendorf, glocalism. Among the MEPs in our sample, 58 per cent favour cooperative intergovernmentalism. In our view, this dissonance should not be interpreted as a failure or nonfulfilment of the European political space, but rather as evidence of its vitality. Nonetheless, the fact that this variability cuts across political parties is potentially problematic insofar as it makes a structured debate about the future of the European Union supranational institutions and the European polity even more unlikely. Furthermore, from the perspective of representative governments this would tend to aggravate rather than reduce the legitimacy of European Union institutions like the European Parliament. The existence of a European political class is, taken alone, a necessary rather than a sufficient condition for the emergence of a European public sphere. There are theoretical grounds for arguing that the various conditions that would ensure the existence of a powerfully structured European political class (parties, institutions, media processes, social, linguistic and cultural homogeneity, and other currently absent factors) would, in conjunction, be sufficient for a public sphere to operate on terms similar to those prevalent in historically constituted national democracies. Clearly, however, those conditions do not currently exist, as confirmed by the research reported on here, and the European political class, as it is, cannot be said to be ‘powerfully structured’. Nonetheless, the fact that it is not entirely absent, and that no obvious barriers to its consolidation have been identified, make further developments at least possible. What remains to be seen is whether the context of such developments is compatible with the general model relating the political class to the public sphere. Insofar as this is premised upon a fairly standard model of representative government, and insofar as such a model is precisely challenged at both national and European levels, it is possible that the function of the political class will change just as it becomes sociologically significant. The attitudinal data suggest that a notion to this effect is part of the common sense of political professionals. Whether they are correct remains to be seen.
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Notes 1 Thus, for instance, in most countries we observe a decrease in the number of seats in view of enlargement and the Nice Treaty. During the 5th term, the UK for instance had 87 seats; now it has 78 seats. In terms of political ideology, the European Parliament elected in June 2004 resembles that of 1999 in that it is dominated by the EPP (Peoples’ Party); however, in several countries there have been considerable shifts of electoral vote, including in Spain (from the EPP to the PES), France (as in Spain), the UK (from the EPP and the PES to new entrants, i.e. the Independence Party). 2 This factor as the strongest explains 30 per cent of the variance. The significance was as follows: 0.381 (no. 8), 0.671 (no. 9), 0.715 (no. 14), 0.730 (no. 16) and 0.721 (no. 18). 3 This factor explains 15 per cent of the variance. The significance was as follows: 0.616 (no. 7) and 0.740 (no. 13). The factor analysis was carried out using principal components analysis and the varimax rotation method. The answers to the attitudinal questions were summarized in three categories prior to undergoing factor analysis. 4 The significance of no. 3 was 0.377 on factor 1 and 0.306 on factor 2. The respective figures for item no. 5 were 0.494 and 0.220. 5 The above findings are confirmed also when examining the sample of UK respondents separately from that of Czech respondents.
5
The anti-globalization movement and the European agenda Elise Feron
Over the last few years, there has been renewed interest in the emergence of a European public sphere. This interest can be explained by three different factors (De Schutter 2002). The first has to do with the emergence of a European citizenship that is being defined and codified through various charters and texts, for example an official report (‘White Paper’) on governance, the Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Maastricht Treaty and, not least, the European Constitutional Treaty produced by the Convention on the Future of Europe. Some of these texts were drafted by reflection groups that involved representatives of European civil society. The symbolic as well as very concrete involvement of civil society in the drafting of these important documents shows that there is a genuine will to improve citizens’ involvement in institutional processes at the European level. Second, there is a general dissatisfaction with the Europeanization process, which appears to lack democratic legitimacy. In this respect, the development of a European public sphere seems to offer an opportunity to develop a channel and framework for criticism, debate and protest in relation to Europeanization. Third, there has been a clear strengthening of protest movements at the European level, which has contributed to the development of a trans-national network of civil society organizations, even though forms of mobilization are highly diverse. Mobilization has placed the issue of the mode of citizen intervention in policy-making at the forefront of debate. Indeed, and as argued in Chapter 1, if we want to enquire whether or not a European public sphere is emerging, we have to analyse on the one hand the extent to which institutional structures and practices at the European level provide opportunities for such groups to participate in the setting and elaboration of policy agendas, and on the other hand the kinds of mobilization from below that are emerging, and how they use the European level to bring forward specific concerns. The various obstacles and difficulties these movements face on the European political stage, as well as the opportunities that are open to them when they wish to express their claims and participate in policy-making, are good indicators of the degree of openness of this European public sphere. Among the various types of protests taking place in Europe, anti-globalization movements embody a specific mode of contestation: even though the EU is
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not the main target of their criticism, they have shown a growing interest in European events and institutions in recent years. During the same period, they have also played a fundamental role in social mobilization and protest movements in Europe, especially during the widespread demonstrations usually surrounding European summits. Anti-globalization movements have belatedly entered the European social and political scene, which over several decades had been driven by various trade unions, generally grouped within the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), as well as by some NGOs, for instance in the field of ecology or of immigration, certain of which have established themselves as lobbies (Ruzza 2004). Europe has a long tradition of contestation and street mobilization, which goes back to the early 1980s (Imig and Tarrow 2001; Marks and Steenbergen 2002; Imig 2002); in this tradition, the mobilization of thousands of activists from several European countries that took place in Vilvoorde in 1997 against the closure of a Renault factory, is usually considered a watershed, marking the setting up of genuine trans-national cooperation structures within the European social movement (Lefe´bure and Lagneau 2002). The adaptation of social movements to a trans-national context and to the new ‘governance’ mode at the European level therefore precedes the emergence of anti-globalization movements. Their current actions fall within the scope of an older repertoire, which partly imposes itself upon them, in particular during demonstrations organized jointly with trade unions familiar with such mobilization. In this context, the question of the specificity or added value of antiglobalization claims arose from the very first demonstrations they organized. The struggle for more ambitious social policies at European level, or against neo-liberalism, has long been a key concern for unions active inside the ETUC, as well as organizations such as the ‘European Marches Against Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Exclusion’ that were launched in 1997 that, although they predate it, are nowadays considered part of the European anti-globalization movement. The emphasis put by some organizations such as ATTAC on the questions of the democratic deficit, and of the shape of democracy at the European level, have put at the forefront of the debates themes that had hitherto been neglected, or considered secondary compared to policy issues, by the European social movement. The whole ambiguity of the anti-globalization activists’ investment at the European level lies therefore in a permanent oscillation between reassertion of the specificity of their global struggle and participation in a European social movement that stretches far beyond them, and above all shifts their priorities. The emergence of a European public space generates a whole series of questions for the anti-globalization movement: how can it integrate the European level into its usual issues? Should it gain leverage from this space of political opportunity in order to build a wider trans-national movement
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gradually, or should it disregard and denounce it as a tool of neo-liberalism, like most other international organizations? Controversies that arose inside ATTAC France about the setting up of ‘100 per cent alternative globalization’ lists for the European elections of June 2004 bring to light the many rifts dividing the anti-globalization movement, and perfectly illustrate the challenge generated by Europeanization for anti-globalization activists, torn between the options of participating in the political game, of acting as an opposition force, and of standing back from the fray. From this perspective, this chapter aims to examine the relationship between the Europeanization process and the anti-globalization agenda in Europe. It is based on fieldwork, observations and interviews carried out between September 2001 and November 2004 during anti-globalization demonstrations surrounding European summits,1 mainly in France, Belgium, Italy and Spain, and on the observation of certain congresses and conferences organized by these movements, for instance the European Social Forums. Its main argument is that these trans-national protest movements have a dual, and in part contradictory, nature. On the one hand, they have an agenda-setting character, contributing to the formation of a European public opinion. On the other hand, their agenda-setting influence in terms of European policy is constrained by their style of discourse, which bypasses official discourse on European integration.
Creating a European movement? Straightforward characterization of the European anti-globalization movement is made difficult by the number and diversity of the groups that constitute it and participate regularly in demonstrations, as well as by the fact that individual membership cuts across institutional boundaries. The administrative structures of these groups are often of the associative and/or NGO type. They usually operate on a global level, and their activities in Europe are perceived as regional-level interventions, but anti-globalization demonstrations also frequently bring on board local organizations that use the event as a way to publicize their specific demands. At the organizational level, some of these groups have the traditional union or associative forms with an identified centre, hierarchy, division of responsibilities, and active militancy; but many other anti-globalization groups rather fall within the ‘network’ or ‘movement’ type of organization, gathering individuals as well as groups in loose structures with weak hierarchies and institutions. As a consequence, insofar as it combines formal organizations and loose movements or networks, the anti-globalization movement is often described as a ‘movement of movements’ (Whitaker 2004b: 111). There is also great diversity in the demands put forward by these organizations and movements, the priorities of which vary considerably. Roughly speaking, they may be divided into six categories (Sommier 2003: 115–21): first, there are anti-liberal and anti-capitalist groups, which may be Marxist
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or more generally hostile to ‘neo-liberal globalization’, such as ATTAC; second, there are human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch, which also defend the social rights of workers; the third group comprises humanitarian NGOs such as Oxfam, which often campaign for Third World debt relief; fourth, ecologist and environmental organizations such as Reclaim the Streets or Friends of the Earth are also very active in the anti-globalization movement, even though some of them, such as Greenpeace, have also been very critical of it (Fre´our 2004); some feminist organizations have also taken part in the anti-globalization movement, but their commitment has been more important during the World Social Forums than at the European level itself; the last group is made up by trade unions and by confederations of trade unions such as ETUC, which have been relatively active in organizing demonstrations at the European level. The real scope of the European anti-globalization movement is also quite difficult to assess. One useful indicator that is easily available is the number of participants in the demonstrations and events organized by these groups. As far as demonstrations are concerned, anti-globalization groups regularly mobilize at least 100,000 people, especially for demonstrations taking place during European summits (100,000 in December 2001 in Laeken; 300,000 in March 2002 in Barcelona), and up to 500,000 people in ‘anti-war’ demonstrations (for instance in Florence in November 2002), the focus of which admittedly differs from purely anti-globalization claims. Events such as summer schools or ‘counter-summits’ organized by anti-globalization groups generally attract fewer participants, from 1,000 participants in the European Citizen’s Congress organized by ATTAC in Lie`ge in September 2001, to 60,000 registered participants in the first European Social Forum in Florence in November 2002, and 50,000 registered participants in the second, which was held in Saint-Denis in November 2003. The most dynamic of the anti-globalization groups on European soil is ATTAC. Other major groups are Oxfam, the Collective for Third World Debt Relief, Globalize Resistance, the European Marches against Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Exclusion, and Reclaim the Streets. Antiglobalization movements, organizations, institutions and groups do not object to the increasing interdependence of human societies and the development of global social networks per se. Rather, these groups oppose and criticize the global spread of neo-liberal capitalism and the subjection of all decision-making (political, economic, social etc.) to the priorities of the market and of global financial capitalism. These groups prefer to be called ‘globalization critics’ who support an ‘alternative globalization’ based on an alternative vision of global social and economic relationships, rather than simply opponents of globalization. It is in no way my intention to ignore the diversity of these anti-globalization organizations, which include large movements like ATTAC, other organizations whose main objective is not to promote ‘another globalization’ such as Oxfam or Greenpeace, and a multitude of smaller groups of activists whose aims and claims are very diverse.
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For purely practical reasons, this chapter refers to ‘anti-globalization movements’ in general; I shall, however, try to specify when there are major internal cleavages within these movements. There are also important divergences between anti-globalization movements and trade unionists. While they share the same critique and often stage joint demonstrations, trade unions differ significantly in terms of institutional and organizational setup, professed type of representation and the degree of integration in the formal policy process. For these reasons, trade unions are not discussed in this chapter as a constituent part of the anti-globalization movement. The various organizations do not share a common discourse on Europeanization or on European institutions, but rather a series of anti-EU opinions, such as criticism of the neo-liberal model that is applied at the European level, or denunciation of the ‘democratic deficit’. Even if they are not yet clearly stated, these assessments lay the first foundations of a shared vision for the European anti-globalization movement (Bursens and Sinardet 2002). Through their recurrent mobilizations, anti-globalization movements are building a relatively stable trans-national network of organizations, which are becoming used to working with each other. This stability is embodied in the fact that the same organizations more or less always form the basis of these mobilizations and make up the steering committees of the various events and demonstrations. Around them gather other organizations who choose to join the event according to their interest in the topic, their financial situation, and the location. Anti-globalization movements have only begun taking the European level into account very recently. The first attempts to think out their struggle at this level began in 2001, intensified in 2002, and came to a head with the first European Social Forum held in Florence in November 2002. By way of example, Grain de Sable, ATTAC France’s weekly electronic newsletter which has been published since July 1999, had devoted only about fifty articles to European questions by mid-2004 (each weekly issue comprises an average of four articles), amongst which more than half had been published since the end of 2002 and related either to the organization of the European Social Forums of Florence and Saint-Denis or to demonstrations and events organized during official European summits. Most analytical articles are recent, and deal mostly with the economic model of the European Union (Stability Pact, neo-liberalism, the euro), or with foreign or enlargement policies. Anti-globalization activists have taken the European dimension into account so recently that many, like Riccardo Petrella, who was in charge of the European Social Forum in Belgium in 2003, have the feeling that they have a lot of ground to make up: One criticism that can be addressed to anti-globalization activists of the nineties, and I am talking about European anti-globalization movements, is precisely to have neglected the European dimension. But since Nice, anti-globalization activists have begun to realize the
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importance of the struggle over Europe. For the moment the European struggle of anti-globalization organizations seems to have fallen behind. We have, so to speak, missed the bus. This does not prevent us intensifying here and now our struggle at the European level.2 Beyond the difficulties inherent to the setting up of a trans-national movement – especially cultural and linguistic problems, but also questions related to repertoires of action, to national contexts, to differing priorities, and to the investments required by the maintenance of a trans-national network (as shown for the first European social movements by Reising 1999: 317–42), how can we explain the fact that anti-globalization movements were so tardy in taking the European level into account? One possible explanation lies with the internal diversity of the European social movement, which is particularly obvious when it comes to discussing institutional affairs. Most European events, including the European Social Forums,3 are organized jointly with trade unions which tend to be less hostile in principle to the European Union than anti-globalization activists. In these circumstances, it is extremely difficult to reach an agreement not only on attitudes to be adopted, but also on actions to be launched. While most anti-globalization groups are deeply dissatisfied with the way the Europeanization process is advancing, and in particular with its lack of democratic legitimacy and accountability, this does not necessarily mean that the process of European integration is the raison d’eˆtre of these movements, or even that Europe is at the core of their concerns. In fact, the picture that arises from our fieldwork is much more complex. Even though Europe is included in their discourses and agendas, anti-globalization organizations feel in no way limited by the shape and momentum of Europeanization. Anti-globalization discourses on Europe are as varied as the organizations that pronounce them. Some do not speak at all of Europe, while others do so only from a critical perspective. There is no common position vis-a`-vis Europe and the European institutional framework. Modes of operation and political activities are also distinct. Anti-globalization movements rather consider the internationalization – and consequently, the ‘Europeanization’ – of their protests as a new and necessary feature of their repertoires of action: In the course of the nineties, a new term entered the dictionary of social scientists – globalization. Whatever that term means . . . evidence began to accumulate toward the end of the nineties that social actors were increasingly protesting against the intrusive policies of international agencies; that they were taking their claims against national antagonists into international forums through trans-national activist networks; and that they were framing grievances against their own governments as if they were claims against international or foreign actors. (Imig and Tarrow 2001: 8)
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Moreover, like many Europeans, anti-globalization organizations generally favour European construction in principle, but at the same time are hostile to its practical methods of implementation (Bursens and Sinardet 2002: 20– 3). They are therefore both ‘alter-globalist’ and ‘alter-European’, and there is always an ambiguity in their discourses about ‘Europe’, a word which can refer both to the European Union, or to the European continent as a whole. Moreover, for many anti-globalization organizations that focus primarily on development issues or on Third World debt relief, such as Oxfam, the European Union is perceived as a space for the well-to-do, the rich and the affluent, as opposed to the problems that affect the rest of the world, especially the difficulties of southern countries. For others, the European construction is merely another typical expression of the world ascendancy of neo-liberal capitalism, which allows the economical integration of European countries and subjects national economies to the constraints of the world market. For these reasons, while some anti-globalization organizations hardly talk about Europe,4 most of the others are slowly beginning to integrate European themes into their campaigns. These discrepancies partly explain that no common position has so far been adopted on the idea of European integration in itself, or even on Europeanization processes. Antiglobalization movements rather convene around a small number of shared themes, such as the struggle against neo-liberalism, that are not directly connected to Europe, and largely bypass it.
Between exploitation and real investment While it has long been neglected, the European Union now gives rise to conflicting attitudes and opinions, which correspond, roughly speaking, to a dual strategy: on the one hand, anti-globalization organizations use the European political scene for their own purposes and consider it as an ‘intermediary’ platform for mobilization; on the other, Europe is viewed as a legitimate target, insofar as it is an important actor at the international level. Europe is relevant not only because it is capable of intervention in what these groups see as the most important policy areas, most notably globalization, immigration, social policies and the environment, but also because these policy areas typically require a trans-national rather than a strictly national approach. Empirically, both of these approaches can be seen to exist, with the result that purely instrumental actions can be observed – when European summits give an opportunity to demonstrate against the war in Iraq, for instance.5 At the same time, we can witness the elaboration of a specific discourse, mostly critical, that is addressed towards European institutions. This does not mean that national political spaces are no longer considered by anti-globalization movements as relevant spaces for mobilization; most of these organizations have national branches that organize their own campaigns, which focus, most of the time, on national institutions. It rather
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shows that anti-globalization activists are waiting for trans-national political answers to the questions they are asking. As Sidney Tarrow puts it, trans-national movements ‘naturally’ tend to organize around international institutions, ‘which serve as sources of group claims, as targets for their protests, and as sites that can bring groups together internationally’ (2001: 247). In this perspective, it is worth noting that they seldom bring the European project itself into question; they rather seek to influence its development in a way that would favour their own objectives.6 They are therefore not opposed to the European Union, but rather to some of its policies which they think favour a neo-liberal form of globalization, or, especially in the social and environmental fields, do not go far enough. For example, during the Autumn University of ATTAC which was held in Lie`ge in September 2002,7 the objective was to express criticism of EU policies, but also to propose reforms that could be set up (for example, to revise the status of the European Central Bank). There is a widespread idea that the European Union, which is still malleable and in its formative process, could be used as a tool against certain forms of globalization, and therefore that it is very important to intervene now in the building process. The other strategy – exploitation of the European political space – is also clearly visible in many instances. As Jean Vogel has put it, anti-globalization movements are implementing a ‘strate´gie de contournement’ (1999: 206), a strategy of circumvention through which claims are carried to the European level because it is more open and less crowded than national political arenas, which are monopolized by political parties and other traditional political movements. They are in fact exploiting new opportunity structures, and harmonizing their movement and means of action along the contours of a new trans-national structure. This strategy should not come as a surprise: To the extent that European integration results in the replacement, or more likely the decline, of the nation-state as the exclusive seat of formal institutional power, we can expect attendant changes in the forms and dynamics of social movement activity. (Marks and McAdam 1999: 98) This explains for instance the desire of some leaders of ATTAC France to intervene in the European political scene during the 2004 Euro-elections: ‘European elections provide us with an ideal platform for spreading amongst our fellow citizens our ideas about Europe. This space is specifically related to our work’.8 Besides, this strategy has long been adopted by other organizations such as the Collective for Third World Debt Relief, which declared in September 2001: ‘common work at the European level is an obvious option’.9 In this perspective, important European dates such as European elections or inter-state summits provide anti-globalization organizations with ideal mobilization platforms, because of the media coverage
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they attract. In other words, another factor influencing the presence and activity of anti-globalization activists at European events is their media exposure strategy (Neveu 2000).10 Following this view, the fact that anti-globalization movements often hold demonstrations around important European summits or events is not sufficient evidence for deducing that they also mainly model their agendas and discourses on those of Europe. The timing of demonstrations is rather often strategically chosen as a way to exert pressure on European policy-makers, and primarily, as a means of attracting media attention. Research on antiglobalization movements viewed through the prism of their European protests can therefore be very misleading, as it places the emphasis on a framework that may not even be an implicit reference for these activists. Their agenda is indeed in no way limited by European considerations. Taking the example of ATTAC, one of the most active anti-globalization movements in Europe, it is striking how events organized in Europe represent only a small share of its activity schedule.11 The scope of antiglobalization activities is larger than that defined by the official European agenda: many events take place outside Europe, and when they are organized in Europe, they can be completely out of line with official European meetings.12 This means that the agendas are still largely autonomous, but not totally disconnected, as each important European summit now seems bound to give rise to anti-globalization demonstrations (of course, the reverse is not true, but this can also be observed at national levels). There is therefore a kind of discrepancy between involvement in European activities and actual anti-globalization demands. Activists’ objectives are not restrained or structured by the framework of European institutions, and they mostly refer to Europe as a geographical13 rather than a political entity. At the same time, their insistence on asking for the European Union’s involvement at the international level indicates that this attitude may evolve in the near future, especially if European officials tend to respond to their demands. In other words, it seems that they are trying to use the European Union as a lever, but as their own strategies and means of action are not set in stone, they are in turn influenced by the European Union. Thus, the relationship of anti-globalization movements to the European agenda cannot be described as pure exploitation, but should be seen more as an on-going process of adjustment. Most European activities of anti-globalization activists are admittedly made up of demonstrations dependent upon institutional events organized jointly with ETUC, and occurring either during closing summits for European presidencies (such as the Brussels/Laeken summit in December 2001 or the Thessalonika summit in June 2003), or during intermediary summits that take place midway through a presidential term (such as the Lie`ge summit of September 2001, or the Barcelona summit in March 2002). But an agenda largely independent from these institutional dates is currently undoubtedly in the making, taking the shape of summer schools, of
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European Citizens’ Congresses and, above all, since November 2002, of European Social Forums. These annual forums14 have become critical platforms for the defence of anti-globalization claims, but also for the setting up of European anti-globalization networks. In other words, while the antiglobalization mobilization agenda is not (yet?) completely disconnected from the European institutional agenda, it is tending to gain more and more autonomy. What makes these developments particularly interesting is that the movements themselves are not united, and that divisions inside the overall movement are rather deep; for instance, a wide gulf divides big anti-globalization organizations like ATTAC, Oxfam and Greenpeace, and smaller (albeit sometimes older) movements such as the anti-poverty European Marches against Unemployment, Job Insecurity and Exclusion. Their actions are not always directed at the same audience, and needless to say, their objectives are quite divergent most of the time. Other rifts do exist, such as the one between so-called ‘radical’ and so-called ‘reformist’ organizations. What emerges therefore is the image of a dual anti-globalization movement: one side is more concerned with social and economic policies, and is therefore more willing to campaign for changes and improvements in EU policies; it is also more likely to unite with trade unions, with whom it shares social and economic concerns, as well as a more European- or national-centred focus. On the other side, there is the better known portion of the anti-globalization movement, including organizations like ATTAC, Oxfam and Greenpeace, which are more interested in global issues, such as the environment and peace; their activists seem to be more likely to ask the EU to act at a global level than to campaign for a specific European policy – though they sometimes do. The cleavage between these organizations in terms of concerns, aims and the forms their activities take, should however not be overstated as they are all truly opposed to neo-liberal globalization, and defend the idea that global political and economic issues are related to more local ones like unemployment. Inside the European social movement, even deeper cleavages oppose antiglobalization organizations to trade unions, which support a different view of Europe, and which are much more policy-oriented. The relationships between anti-globalization demonstrators and trade unionists are indeed often both competitive and conflictual, even though they may be participating in the same events and demonstrations; anti-globalization movements tend to regard trade unionists as ‘traitors’, because they are better integrated into the institutional spheres, and because they are said to be unwilling to be hostile to European officials. There exists an opposition in terms of mobilization strategy. Anti-globalization activists have a critical stance towards the traditional forms of union protest, which they feel to be outdated. They are also severely critical when union organizations participate in various negotiation processes. This tension between the different visions – national or European corporatist cooperation versus trans-national
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pluralism – seems to block any common mobilization. But far from damaging or hampering the emergence of a European public opinion, these contradictions in fact create and favour debates on the nature of the European Union, because they offer a framework inside which they can develop. The fact that such various actors coming from civil society gather and confront their opinions on Europe, in a voluntary debate,15 is thus a promising means of improving the implication of citizens in debates about the future of Europe. But street mobilization, which often is the focus of media coverage, is not the only mode of influence that anti-globalization movements deploy; lobbying and public relations also make up a large part of their strategies at European level. This lobbying strategy is made easier by the fact that many anti-globalization leaders have good relations with European politicians, especially parliamentarians. For instance, in some countries such as Austria, anti-globalization movements seem to have a direct influence on European Union politics because there are some individuals who are both members of ATTAC and MEPs, and because in the field of environmental politics, Greenpeace activists are increasingly integrated in the decision-making process as experts. In many cases, anti-globalization movements can claim to have an influence on EU agenda setting (e.g. by forcing politics to deal with specific topics), and it is no surprise that many MEPs, national MPs or other types of members of the national political classes attend meetings organized by anti-globalization movements.16 As Carlos Ruzza has shown, if European institutions are indeed implementing strategies to marginalize social movements, they cannot completely ignore them: Like political institutions in member states, EU institutions react to movements somewhat ambiguously. They may marginalise popular movements when they consider them to be disruptive, unrepresentative, extremist and lacking credibility; but the presence of these movements may also remedy the much-debated remoteness of the European institutions. Their grounding at EU level may also meet institutional desires for dialogue with civil society while at the same time addressing movement aspirations for policy relevance. (Ruzza 2004: 11) While it is indeed true that the discourses deployed by anti-globalization movements can be dismissed as irrelevant by European policy-makers, they are sometimes forced to take at least the subject matter itself into account, and even to subscribe to certain demands, as the example of the ‘Tobin Tax’ shows.17 While the relationships between anti-globalization movements and official representatives of the European Union can often be described as complex and difficult, it is inaccurate to say that these movements are completely disconnected from the official European political scene, especially because of the personal links and relationships that exist between both circles.
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During the years that immediately followed the Seattle mobilization of 1999, positions adopted by anti-globalization organizations towards European construction could be described as disparate discourses of opposition and refusal – of the neo-liberal logic of the European Union, for instance – and lacked any kind of coherence.18 In recent years, however, there have been many signs of the construction of a truly European anti-globalization programme: since 2001 in particular, a critical discourse has been developed on the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is regarded as incomprehensible and incomplete,19 a ‘fig-leaf text’.20 Since 2003, this discourse has converted itself into a critique of the European draft constitutional treaty. In the ‘Call to the Peoples of Europe’ that was published at the end of the Saint-Denis European Social Forum in November 2003, the draft treaty was accused of ‘constitutionalizing liberalism as the official doctrine of the European Union’, and a mobilization schedule against the treaty was set up. ATTAC France has even prepared an alternative text called ‘Treaty for a Europe of Solidarity’,21 that it attempted to publicize during the Euro-elections campaign in 2004. At a more general level, two major critiques are addressed to the European Union by the anti-globalization movement: on the one hand, the subordination of European policies, in particular social policies, to market requirements – the European Commission is then taken as a target in the same way as the WTO – and on the other hand, the undemocratic character of the construction of Europe. The core of the anti-globalization critique of the EU is framed in economic terms. Dominique Plihon,22 Director of the Scientific Committee of ATTAC France, speaks of an ‘asymmetrical Europe’. He considers that European construction has been marked by two major transformations: an acceleration of the process of commercialization and of neo-liberal logic, and the introduction of monetary stability as a primary objective. This critique of the EU contains three points: the domination of the market, the process of privatization and the process of deregulation. Their consequence is a general weakening of political power, resulting in a Europe marked by competition between businesses and states, as well as between individuals. The European Union, through a lack of political will, has allowed itself to become dominated by an American-style free market economy. On the other hand, the model of participatory democracy that has been put forward by the European Union based on the notion of governance,23 is accused of depriving citizens of their means of action. In this undemocratic Europe, where ‘everything has been decided behind the back of the peoples’,24 it is more necessary than ever that citizens mobilize and make themselves heard. For these purposes they can rely on anti-globalization organizations: the more you are at the bottom of the ladder, the more you can fear that the supranational European construction is a retreat on rights
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without which citizens are considered as totally insignificant. This real crisis in the constitution of rights will find no solution without collective mobilization, around common demands, at European level. We want to contribute to it.25 In the minds of many anti-globalization activists, the democratic deficit is tightly linked to the neo-liberal hold on Europe, which has finally succeeded in corrupting the idea of European construction itself. Anti-globalization organizations thus denounce the changed orientation of European construction, which has gradually abandoned policies rooted in political will and submitted to market principles. In this perspective, anti-globalization organizations wish to play a fundamental role in Europe by making people aware of these issues, and by proposing alternative solutions: ‘neoliberals have henceforth discredited the idea of Europe. It is up to the antiglobalization movement to give it a new content and to act in order to implement it’.26
Anti-globalization movements and the emergence of a European public sphere Generally speaking, the space for protest and discussion that these organizations are building involves some of the characteristics of a genuine public sphere. Not only are their events open to participation but they are also quite flexible with regard to the issues discussed. Topics dealt with range from the situation in the Third World to populism, fascism and the war in Palestine. Protesters are also not constrained with regard to the style of deliberation. It is quite common for such events to include technical or expert presentations, political speeches, ‘grassroots’ plain talk and ideological manifestations.27 What is even more interesting is that this newly created space for discussion is trans-national by the nature of the issues which bypass the national level. Globalization, peace and sustainable development, to take the best known examples, are presented as requiring a trans-national approach rather than policies constrained by national barriers. This is probably one of the explanations for the fact that these organizations are increasingly willing to refer to the European rather than to the national level. In other words, the European agenda is more relevant and appropriate than national agendas. This does not mean that anti-globalization organizations consider national policies unimportant,28 but rather that they expect trans-national political answers to issues, even though they sometimes lack the necessary trans-national popular support: there has been an increase in contentious collective action in response to European policies and transnational movement organizations that are being formed at the European level in response to them. At the
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same time, it is clear that European collective action is faced with some serious obstacles relating to the apparent lack of social networks that impose high costs on the formation and maintenance of sustained collective action across Europe. (Reising 1999: 324) Anti-globalization movements also help to draw the media’s attention to the European political scene and agenda, which otherwise tend to be perceived as lacking in salience and interest. Even though the media are focused, most of the time, on the demonstrations surrounding European summits, the importance of the European agenda and official meetings is indirectly brought to light. It is true that, depending on the medium,29 the coverage will be either informative or negative, but considering the generalized lack of interest in EU-related topics, anti-globalization demonstrations are indisputably included in what could be called the ‘European public debate’, especially by the most sensationalist media. Thus, these demonstrations draw the public’s attention to ongoing debates on the future of Europe and the institutions or meetings that matter. Moreover, many anti-globalization organizations have their own alternative media channels, which are often organized on a trans-national basis.30 This is the case for the Indymedia network, which is managed by the Independent Media Centre. Such channels counterbalance official European media such as European Voice and Euronews and promote an alternative view of Europe. Even though Indymedia’s audience cannot claim to be wide, it is defined by its opinions rather than by its nationality. By holding media-attractive demonstrations in places where important institutional events take place, anti-globalization movements help embody what a European political scene could be, and indicate its abstract location; as such, they help to reassemble the fragmented image of the European political space – fragmented by reason of the fact that it is made up by a series of events quite distant in time and in place. In this image-building process, they act as a stable link that makes the connection between the various European events, both in terms of the dimensions and the issues; it is therefore not completely paradoxical that anti-globalization movements should impart identity and visibility to the European agenda. Even though the differences and disagreements that exist between antiglobalization movements and, particularly, between anti-globalization movements and trade unions, explain why trans-national mobilizations have sometimes failed to influence European policies and official agendas, the existence of these disagreements has, at the same time, fostered the creation of a space for debate. The positive effect of anti-globalization movements on discussions on Europe is as much the result of their opposition to the official agenda as a consequence of their own internal divisions. Far from hampering the emergence of a European public sphere, the fragmentation of these movements seems rather to favour the emergence of genuine debate at
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both the grassroots and institutional levels. Another important element is that the trade unions that often join anti-globalization demonstrations play a key mediating role in the relationships at a European institutional level and, especially, at the European Council of Ministers.31 Hence, even though the relationships between anti-globalization movements and official representatives of the EU are complex and difficult, it would be inaccurate to say that these movements are completely disconnected from the official European political scene. Anti-globalization movements in Europe therefore have a highly contradictory impact on the process of Europeanization, because even though they tend to be more global and trans-national than purely European in focus, they succeed in emancipating some debates within the European Union from their national fetters. Furthermore, because the anti-globalization movement in itself is very young, it is strongly influenced by the European agenda. The fact that these mobilizations have fostered discussions about the need to get citizens more actively involved in Europe also shows that the European agenda has in turn been influenced by them. Last but not least, these movements act within an open and trans-national space that could in part coincide with a European public sphere that is still developing. The attitude of European officials towards these movements in forthcoming years will thus be crucial for the future of the European polity. In particular, it will be very interesting to observe whether new channels of communication are set up in order to better integrate civil society into the decisionmaking process. If this is the case, this will once again raise the question of associative democracy, and of the representativeness of the groups included at the forefront of the debates about the future of the European polity. As Olivier De Schutter puts it: Many feel that this ‘new actor’ should be better integrated in the institutional system of the Union if the dialogue with it is to lose its purely confrontational dimension. Many feel that the legitimacy of the European Union, in the years to come, will depend on its capacity to include this voice, and to offer convincing answers to the questions raised by these organizations. (De Schutter 2002: 198–9) Insofar as it constitutes an arena for debate and for the formulation of demands that is in many respects more open than national political arenas, the European public space seems to invite the participation of anti-globalization organizations. Because it favours the inclusion of social actors in the decision-making processes, and because it blurs the outlines of politics, especially by its resort to expertise, the European Union seems to favour an adjustment of the strategies of anti-globalization organizations. More specifically, as anti-globalization activists have set up a social movement occasionally using specifically political means of action, this requires further
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thought on their relationships with politics, and on their place in the political space. Many anti-globalization movements, like ATTAC, maintain that they were born out of the shortcomings of political parties and trade unions, and that they perform a function that political parties cannot (or do not want to); in reality, far from disposing of their relationships with politics, this ambiguous assertion turns it into a latent questioning. While the anti-globalization sphere itself is wondering about its own nature (see Teivainen 2004; Whitaker 2004a), between a movement in the process of structuring itself, and a mere space for debate between heterogeneous movements, diverging strategies are becoming apparent. These strategies can in part be explained by the fact that the levels of institutionalization of these organizations vary greatly. As Justin Greenwood and Mark Aspinwall have shown, what characterizes the European social movement is precisely the juxtaposition of formal and informal groups, with the result that ‘the forms of collective action range from formal functions (at one end of the spectrum) to ‘‘disorganised collective action’’, such as ad hoc alliances (at the other end)’ (Greenwood and Aspinwall 1998: 12). Fieldwork observation also shows that the question of the relationships with politics is all the more important when the group is formalized. In fact, the general issue of relations to politics refers to three types of questions: first, anti-globalization movements’ notion of power and of politics – which refers to the old debate between radicals and reformists – second, the possibility of dialogue or even alliance with traditional political actors, and finally, the entry of anti-globalization movements in the political space, which would entail turning the social movement at least partly into a political movement. Each of these questions gives rise to numerous debates and cleavages between and within European anti-globalization groups. Since their creation, most anti-globalization groups have claimed to play the role of platforms for discussion and thinking on politics, and have quite clearly condemned the ‘reformism’ of Western political parties, the programmes of which are frequently opposed to the radicalism of anti-globalization proposals. However, many cleavages seem to oppose groups like Reclaim the Streets, or the Italian ‘disobedients’ of Tutte Bianche, which present themselves as radicals,32 to other groups like ATTAC that they identify as reformist. Thus, while some organizations are considering inclusion in decision-making processes, in order to weigh on them as heavily as possible, others reject the system as a whole. Many leaders of traditional political forces, on the left in particular, are tempted by alliance with anti-globalization movements, whose ideas are very popular, and therefore try to take over events, such as the European Social Forums, organized by anti-globalization groups. A first official meeting between European anti-globalization organizations and left-wing parties was held on 8 November 2002 during the European Social Forum in Florence. This represented a real revolution for the anti-globalization activists, who had been careful since Seattle in November 1999 to keep their
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distance from political parties. However, while debate with political actors has indeed been initiated (for instance through the organization of sessions bringing together political representatives and anti-globalization activists during forums and seminars, or the participation of political representatives in a personal capacity in these events), distrust still prevails. In the minds of anti-globalization activists, political parties are still opposed to ‘street action’.33 For some far-left political leaders, there should be no division of labour at the European level between the social movement and political parties: the social movement has to intervene on political questions, and the European left has to be ‘committed to the social movement’.34 At a practical level, collaboration between anti-globalization activists and political professionals is increasingly common. For instance, the campaign launched jointly at the European level by various anti-globalization organizations – ATTAC, GATSwatch, Friends of the Earth, the World Development Movement, etc. – against a new round of agreements on trade and services (GATS) associates a whole series of MEPs, and also, through petitions signed by European citizens, aims at mobilizing the national MPs. The question of the entry of anti-globalization organizations into the European political sphere thus logically arouses deep divisions inside their ranks, as shown by the example of ATTAC France during the 2004 Euroelection campaign. Some activists were tempted to enter the European political arena in order to put forward the ‘real issues’ of European construction, which, they claim, are kept hidden by political parties; these antiglobalization activists presented themselves as a genuine alternative to a restricted political offering and proposed to put citizens back at the heart of European construction – hence their interest in the draft constitutional treaty. It is thus significant that the organization ‘100 per cent Alter-globalists for a Europe of Solidarity’ organized, during the European Social Forum in London in November 2004, a workshop on the ‘necessary’ adaptation of anti-globalization ideas to the political space: ‘We see Europe as the relevant scale for inventing a new social model. . . . We think that other initiatives of the same kind will arise during the forthcoming months and years in other European countries’.35 The involvement of anti-globalization organizations at the European level therefore seems to lead them to think more in depth about their relationships with politics, but also about their means of action and, in an underlying but essential manner, about the nature of their movement itself. The construction of a real European public space is the objective of many anti-globalization organizations. The article ‘European Social Forum: the structuring of a public space at the European level’,36 published in the weekly newsletter of ATTAC France, analyses the success of the European Social Forum of Florence not only in terms of the huge turnout but in terms of a ‘political event that represents an historical convergence between old and new social movements at the European level . . . which constitutes undoubtedly a space for the expression of crucial demands at a key moment
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in European construction’. In spite of the criticism levelled at Europe, the anti-globalization movement in Europe is not opposed to the idea of the European Union, and on the contrary is largely pro-European. However, the movement questions the present orientations of the EU and forcefully emphasizes the historical role that Europe should play both within Europe and in the rest of the world. A whole series of alternatives have been presented to a capitalist Europe: the establishment of a social Europe would not be an appendage, but rather a foundation consisting of the maintenance of public services and a guaranteed right to employment and to a decent retirement, through the reinforcement of social security and the establishment of a guaranteed minimum, to be achieved by ratification by member states of the European Convention on Human Rights and the Conventions of the International Labour Organization, and also by democratization of European institutions. By using EU institutions, events or policies in order to bring forward specific concerns, the European anti-globalization movement has been favouring and accompanying the growth of a European public space. While exploiting the new opportunity structures provided at the European level, anti-globalization organizations have also simultaneously been elaborating a specific European discourse, sustained by increasingly diversified strategies, ranging from street mobilization, through media exposure, to lobbying and public relations. The various strategies, actions and events implemented and organized by the European anti-globalization movement have renewed the old repertoire traditionally used by social movements at the European level, such as corporatist cooperation, and favoured the emergence and media visibility of new stakes and issues, thus directly influencing the official EU agenda. There have been some attempts at the EU institutional level to marginalize these movements, but it has gradually become obvious that EU officials can no longer ignore these movements, which express the desire of some civil society organizations to take part in the debates on the development of Europe and on European policies. While the question of their formal inclusion in the decision-making processes remains open, it is clear that these strategies and claims have strong implications for the future development of the movement itself: by asserting their will to be considered legitimate actors in the European public space, anti-globalization organizations are indeed taking the risk of entering the political game, from which they had hitherto been trying to distance themselves. Notes 1 There are two types of demonstrations that can be linked with European institutional events: those that occur during closing summits for European presidencies (such as the summit of Brussels/Laeken in December 2001), and those that occur during intermediary summits that happen midway through a presidential term (such as the summit of Lie`ge in September 2001 and the summit of Barcelona in March 2002).
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2 Interview with Riccardo Petrella, in charge of the ESF for Belgium, 13 November 2003, website of Libe´ration, http://www.liberation.com (accessed 25 August 2004). 3 For instance, the ETUC is part of the steering committees of the European Social Forums. 4 For instance, among the eleven main themes of struggle that are currently listed by Globalise Resistance, none deals directly with Europe; the same is true of the nine thematic campaigns led by Oxfam. 5 This was notably the case of the demonstration organized in April 2003 in Athens, during the summit on the enlargement of the European Union. 6 There are numerous indications of this, for example their insistence on asking the European Council of Ministers to be more active at the international level, concerning for instance the Kyoto protocol or the international conferences on racism or the Third World. 7 The Autumn University of ATTAC took place at Lie`ge University, 27–9 September 2002. 8 Dominique Mourlane, meeting of the board of directors of ATTAC France, 4 May 2004. http://www.france.attac.org (accessed 5 September 2004). 9 Les Autres Voix de la Plane`te, ‘La Mondialisation face aux mobilisations’, September 2001, 14: 12. 10 The processions of alter-globalization groups at demonstrations are often quite spectacular: cars transformed into floats; a gigantic globe pushed by activists. This way of demonstrating serves effectively to convey political messages and to produce media-friendly images that will hopefully make the front page. 11 For instance, for the year 2003, fourteen ‘important’ dates were listed on ATTAC’s website, of which only two concerned European summits (Rome in December, Thessalonika in June), two others concerning campaigns carried on at the European level (the mobilization for the GATS-AGCS campaign in March in Brussels in order to stop the liberalization of services, and the forum ‘For Another Health’ in February in Paris), and finally, the European Social Forum in November in Saint-Denis. The other dates concerned the Asian Social Forum, the WSF in Brazil, Davos demonstrations against the G-8, the WTO meeting in Cancun, etc. See http://www.attac.org (accessed 25 August 2004) 12 This was, for example, the case of the European Social Forum which was held in Florence in November 2002. 13 What is designated as Europe is indeed more often the European continent rather than the European Union itself. 14 The first was held in Florence in November 2002, the second in Saint-Denis in November 2003, and the third in London in October 2004. 15 This was, for example, the case during the European Citizens’ Conference which was held in Lie`ge on 21–3 September 2001, and brought together the main European trade unions and anti-globalization movements. 16 In Lie`ge in September 2001 for example, at the Congre`s Europe´en Citoyen organized by ATTAC, seven MEPs were key-note speakers along with five French and Belgian parliamentarians. Of course, there were also many other European officials and members of the French and Belgian political classes who attended the event but did not speak. 17 Though in this specific case this may admittedly have been due to purely political reasons rather than because they thought anti-globalization movements were correct in their claims: during the ECOFIN summit held in Lie`ge in September 2001, under the pressure of anti-globalization activists, the ministers briefly considered the possibility of creating such a tax before rejecting it as unworkable. Following this setback, some branches of ATTAC decided to transfer the struggle to the national level; this strategy finally proved successful in Belgium, where
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the parliament passed a law introducing a 0.02 per cent tax on foreign exchange transactions in June 2004. Generally speaking, the term ‘Tobin Tax’ refers to the creation of taxes on cross-border currency transactions; the revenue raised thereby would be allocated to global priorities, such as environmental and human needs. For more information on the question, see James Tobin (1978) ‘A proposal for International Monetary Reform’, Eastern Economic Journal, July/ October, 4(3–4): 153–9. Accessible at http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cp/p04b/ p0495.pdf (accessed 8 November 2004). Unlike the more structured union discourses, anti-globalization slogans were for several years limited to ‘For Another Europe’, ‘Europe, Tobin Now’, or ‘Against a Europe of Capital’. Current discourse is much more articulate, as shown by the example of the draft constitutional treaty, which has given rise to a detailed and meticulous deconstruction; this was particularly obvious in the ‘Call to the European Peoples’ issued at the end of the European Social Forum of Saint-Denis in November 2003, which denounced competition rules. For instance, during her speech at the Autumn University of ATTAC in 2002, Corinne Gobin deplored the disappearance of the notion of right to employment reduced to the right to work, and the absence of the right to a minimum income, retirement or housing. A. C. Robert, ‘Une Charte cache-mise`re’, in Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2000. Published on 10 May 2004, it is available at http://www.france.attac.org/a2730 (accessed 5 September 2004). Autumn University, ATTAC Belgium, September 2002. ‘Producing the idea of governance when it wants to be perceived as scientific, and the idea of participatory democracy when it wants to be perceived as popular’, according to Corinne Gobin, during the European Citizens’ Congress in Lie`ge in September 2001. Rouge, 7 November 2002, 1991: 4. Pierre Cours-Salles, ‘Vers une Europe de´mocratique’,Politique, Revue Europe´enne de De´bats, May 2001, 2: 16. ‘Apre`s les e´lections du 13 juin, L’ide´e d’Europe discre´dite´e par les ne´olibe´raux’, statement of the board of directors of ATTAC France, 21 June 2004. During conferences and forums, movement leaders and political personalities are likely to intervene in plenary sessions and act as chairs and discussants in the others. The existence and activities of their local branches show the contrary. For instance, the difference between poor- and high-quality newspapers, or between newspapers and television. Journals and newspapers are often organized on a linguistic basis: for example, Politique, Revue Europe´enne de De´bats, is distributed in France, Switzerland and Belgium. Our observations indeed show that it is trade unionists rather than anti-globalization protesters who are invited to discussions with officials, for example after a European summit. See in particular the heading ‘Ideas’ on the Reclaim the Streets website: http:// www.reclaimthestreets.net/ (accessed 27 August 2004). ‘Cuore d’Europa’, Social Press, 3 November 2002: 1. Interview with Olivier Besancenot, Rouge, 7 November 2002, 1991: 8. In ‘Les listes ‘‘100% altermondialistes’’ veulent en finir avec la politique par de´faut!’, see the organization’s website: http://www.alternateurope.org/ (accessed 6 September 2004). Grain de Sable, 19 November 2002.
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The European Union as a Community of Values Liana Giorgi, Niki Rodousakis, Marisol Garcia and Martin Peterson
The debate regarding the start of negotiations with Turkey on EU accession in the second half of 2004 has fuelled the discussion on the distinctiveness of European values, and, more importantly, the extent to which the European Union comprises or should comprise a community of values in cultural terms. In fact, this is a discussion that has been going on for some time, albeit at variable intensity and not always in the public arena. The recent rejections of the EU Constitutional Treaty in France and the Netherlands is, however, likely to once again revive this debate in a significant way. This chapter traces the debate on the European Union as a community of values, and attempts to pinpoint the key narratives that underlie it. Our main argument is that there are three distinct narratives on the European Union as a community of values, and that the ultimate choice for one or the other narrative or, more realistically, their combination, will determine both the character and scope of European political integration as well as the disposition of the European public sphere. The first narrative links European values with democratic principles and the respect of human rights. Insofar as both democratic principles and human rights are universal, there is at first sight nothing unique about European values. Rather, what is distinctive about the European Union is that it represents the first modern non-nationalist project of political integration based on the recognition of cultural diversities in interaction. The project of political integration nevertheless raises questions about the Union’s institutional framework and how democratic rules and values are to be interpreted procedurally. These questions were exemplified by the debate on the ‘sanctions’ against Austria imposed in 2000, which is reviewed in the first section of this chapter. The second narrative that emerged to complement the first seeks the enlargement of the scope of European values to include social values and, more specifically, the commitment of EU policy to employment, a social market economy and the welfare state. This narrative seeks the consolidation of this European ‘social model’ as the source of solidarity among European peoples and also as a safeguard against neo-liberal market capitalism. The Convention on the future of the European Union that drafted
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the Constitutional Treaty demonstrated how there is principal agreement on the necessity to underpin the process of political integration through the strengthening of social rights. However, how the supra-national level of governance should intervene in the social policy field remains a contested and problematic field, as shown by the formulation and implementation of the European Employment Strategy. This is the subject of the second section of this chapter. Finally, the third narrative attaches a cultural dimension to European values and considers that a successful EU political integration depends on the emergence of a shared European identity. For those adopting a cosmopolitan viewpoint, such a European identity, even if rooted in cultural and religious traditions, explicitly transcends nationalist aspirations and centres on membership in a political community. However, many of those who strive towards a European identity are suspicious of this cosmopolitan viewpoint and consider it important to pursue courses of action whereby a ‘European’ sense of belonging can be created. This third narrative is both old and new. A wide range of the most influential writers and social philosophers of about a century ago, such as Herman Broch and Robert Musil, as well as Gyo¨rgy Luka´cs (in a Marxist fashion) called for a firmer rooting of politics in cultural and religious heritage, albeit as explicit articulations for societal cogency and against violent and rigid nationalisms. The opposite is the case of contemporary calls for greater cultural and religious homogeneity that are associated with the extreme right wing and are formulated in the dangerous language of Huntington’s ‘clash of civilizations’. At the political level such debates ultimately raise questions about the external borders of the Union, but also about the boundaries of European citizenship. The third section of this chapter analyses this narrative from the perspective of cultural policy, migration and multiculturalism.
European values in democracy and the problem of sovereignty In his address to the European Parliament entitled ‘About European identity’ in March 1994, Vaclav Havel proclaimed that the Union was based on the values of modern democracy, the rule of law and civil society.1 A ‘Reflection Group’ set up in the same year to prepare the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference elaborated this definition and asserted that European values include democratic values, respect for human rights, equality between men and women, non-discrimination on grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation, age or disability, and condemnation of racism and xenophobia. The Reflection Group called for the Union to protect and promote these values as the basis of ‘our’ democracies and security and as ‘present in the feeling of belonging in the citizens’. In addition, the Group recommended that the Treaty of Amsterdam include an explicit obligation of member states ‘to respect human rights and fundamental freedoms’, with non-compliance providing grounds for Union intervention: ‘penalties could
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go as far as suspension of the rights inherent in membership in the case of any state which commits a serious and repeated breach of fundamental human rights or basic democratic principles’.2 According to Petite (1998), this recommendation was judged necessary in view of the process of accession to Union membership by Central and East European countries that did not have a long democratic tradition. The accession of Portugal, Spain and Greece to the European Union in the 1970s was accompanied by similar discussions. All three countries had only recently emerged from periods of military-authoritarian rule and displayed no solid political democratic culture. There was concern that this could endanger the democratic character of the Union. Accordingly, the ‘Declaration on Democracy’, agreed to at the Copenhagen European Council in April 1978,3 confirmed the commitment of the Union to ‘a political system of pluralist democracy’ to guarantee the constitutional organization of power, the free expression of opinion and the protection of human rights. These so-called ‘Copenhagen criteria’ achieved the status of constitutional legal principles in the Single European Act of 1986 and came to guide subsequent enlargements. The Treaty of Amsterdam of 1997 introduced Article 6 making compliance with the ‘principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law’ a prerequisite for states wanting to join the Union. Furthermore, a constitutional procedure to confront a member state that had reverted to nondemocratic rule was established in Article 7. Article 7 provided the Union with the possibility of taking ‘suitable action’ against a member state committing a ‘serious and repeated breach of fundamental human rights or basic democratic principles’. Under Article 7(1) of the Amsterdam Treaty, the European Council, acting by unanimity and after ‘inviting the government of the Member State in question to submit its observations’, can determine that a serious and persistent breach by a member state of principles mentioned in Article 6(1) exists. If such a claim is put forward by either one third of the member states or by the Commission, the Council, acting by qualified majority, may decide to suspend certain of the rights deriving from the application of this Treaty to the Member State in question, including the voting rights of the representative of the government of that Member State in the Council.
Back in 1997 probably no one thought it possible that Article 7 would become relevant with regard to an existing EU member state. The entry into government of the far right-wing populist Freedom Party (FPOE) in Austria in 2000 was perceived by many at the time as one such case in which Article 7 ought to be invoked. Nevertheless, the approach chosen by the EU-14 was not to call for the application of Article 7 of the Amsterdam
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Treaty but, instead, to impose a moratorium on bilateral contacts at political level with representatives of the Austrian government. The decision not to follow the route prescribed by the Treaty but instead opt for symbolic sanctions had probably to do with the fact that the EU-14, while keen to signal their moral opposition to the strengthening of the extreme right wing across Europe, were at the same time aware of the fact that the application of Article 7 to Austria would probably raise serious problems of a constitutional character, given that the FPOE was a legally established party and represented in the Austrian parliament. Furthermore, the ‘sanctions’ were declared prior to the official formation of the new Austrian government and were obviously meant to deter the latter, a move which, however, also implied that the observations of the government of the member state could not be heard as determined in Art. 7(1). The sanctions failed in their objective of deterring the formation of a new government in Austria which included the FPOE. An intense debate regarding the legality and legitimacy of these measures followed in the subsequent months. This, among other things, resulted in the revision of Article 7 of the Treaty of the European Union (TEU). According to the three ‘Wise Men’4 called upon to evaluate the Austrian government’s record of human and minority rights as well as the ‘political character’ of the FPOE, Article 7 had to be revised to ensure ‘that a situation similar to . . . Austria would be dealt with within the EU from the very start’ (Ahtisaari et al. 2000: 34). In other words, in the future, no action ought to be taken outside the institutional and legal framework established by the Treaties. Article 7 as revised in Nice now states: On a reasoned proposal by one third of the Member States, by the European Parliament or by the Commission, the Council, acting by a majority of four-fifths of its members after obtaining the assent of the European Parliament, may determine that there is a clear risk of a serious breach by a Member State of principles mentioned in Article 6(1), and address appropriate recommendations to that State. Before making such a determination, the Council shall hear the Member State in question, and acting in accordance with the same procedure, may call on independent persons to submit within a reasonable time limit a report on the situation in the Member State in question. (Article 7 TEU, Nice) Comparing the new version of Article 7 in the Nice Treaty with its earlier version in the Amsterdam Treaty, the following can be noted: (1) Under the revised formulation of Article 7, the action to be taken against a member state found in breach of the principles of Article 6(1) is no longer explicitly defined. There is talk about ‘appropriate recommendations’ but no explicit reference to the suspension of rights as a possible outcome. (2) Article 7
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reiterates the requirement that the member state in question is heard in advance of any action taken, but it is noteworthy that the former explicit reference to the government of the member state has been dropped – probably because in a transition situation from one to another government, the holder of a government position is not obvious. (3) The procedure whereby any recommendations to a state found in breach of the principles of Article 6(1) can be made is better defined and there is now explicit reference to the European Parliament. The European Parliament may bring forward concerns regarding Article 6(1) but it must also assent to any decisions taken by the Council which furthermore must now be approved by a four-fifths majority – a stricter rule than the qualified majority rule. (4) Finally, Article 7 now formally foresees a monitoring or evaluation procedure like that used for Austria with the Wise Men committee. The revisions to Article 7 were agreed upon after considering expert advice, the recommendations of the European Parliament and the European Commission, as well as proposals by member states. Belgium and, especially, Austria were active in putting forward proposals. As in any treaty text, the revised text for Article 7 represents a compromise among different interests, and it remains unclear whether this revised Article provides a useful basis for addressing possible breaches of Article 6(1) in the future. The fact that it was not applied to Denmark or Italy, despite coalition governments in both these countries that included extreme right-wing parties, is evidence of the fact that the entry of an extreme right-wing party into government per se is not considered a justifiable reason for enacting the procedures there foreseen. This said, the process of revising Article 7 demonstrated the necessity of enhancing the ex-post procedures outlined therein through the incorporation of an ex-ante early warning mechanism. The recent work of the European Parliament to monitor the situation of the media in Italy (Parliamentary Assembly 2004), but also the recommendation of the Strauss-Kahn round table ‘Construire L’Europe Politique’ to establish a permanent observatory of European democratic institutions (European Communities 2004b) points in this direction. It is useful to remember that what a treaty specifies represents policy but not politics. In addition to giving rise to policy revisions, the events in Austria provided an important impetus to the debate on ‘European values’. According to Toggenburg (2003), they immersed the European Union in a debate on ways to control the observance of its values and, perhaps more importantly, the Union’s constitutional identity. Two types of argument were made in this connection: legal arguments were advanced to argue against the ‘sanctions’; legitimacy arguments were made in favour of the ‘sanctions’. Both lines of argumentation were echoed widely in the European press and used democratic values as their main reference point. We summarize the two lines of argumentation briefly below. For the opponents of the ‘sanctions’, the point of reference was European and international law. It was argued that the FPOE was a legitimate
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democratic party that had not been prohibited by the judiciary from participating in the election. According to Winkler (2000), the FPOE’s government participation was in compliance with Austrian constitutional law and international contract law as well as European law.5 Attempting to prevent Austria from selecting its own government was perceived as an encroachment on the country’s sovereignty and an interference in Austrian domestic affairs. In its ‘Action Programme for the Lifting of Sanctions’, the new Austrian government argued that it was the fundamental right of each democracy to decide freely which parties its citizens can vote for and which of these parties should form a government. Winkler argues that the rights and obligations derived from EU membership preclude agreements on bilateral sanctions by member states against each other. In accordance with Title I, Article 1 TEU, the principles of consistency and solidarity are to guide the relations between the member states and between their peoples. Accordingly, the assumption that the OEVP-FPOE coalition government could potentially violate Article 6(1) TEU principles in the future did not provide a legal ground for launching a diplomatic boycott against the Austrian government to prevent an anticipated violation of an ‘undefined new European values order’ (ibid.: 26).6 Hummer (in Hummer and Pelinka 2002) further notes that the principle mistake made by the EU-14 was that the measures were exclusively aimed at preventing an OEVP-FPOE government from forming, and did therefore not involve an exit strategy in case such a government was indeed formed. Like those opposing the ‘sanctions’, their proponents also appealed to ‘democratic values’, declaring that the FPOE posed a threat to the principles laid out in Article 6 TEU, in particular to the principle of human rights. Since the EU is a ‘community of shared values’, the other member states were obliged to send a clear signal demonstrating that racism, xenophobia and the FPOE’s ambivalent attitude to Austria’s National Socialist past were unacceptable in contemporary Europe. The measures were heralded as a milestone in the development of the EU, and regarded as an expression of a Union that had moved beyond economic and monetary integration towards deeper political and moral ties. As the EU was perceived as a ‘self-contained regime’ supported by a common values platform (Hummer and Pelinka 2002: 54), interventions in the internal affairs of other member states were thought both permissible and necessary in order to safeguard a specific human rights standard. The increase of racism and xenophobia is the biggest human rights problem within the EU today. ‘Sanctions’ supporters argued that had the EU-14 not responded to the Freedom Party’s entry into a member state government, it would have signalled that this problematic development was tolerated, i.e. that a blind eye was being turned toward the establishment of governments with parties that endorse racism and xenophobia. The EU-14 consequently assumed a guardian role, despite the fact that the government had been formed legitimately. According to Pelinka (in Hummer and Pelinka 2002), the ‘sanctions’
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signalled an extension of the empirically defined concept of democracy based on competition and majority rule to include a normative understanding of democracy as including the defence of fundamental rights. According to Moı¨si,7 even if illegal in strict terms, the EU-14 ‘sanctions’ signalled the existence of a moral constitution underpinning the EU that was for the first time verbalized as such. Echoing a similar attitude, Karlhofer et al. (2001: 169) maintained that a ‘community of values is not constituted through declarations and affirmations, but materializes through shared situations, considerations and joint actions’. In December 2000, at the Nice European Council, some ten months after the proclamation of the ‘sanctions’ against Austria and three months after their lifting, the Charter of Fundamental Rights was signed. Even though there was no direct link between the Charter and the EU-14 ‘sanctions’ – the drafting of the Charter was initiated in June 1999 at the Cologne European Council8 – the timing of its declaration was nevertheless significant. The Charter comprises six chapters and fifty-four articles – together they distil the whole range of political, civil, social and economic rights of European citizens and offer a ‘more precise definition of the [EU’s] common values’.9 As pointed out by Eriksen (2002),10 the recognition of the concept of fundamental rights had already been enshrined in Article 6(2) of the Amsterdam Treaty; however, the Charter provided a reference document that, once incorporated in the TEU, was expected to contribute to overcoming the real-existing ambiguity across member states in terms of content, implementation and levels of enforcement of human rights. This is evidenced by, among other things, the fact that the Wise Men’s report on Austria was the first official report to refer to the Charter of Fundamental Rights, though it had not yet been officially proclaimed at the time.11 The Charter of Fundamental Rights could be said to represent the ‘moral constitution’ of the European Union that had been called for by various political figures during the ‘sanctions’ debate. Nevertheless, the debate on the legality vs the legitimacy of the ‘sanctions’ exemplifies how the debate on the European Union as a community of values does not stop with the definition of what constitutes European values, but has also to do with the political and institutional framework of the Union. Establishing that the EU as a community of values entails respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms is by itself no guarantee that EU politics are also democratic politics. It is equally important to clarify what is to be done in case of violations and at what level relevant actions have to or can be taken. Insofar as the European Union is concerned, this implies specifying how sovereignty is to be shared between national and supra-national institutions. This remains unclear in Article 7 and also – for that matter – in the Constitutional Treaty. A similar point regarding the division of competencies can be made with reference to the realization of European values as social values, the subject matter of the next section of this chapter.
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European values as social values and the question of competence level Europeans are known to have a ‘comparatively low threshold of tolerance towards social exclusion at home’ (Habermas 2001: 21). This is the result of a history of public social welfare implemented with different variants in national societies within Europe. Europe is, of course, not homogeneous and, therefore, any simple generalizations are likely to be short-sighted (Esping-Andersen and Regini 2000: 336). However, the reference to a European social model is not without reason and indicates that Europeans share common values concerning social and economic organization. Even prior to the official start of the European social agenda in Lisbon 2000, European member states had worked together towards the adoption of secondary labour legislation. In 1974 the First Action Programme led to the adoption of several directives in the areas of equal treatment between men and women, labour law and working conditions, as well as health and safety. By the end of the 1970s, several directives in the field of workers’ collective rights had been adopted (Leibfried and Pierson 1995). Gradually, social partners have come to play a greater role in the European social agenda in accordance with the subsidiarity principle (Vaughan-Whitehead 2003: 5). Successive EU enlargement waves have always been regarded as a potential threat to European values, also in the field of welfare. The original European Community was seen as a space characterized by market competition combined with strong social welfare. The accession of the Southern European countries was accompanied by fears regarding migration tides to the north. These fears were allayed, and the enlarged European Community proved a blessing for both the new and the old member states. The later accession of Sweden, Finland and Austria in the mid-1990s was perceived as strengthening the strong economic growth/strong welfare approach of the European Union. Things began to change towards the end of the 1990s, and this coincided with the onset of eastern enlargement. In the context of slow economic growth and stagnating labour market demand, eastern enlargement challenged the endurance of the European social model and raised questions regarding the latter’s sustainability (Prats-Monne´ 2003). The rejection of the European Constitutional Treaty by French voters in May 2005 was to a great part due to these fears and concerns that any further deepening of the Union at the political level would endanger social rights at the national level. The development of the European social agenda is best exemplified by the evolution of the European Employment Strategy. The European Employment Strategy exemplifies the problems entailed in the formulation and implementation of an effective social policy in a context of national variation and the domination of economic goals. The latter undermine the ambitious goals set up by the European Convention established to draft the Constitutional Treaty. In other words, we can observe a divergence at the EU
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level between the high-level goals and intentions as enshrined first in the Amsterdam Treaty and subsequently, in an elaborated form, in the Constitutional Treaty, and the specific policies implemented to achieve these goals. In order to exemplify this divergence we begin with a brief discussion of the Working Group ‘Social Europe’ of the European Convention prior to addressing the problems entailed in the implementation of the European Employment Strategy. A ‘Social Europe’ for the European Constitution? The Charter of Fundamental Rights reviewed in the previous section presented the first formal attempt by political representatives to formulate Europe’s shared values. As exemplified by the ‘sanctions’ debate on Austria, the listing of the values and principles underpinning the Union does not suffice on its own, to establish a framework for democratic politics, especially with regard to how sovereignty is to be shared and competencies allocated between different levels of government. In recognition of this, the Laeken European Council mandated the organization of a Convention to discuss the future of the European Union and its constitutional basis in December 2002 (European Convention 2003). The Convention’s proceedings ultimately led to the drafting of a treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe, which was accepted by the European Council in Brussels on 17–18 June 2004. Article 2 states that the Union is ‘founded on the values of respect for human dignity, liberty, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights’. The Article further maintains that ‘these values are common to the Member States in a society of pluralism, tolerance, justice, solidarity and non-discrimination’. Hence what was referred to more vaguely in Article 6 TEU (which Article 2 of the Constitution is derived from) as the Union’s ‘principles’ has now been replaced with the term ‘values’, a term that is more powerful and implies that the rights set out in Article 2 are inherent. ‘Values’ are also referred to in Article 3 (the Union’s objectives), the Union’s aim being to ‘promote peace, its values and the well-being of its peoples’ (Article 3, para. 1) and, in its relations with the wider world, to ‘uphold and promote its values and interests’ (Article 3, para. 4). Values are also mentioned in Title VI on the democratic life of the Union and in other provisions establishing specific objectives. Moreover, the Charter of Fundamental Rights is incorporated into the Constitutional Treaty, thus making it legally binding. In this section we are particularly interested in the workings of the Working Group XI ‘Social Europe’ which brought about the inclusion of social values in the Constitutional Treaty. The new Group’s mandate was formulated in a set of seven questions as a call to specify: (1) the social values to be included in Article 2; (2) the social objectives to be included in Article 3; (3) the Union’s competencies in the social field; (4) the role of the open method of coordination; (5) the relationship between the coordination
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of economic and social policies; (6) the scope for the co-decision and qualified-majority voting procedure in the social field; and (7) the role of social partners in policy formulation (European Convention CONV300/0212). Of all the eleven working groups formed, the Working Group on Social Europe was the largest in membership terms, comprising a total of thirty-two full members, thirty-one alternates and seven observers. The contributions made to the meetings were provided in forty-four working documents, altogether amounting to around 500 pages. The analysis of this material provides insight into the social values dimension of the European Union and the institutional framework for their implementation:13 Social values as basic values. The majority of the Convention members contributing to the Working Group ‘Social Europe’ were of the opinion that social values comprised basic values and as such should be referred to in the Constitutional Treaty. Such values included solidarity, equality and social justice. Social objectives. The main debate in this respect concerned the explicit reference to ‘full employment’ as a social objective. The division was an ideological one, with left-leaning politicians being much more likely to opt for ‘full employment’ as a social objective than right-leaning politicians (eight out of ten as compared to two out of ten). The final text of the Constitutional Treaty refers to ‘full employment’ only once and not in Article 3 on ‘social objectives’. The latter refers instead to a ‘high level of employment’. EU competencies in the social field. The majority of the Working Group members – nine out of ten – were against any extension of the Community’s competencies in the field of social protection. In this regard, the Union’s legitimate area of activity was thought best limited to crossborder situations in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity. The open method of coordination. There was a general agreement that the open method of coordination was a useful complementary mode for coordinating policies which are not at the core of the legislative activity of the Union (see also next section). However, most members of the Working Group were keen to underline the non-legislative, non-binding and hence flexible character of the OMC, as a kind of institutional predecision mechanism of deliberation that should help gradual harmonization through learning, the exchange of information and benchmarking. Thus the OMC was judged most useful for agreeing on values, targets and indicators rather than on specific policy measures. Coordination of social and economic policies. In principle, all members of the Working Group agreed that economic and social policies should be coordinated in a better way. The key difference was between those who called for a strong coordination between social and economic micro- and macro-economic policies towards a social market economy and those who instead were in favour of weaker forms of coordination.
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Decision procedures. The majority of the contributors to the Working Group Social Europe thought it advisable to extend the co-decision and qualified-majority-voting (QMV) procedure to those areas of social policy (like rights of migrant workers) which are currently regulated by unanimity. However, very few members of the Working Group spoke in favour of extending the competencies of the Community in other social policy fields. Role of social partners. There was overall approval of the social dialogue and its explicit mention in the Constitution; however, there were also concerns regarding the scope (i.e. the areas it should apply to), legal basis and representativeness of social partner organizations. The recommendations of the members of the Working Group Social Europe were taken up with minor revisions in the Draft Constitutional Treaty and eventually in the final version agreed upon by heads of state in June 2004. This is an important point against the background of the ongoing debate with regard to the social dimension of the European Union, following the rejection of the Treaty by French and Dutch voters in May and June 2005 respectively. The working group was successful in enshrining social values and social objectives in the introductory articles of the Treaty. However, it did not go much further. Neither did it uphold ‘full employment’ as a Community objective, nor could consensus be reached with regard to a closer coordination between economic and social policies at the macro-level, a key prerequisite for more active state involvement in the stimulation of the labour market. Members of the Working Group were equally reserved about proposing an extension of the EU competencies in the social field. The open method of coordination remains the principal approach for the European social agenda despite the reservations expressed; and social partners are recognized as key stakeholders, albeit primarily in a consultative function. The establishment and conclusions of the Working Group Social Europe represent at best the onset of a long-term discussion. Expanding the European social agenda would at this point involve a more important debate about the division of competencies between EU supra-national institutions and the national level, as well as the relation between economic and social policies: two discussions that national political representatives were for the most part not prepared to pursue as of yet. However, that such discussions are important in order to materialize the ambitious objectives of making Europe the most dynamic knowledge-based economy with a high level of employment, is shown by the weak overall performance of the European Employment Strategy. This is reviewed below. The European Employment Strategy14 The European Employment Strategy (EES) was established in anticipation of European Monetary Union and as a strategy for dealing with the diversity
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of national labour market regulations and the diverse standards of social welfare and re-distribution existing among member states. The EES was not the first attempt at coordinating labour market policies. The Community Charter of Basic Social Rights adopted in 1989 by eleven of the then twelve member states (excluding the United Kingdom) represented the first major step in this direction: the Charter established fundamental rights of workers, including freedom of movement, an annual period of paid holiday, a weekly rest period and minimum social protection; however, it failed to take significant steps beyond those of removing barriers to labour mobility (Hantrais 2000: 228–37). Social objectives were enshrined in Article 136 of the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty and sought to promote employment, improve living and working conditions, ensure proper social protection, encourage dialogue between management and labour, and further the development of human resources. According to the Amsterdam Treaty, the measures to be implemented to achieve these objectives were to take account of national practices. This was the beginning of the so-called ‘convergence strategy’ which aimed at setting ‘common objectives able to guide member states’ policies’ in order to permit the co-existence of different national systems and to enable them to progress in harmony with one another towards the fundamental objectives of the Community. Moreover, the Commission’s social action programme for 1998–2000 referred to the convergence of employment policies as a complement to the convergence process leading to the European Monetary Union (EMU). In terms of contents, the policies favoured were those of activation: moving persons off benefits and into work and establishing work incentives. The incorporation of the Employment Chapter into the Amsterdam Treaty formally created the European Employment Strategy (EES). Some months later in the same year, the first set of employment guidelines were agreed upon in Luxembourg, giving rise to what came to be referred to as the Luxembourg process for some time thereafter. The European Employment Pact (EEP) aims to establish a macro-economic dialogue involving all actors responsible for wage negotiations and monetary, budgetary and fiscal policies in order to mainstream employment issues through all Community policies. The Extraordinary European Council of Lisbon set out the objective to reach an overall employment rate of 70 per cent and a 60 per cent employment rate among women by the year 2010. The Social Agenda for the 2000–5 period was adopted during the Nice Summit in December 2000 and extended the open method of coordination to the field of social inclusion. At the Spring European Council Meeting of 2001 held in Stockholm, mid-term objectives for the Lisbon Strategy were set up and the open method of coordination was extended to the area of pensions. Lisbon therefore also stands for the explicit consolidation of the OMC as the methodological paradigm for European social policy (European Commission, 2000, xx37, 38). The 2001 Go¨teborg European Council added an environmental
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dimension to the Lisbon Strategy with the adoption of the Sustainable Development Strategy. The employment guidelines foresee an important role for state institutions and social partners for the production of the National Action Plans on Employment. This means that the traditional national industrial relations have not been questioned. What is new about the European Employment Strategy is the extension of the dialogue to the regional and local level of government as well as to societal actors, including non-governmental organizations, albeit to a lesser extent. From a procedural perspective the EES is ‘designed to create ongoing policy dialogues that engage diverse groups and cross many traditional boundaries within governments, between national governments and social partners, among actors from different countries, and between localities, national governments, and the Union level actors and institutions’ (Trubek and Mosher 2001: 17–20). According to several authors (cf. Biagi 2000), the coordination of national employment policies through the European Employment Strategy is a spill-over effect of European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The greater degree of interdependence between member states’ economies brought about by EMU has induced member states to make a concerted effort to modernize national security systems and to coordinate their employment policies, despite the fact, or perhaps because it did not call into question the primary responsibilities of each member state to organize and finance its own system of social protection. A similar argument can be made for the procedural level. The procedures adopted in the employment and social policy spheres clearly derive from those applied to the monetary union, where one can distinguish between the ‘hard’ coordination of national fiscal policies through the Stability and Growth Pact and the ‘soft’ coordination of national economic policies through the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines. As De la Porte and Pochet (2002) point out, the concept of convergence associated with economic policy coordination, particularly its ‘hard’ aspect in the field of fiscal policy, would require member states to make significant structural institutional adaptations in a European context where no particular social policy model is hegemonic. This explains why the policy coordination scheme under the EES (and the emerging strategy in the area of social exclusion and poverty) has much more in common with the ‘soft’ side of EMU, having thus very much the characteristics of a ‘process of multilateral surveillance’ (Biagi 2000: 156) Reducing the negative effects of economic integration through social policies and especially the EES has, however, not been as easy a task as originally anticipated. The existence of important variations between national welfare states – in terms of the total level of taxation and social spending, the relative weight of various taxes and social security contributions on the revenue side, and of social transfers and social services on the expenditure side – makes harmonization very difficult and not a realistic option in the short term. One can therefore expect social solidarity policies to remain
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within national member state borders. This is one main reason for social partners and political parties opting for the open method of coordination (OMC) as a new governing mode in order to protect and promote ‘social Europe’ (Scharpf 2002: 652). The OMC focuses on reaching agreements on common objectives and common indicators. However, coordination depends on voluntary cooperation, and there are no formal sanctions against member states whose performance does not match agreed standards. From the launch of the EES in 1997 till the present, member states have elaborated annual plans for employment with the main objective of reducing unemployment. The farreaching difference in labour market structures and functioning has been portrayed as one of the main reasons why all member states have chosen to give themselves a broad margin of manoeuvre for the design and implementation of the annual plans. Thus, the OMC is designed to help member states develop their own policies, reflecting their individual national circumstances, and at the same time be aware of their specific outcomes and those of the other member states. From an optimistic perspective, this method should help define the substance of the European social model in a more precise way. In theory this should be done in an open way, involving societal actors and non-governmental organizations besides social partners and the government. Democratic legitimacy is expected to derive from national parliaments where National Action Plans (NAPs) are presented and discussed. The reality looks somewhat different, however. In most countries, national parliaments do not take an active interest in the NAPs on employment, as these represent mainly monitoring and reporting mechanisms with no obvious and direct legislative implications. The role of the European Parliament is also reduced to that of consultation. Furthermore, in many countries the elaboration and implementation of the NAPs represents a rather closed process where non-governmental actors and even social partners have little access (Garcı´a et al. 2004). It should be recalled that the social partnership corporatist model is not standard practice in all European countries. Consequently, the European Employment Strategy remains a matter of experts, thus proving that it constitutes more a top-down, rather than a bottom-up process, with a fairly weak integration in national policy structures. The high profile given to localities and regions for implementation can also have some negative consequences. One is that competition between them for resources to encourage employability increases. It is very likely that this territorialization of employment policy will work in favour of the already successful regions and cities in Europe. In large and heterogeneous countries, governments and interest groups of richer regions may not be willing to support redistributive policies in favour of the poorer ones. The other negative consequence is that in some countries managers of local councils and other local actors may not have the necessary management
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skills and ambitions to pursue comprehensive policies. This will result in fragmented initiatives with little impact on the overall employment and training outcomes.15 Trade unions also tend to regard the National Employment Plans as having little independent effect on employment creation due to their lack of ambition, and consider that the positive results obtained in the late 1990s were due to a favourable economic cycle. On the other hand, employers’ associations place the emphasis on improving evaluation and comparison mechanisms between countries so as to make better manuals of good practice. The weak performance of the European Employment Strategy in terms of both creating new jobs and coping with unemployment has to a large part been attributed to the general economic slow-down. However, there is increasing recognition that the strategy might in itself be at fault in that it concentrates almost exclusively on promoting measures at the micro- and meso-level, targeting either individuals or enterprises in the absence of structural framework initiatives with respect to education, urban regeneration or the labour market. In a recent communication proposing the revision of the Employment Guidelines (European Commission 2002), the European Commission appears to be aware of this problem. Even though some progress towards achievement of the Lisbon target is noted, the Commission points out that this is not adequate considering the increase of job insecurity under the current slow economic and employment growth rates, the challenges related to the Union’s enlargement and the ageing of society. For these reasons, the European Commission recommends closer coordination between the Employment Guidelines and the Broad Economic Policy Guidelines, and a more explicit focus on inclusion and participation. The Communication further recommends a simplification of the EES guidelines and suggests three overarching objectives, namely full employment; quality and productivity at work; and cohesion for an inclusive labour market. In comparison with the earlier four pillars of the EES – employability, entrepreneurship, adaptability and equal opportunities – the revised three overall objectives are not only simpler but also more explicitly social policy oriented. Especially the unambiguous commitment to ‘full employment’ is noteworthy. In this respect the Commission appears to take an even bolder step than the European Convention. Overall, however, the European Union is still a long way from clarifying both the policy contents and underlying institutional framework for the realization – or sustainability – of the European social model in a context of close economic and political interdependence.
The EU as a cultural community The new phase of the European integration process launched by the Maastricht Treaty called for a European citizenship as a complement to national citizenship. This EU citizenship underlined the common values
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European citizens were expected to share based on a confluence of democratic values and the recognition of cultural diversities in interaction. The foundations for this pluralist and cosmopolitan view of Europe were laid during the nineteenth century when major Eastern and Northern European writers travelled across Europe and the Mediterranean littoral. Ibsen and Strindberg wrote most of their significant works in Italy, Switzerland and France. Adam Mickiewicz wrote Pan Tadeusz in Paris, from where he also launched his influential appeals to the Polish nation. Shelley lived in Italy and Byron in Greece. Artists from all over lived in selected colonies in France and Germany where they constructed images of landscapes that constituted the basis for national identities. During the twentieth century individuals such as Arthur Koestler and Roman Polanski excelled in acting out as grand overarching Europeans. From this perspective, what defines Europe is a long-term pluralistic cultural project without any sharp or set borders with other civilizations. On the contrary, it is free to borrow from and interact with cultures emanating from the Maghreb, Latin America, the Mali-Senegalese axis, or Eastern Mediterranean regions without compromising or diminishing any established image of a European cultural dimension. From this perspective, the strength of the pluralist European cultural heritage lies in its openness to influences from surrounding civilizations.16 This pluralist and cosmopolitan interpretation of European citizenship, and by default European identity, is not the sole one or even the most influential at present. Indeed, the Union is still struggling to define its cultural identity. This is manifested on several fronts. Below we consider cultural policy as well as the discourse on migration and multiculturalism. Cultural policy between market goals, regionalism and pluralism Only a generation ago culture was equivalent to the deeper and more complex expressions of high culture as art. In many circles this selective ambition still prevails: art represents the ultimate antennae, with the aid of which new mentalities and sensibilities are revealed. However, the old division between high culture, middle culture and low culture is no longer valid. These three cultures now belong to the same stage – aptly called ‘nobrow’ (as opposed to highbrow, middlebrow and lowbrow) by the critic John Seabrook (2001) – and what previously used to be high culture has been relegated to one of many subcultures while an amalgam of public mainstream culture has assumed the role of the all-encompassing popular culture. The original meaning of ‘culture’ as something unique and strictly related to one unique language has suddenly been transformed into a transnational meaning where the unique element is institution-bound rather than language-specific. This more open, trans-national and pluralistic view of culture is accompanied by the equivalence of cultural policy with other sectors of society in terms of usefulness. In this sense the arts are primarily
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a source of employment and only secondarily the means for bolstering the spiritual approach to any kind of productive activity. In parallel with this instrumental orientation of cultural policy to economic goals, we can observe a growing interest in the regional dimension of culture. This follows the decentralized approach adopted by the Soziokultur movement in post-war Germany, and stands in opposition to the monumental, classical orientation of cultural policy observed in France in the 1960s. However, unlike the Soziokultur movement, which explicitly aimed to support alternative cultural expressions from below, the regional orientation of contemporary national cultural policies emphasizes traditions and cultural heritage. The combination of economic and regional goals in cultural policy is best exemplified in contemporary Swedish regional development policy, elaborated also in response to the increasing financial significance of European Structural Funds. The following quotation from a booklet entitled ‘Regional development strategies for VGR’ published by the authorities of Va¨stra Go¨taland Region in Sweden summarizes this position well: Cultural heritage and cultural history provide the region with identity and a separate character. . . . Strong cultural institutions can be reinforced. Culture should be part of the international marketing of the region. Strong links exist between culture and tourism as well as the development of the economy. A rich cultural life is of strategic importance to an environment that manages to attract people and businesses from around the world. With increasing competition between regions, the quality of life and life environments is becoming increasingly important. (quoted in Nilsson 2003, my translation) The EU has called the tune for this instrumental angle on culture by emphasizing its role in the renewal of the economic base. The significance of culture for employment, export and economic added value was turned into a European Union doctrine. British innovations such as creative industries, heritage industries and copyright industries were incorporated to structure the field of cultural policy, as well as into regular EU discourse (Mitchell 2003). This market focus of EU cultural policy was already established in the first Communication of the European Commission on the subject published in 1977 and entitled ‘Community action in the cultural sector’ (CEC 1977). There, the focus of action in the cultural sector was described as promoting ‘freedom of trade in cultural goods . . . harmonization in the sphere of copyright . . . conserving the architectural heritage . . . [and] promoting cultural exchanges and cooperation’. According to Forrest (1994), the invocation of economic goals to achieve cultural objectives was less an end in itself but rather represented a strategy to circumvent the legal problem of competence, considering that following the principle of subsidiarity, the Union has no major competencies in this
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field. This strategy was made explicit by Delors in his first speech as Commission President to the European Parliament in 1985: The culture industry will tomorrow be one of the biggest industries, a creator of wealth and jobs. Under the terms of the Treaty we do not have the resources to implement a cultural policy; but we are going to try to tackle it along the economic line. Some years later, in 1992, the Maastricht Treaty provided the legal basis for a deeper and more direct form of EU intervention in the cultural field. Article 128 of the TEC (re-numbered into Article 151 under the later Treaty of Amsterdam) mandates the European Community to ‘contribute to the flowering of the cultures of the Member States, while respecting their national and regional diversity and at the same time bringing the common cultural heritage to the fore’. Paragraph 4 indicates the possibility of considering the cultural dimension in all EU policies ‘in order to respect and to promote the diversity of its cultures’. Culture is here characterized as an integrative mechanism within the framework of subsidiarity, and as a means to go beyond sheer economic integration and technical harmonization. Despite this attempt to move away from the sheer instrumental view of cultural policy, the latter remains the most powerful instrument for advancing cultural objectives. The resources allocated to programmes created under Article 151 – most notably the Culture 2000 Programme and the European City of Culture events – speak for this. For instance, the financial framework for the implementation of the Culture 2000 programme in the period 2000–4 was set at 167 million euros despite repeated requests by the European Parliament during the co-decision procedure to increase it to 250 million. Around 700 projects were funded in the period 2000–3 for a total of just over 100 million euros, i.e. the average financing per project did not exceed 150,000 euros. These are small resources compared to those committed to promote the liberalization of telecommunications or regional development. Regardless of the instruments employed, a primary cultural policy goal at European level today is the creation of a shared cultural sub-stratum which is identified as European and as such helps foster the consolidation of a European identity. European integration is no longer thought of as (solely) the rational by-product of economic prosperity and legal harmonization. Rather it represents a political process, and as such entails an element of identity or belonging. It is in this latter respect that European policy-makers have also come to view European integration as a cultural process and ‘culture’ as a political instrument for furthering the construction of European identity. As Shore (2001: 109) notes, for many within the European policy community and intelligentsia, the European Union’s democratic deficit is ‘ultimately rooted in a deeper cultural deficit’. However, the very fact that the aspired European conscience should not be exclusive in view of the ‘national/cultural’ differences among member
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states is tantamount to a demand that cultural pluralism without any defined identity should prevail. The shared cultural historical heritage cannot be reduced to any framework for a cultural policy that may be expressed in instrumental needs or utilitarian measures. According to Banus (2002), European cultural policy should therefore be based on an open vision of culture as an ongoing process of dialogue, underlining the awareness of European elements as balancing both nationalism and globalization. This would foster a view of Europe as in dialogue with the rest of the world. Implicit in the above approach is the design of a European Union cultural policy, which provides a myth-and-nationalism-combating model. We are thus back to our point of departure, namely, the cosmopolitan, plural and forward-looking vision of the European Union. Yet this approach is neither the easiest to operationalize in terms of policy and the market, nor the one most likely to be accepted by European citizens. This is evidenced in the regular surfacing of doubts regarding the multicultural character of the Union in relation to migration policies. Watching over the internal borders in Fortress Europe The question regarding the existence or not of a European society is increasingly becoming synonymous with that of the EU as a homogeneous – as opposed to fragmented – cultural community. This is evidenced in the ‘unity in diversity’ approach of EU cultural policy but also, and more tellingly, in the discourse on immigration and multiculturalism. The question whether EU member states are immigration countries has been a contested issue for a long time. At various times almost all European countries have faced such debates at home, and typically the result tends to be more restrictive migration policies. Since the 1990s this appears to have been the general trend, not least as the result of harmonization attempts at EU level, and despite calls from economists and demographers that restrictive policies do not support the well-being of European societies in the long term. Legislation on the control of migratory flows has been included in the security, justice and freedom area of the EU. Inside this area the measures adopted to control migration and establish common fields have been extensively developed. At the same time, there has been all-embracing legislative activity on immigrants’ rights and anti-discrimination – mainly on the initiative of the European Commission and the European Parliament. Overall and with the exception of extreme right-wing parties like the Front National in France or the Freedom Party in Austria, a political consensus exists that immigrants legally residing in European ‘host’ societies, as well as long-standing ethnic or minority communities, should be supported with regard to social integration but also political integration – through the granting of political rights at the communal and local level or by encouraging naturalization in the short-to-medium term. The assumption underlying this approach is that
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immigrants will eventually assimilate to host societies, adopting the latter’s language, worldviews and cultural lifestyles, even if not necessarily the prevalent (Christian) religion. However, several examples known from the practice of multiculturalism (Barry 2000; Parekh 2000) reveal the shortsightedness of this model. The latest example concerns the ban of the foulard in public spaces in France. The foulard is typically worn by Muslim women and signifies membership in a Muslim community and/or affiliation with Islam. Religious symbols signify membership in religious communities that often are not established on a voluntary basis and which support attitudes and modes of behaviour that contradict human rights. Those supporting the ban argued that the foulard symbolized the oppression of women in Muslim communities in a very material way and as such had to be abolished from the public sphere. Those against the ban argued that this went against both religious freedom and the freedom of expression in addition to denoting cultural intolerance. The current crisis of values characteristic of the European political project exacerbates such conflicts, both for those belonging or considered as belonging to the majority culture and for those assuming or labelled as adopting minority collective identities. The context of restrictive migration policies and discrimination practices frames such debates and renders them confrontational. Against the background of the possible enlargement of the European Union to include Turkey, a Muslim country by majority, a European ‘clash of civilizations’ discourse is consequently not unlikely. The danger entailed by such a debate should not be underestimated. The European Union, as a project for the formation of a political community that transcends but does not negate national and other identities, cannot be sustained by an exclusive definition of European identity in either religious or cultural terms.
Conclusions Today, the European Union finds itself at a crossroads. It is being called on to decide where it should be heading with regard to its political make-up as a state or state-like entity, its geographical scope and new members’ eligibility, as well as its role as a global player. None of these decisions are easy or straightforward, and they are especially difficult to make in a situation of social insecurity and economic slow-down. At the turn of the century it was hoped that these principal questions could be dealt with through the drafting of a Constitutional Treaty. Recent developments suggest that this will not work out as expected. In the next months and possibly years there will be extensive discussions as to who or what was to blame for this slow-down of the European integration process and its implications in the medium-to-long term. The analysis in this chapter of the narratives underpinning the discourse on European values suggests that the answer to this question is complex, but also that the apparent
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loss of direction is both real and has been ongoing for some time. The fact that related discussions were often relegated to expert committees and concealed from the public sphere has complicated matters even more by increasing people’s sense of alienation from political institutions. There are perhaps good reasons why the debates reviewed in this chapter were kept at bay to the extent possible. None of them are easy to handle and all entail elements that could well be instrumentalized by populist politicians in order to polarize the electorate. However, a constitutionalization process is also not achievable behind closed doors. Our analysis suggests that there are three key issues that must be publicly debated in order to advance the process of EU integration: the first concerns the institutional framework of the European Union and the question of shared sovereignty and subsidiarity; the second concerns the European social agenda and the division of competencies between supra-national and national institutions as well as the relation between economic and social policies; finally, the third concerns the boundaries, or alternatively, the openness, of European identity. All three themes are interrelated and linked to the definition of the European Union as a community of values. It is not possible to foresee what answers will be given to these questions but the options are beginning to crystallize. Moreover, even if in a ‘blues’ mood – as argued by the European Commission’s press office following the French and Dutch referenda on the EU constitution – European citizens are neither oblivious nor unaffected by these discussions. This is a reasonable starting point for debating Europe as a community of values. Notes 1 Havel, V. (1994) ‘About European Identity’, speech to the European Parliament on 8 March 1994, Strasbourg. See: http://www.hrad.cz/president/Havel/speeches/ 1994/0803_uk.html 2 See http://europa.eu.int/en/agenda/igc-home/eu-doc/reflect/final.html (accessed March 2002). 3 The Declaration on Democracy of 1978 follows the Declaration on European Identity adopted at the Copenhagen Summit in December 1973, calling for ensuring that ‘the cherished values of [the member states’] legal, political and moral order are respected’ and upholding the ‘principles of representative democracy, of the rule of law, of social justice and of respect for human rights’. 4 The three personalities appointed by Luzius Wildhaber, President of the European Court of Human Rights, in July 2000 were Jochen Frowein, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law at Heidelberg; Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland; and Marcelino Oreja, President of the Institute on European Studies of the San Pablo-CEU University. 5 Winkler, G. (2000) ‘Europa Quo Vadis – Die Anatomie eines Europa¨ischen Willku¨raktes’, http://bmj.gv.at/aktuelles/download/europa_quo_vadis.pdf 6 What gives credence to those who opposed the ‘sanctions’ on legal grounds was the insistence of the ‘Wise Men’ to include paragraph 114 in their report, which stated that it was not ‘within [their] mandate to pronounce [themselves] on the lawfulness of the measures adopted by the XIV Member States’. This indicates that their conclusion would have been that the measures were indeed ‘unlawful’.
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In an interview with Jochen Frowein on 21 January 2003, he reiterated several times that he was only going to set his signature under the report if paragraph 114 was included. As quoted in PBS, ‘Austria vs Europe’, Online News Hour, A News Hour With Jim Lehrer, transcript, 24 February 2000. A sixty-two member Convention headed by former German President Roman Herzog was established at the Tampere European Council in October 1999. The Convention was made up of fifteen representatives of EU heads of state and government, one representative of the European Commission, sixteen representatives from the European Parliament and thirty members of national parliaments. The Charter was approved by the Commission, the Council and the European Parliament and proclaimed at the Nice Summit on 7 December 2000. Commission website: http://europa.eu.int/comm/justice_home/unit/charte/en Eriksen, E. O. (2002) ‘Why a Charter of Fundamental Human Rights in the EU?’, Arena Working Papers, WP 02/36, http://www.arena.uio.no/publications/ wp02_36.htm The Wise Men referred to the then new Draft Charter of Fundamental Rights in paragraphs 8, 9 and 16 of their report, pointing out certain fundamental rights standards that must be adhered to by all member states. In this case reference is made to non-discrimination (para. 8), freedom of expression (para. 9) and the prohibition of member states from extraditing or deporting individuals to countries where they could be exposed to inhuman treatment (para. 16). European Convention (2002) ‘Motions to the Praesidium according to Article 2 and Article 15 of the Working Methods’, European Convention CONV 300/02. A more detailed elaboration of the workings of the Working Group Social Europe is provided in Fo¨llesdal, Giorgi and Heuberger, ‘Envisioning European solidarity between welfare ideologies and the European social agenda’ (forthcoming). For a full analysis of the EES, see Garcı´a et al. (2004). This latter point was provided, referring to the British case, by a member of the SEI staff in the seminar presentation of this paper at the University of Sussex in April 2004. It was argued that training should be provided to local actors to begin with. These tendencies are confirmed by some notable examples. For instance, Romain Gary famously published La vie devant soi under the pseudonym Emile Ajar. Gary posed as a Maghreb-born writer twenty-six years his junior and won an impossible second Prix Goncourt. As Ajar he wrote three more acclaimed works, which have become part of the European literary heritage. Gary had crossed several Rubicons of cultural citizenships during his lifetime. Algerian writers such as Assia Djebar and Kateb Yacine are recognized as important contributors to an understanding of a new European reality, which means that they are simultaneously representing the deep cultural heritage of Maghreb and a European literary vein for which they have received European literary prizes. The impact of Asian-British writers such as most famously Rushdie, Naipaul and Kureishi, stems from their embracing British culture as their own in spite of their inter-cultural point of departure. On the other hand Nigerian writers such as Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka express in English symptomatically Nigerian syndromes and transitional conflicts which are strictly Nigerian yet universal. Maghreb writing has had similar ambitions but has intertwined roots with French literary currents and fashions. The charm of this intertextual cross-fertilization is its basic unpredictability, which is also its particular source of creativity. Assia Djebar’s award winning Nuits de Strasbourg (2000) is a good example.
7
EU accession and the public sphere in new member states The case of the Czech Republic ˇ erma´k, Michal Illner, Daniel C Toma´sˇ Kostelecky´ and Jana Stachova´1
The demise of the communist regimes in the countries of East Central Europe in 1989 and their emancipation from Soviet domination resulted in a radical geopolitical re-orientation of these countries towards the EuroAtlantic space. After the dissolution of the military and economic instruments of Soviet rule, namely the Warsaw Pact and Comecon, these countries sought integration into West European and Atlantic structures with the ultimate aim of becoming members of NATO and the European Union. Both memberships had a strategic value and were additionally endowed with a large symbolic importance, namely as representing a confirmation of the European identity of East Central Europe. Of these two goals, NATO membership was the easier one to attain. With the exception of Slovakia which followed later, the East Central European countries were invited to start accession negotiations in 1997 and became NATO members in 1999. The strategic and security considerations sped up the procedure. The road towards membership of the European Communities was both longer and more demanding. The East Central European countries were offered association status in 1991 – the aim was to create a framework for a mutual political dialogue with the European Community on the conditions for the development of a free trade area and for cooperation in the economic, cultural and social spheres. The breakthrough came in June 1993, when the Copenhagen European Council declared that ‘the countries in Central and Eastern Europe that so desire shall become members of the Union. Accession will take place as soon as the countries are able to assume the obligations of membership by satisfying the economic and political conditions.’ After nearly ten years of gradual adaptations to the accession criteria and negotiations about the concrete conditions of the accession, East Central European countries together with the three Baltic states, Malta and the Republic of Cyprus, became EU members in 2004. In most countries the accession materialized only after referenda showed a majority of the national populations in favour of EU membership. The interval separating the start of the accession talks and the accession itself was characterized by hectic, mainly governmental, activity in all East
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Central European candidate countries, aiming to implement the acquis as well as render the accession project legitimate in the eyes of the citizens. Although EU membership was a project driven primarily by the political elites, it could not succeed without being legitimized by the consent and at least passive support of the general public. The results of the referenda that took place in 2003 were overwhelmingly positive: 77 per cent of votes were cast in favour of accession in the Czech Republic and in Poland; 84 per cent in Hungary; and 93 per cent in Slovakia. The turnout was, however, not as overwhelming: this was highest in Poland with 59 per cent, and lowest in Hungary with 46 per cent; in the Czech Republic turnout was 55 per cent; in Slovakia it amounted to 52 per cent. This low voter turnout corresponds to the figures for voter participation in national elections in several countries, and particularly to the turnout in European elections in most EU member states. Rejection of EU membership was not always or even primarily the main reason for abstention from voting in the EU referenda. Nevertheless, it does suggest an absence of enthusiasm about the project of European integration, especially when it occurs in such large numbers. The main argument of this chapter is that there is indeed an ambivalence vis-a`-vis the European Union in East Central European countries, and that when assessing the referenda results, and also subsequent debates, it is important to recall that a positive attitude towards EU membership does not necessarily imply acceptance of all aspects of the EU integration project, above all, its political aspects. This chapter concentrates on one of the new East Central European member states, namely the Czech Republic. Following the ‘Velvet Revolution’, in November 1989, the Czech Republic was transformed into a political democracy guaranteeing its citizens all standard political rights and liberties, including freedom of speech and opinion, the right of association and the right to obtain information. A multi-party political system was established and elections to the representative political institutions have since been held regularly. A plurality of free media, both electronic and print, public and private, emerged. The Association Agreement (later known as the European Agreement) between the European Communities and Czechoslovakia was signed in December 1991. Following the partition of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic at the end of 1992, the first government of the Czech Republic confirmed that membership of the EU was the primary goal of the country. Consequently, the European Treaty with the Czech Republic was signed in October 1993 and the country applied for EU membership in January 1996. An evaluation carried out by the European Commission in 1997 within the framework of Agenda 2000 confirmed the Czech Republic’s eligibility and provided recommendations for further reforms towards the alignment of Czech institutional arrangements to EU standards. Accession negotiations were launched in 1998 and successfully concluded in 2002. The accession was approved by a popular referendum in June 2003. The Czech Republic, together with another nine countries, became an EU member state in May 2004.
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The positive outcome of the referendum is evidence for the support of European Union membership in the Czech Republic. However, the results alone do not say much about the process that led to this decision and how this engaged the Czech citizens. They also say little about what this support means or might entail in the future. A more analytical investigation is thus called for. In this chapter we seek to unearth the meaning(s) of the positive outcome of the EU referendum in the Czech Republic by investigating the communication and information processes surrounding the referendum as well as the views expressed by the different actors. Although the concrete circumstances accompanying the journey to EU accession were specific for each of the East Central European candidate countries, and although these countries differ in many respects, there are reasons to believe that due to their territorial and cultural proximity, and the elements of common history, particularly of the last fifty years, the Czech case exemplifies the situation in the whole region.
Building public consensus on EU membership: amid information and campaigning In the ideal case, to be safely anchored, a public consensus concerning a key political decision should be based on an open democratic discussion where different opinions are ventured, weighed and contested. For such a process to be possible, several institutional and cultural prerequisites have to be fulfilled: first, citizens should have easy access to comprehensible information about the intended policy and its expected implications; second, they should enjoy the opportunity to freely associate in order to promote their interests and preferences; third, opportunities should exist for a public debate and contestation of different opinions concerning the respective policy; fourth, the way in which the outcome of the contestation impacts on the policy decision should be clear and transparent; fifth, and not least, a culture of involvement in public matters should prevail within the community in question, motivating citizens to express their views and take part in the deliberation. Commenting on the enlargement process and its impacts on democratic politics in East Central European countries, Dehaene and Krok-Paszkowska (2001) warned against over-reliance on the passivity of the electorate. Even though such passivity, they argued, might be helpful for political elites in the short- to medium term, it may backfire in the long term. On the following pages we investigate if and how the above-mentioned ideal prerequisites of a democratic public consensus were fulfilled in the case of the decision of the Czech Republic to join the EU. We will discuss the inputs to the public discussion by the main political parties, the national government and non-governmental organizations, as well as reviewing the role of the media in this process. Data from opinion polls will be used to trace the development of public attitudes to accession. On the basis of this empirical evidence, we will seek to unveil whether the form and intensity of
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public deliberation regarding accession has had any consequences for the legitimacy of the accession itself. The Czech government’s communication strategy Following the start of the accession talks, the government prepared and launched an information programme in 1999 entitled ‘The Communication Strategy of the Czech Republic Before the EU Accession’ (Chatardova´ 2001). The Strategy was prepared by the government’s Advisory Council for European Integration and managed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The declared main objectives were to provide both the general public as well as specific target groups – senior citizens, students, housewives, entrepreneurs, farmers – information about the benefits, as well as costs of the EU accession in order to motivate citizens to take part in the referendum and to support accession. The programme intended to proceed ‘from the principle of objectivity and balance of information’ (Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2000). Seen from outside, it attempted to follow a middle ground between the persuasive approach, as adopted in Austria before its EU accession, and the more balanced approach adopted in Sweden (Vajdova´ 2003: 17). Nevertheless, a pro-accession tenor prevailed. The programme was divided into three stages. The first phase from 1999 to 2002 intended to provide the public with general information about the EU, about experiences of countries that had joined the Union in the preceding wave, and about the conditions of the country’s future membership. The second phase, scheduled to begin some months before the referendum, aimed to provide citizens with more focused information on the accession as well as to motivate them to participate in the referendum irrespective of whether they were for or against membership. During the third stage starting after the referendum, the pre-accession information service was transformed into a permanent instrument providing EU-related information on a current basis. The programme’s own infrastructure consisted of nineteen regional information centres, several hundred information points distributed all over the country in public libraries, department stores and administrative offices, a publication series, a telephone call centre, and an internet information provider called Euroskop. In addition, a large number of partial campaigns and activities were organized through the media, advertising, billboards and otherwise, targeting both the general public as well as specific groups. Statistical data testify to a wide use of the programme’s services. The Euroskop internet provider registered on average over 600,000 monthly visits in 2003, the telephone call centre established in October 2001 answered on average over 2,000 calls monthly during 2001 (October to December), over 17,000 calls monthly in 2002, over 22,000 in 2003 and almost 27,000 calls monthly during the first half of 2003.2 The information campaign had to cope with a situation in which a fair portion of the general public declared that they did not have sufficient
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knowledge of the EU, the accession process or the conditions of EU membership, and that such information was not accessible to them. In a representative public opinion poll conducted by the Institute for Public Opinion Research (IVVM) in February 1998, 33 per cent thought that information about the European Union was accessible to ordinary citizens, while 38 per cent claimed that such information was available only to experts. Despite the information campaign, the situation did not change substantially in the years that followed: in April 2004, when the same question was asked again by the Centre for Public Opinion Research (CVVM), 37 per cent declared that information was accessible only to experts, while the share of those who felt that information was accessible to ordinary citizens increased slightly to 44 per cent. Table 7.1 summarizes the results of two other surveys conducted in October 2002 and February 2003,3 which monitored the perceived level of awareness regarding the accession process, and confirms this conclusion. In October 2002, eight months before the referendum, about 50 per cent felt they were sufficiently informed about the European Union while over 43 per cent thought that they lacked information. In February 2003, just four months before the referendum, the share of those who considered themselves adequately informed had increased, albeit only to 55 per cent. This fostered criticism that the government’s strategy had failed to substantially increase public awareness of the EU and the integration process. However, the polls may have underestimated the success of the information campaign. Being ‘sufficiently’ informed is a condition assessed differently by different respondents. Moreover, some of the respondents who claimed that they lacked sufficient information presumably belonged to the chronically passive and disinterested part of the public which is usually immune to any information campaign or which judges these negatively in any case. The government’s strategy was also criticized on more substantive grounds. First, objections were raised by opponents of EU membership against what they perceived to be the ‘pro-European bias’ of the information campaign. Particularly, the Eurosceptical Initiative (Euroskepticka´ iniciativa) – an anti-integration civic initiative (see below) – thought that the strategy did not sufficiently expose the negative aspects of EU membership Table 7.1 Answers to the question ‘Do you think that you have enough information about the accession process?’, by percentage
Clearly yes Rather yes Rather not Surely not Don’t know Total
October 2002
February 2003
7.8 42.4 32.8 10.3 6.7 1, 017
7.7 47.4 32.1 7.3 5.5 1, 074
Source: CVVM ‘Our Society’ surveys 2002/10 and 2003/2.
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and of the Union itself, and that it also did not give enough space to the opponents of European integration. The Initiative challenged the perceived ‘monopolization’ of public space by the government and requested that public finances be allocated for managing a campaign against the accession.4 Second, reservations were also raised by several academics who claimed that the campaign failed to stimulate a genuine public discussion about the accession project due to the way the government framed the public communication of the EU-related issues. For instance, Vajdova´ (2003) argued that the issues were presented in a de-politicized manner that did not invite contestation. In her opinion, the information programme while concentrating on factual description, objectivity and supplying information, did not account for the different interests, intentions and feelings existing in Czech society in connection with the accession project, and did not create a forum for their presentation. Furthermore, the accession agenda’s presentation as a ‘single alternative’ policy, the only feasible geopolitical choice of the country, appeared to give the government an undisputed mandate to implement this strategy. A somewhat dramatic metaphor of ‘martial law’ was used to characterize the course and context of the accession discourse, implying that the above-mentioned patterns contributed to its ‘war-like’ character when, in an emergency situation, all national actors and resources had to be integrated behind the accession project, leaving aside the ‘unnecessary’ local squabbles (Vajdova´ 2003: 24). Undoubtedly the strategy had a pro-accession bias even though it would be hardly realistic to expect that a governing coalition which had won the parliamentary elections on a pro-European ticket would support an antiEuropean campaign. There were nevertheless many other channels available to opponents of the accession for advocating their critical stance. The fact that they failed to mobilize more support for their cause suggests that a sufficient supply of anti-European attitudes simply did not exist within Czech society. On the contrary, the majority of the population in the early 1990s had already accepted that the country’s integration into ‘Europe’, i.e. the European Community, was an inevitable and, in principle, desirable goal, sealing the country’s European identity (see below). It is doubtful whether additional opportunities to criticize the accession project, had they been created specifically for opponents of EU membership, would have radically changed the situation. This said, the overall acceptance of EU membership does not, automatically, imply acceptance of all associated conditions and says little about future developments. We return to this in the next section. Prior to this, we review the role and contribution of nongovernmental organizations and the media to the debate on the EU accession. NGOs’ contribution to the public debate on EU accession An NGO’s involvement in the EU accession debate can be distinguished according to several features:5 first, whether the organization expressed a
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specific standpoint on EU accession, or whether it only provided information on the EU and the potential impact of Czech membership; second, what target group the organization was directed at – either the non-profit sector, or the general public; third, whether it was an organization already in existence or a platform that emerged specifically in reaction to the country’s impending accession. The majority of NGOs which engaged in the debate existed prior to the referendum campaign. Examples include the Centre for Community Organizing, an organization providing advice on the use of structural funds; the Information Centre of Non-profit Organizations, an information server for non-profit organizations; and finally the Civil Society Development Foundation, which organizes volunteer and sponsorship activities to support civil society activities. Platforms that emerged as a direct result of the Czech Republic’s EU accession included European Gate and Eufonie, both communication platforms working primarily through the internet and providing information on the EU supra-national institutions and the latter’s activities in and financing of civil society initiatives or local communities. The main target group of all of the above organizations was the non-governmental sector. A more interesting group for the purposes of this chapter comprised organizations oriented to specific professional groups or citizens more generally. With one exception, all such organizations were pro-European in outlook and expressed support for European integration. One of them is Europeum, the Institute for European Policy, a civic association founded in 1998 by teaching staff at the Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University in Prague. Europeum is involved in activities aimed more at the professional community than the general public and publishes an independent internet journal, Integration, focusing on issues of the Czech Republic’s integration into the EU and the related transformation of the country’s political, economic, and legal environment. Another example is the European Movement, a civic association founded as early as 1991: its goal is the development of a unified, federal Europe founded on respect for human and civic rights, the principles of freedom, democracy, and rule of law. The movement supports the subsidiarity principle, decentralization, democratic local self-government, the promotion of ideas of civic solidarity and civic participation. The European Movement is also interested in strengthening the European identity of Czech citizens, emphasizing the Czech contribution to European cultural and democratic traditions. In its pre-accession campaign the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic was in contact with a number of non-profit organizations for the purpose of exchanging information on the EU, especially information relating to specialized issues, and to provide the Ministry with knowhow and experience regarding the preparation of information publications. Within the framework of the funding programme ‘With Czech Citizens and into the EU’ established in 2001, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs provided financial support to twenty-nine non-profit organizations (out of a total of
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387 applicants) which, in coordination with the Regional European Information Centres, organized events in connection with the accession. All the projects supported from this fund were pro-European. There were only few NGOs that took a critical stance towards EU accession. Those that enjoyed visibility came primarily from the liberalconservative milieu of the Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and included organizations and think-tanks such as the Liberal Institute, the Civic Institute and the Eurosceptical Initiative. They considered the EU to be an overly bureaucratic, socialist and interventionist organization that left the correct path in 1992 after the Maastricht Treaty (Vajdova´ 2003:10). Among them, the Eurosceptical Initiative, founded in 2002, was the most outspoken. It focused mostly on opposing the government’s information campaign before the accession by cautioning against ‘thoughtless accession to the EU’. The information campaign of the Eurosceptical Initiative pursued three goals: to inform citizens about the negative aspects of the EU, to refute the argument that there was no other alternative to EU membership, and to persuade the majority of Czech citizens about the disadvantages of accession to EU in its present state and under the present conditions.6 The Eurosceptical Initiative urged the public to actively resist pro-European forces and to found regional clubs of Eurosceptics. It objected to the perceived monopolization of the public space by the government and requested support from public finances for managing the campaign against accession Summing up, it can be said that the majority of NGOs in the Czech Republic advocated a pro-EU stance. Some of the organizations that engaged in the debate and supported EU accession did so on behalf of the government. Most organizations advancing critical arguments emanated from the Eurosceptic sector around the ODS. Public debate on EU membership in Czech dailies The media and especially the daily press were extensively used as a communication channel in the period preceding the referendum. We analysed the media discourse during the thirty days preceding the Czech national referendum on EU accession, i.e. from 14 May till 13 June 2003, using two popular dailies: first, the relatively serious newspaper Lidove´ noviny, which is oriented towards more educated urban readers; second, the tabloid Blesk, which has a large circulation among the less educated strata. The average daily circulation of Lidove´ noviny is 110,000, that of Blesk 554,000. Lidove´ noviny published 112 contributions concerning the Czech accession in its twenty-seven issues that appeared within the aforementioned period, i.e. on average four articles every day. Within the same period, only twenty-eight articles appeared in Blesk, i.e. an average of one article per day. The relative majority (42 per cent) of the articles published in Lidove´ noviny had a discursive or even polemic character: about half of them expressed opinions and arguments in favour of membership, about one
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quarter advanced arguments against it, while the remaining quarter mentioned various requirements upon which accession should be made contingent. The remaining contributions published in Lidove´ noviny can be split into two almost equal groups. The first provided readers with information concerning the European Union, many with reference to the nomination of the first (and temporary) Czech European Commissioner. Another group represented contributions of a more analytical nature probing deeper into the consequences, the advantages and disadvantages of Czech EU membership and the arguments presented by supporters as well as those who disagreed with it. Particular attention was given to the economic consequences of accession; for instance, the question of access to European funds, the potential increase in prices and unemployment, the feasibility and timing of introducing the euro, as well as the impacts of the accession on agriculture, education, tourism, research and other sectors. The majority were articles balanced in terms of their arguments and leaving it to the readers to draw their own conclusions. Some of these contributions spoke out explicitly in favour of accession; only a few were clearly against it. The content structure of the contributions on EU membership published in Blesk was not very different. Only the proportion of analytical articles was substantially smaller. Here too pro-accession articles prevailed. Beside the rare voices which rejected the accession as a matter of principle, the majority of critics were rather concerned about the economic expediency of the accession and the quality of concrete conditions negotiated with the Commission by the Czech negotiators. There are reasons to believe that this observation can be extended to other Czech dailies with national circulations, namely the Mlada´ fronta dnes, Hospoda´rˇske´ noviny and Pra´vo. It has to be added that all the mentioned newspapers are privately owned and are not dependent on public money.
Accession yes, but . . . : a sociological analysis Using results of public opinion polls, we shall characterize public attitudes to the intended accession of the Czech Republic to the European Union, and their development during the years preceding the referendum. Poll results were regularly published, quoted and widely discussed in the media, and thus of considerable political relevance. They functioned as a mirror of the public mood and provided an important input to the public discussion on EU membership, thus feeding back on the formation of public opinion regarding the accession. The data were used to estimate results of the coming referendum and thus to forecast the success or failure of the accession project. Support for future membership was first measured in 1993 by the Centre for Empirical Research, STEM: 85 per cent of the adult population were in favour of accession, still a rather distant goal at that time.7 Then, in March 1996, after the government had already submitted its application for EU
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membership, respondents were asked by the Institute for Public Opinion Research, IVVM, if they agreed with this move.8 Affirmative responses (42.5 per cent) were twice as frequent as the negative ones (20.9 per cent). However, supporters did not constitute the majority, as almost 18 per cent did not know what to answer, while an additional 19 per cent was indifferent about the application. Such high shares of undecided and disinterested respondents testify both to the public’s limited grasp of the pros and cons of membership and the relatively low level of interest in the integration process. As was found by subsequent opinion polls, the share of uninformed and disinterested people taken together did not decrease substantially during the following years, staying above the 30 per cent level (see Figure 7.3). Education, party preferences and the general level of political participation on the one hand, and age and gender on the other, were the essential characteristics distinguishing respondents. Figure 7.1 shows the impact of education on attitudes towards accession. The percentage of affirmative answers was positively correlated with the level of respondents’ education, and varied from 33 per cent among those with only elementary education to 65 per cent among the university educated. However, the impact of education should not be over-estimated: one fifth of respondents in all educational categories disagreed with the process; similarly, in each educational category the percentage of undecided voters was roughly similar, with the exception of university educated respondents who were less often undecided than the others. The other factor besides education that had significant influence was the respondents’ general attitude towards politics and their party preferences. There was a high correlation between the respondents’ participation in the parliamentary elections and their attitudes towards the application for EU membership. Those who were not planning to participate in the elections did not care as much about the application or tended to oppose it. The distribution of supporters, opponents and indifferent respondents among the voters of selected political parties representing the left/right political spectrum in the Czech parliament is shown in Figure 7.2. Supporters of extreme parties, both right and left, were strongly against membership, while voters of moderate parties, both right and left, mostly supported it. Voters of different parties, however, expressed different reasons for their attitudes. Supporters of the Communist Party were among the most fervent opponents of EU membership, seeing in the EU a threat to the domestic economy and to national identity. The alleged loss of national identity was one of the key stated reasons for opposing EU membership, also among supporters of the extreme right Republican Party. The Republican Party was represented in Parliament from 1992 to 1996 and has since been losing the support of voters. Voters who supported the right-oriented Civic Democratic Party (ODS) tended to be the strongest supporters of accession. Most of them associated EU membership with an improvement of economic conditions and prosperity.
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Figure 7.1 Public support for the Czech Republic’s application for membership of the European Union (March 1996) by education Source: IVVM Omnibus 1996/2003, N=1, 041. Note: The precise phrasing of the question was as follows: The Czech Republic submitted an application for membership to the European Union. The European Union coordinates politics and specifically the economies of the developed European countries. Do you agree with the application for membership?
The above-average education level of the supporters of this party and the higher share of entrepreneurs and businessmen among them explains in part this high level of approval. It is nevertheless intriguing to find that the most enthusiastic advocates of the Czech Republic’s EU membership voted for the ODS, considering that several of the ODS party leaders openly expressed (and continue to express) rather Eurosceptic attitudes (see also next section). Data from subsequent opinion polls conducted between 1997 and 2003 confirm that ODS voters did not share the Euroscepticism of their party’s leaders and maintained the highest level of support for the Czech Republic’s accession compared to sympathizers from all other parties on the Czech political scene. The level of support for the application was notably higher among younger than older people. However, respondents who claimed that they were indifferent to the EU application were younger than the average. Women more frequently than men answered that they did not care about EU membership. Overall, men tended to be more enthusiastic about membership than women. From the time the decision was made by the Czech government in 1996 to apply for EU membership, the pollsters started asking questions about respondents’ likely vote in the future accession referendum. Figure 7.3
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summarizes the answers obtained in twelve opinion polls conducted between 1997 and May 2003, giving an idea about how public support for accession developed over time. Support for EU membership was more or less stable between 1997 and 2002, and increased during the last few months before the referendum. Supporters considerably outnumbered opponents during the whole period under observation. In November 2002 the share of people claiming they would vote ‘yes’ in the upcoming referendum exceeded the ‘magic’ threshold of 50 per cent of eligible voters for the first time. Among respondents who stated they would vote ‘yes’ in the last pre-referendum poll in May 2003, the young and well educated were highly over-represented. On the other hand, the percentage of undecided and non-voters did not substantially decrease over time. Despite the overall positive trends, misgivings were expressed regarding the outcome of the referenda in the candidate countries. Krenzler and Krok-Paszkowska (2003), for instance, thought that the outcomes of the referenda were doubtful ‘given the generally low participation in elections, low levels of trust in state institutions, a lack of communication between state and citizen, a lack of identification with and loyalty to parties as well as the large number of undecided voters’ (2003: 2). The referenda results
Figure 7.2 Public support for the Czech Republic’s application for membership of the European Union (March 1996) by party preference Source: IVVM Omnibus 1996/2003, N=1, 041. Note: Question phrasing: as in Figure 7.1.
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proved the fears of these authors unsubstantiated: 55 per cent of eligible voters participated in the referendum of 13–14 June 2003; of these, 77 per cent cast a ‘yes’ vote. This was interpreted as a clear endorsement of the pro-membership policy and opened the road to accession a year later. Sceptics could, however, still object that it was actually just a minority, namely 43 per cent of all eligible voters, who voted in favour of EU membership. The low turnout suggests that there might be good reasons to take some of the concerns of Krenzler and Krok-Paszkowska seriously. Let us look at the referendum’s results in the light of the hypotheses advanced by these authors aiming to explain patterns of support and disagreement regarding EU membership (ibid.: 5–9): The political allegiance explanation is based on the assumption that national publics support national political elites in supranational activities provided such activities serve the social and economic interest of their states. Following this line of argumentation, European integration enjoyed
Figure 7.3 Public support for the Czech Republic’s membership of the European Union; voting likelihoods in the accession referendum (1997–2003) Source: IVVM/CVVM, public opinion series from 1997 to 2003. N=1,000 to ˇ esˇi evropsky´mi obcˇany (2002) and Obcˇane´ o sve´ u´cˇasti (2003). N=1,110. Quoted in C Note: Till April 2002, the question asked was: If the referendum on the membership of the Czech Republic in the EU were tomorrow, would you personally vote for or against EU membership? As of November 2002 the question was instead phrased as follows: If you were to participate in the referendum, would you vote for the accession of the Czech Republic to the EU or against the accession of the Czech Republic to the EU?
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support in the Czech Republic because it was viewed as improving the capacity of the state to guarantee the physical and economic security of the population. The economic benefits of EU accession were indeed among the most frequently cited items in the IVVM poll of November 1996. The pooling of sovereignty explanation purports that EU membership can be seen as being in the national interest because it serves the increase of influence of the member country through accession to a larger political entity. This line of argument was obviously particularly relevant in countries like the Czech Republic, whose independence and sovereignty had been repeatedly under threat from foreign powers. However, the same argument was used by many adversaries to mobilize against EU membership, as will be shown in the next section. Suffice here to note that the sovereignty argument was used by the Communist Party to reject EU accession, but also by the ODS to relativize its support for the EU integration project. The argument also found resonance among the population: the loss of national identity was the most often quoted disadvantage of future EU membership in the IVVM opinion poll of November 1996. The political values hypothesis assumes that support for EU membership is related to liberal political values and a commitment to individual liberty and equality, rather than nationalistic and populist values. The data reviewed in the earlier section regarding support for EU membership in the Czech Republic testify to the relevance of this explanation. However, some influential Czech right-wing politicians kept condemning the EU as a ‘socialist’ institution endangering liberal values. The cognitive mobilization hypothesis looks for an explanation of the differences in the levels of support for EU membership between the elite and the general public. It maintains that a gulf exists between the pro-accession stance of the elite (political and business) in the candidate states and the doubts among many other voters who were not sure whether the economy of their country could sustain the competition within the common market, whether the sovereignty and traditional values of their country might be at risk, and whether the EU would actually benefit from the enlargement more than the new members. The more educated strata tended to be in favour of membership because they would primarily benefit from it and because they were better informed about the positive consequences of accession. In contrast, the economically and socially deprived sectors of the population felt threatened by the new situation, the consequences of which they were unable to estimate. The differences in levels of support for membership according to educational background support this thesis. However, the different levels of support of the different social strata were much less extreme than assumed by this hypothesis.9 The overall pattern of public attitudes concerning EU membership was marked by a peculiar inconsistency. While the accession as such enjoyed solid support that tended to increase during the year preceding the referendum (see Figure 7.3), attitudes concerning the more concrete aspects of
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membership tended to be sceptical and remained so even as the accession approached. Thus, for example, the public considered the relationship between the Union and the Czech Republic more favourable for the Union: 36 per cent adhered to this view as late as March 2001, while just 13 per cent felt that the relationship favoured the Czech Republic; 25 per cent considered the advantages to be balanced. The general public was particularly disappointed with the temporary restriction by the Union of the free movement of the Czech labour force – 68 per cent considered the restriction a non-acceptable condition. The distrust did not recede in the course of the negotiations: in January 2003, five months before the referendum, 37 per cent claimed that the results of the negotiation were ‘worse than expected’, 35 per cent considered them ‘as expected’, while only 6 per cent thought the conditions were ‘better than expected’.10 The apparent contradiction between, on the one hand, the overall positive general attitude of the Czech public towards the Union and EU accession in particular, and the rather sceptical perception of the conditions of EU membership on the other, is the consequence of a ‘two-level’ thinking about the relationship between the Czech Republic and the European Union. On the more general ‘statesman-like’ but also symbolic level, this relationship is viewed positively from a historical and cultural perspective and as a matter of geopolitical necessity. On the other pragmatic ‘no-nonsense’ level, the public judges the Czech-European relationship in terms of the perceived concrete, mostly economic, gains and losses implied by EU membership. From this point of view, the trade-offs of membership are often evaluated as ambivalent or even negative. This type of thinking was manifested by the belief that the conditions of the country’s entry into the Union were fixed to its disadvantage. Both ways of thinking are symptomatic of different categories of the populationc – education and economic status play a role here – but it may also be that the same people think both ways, depending on the situation. Such ambiguity has a destabilizing effect, and it may happen that after the Czech membership in the Union has been safeguarded, many of its supporters will move to the camp of the Euro-critical or Eurosceptic pragmatists. According to the 2003 Eurobarometer survey, Czechs – together with respondents from Malta, Latvia and Estonia – were least likely to trust the EU and, along with respondents from Slovenia and the three Baltic countries, had the least positive image of the Union (European Commission 2002b). The transformation of these attitudes into Euroscepticism is already taking place at the political level, as is discussed in the next section.
Not every ‘yes’ means ‘yes’: a political analysis The ‘Back to Europe’ slogan used to signal the re-integration of the Czech Republic into the broader European political, democratic and cultural framework was one of the central demands of the ‘Velvet Revolution’. It took
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some time before this somewhat vague slogan was translated into more concrete foreign policy goals as representing EU accession, and thus became part of the political agenda. A general consensus on the desirability of this goal prevailed among the political groupings which emerged as winners of the revolution and became the kernel of the new party system. Two sets of political documents testify to this fact: the electoral programmes of parties which, in various combinations, were represented by coalition members in the four Czech national governments that held office in the period 1992– 2002,11 and the policy statements issued by these governments when they asked for a vote of confidence in the parliament.12 In this section, we analyse the election programmes of the most important parties on the Czech political scene. They include the Civic Democratic Party (ODS), the ˇ SSD), the Civic Democratic Alliance Czech Social Democratic party (C (ODA), the Christian Democratic Union-Czech Peoples’ Party (KDUˇ SL), the Freedom Union (US, later US-DEU) and the Communist Party C ˇ M). of Bohemia and Moravia (KSC The Civic Democratic Party (ODS) is a conservative party on the right of the political spectrum. Its voters tend to be propertied members of the middle and upper classes. The ODS was, and to some degree still is, dominated by its former leader (until 2003) and present honorary chairman as well as President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, who is an ardent supporter of the free market and minimal state intervention, and who modelled the policies and politics of the ODS according to those of the British Conservative (Tory) party during the Thatcher era. ˇ SSD) is a centre-left party and The Czech Social Democratic Party (C supports a social market economy. Its voters are to be found mainly among the lower middle class, workers, people with low incomes, the unemployed, and retired elderly people. The Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA) is a party with a right-wing orientation, a small membership base and a constantly declining significance. The majority of its voters have transferred their allegiance to the Freedom Union party, a liberal party with a base mainly among the urban intelligentsia. The Freedom Union was formed in 1998 and subsequently merged with the Democratic Union and is now known under the acronym US-DEU. ˇ SL) is a centre-right party The Christian Democratic Union (KDU-C that appeals mainly to Catholic and rural voters. ˇ M) is a Finally, the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSC party with a strong left-wing orientation. Its supporters have a similar ˇ SSD supporters, but tend to favour the socio-economic background as C former communist social order. The political system in the Czech Republic is characterized by a bi-cameral parliament, a strong government and a relatively weak, indirectly elected
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president. The parliament’s lower chamber has 200 members and is elected every four years; the upper chamber or senate has eighty-one members elected for a six-year term in single-seat constituencies of which one third is renewed every two years. The president is elected for a five year period in indirect elections by both chambers. The first President of the Czech Republic was Vaclav Havel, who was re-elected in 1998. Since 2003, Vaclav Klaus has held the presidential office. The last parliamentary elections for the lower chamber took place in 2002;13 the last parliamentary elections for the senate took place in 2004. The Civic Democratic Party ODS was the main party in government in the years 1992 to 1998, for most of this period in coalition with the Christian Democratic Union. This coalition collapsed in 1997 as a result of a row over party financing. The Freedom Union was formed at that time from dissenting members of the ODS. The 1998 parliamentary elections brought no clear winner but a significant increase of the electoral share of the Czech ˇ SSD which subsequently led a minority governSocial Democratic Party C ment in the years 1998–2002 under Milosˇ Zeman. This minority government was tolerated by the ODS. The 2002 parliamentary elections confirmed the ˇ SSD, which went on to form a government with the Chrispower of the C tian Democratic Union (which had previously supported the ODS) and the Freedom Union. This coalition enjoys an extremely weak majority of just a single vote in the lower chamber of the parliament. Current polls suggest that elections, if taking place soon, would be won by the ODS, which also dominates the upper house or senate with 35 out of 81 seats. Let us now turn to the attitudes of the political parties towards EU accession and EU membership. The Communist Party is the only party which has been consistently against the process of EU accession. In the 2002 elections it received 20.5 per cent of the vote; this represented a significant increase from the 1996 and 1998 elections (11 and 12 per cent respectively) and a slight increase from the 17.5 per cent gained in 1992. The Communist Party does not officially object to all aspects of the European integration process. It supports specific European institutions such as the European Social Charter, the European Charter of Local Self-government and the European Charter for Regional/Spatial Planning. It has also come out in favour of EU legislation on the protection of environment, as well as EU funding for regional development. However, it objects to the political dimension of EU integration as representing a subordination of Czech interests to German interests. All other parties have been supporting EU accession, albeit with divergences, especially since 1998. In 1992 all parties called for a clear orientation towards the ‘West’, meaning both Western Europe and the USA. Integration was understood in political and economic terms and underlined the security dimension. The ODS, for example, claimed that integration into the European supra-national institutions and, primarily, the Common Market, would guarantee the revival and protection of the basic values of European
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ˇ SSD election programme underlined the same Christian civilization. The C goals, albeit emphasizing the social dimension of European integration and the possibility offered by the latter to ‘learn’ about the process of building a stable democracy from Western European countries. 1996, the year when the Czech Republic officially applied for EU membership, marked a shift towards the more technical and policy-specific conditions associated with EU accession. The idea of adjusting Czech legislation to accommodate EU regulations was frequently mentioned in pre-election campaigns. The main goal, according to the ODS, was to attain full membership and this would require taking a number of economic and legislative ˇ SSD advocated the alignment of the country’s social, environsteps; the C mental, agricultural, transport, foreign and security policies with those of ˇ SSD election programme was similar to that of 1996 – the EU. The 1998 C the objective remained that of full membership, and for this to be achieved an alignment of policies across sectors had to continue and be accelerated. In contrast, the ODS began to represent a more critical attitude, arguing that EU accession should not be striven for ‘at any price’ but ‘only under conditions negotiated to the country’s advantage’. In its programme the ODS distanced itself from any tendency to uncritically accept everything directly from the EU, and said it did not want to see the Czech state dissolve within a supranational structure or within a ‘Europe of regions’ without clearly defined margins of statehood. Similar arguments were brought forward in 2002. The ODS called for the finalization of the accession process, but at the same time continued to criticize the European Union for displaying tendencies of becoming a supranational ‘super-state’, demanding that sovereignty in decision-making be retained by the individual states in areas concerning national interests. Thus it rejected the alignment of tax rates and of the social, pension and health systems to match those in the EU. The Social Democrats, who as head of government since 1998 had borne the main portion of responsibility for the negotiations relating to the country’s membership in the EU, struck a more EU-enthusiastic tone favouring closer alignment of Czech policies to EU policies. In summary, we can say that since around the mid-1990s three main positions vis-a`-vis EU membership can be observed. The main political representatives of the pro-EU stance have been the Social Democrats; their position has been supported by the Christian Democratic Union and the Freedom Union. The ODS represents an EU-critical stance which is similar to that of the British Conservative Party. Finally, the Communist Party has been against EU accession all along. The 2002 parliamentary election results can be used as an indication of electoral support for these positions (Table 7.2). As can be seen from the above-mentioned distribution of votes and mandates in the lower chamber of the parliament, Czech citizens voted for the pro-European parties. Nonetheless, as the data in Table 7.2 also show,
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Table 7.2 Support for Czech political parties (2002) Parties
Pro-EU
Pro-membership
ˇ SSD + C Coalition
EU critical
Anti-EU
Electoral support (%)
–
30.2 14.3 24.5
70 31 58
ˇM KSC 18.5 41
18.5 87.5
41
ODS Anti-membership Electoral support, % Mandates
44.5 101
24.5 58
Mandates (200)
200
Source: Czech Statistical Office. Notes: 1 The data are for the 2002 elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament. 2 There are 200 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. 3 The electoral support data do not sum up to 100 per cent, the remaining 12.5 per cent votes were cast for small parties not represented in the Chamber of Deputies.
the support was not unambiguous: about one third of the total votes obtained by parties supporting membership were those cast for the Eurocritical ODS, a party which views EU membership primarily as an externally given necessity that is justified by the expected economic advantages, but which opposes any more intensive European integration. Moreover, the share of votes obtained by the communists, who reject both the Union and the accession, was not negligible. Taken together, these two parties – the EU-sceptics and those professing anti-EU views – commanded 43 per cent of the vote in the general election and nearly one half of the seats in the lower chamber of the parliament.
Conclusions The introductory part of this chapter addressed the institutional and cultural prerequisites that have to be fulfilled in order to guarantee public participation in decisions on key policy issues of national relevance such as EU membership. Of these five prerequisites, four were met to a considerable degree in the Czech Republic. First, citizens had access to information about the types and direction of European policies as well as about the broad implications of such policies. As of 1996 at the latest, all major political parties made their position on the country’s potential membership of the EU known in their election programmes, proclaiming either pro- or anti-accession stances with reference to the advantages and disadvantages of membership. All national coalition governments in power since 1996 declared in their policy statements the intention to steer the country towards the EU and enumerated the main steps which they intended to take in order to comply with the conditions set by the Union. The European Commission’s regular reports on the progress of the country towards accession made clear which of these steps had been approved by Brussels
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and which had yet to be made. The government’s information campaign prior to the referendum offered the general public as well as some specific groups an array of information about the EU, the accession and its conditions. Moreover, the 1999 law on free access to information guaranteed interested citizens access to more detailed information about the activities and policies of the public administration, including its European policies. However, the picture is not as rosy as this enumeration might suggest. Behind the publicized general conditions of the membership and the general measures that had to be taken to comply with them, there were a great number of detailed technical requirements, the majority of which were invisible and also hardly comprehensible to the lay public. Yet often it was only these concrete issues that lent meaning to the framework conditions. The concrete potential impacts of accession on the practical aspects of people’s everyday lives were often difficult to forecast. A number of speculative, unfounded predictions, both positive as well as pessimistic, were thus made which disoriented public opinion. The second prerequisite, namely the right of the public to freely associate with the aim of promoting their accession-related interests, as well as the right to campaign against EU membership, was guaranteed by law and was utilized to some extent both by supporters and opponents of membership. However, the accession project did not trigger a marked mobilization of civil society on either side of the accession debate. This is evidenced by the overall low profile of NGO accession-related activities. Similarly, the third prerequisite – the opportunity for a public contestation of different opinions concerning the accession – was fulfilled, yet not much used. Free, uncensored media were open for the publication of divergent standpoints, and other standard forums and means of contestation such as public discussions, meetings, demonstrations and petitions could also be used without hindrance. As we were able to show by analysing the press and the activities of the NGOs, this space for deliberation was indeed used to promote, criticize or reject the accession project. Yet on the whole, the discussion was not very intensive and the anti-membership voices were rare and failed to meet with a wider response. The material conditions of the debate were not entirely equal for advocates and opponents of membership due to the government’s financial support of the pro-accession campaign. However, nothing indicated the existence of any vigorous anti-membership potential within Czech society that might have been unleashed if there had been more public money available for its expression. The fourth prerequisite, i.e. the guarantee that the outcomes of the contestation, whatever they might be, would be reflected in government policy, was ultimately secured by the democratic political system of the country. Three times – in the 1996, 1998 and 2002 parliamentary elections – voters had the chance to influence the fundamental direction of the country’s European policy by casting ballots for either the anti-accession, the Eurocritical or the pro-membership parties. They were given this opportunity
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again in the 2003 national referendum on the Czech Republic’s EU membership. Repeatedly, they made a pro-European choice. In negotiating the conditions of accession to the Union, the government’s room for manoeuvre, including its ability to react to public pressure, was rather limited. The accession talks were basically an asymmetrical process wherein the Commission set the requirements and the candidate countries had to follow. As was rightly – and critically – observed by Vajdova´ (2003), the accession agenda started to roll on as a more-or-less independent mechanism with its own schedule, tasks and deadlines, structured by the Commission’s regular yearly reports on the progress towards accession. The progress and the possible problems were reported to the general public in a way which did not and, in our opinion, could not invite much discussion. Because the EU set the rules, a candidate country had no choice but to accept the conditions. This being so, there was not much space left for domestic debate. A ‘dates and deadlines’ pattern of accession discourse pictured the road to membership as a kind of bureaucratic process leading through a number of pre-determined steps, stages and deadlines towards the final outcome to be reached by a certain date. Under the resulting time pressure there was no time for anything apart from the necessary tasks (Vajdova´ 2003). It was the fifth prerequisite – the existence of a culture of civic involvement in public matters manifesting itself, among other things, by citizens’ intensive interest in issues regarding the accession, a readiness to take a stand in matters concerning membership, and to actively promote and defend their accession-related interests – that was not sufficiently fulfilled in the Czech Republic. Opinion poll results showed relatively high shares of citizens who were disinterested in the accession agenda. The low level of accession-related civic mobilization, as well as the modest intensity of public debate, testify to this fact. This important element of civic culture is chronically underdeveloped in Czech society, and this has been evidenced on previous occasions by a number of indicators – such as the low and decreasing election turnout, people’s unwillingness to stand for public office, doubts over the meaningfulness of public involvement, etc. (Illner 2003: 74–5). Assessed from this perspective, public participation in the deliberation of the accession process was far from perfect. What conclusions can thus be made about the democratic legitimacy of the Czech Republic’s decision to join the EU in light of the above facts and critical observations? Do the inadequacies of its public deliberation vis-a`-vis the ideal criteria call the legitimacy of this decision into question? In our opinion, such a conclusion would not be justified. As already mentioned before, the political, economic, social and cultural (re)integration of the Czech state and society into the community of democratic European countries has been a widely accepted aim, supported by both the society at large and by most of its elites. EU membership was loaded with important symbolic meaning and was considered by the public to be a higher-order interest in comparison with the
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more pragmatic expectations regarding membership. Although the original, often unqualified, exhilaration dwindled over time, accession retained, as proved by the opinion polls and manifested in the referendum, a stable public support base throughout the whole period until the accession materialized. Beyond the fundamental question of whether or not to steer the country towards the EU, the accession agenda did not offer many opportunities for public deliberation and debate, due to the asymmetry of the candidate country’s relationship with the European Commission and the technicality of the membership conditions and process of their negotiations Moreover, in the specific case of an East Central European country, only recently disengaged from Soviet dominance and seeking a way to escape from the geopolitical vacuum in which it found itself after 1989, a kind of emergency situation had emerged and EU accession was indeed the only alternative. It was fortunate that this imperative was supported by a permissive public consensus. Some of the difficult requirements of democratic decision-making, such as a thorough public deliberation and contestation of the potential choices, justified in the context of most domestic policies, could not be rigorously applied in this unique context. However, what our analysis also suggests is that it would be wrong to rely on the positive results of the EU referendum in the Czech Republic – or in any of the other new member states – and consider that these countries are overtly Euro-enthusiastic or will remain so. Just as in the older member states, the contents and conditions of EU membership, and especially its political implications, have yet to be defined. This debate has just begun, and it looks like it will become even more intense than that on EU membership per se. Unlike that of several other EU countries, the political scene in the Czech Republic displays clear contours. It is thus not unlikely that it will provide a reference point for many other political debates in other countries – East and West – in the coming years. Notes 1 The authors are indebted to Katerˇina Bernardyova´ for her efficient help with assembling background information for this chapter. 2 See Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic: http://www.euroskop.cz 3 The CVVM survey was entitled ‘Nasˇe spolecˇnost’ (‘Our Society’). It was carried out in September 2000, March 2001, October 2002, February 2003 and May 2003. ´ rˇadu 4 See V. Bara´k ‘Letter to the Czech Government’s Office’ (Czech: ‘Dopis U ˇ eske´ republiky’) from 20 May, 2002 posted at http://www.euroskeptik.cz vla´dy C 5 Since the 1989 revolution, the Czech non-profit sector has developed dynamically and has acquired an important role in the process of democratization and building a civil society (Fricˇ and Rochdi 2001). In 1990 there were roughly 4,000 organizations in the non-profit sector; today the figure is around 80,000. The largest proportion of them are organizations focused on sports, followed (in this order) by organizations for education, health, social services, culture, environmental protection and others. 6 See, for instance, V. Bara´k, D. Hana´k and B. Kuras (2002) ‘The Eurosceptic Alternative’ (Czech: Euroskepticka´ alternativa) posted at http://www.euroskeptik.cz
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7 Centre for Empirical Research (STEM), 2–12 November 1993 opinion poll, national representative sample of adult population, N = 1,113. 8 IVVM Omnibus 1996/03, N = 1,041. Question: ‘The Czech Republic submitted an application for membership in the European Union. . . . Do you agree with it?’ 9 Finally, Krenzler and Krok-Paszkowska argue that the public is more likely to support the government’s stance on EU membership in countries where the government is trusted. This explanation does not apply to the Czech Republic, where the government was not particularly popular at the time of the referendum and prior to it. See also next section. 10 See the CVVM ‘Our Society’ surveys (op. cit.) of March 2001 and January 2003. ˇ SSD, KDU-C ˇ SL, KSC ˇ M, ODA and ODS; 11 For 1996: election programmes of C ˇ SSD, KDU-C ˇ SL, KSC ˇ M, ODS and US; for for 1998: election programmes of C ˇ SSD, KSC ˇ M, ODA, ODS, and the coalition of 2002: election programmes of C ˇ SL and US-DEU. KDU-C ˇ eske´ republiky), ´ rˇad vla´dy C 12 See Office of the Czech Government (Czech: U ‘Policy Statements of Czech Republic’s Governments’ (Czech: Programova´ ˇ eske´ republiky) for 1992, 1996, 1998, 2002. prohla´sˇenı´ vla´d C 13 Parliamentary elections for the lower chamber took place in 1992, 1996, 1998 ˇ NR) – the and 2002. The 1992 elections were to the Czech National Council (C national parliament of the Czech part of the then still existing Czechoslovakia. After its split in 1993, the Council was transformed into the Chamber of Depuˇ M ran ties of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. In the 1992 elections KSC together with the Democratic Left Party.
8
Conclusion What future for European integration and democracy? Wayne Parsons
This book began by arguing that the EU in the twenty-first century faces a crossroads in its history, and a crisis of legitimacy. The rejection of the Constitutional Treaty by the French and Dutch and the problems of budgetary reform serve to underline the research findings and arguments contained in the preceding chapters. It was hoped by those who drafted and approved the text that the ratification of a European ‘constitution’ would provide a powerful impetus towards dealing with the ‘democratic deficit’ and the crisis of legitimacy facing the EU. But this was not to be. It is apparent that the failure of the Constitutional Treaty to live up to the various expectations of its proponents has vividly exposed the problems which this book has explored: the lack of a European public sphere and the issues of democratization and legitimacy in conditions of multi-level governance. Indeed, this volume goes some way to explaining why the fate of the constitution should not have come as such a great surprise.
Quo vadis Europa? The process which came to a grinding halt with the rejection of the constitution by two ‘core’ members of the European Union in 2005 had begun with high hopes for the constitution as both a method of consolidating the EU, and also a symbolic catalyst which could move integration and democracy forwards. Given the fact that the constitution had to be ratified by all member states, and also given the fact that unanimous ratification was always going to be problematic for the more Eurosceptical members, it was hoped that the supposed ‘core’ and the avant-garde of the EU could be relied upon to deliver ratification. This would have at least opened the way for a ‘variable geometry’ option to guide the future deepening of the Union. This option evaporated following the rejection of the constitution by France and then the Netherlands. What is more, there was evidently no ‘plan B’ – apart from a return to the Nice Treaty. In his speech ‘From confederacy to federation’, given at Humboldt University in 2000, Joschka Fischer, Foreign Minister of Germany, set out a vision for a more democratic and federal EU. ‘Quo vadis Europa?’ asked
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Fischer (Fischer 2000). His answer, which helped to frame and inform the debate on the constitution, was that the future had to be one in which integration, understood as federalization, must be supplemented and complemented by a process of democratization. The new Europe which would result from enlargement had to be a Europe in which integration was legitimated and accepted by the citizens of the EU. A European constitution would, he argued, be a ‘critical step’ on the road to political integration. A group of states who would sign up to this strategy could form a new ‘centre of gravity’ within the EU. The idea of a constitution, as it developed in subsequent years after the Laeken declaration (2001), assumed an important place in the strategy to advance integration and democratic legitimacy. In his speech Fischer assumed that the constitutional project would be essentially a project of the avant-garde – a form of political gravitation – which would, in time, pull the sceptics into a fuller and more federal relationship. The French vote put a provisional end to that particular answer to the question of ‘Quo vadis Europa?’ Fischer’s great intellectual supporter in this plan to use a constitution as a device for deepening political integration was, of course, Ju¨rgen Habermas. In 2001 he had set out his own argument in respect of ‘why Europe needs a constitution’. Habermas, supporting Fischer’s position (and vice-versa) maintained that the EU needed the ‘power of symbolic crystallization’ (Habermas 2001: 6) if a genuine European public sphere were to develop. The euro had provided this kind of unifying symbol at an economic level, but the EU needed a constitution to provide a symbol which could promote the growth of a public sphere and a ‘post-national’ Europe able to act as a counterweight to American domination and the forces of globalization. The constitution would, therefore, serve to address the ‘democratic deficit’ and facilitate a new civic nationalism, enhance the growth of a European civil society, and promote a common public sphere and political culture. The role of a constitution was absolutely central to the emergence of a European civil society, public sphere and political culture. But, he argued, the potential depended upon whether the constitution could have a ‘catalytic’ effect on European political debate. The first step on the road to a European public sphere would, he suggested, be in ‘arousing a Europe-wide debate – the making of such a constitution representing in itself a unique opportunity of trans-national communication with the potential for a self-fulfilling prophecy’ (Habermas 2001: 16–17). This first step was not to be taken: there was no Europe-wide referendum, but a few national referenda. Which in turn, it has to be said, did give rise to a EU-wide debate on the constitution, but within national rather than ‘transnational’ settings. Even so, Habermas (writing with Derrida in 2003) nursed some hopes that, as a result of the Iraq war, a public sphere in the European ‘avant-garde core’ was indeed emerging (Habermas and Derrida 2003). In the course of the French referendum, which he realized was critical for the prospects of the constitution, he came out supporting the ‘oui’ vote and attacked the
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‘illusions’ of those on the left who were campaigning for a ‘non’ vote. A defeat for the constitution, he feared, would hand the initiative to populists, nationalist, neo-liberals and George Bush (Habermas 2005). Habermas saw the constitution – and the ratification process – as offering the potential for the emergence of a European public sphere. However, as the referenda in France and the Netherlands demonstrated, referenda (where they did take place) tended to be either rather low key – as in the case of Spain – or intensely national in their focus. The Habermasian narrative was outgunned by the argument that, far from securing distinct European values and the ‘European model’, the constitution subverted them or failed to provide sufficient guarantees against the encroachment of neo-liberal economics and globalization. The referenda on the constitution became an opportunity to register dissatisfaction with national elites, and a variety of concerns which were EU-related, but, at best, rather tangential to the actual text up for consideration. (Not that the text, according to Giscard d’Estaing, could actually be understood – by anyone!) So, the constitution failed to act as a catalyst to generate the kind of public sphere which Habermas had thought so vital for the future of Europe. The majority of countries which had ratified the constitution by the time of the French and Dutch vote had either chosen not to have a referendum, or were constrained by their own constitutions – as was the case in Germany. Spain held a consultative referendum, but the vote was not exactly overwhelming, securing a majority in favour on a low turnout of only 42 per cent, which as El Pais noted was the lowest turnout in the country for thirty years! In the event, 77 per cent of those who voted said ‘Si’. In the other countries public support for the constitution, as measured by Eurobarometer, showed a very mixed picture of support, and notably high levels of apathy and ignorance in some member states. Apathy was, however, not in evidence in the lively debates in France and Holland which captured considerable European and world attention. The referenda in both France and Holland brought the issue of trust to the fore: the ‘no’ campaigns in both countries emphasized that the constitution was an opportunity to tell the political elites that they were not trusted. It was this perceived lack of legitimacy which enabled the very diverse ‘non/nee’ coalitions to secure such a convincing rebuff to the political elites and their project. Although the referenda did not facilitate a public sphere in Habermas’s sense they did provide a public space in which issues, fears and anxieties which concerned citizens could be expressed in the context of a debate on constitutional arrangements. In France this meant that the ‘no’ campaign focused on the threat the constitution posed to a ‘social Europe’ and how it would weaken public services; how ratification would pave the way to the accession of Turkey; that it would subvert French sovereignty and identity; lead to a ‘Blairite’ Europe; create a Europe for big business and endanger the livelihood of small farmers and business. ATTAC, which took a prominent role in the ‘no’ campaign, argued that the
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constitution would enable the ‘neo-liberal’ agenda to dominate European politics and inevitably damage the prospects for European democracy, society and the environment. Thus the ‘no’ campaign was an alliance of socialists, supporters of the extreme right-wing Front National, antiglobalizationists, right-wing anti-Europeans, communists, and peasants. Strange bedfellows indeed. The Dutch turned out to vote ‘nee’ in large numbers: 62 per cent in the country’s first ever referendum. The vote against was unequivocal: 61.2 per cent voted against ratification. The ‘no’ campaigners focused on Dutch fears about immigration, the euro and the consequences for Holland’s influence in an enlarged EU. The ‘no’ campaign also gave voice to anxieties about the threat to the social model of Europe and the threat to Dutch liberal values. It is therefore erroneous to conclude that the vote was against the constitution per se. However, the Dutch referendum provided citizens with a space in which they could articulate a variety of concerns and express unease about the EU as well as national political elites. The position advanced by those in support of the constitution, in France and Holland and elsewhere, is not without merit. It is evident from the campaigns in both countries, as well as from debate in other member states, that the treaty ratification process was greatly distorted by issues which had little to do with the actual constitutional text. The constitution became a symbol of something else: it rallied disenchantment and disillusionment with the EU and became a means by which citizens could protest and punish political elites. As Tony Blair, speaking in the European Parliament (23 June 2005), argued: For four years Europe conducted a debate over our new Constitution, two years of it in the Convention. It was a detailed and careful piece of work setting out the new rules to govern a Europe of 25 and in time 27, 28 and more member states. It was endorsed by all Governments. It was supported by all leaders. It was then comprehensively rejected in referenda in two founding Member States, in the case of the Netherlands by over 60 per cent. The reality is that in most member states it would be hard today to secure a ‘yes’ for it in a referendum. There are two possible explanations. One is that people studied the Constitution and disagreed with its precise articles. I doubt that was the basis of the majority ‘no’. This was not an issue of bad drafting or specific textual disagreement. The other explanation is that the Constitution became merely the vehicle for the people to register a wider and deeper discontent with the state of affairs in Europe. I believe this to be the correct analysis. Critics of Mr Blair could argue about how to respond to this discontent, but the referenda in France and Holland did indeed throw the rhetoric surrounding the future of the EU into stark contrast with the reality. The
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gap between the Laeken declaration of 2001 which stressed the need to bring Europe ‘closer to the people’ and the referenda in France and Holland in 2005 could not have been more evident. The conduct of the constitutional referenda in two of the founding member states demonstrated that the process of bringing Europe closer to the people has not resulted in the formation of a public sphere in which a discussion of European democracy can take place. The outcome of the referenda shows that the Laeken goal to bring the institutions closer to the people has fallen a long way short. Following the rejection of the constitution in France and Holland, Luxembourg pressed ahead with its referendum: the constitution was approved by a majority of 56 to 44 per cent – prior to the rejection by the French and the Dutch, support in Luxembourg had been running at 76 per cent. Like Spain, Luxembourg is a net beneficiary of the EU: per capita it receives more EU funds than any other member of the EU. Although the vote expressed a clear majority of support amongst the electorate, the size of the ‘no’ vote is indicative of the impact which the French and Dutch campaigns had on one of the staunchest supporters of the EU project. The referenda in France and Holland were clearly about a good deal more than the constitution, but it was evident that there was indeed an inability for ‘anyone to understand the full text’ and a lack of understanding as to what this text meant for the citizens of Europe. The big question, however, is what significance the events of the summer of 2005 will have for how EU leaders approach the task of taking the Laeken agenda forward. The constitutional drafting and ratification process manifestly did not engage or involve the wider public and in the end served less to advance constitutional reform than prompt a re-think on how best to reconnect citizens with the European project. In this respect, the rejection of the constitution may come to represent one of the defining moments in the history of the EU in the twenty-first century.
After the referenda The chapters in this book provide an important context for understanding the possibilities for democracy in the European Union in the light of the events of 2005. As Chapter 1 concluded, the debate on the future of a European public sphere has, as a result of the referenda on the constitution in France and the Netherlands, only just begun. The way in which the results themselves may be interpreted are clearly part of the process of democratization in/of the EU. Crowley and Giorgi define the concept of a public sphere as delineating that ‘space in which citizens come together to discuss and debate issues of common or public concern’. It is, as they show, a problematic concept when applied to the European Union, but nonetheless it is a highly relevant concept for understanding the democratic challenges facing the member states and their common institutions. Given the nature of the EU,
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its institutional systems are much ‘thinner’ than those of the member states themselves. This means that a public sphere in the EU has to be understood as developing (if it is developing) in the context of multi-level governance and multiple identities. The referenda in France and the Netherlands illustrated that debates on the constitution of the EU were deeply and inevitably embedded in national politics. The referenda were instances of a space which did open up in which citizens came together to discuss issues of common and public concern about Europe, but in the context of common and public national concerns. National and European issues overlapped and aggregated and were articulated in a specifically ‘European’ public space. It was a space which was the focus of enormous attention in all the other member states. For those countries that were either unable (constitutionally) to hold a referendum, or whose governments were unwilling to hold or go forwards with a referendum, the debates in France and the Netherlands were followed with great interest. Those who were unhappy with the result could argue – with some justification – that the referenda were not really about the constitution. However, this misses the point made in the opening chapter of this volume. The constitution of the EU cannot easily be disentangled from the politics which exists at the international, national or subnational level. The (emerging) European public sphere is not one which can be separated out from other domains and spheres of policy and politics – and the campaigns and the voting in France and the Netherlands showed this quite clearly. Significantly, in an article published in the Nouvel Observateur (7 May 2005) Habermas urged the French to vote ‘yes’ in the referendum, arguing that the legitimation of the EU could no longer simply rely on results and outcomes: ‘as long as everyone profited, the citizens were content’. The time was right for the EU project to be driven by citizens rather than the European elites – as in the past. The vote of the constitution was, he argued, an opportunity for citizens to exercise their democratic rights. However, whereas: Normally people decide on their own constitution . . . the European constitution must be born out of supporting votes of 25 peoples, and not from the common will of the citizens of Europe. Indeed, there is still no European public space, no trans-national themes, and no common discussion. Each vote thus takes place within the borders of a national public sphere. However, this asymmetry is dangerous because the priority given to national problems . . . can distort the perception of the actual problems that are posed by the acceptance or rejection of the European constitution.1 For Habermas there is no European public sphere as of yet because of the lack of distinct ‘trans-national themes’ and a ‘common discussion’ across the member states. The votes took place within the boundaries of national
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public spheres – and this was inevitably dangerous for the prospect of a ‘yes’ vote. In this he was proved correct. He had argued earlier in 2001 for a Europe-wide referendum in order to remedy the lack of public sphere and give ‘citizens broader opportunities and more effective means to participate in shaping policies’ and help ‘strengthen the connections between the legislature and federal legislature and national arenas’ (Habermas 2001). In the end, of course, the constitutional referenda took place in the context of national public spheres and were thus embedded in national issues and anxieties. Could the lack of a distinct European public sphere – in Habermas’s sense – have been overcome with a Europe-wide referendum? Could a referendum throughout the EU on the constitution have facilitated a process of establishing trans-national themes and a common discussion? Undoubtedly a EU-wide referendum would have enabled trans-national themes and a focus on some common issues, but it is more likely that national politics would have asserted a dominant, if not predominant position. This book also suggests that Habermas is wrong to think that there is no European public sphere because of the lack of trans-national themes and common discussion. As Chapter 1 hypothesizes and subsequent chapters illustrate with empirical evidence, there are indeed trans-national themes and common discussions, but these are institutionally fragmented. Furthermore, such an institutional fragmentation is unavoidable in a multi-level governance system and, indeed, one that also occurs at the national level, especially but not exclusively in non-federalized political systems. In conditions of multi-level governance discussed in this book, the (emerging) EU public sphere does not exist like a distinct layer in a cake. To pursue the metaphor commonly used to describe modes of federalism: the EU public sphere may be understood as far more like ‘marble-cake’ than a ‘layer-cake’. This means that a European public sphere has to be understood in terms of an interplay between national and European issues. The referenda in France and Holland were indeed about Europe: but in terms of the way in which Europe interfaces with the national level. Could a single referendum have filtered out or backgrounded the kind of issues that surfaced in France and the Netherlands? No doubt it would have increased the possibility that common themes and discussions across member states would have emerged, but it is very unlikely that national issues would not have played the critical role – especially in ‘no’ campaigns. The referenda showed citizens in two of the founding members of the European project trying to come to terms with this complex ‘marble-cake’ called the EU. Those who were saddened by the actual result were dismayed at how the campaigns had mixed up a wide variety of issues, and thus distracted voters from the specific issues of the text itself. But the campaigns were never about the text in itself, but rather how that text – as a symbol – related to their issues of common concern. The text was not actually pushed to the side: it was just mixed in to the cake. The text went into the bowl along with unemployment, the euro, immigration, globalization, expansion, the
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popularity of ruling elites, etc. Hence, what ‘non’ or ‘nee’ actually meant is complex: people voted yes or no for many different reasons. But perhaps the key aspect of the referenda was that they voted and that they participated in a (passionate and lively) public discussion on how the EU relates to their problems as citizens of a European Union. In which case, the referenda and their aftermath may mark less of a ‘legitimacy crisis’ for the EU, than an important contribution to bridging or remedying the so-called ‘democratic deficit’. The Laeken declaration and the constitutional convention sought to address concerns about the democratic deficit by initiating a process of constitutional and institutional redesign. This may well have failed in delivering the result which was desired, or anticipated, but the experience of the referenda – and the wider debate which they stimulated – has also served an important role in promoting a European-wide public discussion about the future of the European Union. The referenda, for all their deficiencies (in Habermas’s sense), facilitated a kind of public conversation which the actual constitutional convention manifestly failed to generate and which has involved all three narratives (legitimacy, identity and deficit narratives as set out in Chapter 1) on the future direction of the EU. That the referenda debates (before and after and inside and outside France and the Netherlands) were so fractured and fragmented is indicative of the challenge facing the democratization of the EU. Given the unique character of the EU as a political system, the process of designing a constitution and institutions for the enlarged (and still growing) union of nation states is not something which can be accomplished in a top-down fashion, or by applying existing models of democracy which are unlikely to work in the context of the EU. As Chapter 1 argues, the lack of institutional density and a common language, and the extensive institutional fragmentation, are major constraints on the emergence of a distinctively ‘European’ public sphere. The referenda and their aftermath exemplify many of the problems discussed by Giorgi in Chapter 2. The constitution was the outcome of a decision to address the perceived democratic deficit within the EU. However, as Giorgi shows, this deficit involves a variety of types which cannot be dealt with in a ‘uniform way’. One type requires more openness and participation; another a more active information policy for EU institutions and national governments and other actors; and another type of democratic deficit – essentially a legitimacy deficit – requires addressing the structural processes. And, of course, the wider issue is the relationship between democratic participation and the way citizens identify themselves with the EU as a political system. Furthermore, as Giorgi notes, a key question to be faced in thinking about the democratic deficit is ‘whether and to what extent it is possible to democratize the European Union where there does not (yet) exist a strong sense of political identification’. In turn, this strengthening of a sense of political community involves coming to terms with the deficit in institutional opportunity structures for participation, and
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the deficit information and legitimacy. Giorgi argues that the legitimacy deficit cannot be resolved without confronting the difficulties posed by subsidiarity and the European social agenda. Democratic audit, she concludes, has a vital part to play in the challenges faced by the problems identified at Laeken, and which came to the fore in France and Holland in 2005. The referenda in France and Holland, however, served as a very timely audit of the democratic deficit/legitimacy crisis in the EU. The campaigns in both countries served to mobilize considerable debate throughout Europe and indeed more widely in the media outside the EU, and also gave rise to a much needed popular discussion on the constitution of the EU. What emerged has confirmed both the usefulness of the analytical framework advanced in Chapter 2 and also the case for democratic audit as an integral part of democratization in the EU. Although the debate was very confused, and frequently turned upon issues that were quite unrelated to the actual text up for ratification, it illustrated the extent to which citizens were concerned about all three types of deficit. The ‘no’ campaign drew on the discontent surrounding the lack of opportunity for participation; it demonstrated the sheer scale of the communications gap between national and EU institutions recommending ratification, and citizens who felt ill informed about what the text actually contained, and what it implied for the future of the institutions; and the issue of legitimacy was central to both ‘no’ campaigns. The campaigns also focused on the issue of identity and the role of the social agenda in defining a distinctly ‘European’ approach to democracy. Giorgi argued that the European social model is a critical issue for the future of the EU. The ‘conundrum’ of this model is, she argues, vitally important to both the prospects for the future of economic integration and the democratization of the EU. The referenda showed the extent to which this proposition holds true. Indeed, the referenda, and the subsequent budgetary crisis, has meant that the issues of the social model and the future of integration and democracy have become inextricably linked. If citizens are to have a more informed and focused debate on these, and other issues related to the future of the EU, the case for some form of European Democratic Observatory is increasingly relevant for facilitating a learning process which can overcome the fragmentation which this book has explored, and which the referenda exemplified. Chapter 3 on participative practices addresses another aspect of the EU public sphere which is relevant to understanding the constitutional politics revealed in the referenda campaigns. Von Homeyer shows that there exists something of a shared policy discourse across various policy domains and levels, even though there are significant variations in participation across policy domains. However, this shared policy discourse does not give rise to a common language of political discourse. This is especially shown by an analysis of the opinions and attitudes to Europe and the European Union of members of the European political class, here defined primarily as
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persons holding a political office at regional, national or European level. As Feron et al. show in Chapter 4, there is a notable absence of a shared discourse for talking about Europe within the political class. This means that discussion of the EU inherently tends towards fragmentation, dissonance and inevitable disillusionment. The political class does not actually seem to share a common vision of what the project is about: most seem to favour some form of inter-governmentalism or ‘glocalism’. Federalism is not the lingua franca of discussion on the EU – far from it. Furthermore, they do not even appear to hold consistent views about the future of Europe across political lines: the divisions within the left or the right are almost as wide as those between the left and the right, or among European countries. Whereas, therefore, policy can be debated in the context of a common framework, debate about Europe as a set of institutions, as a form of democratic practice, or as a process of ‘integration’, reveals there is little agreement on what is actually being talked about. Talk about Europe tends towards what might be described as a ‘Humpty Dumpty’ discourse: ‘Europe’ means whatever speakers and listeners want it to mean. A ‘yes’ meant different things to different people – as Chapter 1 noted. Hence, when politicians and citizens do talk about it (Europe), it means so many different and often incommensurate things. The referenda illustrated how so much of the discussion about an EU constitution did not address the issue at hand, but a range of other issues which could be understood as about Europe. The story of European integration has no grand narrative. In this respect the referenda debates in France and the Netherlands are perhaps the shape of things to come. Chapter 6, on the European Union as a community of values, has a special resonance with the position of the EU after the events of 2005. Here too, there is no single narrative: Giorgi et al. show that there are three distinct ways of framing the problematic of the EU as a community of values. All three narratives (democratic principles; social values; and the cultural dimension) were deployed in various ways in the referenda by both ‘yes’ and ‘no’ campaigns. The social agenda, as discussed in Chapter 6, played a prominent role in the Dutch and French campaigns. It was argued by the ‘no’ campaigners that the constitution would lead inexorably to the erosion of ‘Social Europe’ and the ultimate triumph of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ market model. It was claimed by ‘no’ campaigners that the constitution offered insufficient guarantees that the European social model would be protected from the threat posed by the market model (Cassen 2005). On the other hand, the ‘yes’ campaigners argued that the text was necessary in order to protect the model and enable the EU to be a more effective opponent of American capitalism, globalization and the neo-conservative global order. Habermas, for example, urged the French left to support the ‘yes’ vote on the grounds that political development is a necessary check on the power of market capitalism. Without the consolidation of regulatory power at the EU level,
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he argued, the social model will be exposed and vulnerable to neo-liberal attacks (Habermas 2005). The referenda in France and the Netherlands also brought out the anxieties about the meaning of European values and culture. The right and centre-right in both countries drew support from voters who felt uneasy about the expansion of the EU and the prospects for further enlargement. In the case of Holland, the ‘no’ campaign made much of the fear that the expansion of the EU will place at risk their culture and values. This argument, of course, drew on the issues raised by the murders of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh. In both countries the position of Turkey was an issue exploited by the ‘no’ campaigns. The ‘clash of civilizations’ rhetoric was a feature of both campaigns – and not just on the extreme right. There can be little doubt that the issues of immigration and enlargement – and especially Turkish membership – were central to the ‘no’ vote. It is evident that the issue of further enlargement and above all, Turkey, will be a critical area of discussion for some years to come. The Dutch campaign, in particular, emphasized how enlargement will and has impacted on the position of the Netherlands in the EU: as a small country the ‘no’ campaign stressed how maintaining its identity would be more challenging in an even larger EU, and how its influence in the EU will be reduced as the number of members grows. The campaigns reflected concerns about national identity in terms of national boundaries and immigration, but also on the position of national currencies. This was particularly the case in Holland, where doubts about the benefits of the euro was an issue which played well for the ‘no’ campaign. The sense of relative economic stagnation which pervaded both campaigns unquestionably served to bring anxieties about immigration and expansion to the forefront. To some extent, therefore, ‘value’ issues were far more prominent in the respective campaigns than the actual constitutional text. In respect of the issue of European values – as perhaps other issues – the EU is, as Chapter 6 concludes, at a crossroads. It was hoped that the constitution would point the enlarged Union in a new direction. However, it may well be that the constitutional convention has brought the EU less to a crossroads, rather to something of a cul-de-sac. If there is to be any way forwards from the kind of arguments which were articulated in the Dutch and French referenda, it must involve a genuinely more open and inclusive public debate on the future of the EU than that which took place in the constitutional convention. As the chapter argued, the question of European values cannot be simply addressed, as so often in the past, behind closed doors. An ‘ever closer’ and an ever wider union has to be the outcome of an ever more open political process. Elise Feron’s Chapter 5 on anti-globalization draws attention to the role that a very diverse range of groups can play in shaping the agenda of the EU. It is clear that the anti-globalization movement has sought to exploit the opportunities which the EU offers to press home its critique of globalization.
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Feron concludes that EU elites can no longer afford to ignore the antiglobalization movement, and that the movement finds itself in the position of both wanting to enter the EU political arena, whilst at the same time wishing to keep a safe distance to avoid being sucked into and absorbed by the institutions. The anti-globalization movement had a prominent role in the referenda campaigns against the constitution. The anti-globalists argued that the constitution would embed free-market economics into the EU and shift France and the Netherlands towards an Anglo-Saxon economic model. The response of the leading players in the ‘no’ campaigns illustrates how important the defeat of the constitution was for advancing the cause of the European model. The Grondwet Nee campaign, for example, argued that: The outcome of the Dutch referendum on the European constitution is a clear stand against the neo-liberal project. It is not a vote against Europe, European co-operation or integration or union, but rather a vote against the neo-liberal Europe that this constitution was an attempt to set in stone. This does not mean that the vote was unambiguously left wing or progressive. Traditional, Christian, nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiments also played a role. But they certainly did not dominate the campaign. The victory for the no opens up new possibilities for the Dutch global justice movement.2 Whilst the Administrative Council of ATTAC declared (5 June 2005) that:3 The rejection of the constitutional treaty in the Dutch and French referenda has put in question the fundamental structures of the European Union. They will need to be razed to the ground in order to build a democratic, social Europe, truly independent of the United States, that will maintain relations of solidarity with the rest of the world and with generations to come. From this position the anti-globalization movement could challenge both the apparent neo-liberal bias of the new constitution, as well as draw attention to the top-down, elite-dominated process which (under Giscard d’Estaing) actually produced the constitution. As Feron notes, the antiglobalization movement has been somewhat marginalized in EU politics for a long time. However, the referenda campaigns showed that the anti-globalizers were highly effective in framing the agenda in a distinctly European political context and working with other (left /left of centre) groups involved in the successful ‘no’ campaign. Significantly, ATTAC decided that it had to engage with its members to ascertain whether they were actually against the treaty and if they were in support of ATTAC getting involved in the referenda campaigns. Not unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of its members affirmed their opposition to the constitution and their desire to see ATTAC campaigning
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to secure a ‘no’ vote. ATTAC published twenty-one demands which proposed an alternative to the neo-liberalism endorsed by the convention, and ran a highly visible campaign on the streets as well as through publications and the internet. It also sought to forge links with groups opposed to the constitution in other countries – most notably with those in Germany. In this sense, the referenda prompted the anti-globalization movement to answer the questions posed by Feron: ‘how can it integrate the European level into its usual issues’?, and how can it gain leverage from the European situation to advance the wider cause? The campaigns were used both to challenge the neo-liberal model/undemocratic nature of the EU project, and also to put forward an alternative model for the EU. The importance of the EU to ATTAC, for example, can be seen in the increased attention that it received in its journal Grain de Sable as a result of the ‘no’ campaign. In Holland the anti-globalizers also had a prominent role in the ‘no’ campaign. The Transnational Institute (TNI), based in Amsterdam was, in its own words:4 part of the progressive block that was strongly critical of the proposed EU constitution for strengthening the neo-liberal economic framework and threatening the European social model. The campaign to bring the treaty’s bias towards the market competition to the detriment of social rights brought resounding results. The treaty did not pass the test in France and the Netherlands. The Institute, in common with other anti-globalization organizations in Europe, now sees the EU in the aftermath of the referenda as an important site of resistance to the forces of globalization and an alternative to American style neo-liberalism and militarism (cf. Cassen 2005). The anti-globalization case against the constitution made much of the way in which the constitution had been drawn up, and the way in which this was typical of the policymaking process of the EU in general. Susan George argued, for example that:5 Vale´rie Giscard d’Estaing, a former president of France, was named as head of the constitutional convention that produced this document. The members of the convention, 105 of them, were named from above, they were appointed. About two thirds of them were either European or national parliamentarians, but they were not elected by the citizens to do this. Then there were some others supposedly representing civil society. So that’s the first criticism: the non-democratic aspect. A constitutional convention is normally an elected body, so that it comes in a sense from the people. This constitution does not come from the people; it comes from an appointed group. Furthermore, as Erik Wesselius, secretary of the Grondwet Nee committee, argued:6
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This document contains a lot of policy. It includes a whole chapter on economic policies basically fixing Europe on a neo-liberal framework. That kind of stuff should not be present in a constitution because if the European governments would like to subsequently change that policy choice it would not be possible, it would be anti-constitutional. So that’s very dangerous and very easy to explain to people. The inclusion of this whole chapter on neo-liberal policies in the constitution is one of our main points of critique. Another important criticism is the militarization of the EU. The document includes key articles saying that the member states of the EU will improve their military capabilities every year. This has been turned around by part of the left, who say that improving doesn’t necessarily mean spending more, but if you know where these proposals come from then you get worried. They are the product of a working group which included several representatives of the European military industry, and who want to sell their goods. That’s why they were very happy to have these paragraphs in the European constitution. The constitutional process, and the neo-liberal and the apparent militaristic content of the text, provided a unique opportunity for the anti-globalizers to make very EU-focused arguments and to assert that the EU should become a kind of bulwark against the neo-liberal model. The constitutional referenda enabled the movement to draw a line in the European public space and define that space as being a place where an alternative to ‘AngloSaxon’ capitalism could develop and come to challenge the forces of globalization (Cassen 2005). One of the key issues to emerge as a result of the referenda was the subject of Chapter 4 – the ‘political class’. In rejecting the constitution voters were expressing their dissatisfaction with the political class, both national and European. Margot Wallstro¨m, Vice President of the European Commission for Institutional Relations and Communication Strategy, acknowledged this in a speech on ‘Communicating Europe in Stormy Waters’ shortly after the referenda. For a long time the European Union has been – and has been seen as – a project for a political elite. We political leaders and decision makers have been bad at listening, bad at explaining and bad at anchoring EU issues in contemporary national politics. This argument about the elite nature of the EU project came to the fore as a result of the referenda. The use of the terms ‘political class’ and ‘political elite’ by politicians, bureaucrats and commentators does require some clarification. What the research discussed in Chapter 4 shows is that the emerging European political class has a good deal more in common with citizens than would appear from campaign rhetoric and the commentary and analysis
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which followed the rejection of the constitution. Although recognizing the importance of EU, there does not appear to be much enthusiasm amongst the EU elite about the European project, and they display an awareness of the unpopularity of the EU amongst citizens. At the same time, they do not seem to share a common vision for the EU: some form of federalism is a minority view, with the majority of the sample opting for a form of cooperative intergovernmentalism or ‘glocalism’. The so-called political class/ elite in Europe represents, therefore, quite a diverse bunch of people. Furthermore, given the variations between political elites in what they see the EU becoming, it is not surprising that citizens themselves should, as the referenda showed, be equally diverse in their ideas about ‘Quo vadis Europa?’ In this sense the gap between citizens and the political elites was not as wide as may be supposed. Both elites and citizens are manifestly engaged in forming opinions as to what they see as the future of the EU: perhaps the referenda played an important role in this process. So the answer to Fischer’s question may simply be: ‘We don’t know, and we are still thinking about it!’ Chapter 4 concludes that this dissonance, however, should not be interpreted as ‘a failure or non-fulfilment of the European political space, but rather as evidence of its vitality’. This might also be read as an apposite conclusion about the rejection of the constitution. The referenda processes in both France and the Netherlands provided a significant public space in which citizens could articulate their views on the EU and its institutions. It demonstrated less a failure of European political space, than a sign of the potential vitality of politics in that space. The rejection of the constitution was undoubtedly a powerful signal to the political class which supported its ratification, that there is indeed a gap between citizens and national and EU political elites. This gap was, if anything, widened by the constitutional convention rather than narrowed. Chapter 7 looked at another issue which came to prominence during the French and Dutch campaigns – the impact of the new member states. The referendum showed how the enlargement of the EU had inevitably meant that the position of Holland was no longer what it was. EU enlargement (and the prospects of continued expansion) was evidently an issue which was exploited by the ‘no’ groups. The French campaign, for example, made great play with the threat of Polish plumbers. The plumbers became symbols of how cheap East European workers were (it was argued) under-cutting French workers. The Polish tourist board responded by an advertising campaign showing a Polish plumber informing the French that he was staying in Poland, and inviting the French to join him! The issue of the ‘Le Plombier Polonais’ exposed some of the tensions of enlargement which need to be addressed. The position of Turkey was also a prominent issue in the campaigns: it was used both to question the continued enlargement of the EU, but also to raise issues relating to identity and ‘Europeanness’.
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As to the position of the new member states, by the time of the French and Dutch referenda, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia had already ratified the constitution by parliamentary vote. The level of popular support for the constitution as measured by polls, indicated that support for ratification in Poland and Slovakia was high, whereas Malta and Estonia were far more sceptical. As to the Czech situation discussed by Illner and his colleagues, prior to the referenda in France and the Netherlands, the broad consensus was in favour of ratifying the constitution. The Czech media gave considerable attention to the campaigns and the results, and this opened up the debate within the Czech Republic. The Czechs continue to be pragmatic and ambivalent about the wider EU political project. (Even so, the French and Dutch referenda seem to have had the effect of stimulating a new level interest amongst Czech citizens – additional copies of the text had to be printed to meet the unexpected demand!) The chapter on the Czech Republic, however, provides a broader warning against a simplistic interpretation of ‘yes’ and ‘no’ votes. As Illner and his colleagues show, we need to take care in how we interpret results: ‘yes’ and ‘no’ voting cuts across categories of age, education and party political or ideological alignment. The results of the referenda will no doubt become a source of sociological and political interpretation for many years to come.
Crisis – what crisis? The argument of this book is that the crisis facing the EU has been a long time in coming. The legitimacy and democratic deficits have been around for some time: the referenda and their consequences have served to bring these issues to the fore. The solution to the deficits identified at Laeken, and addressed by the constitutional convention, did not quite work out as anticipated or hoped for by the leaders of the EU when they signed the treaty in Rome in October 2004. The constitution was supposed to clarify and simplify, and it failed on both counts and in over 300 pages. An Americanstyle constitution it was not. It was, therefore, not surprising that the text failed to promote public discussion and knowledge of the EU and build consensus. There are lessons here for any future attempts to use a constitutional process and text to remedy the democratic deficiencies of the EU. Of course, all might have gone to plan if not for the French and Dutch referenda. And yet, the commitment by other, far more Eurosceptical, member states to hold referenda would have inevitably have led to problems for the requirement that all member states ratify the constitution. The stalemate which resulted from the rejection by France (in particular) and the Netherlands stemmed from the fact that it was France, and not Britain, that rejected the constitution. As Habermas argued in his article in support of the ‘yes’ campaign: ‘La France, en effet, n’est pas la Grande Bretagne’: France is not Great Britain. A British ‘no’ vote would have a relatively marginal impact, but a ‘no’ vote in France, he (accurately) predicted, would
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lead to paralysis in Europe and give an advantage to the Europhobes, nationalists, defenders of national sovereignty and neo-liberals opposed to the constitution. France had, from the beginning, been (with Germany) the great driver in the move towards ever closer European integration. It was therefore fitting or ironic that it was France – or leastways French voters – which chose to put the brake on a process which appeared unstoppable. A constitution which was intended as a way of legitimating the EU, actually served to expose the degree to which the EU was seen as a project which was the property of a distrusted political class which had for so long been in the driving seat. In the old days, before the discovery of the democratic deficit, the treaty would not have required a big-bang ratification. But instead, it was represented as the outcome of Europe’s ‘Philadelphia’ (by Vale´ry Giscard d’Estaing). This (wholly inappropriate) comparison with the US constitution and the rhetoric of ‘democratic deficit’ and bringing the EU nearer the people served to enhance the symbolic value of the text. But in practice, as the referenda in France and the Netherlands showed, the text became a symbol of many diverse issues and grievances. There were many kinds of ‘no’ and ‘yes’ in the campaigns. What it failed to become was a symbol around which to rally a ‘constitutional patriotism’ as an alternative to nationalism, or a symbol for promoting a commitment to a European civilization as an alternative to and bulwark against the forces of American neo-liberalism/conservatism and globalization. The chapters in this volume show that the issues of democracy and legitimization in the EU are far more complex than could be accommodated in the ill fated constitution. As a text, the document that emerged from the constitutional convention meant different things to different people and was, as Giscard d’Estaing noted, simply not designed to be actually read or understood by citizens. One lesson is that it should have been. And, furthermore, given the nature of the EU – as a system characterized by the existence of multiple identities and multi-level governance – the way that text was read and used would inevitably give rise to competing readings in various contexts and in different (national) public spheres. It became a symbol – but a symbol for a multiplicity of competing political and national narratives. A number of questions now confront the EU for the foreseeable future. Does Europe need a ‘public sphere’ in order to meet the challenges of integration in the coming decades? Is democratization the only way to develop greater legitimacy for the EU amongst its numerous and diverse citizens? How can the ‘democracy’ agenda move forwards? In the case of the need for a European public sphere, Habermas believed that, as a result of the Iraq war, Europe was experiencing something of a rebirth. In his article with Derrida in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, he argued that the demonstrations which took place in February 2003 against the Iraq war marked the birth of a distinct European public. The new engine of European
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integration and democracy should be an avant-garde of core member states which could press ahead with the fight for European values against the American superpower. The constitution was a key element in this drive towards the development of a democratic (post-national) Europe which could act as a counterweight to the USA. He had hoped that this could be achieved by a Europe-wide referendum (Habermas 2001). The actual results showed that the public sphere which he had seen emerging in 2003 was not quite developed by the referenda of 2005 in two core member states. So much for the avant-garde. Far from the campaigns demonstrating a ‘postnational’ European core, French and Dutch voters seemed to be thinking very much in national terms. The constitutional convention was manifestly not a successful way to address the issue of legitimacy. In the context of multi-level governance, how relevant is the call for an ‘ever closer union’ to the kind of issues which dominated the French and Dutch campaigns, and which resonated with citizens in other member states of both the ‘core’ and peripheral kind? In the absence of a (Habermasian) public sphere, it could be argued that the notion of a ‘democratic deficit’ in the EU is highly problematic. The deficit that seemed to bother the French and the Dutch was far more to do with the gap between public and (national) elite opinion on EU and non-EU issues. In this case, does the EU need the kind of legitimacy promised by a constitution? On the experience of the constitutional ratification process, the answer may well be in the negative. What of the future of integration and democratization? At the time of writing, the consequence of the constitutional impasse is unclear. One scenario is that the EU does little or nothing. It can continue to operate under the old rules (Nice) until such time as it seeks to make the necessary adjustments to facilitate policy-making in the expanded Union. Another scenario is that an attempt is made to re-launch the constitution as it stands, either by proceeding with planned national ratification processes or submitting a revised treaty to a new round of national ratification. In this scenario, it could be that, learning from the French and Dutch referenda, the EU opts for the Habermasian solution of an EU-wide referendum which could serve to focus debate more on the actual (revised) text. Or it could be that the EU reverts to being pragmatically intergovernmental if, as it appears from what emerged as a result of the ratification process, there seems to be no great enthusiasm for a constitution on the lines of the exiting text – even among the ‘avant garde’ and ‘core’ member states. Notes 1 Author’s translation. The original text as it appeared in the Nouvel Observateur read as follows: Alors que normalement un peuple se prononce sur sa propre Constitution, la Constitution europe´enne ne pourra naıˆtre que du vote d’adhe´sion de
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2 3 4 5 6
See See See See See
http://www.grondwetnee.org (accessed June 2005). http://www.france.attac.org (accessed June 2005). http://www.tni.org (accessed June 2005). http://www.tni.org/george (accessed June 2005). http://www.redpepper.org.uk (accessed June 2005).
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Index
accession: communication strategy 160–62; consensus 159–60; East Central Europe 157–59; NGOs and 163–64; overview 194–95; political analysis 171–75; public debate 164– 65; sociological analysis 165–71 accountability 1, 15 Acting Locally for Employment (EC 2000) 66 ‘active citizen’ 2 Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment (ACRE) 55 aggregation principle 12–13 agricultural biotechnology referendum 50 agriculture 81–82 Agriculture and Environment Biotechnology Commission (AEBC) 55 Ajar, Emile 156n.16 Amsterdam Treaty 1997 136–39, 146 anti-capitalism 117–18 anti-globalization: European movement 117–21; European public sphere 127– 32; exploitation/real investment 121– 27; overview 22, 115–17, 190–93 anti-liberalism 117–18 anti-racism groups 47, 59 anti-Semitism 59 anti-war demonstrations 118 approximation process 29 Arendt, H. 8, 9, 11 argument 16 Aristotle 7, 8, 10 Arrow, Kenneth 13 arts 150–51 Aspinwall, Mark 130 ATTAC: anti-globalization 117, 118, 119, 122; Constitutional Treaty (2004) 182–83, 191–92; elections 122;
important dates 133n.11; reformism 130; scope of 123; ‘Treaty for a Europe of Solidarity’ 126 Australian audit 25, 40n.3 Austria: accession 142; consensual democracy 35; European Employment Strategy 65, 68, 72; GM crops 50, 52, 54–55, 56, 57, 70; political class survey 86–87; protests 59–60; unemployment rates 47; see also ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case autonomy 3 awareness-raising 37–38 ‘Back to Europe’ 171 Baltic states 157, 171 Banus, E. 153 Barber, Benjamin 7–8 bargaining 6, 16 Basic Social Rights Charter 1989 146 Beetham, D. 25, 34, 41n.4 Belgium 61 Belgium Forum 119–20 Bild 60 biographical analysis 89–90 Biotechnology Coordination Committee (BCC) 54 Blair, Tony 183 borders 153–54 Bourdieu, Pierre 13, 17 Bove´, Jose´ 50, 52–53 Broad Economic Policy Guidelines 147 Broch, Herman 136 BSE crisis 46, 49–50, 57 Bundesrat 68 ˇ erma´k, Daniel 22 C career paths 94–100; diversity 99–100; multiple mandates 82, 94–96;
210
Index
national level contacts 97–99; overview 111; past vs future activity 96–97 CEEP (European Centre of Enterprises with Public Participation and of Enterprises of General Economic Interest) 64 Charles University 163 Chirac, Jacques 60 Christian Democratic Union-Czech ˇ SL) 172, Peoples’ Party (KDUC 173–75 citizenship 115, 149–50 City of Culture 152 Civic Democratic Alliance (ODA) 172 Civic Democratic Party (ODS) 164, 166–67, 172, 173–75 civic virtues 9–11 civil rights 25, 47 civil servant class 81 civil society 115 civility 18 ‘clash of civilizations’ 190 cognitive mobilization 170 Cologne European Council 1999 67 Comisio´n Nacional de Bioseguridad (CNB) 55 Comite´ de Biovigilance 55 command and control measures 36 Commission du Ge´nie Biomole´culaire (CGB) 55 Committee of the Regions 31, 64, 89, 99–100, 101 common affectedness 45, 46, 69–70, 71–72, 74, 77 common citizenship 7–8 common principles 9–11 communication technologies 5 Communist Party of Bohemia and ˇ ) 172, 173–75 Moravia (KSC community of values: cultural community 149–54; overview 22, 154–55, 189–90; political action and 8–9; social values 142–49; sovereignty and 136–41 competences: DRD (Deliberate Release Directive) 70–71; European Employment Strategy 73; hypotheses 76–77; ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case 72, 74; social policy 144; social values and 142–49; transfer of 45, 46, 47 competitive democracy 34, 35 competitive elitism 3, 12
Competitiveness, Growth and Employment 1993 White Paper 53–54 conceptual limits 4 conceptual map 81–86 conditions of democratization 24, 27–34 Condorcet’s paradox 13 Confe´de´ration Paysanne (CP) 50, 52, 70 conflict, peaceful 11 Congre´s Euroe´an Citoyen 133n.16 Consejo Asesor de Medio Ambiente (CAMA) 55 consensus 11, 18, 34, 35 conservative welfare state 32 constitution 180–84 constitutional government 25–26 Constitutional Treaty (2004): after rejection 184–88; Art 2 143; Art 44– 46 43; ‘Quo vadis Europa’ 180–84; rejection of 142; ‘Social Europe’ 33, 143–45; sovereignty 141; structure and 30 ‘Construire L’Europe Politique’ 139 convergence strategy 146, 147 cooperative intergovernmentalists 109, 110, 113 coordination, open method of: see OMC (open method of coordination) Copenhagen Council 1993 157 Copenhagen criteria 137 cosmopolitan democracy 3, 40 Council of Ministers 46, 49, 56–57 Crowley, John 22, 184 cultural community 14, 79–80, 149–54 cultural policy 150–53 ‘culture’ 150 Culture 2000 Programme 152 Cyprus 157 Czech Republic: European Employment Strategy 65–66, 68, 69, 72, 73; GM crops 51, 53, 56; overview 22–23; parliamentary elections 179n.13; partition 158; political class survey 86–87; ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case 61; ‘Velvet Revolution’ 158, 171–72 Czech Republic accession: communication strategy 160–62; consensus 159–60; NGOs 163–64, 176, 178n.5; overview 177–78, 195; political analysis 171–75; public debate 164–65; public opinion research 161, 165–66, 167, 168, 169;
Index referendum 158–59; sociological analysis 165–71; technical requirements 176–77 ˇ SSD) Czech Social Democratic Party (C 172, 173–75 Dahl, Robert 25, 26–27, 28, 41n.6, 41n.7 De la Porte, C. 147 De Schutter, Olivier 129 decision-making: DRD (Deliberate Release Directive) 71; hypotheses 76– 77; impact of 74; practical problems 30–31; ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case 72; social policy 145 Declaration on Democracy 137, 155n.3 Declaration on European Identity 155n.3 Dehaene, J.-L. 159 delegation principle 12, 13 Deliberate Release Directive (DRD): adoption of 48–49; common affectedness 46; expected participation 48, 69; legitimacy dilemma 75–76; mobilization 49–51, 70; openness 53–56; participation 46; public debate 51–53, 70–71; regulations for 49; responsiveness 56–58, 70 deliberation 6, 16, 30–31, 36, 41n.12 Delors, Jacques 14, 152 democracy: in diversity 38–39; dynamism of 36–37; models of 2–5, 19–20, 34; as value 143 Democracy and its Critics (Dahl) 28 democratic audit: information management 37–38; as a nested activity 24; overview 19–20, 187–88; scholarship revisited 25–27 democratic deficit: anti-globalization 126–27; constitution and 181; dissatisfaction 115; legitimacy and 1; overview 187–88, 195–97; recommendations for overcoming 30; recuperative actions 36; types of 38– 39 democratic models vs governance mode 34–38 demonstrations 118, 123–24, 132n.1 Denmark 139 Derrida, Jacques 196 devolution 27 DG Industry 54 dialogue, rational consensus and 11
211
direct democracy 2 discrimination 136, 143 diversity, democracy in 38–39 division of responsibilities 29–30 double-mandates: see multiple mandates DRD: see Deliberate Release Directive (DRD) EAPN (European Anti-Poverty Network) 66, 67 ecology groups 118 Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) 146, 147, 181 economy 4, 150–53 ECOROPA 50–51 ECOSOC (Economic and Social Committee) 64 education: ‘aristocracy of everyone’ 7; Europeanization and 14; political class 91, 91–92 EES (European Employment Strategy): coordination 47; expected participation 48; mobilization 64–66, 72, 73–74; openness 63–64, 67–68, 72–73; organizational embeddedness 73; public debate 66–67, 72, 73–74; responsiveness 68–69; social values and 142–43, 145–49 effective government 26 elite pluralism 13–14 EMCO (Employment Committee) 64– 65, 67–68, 69, 73 employment 32–33, 47, 118, 134n.19 Employment and Social Affairs Council 64 Employment Guidelines: see EES (European Employment Strategy) Environment Council meeting 1999 57 environmental protection 29, 35, 46, 118 equality 17–18, 25, 31–34, 136, 142 Eriksen, E. O. 141 Esping-Andersen, G. 32 ESRC (Economic and Research Council) 34 Estonia 171, 195 ETUC (European Trade Union Confederation) 64–65, 116, 118 Eufonie 163 Euro-enthusiasts/sceptics 103–4, 106–8, 107, 111–12 Eurobarometer 2003 171 Euronews 128
212
Index
European Charter of Fundamental Rights 2000 126, 141, 143 European Citizens’ Conference (2001) 133n.15 European Citizens’ Congress 118, 124 European Commission: assessment of 34–35; division of responsibilities 29– 30; employment guidelines 67–68; White Paper on Competitiveness, Growth and Employment 53–54; White Paper on European Governance 2001 30, 43 European Convention on Human Rights 132 European Council 34–35, 54, 129 European Court of Human Rights 61– 62 ‘European Democracy Observatory’ 37 European Employment Pact (EEP) 146 European Gate 163 European Governance (EC) 30, 43 European Movement 163 European Parliament: assessment of 34–35; character of 31; as colegislator 46; Deliberate Release Directive 49; strengthening 104, 109– 10; voter turnout 39 European Peoples’ Party (EPP) 87–88, 92, 114n.1 ‘European Public Sphere’ 34, 35–36 European Social Forums 118, 119–20, 124, 130–31 European Social Model 33 European Socialists (PES) 87, 92 European Structural Funds 151 European Voice 51, 128 Europeanness, lack of 1–2, 14–15, 79 Europeum 163 Eurosceptical Initiative 164 Euroskop 160 evaluation, role of 36 expertocracy 28 exploitation/real investment 121–27 external fiscal stability criteria 32–33 Faas, T. 100 familiarity with other countries 93–94 farmers 81–82 federalists 109, 113, 180–81, 189, 194 feminist groups 118 Feron, Elise 21–22, 31, 189, 190 Fifth RTD 34 Financial Times 51 Finland 62, 92, 142
First Action Programme 142 Fischer, Joschka 180–81 flexibility and progress 29 Florence Forum 118, 119, 130–31 food sector 81–82 Forrest, A. 151–52 Fortress Europe 153–54 Fortuyn, Pim 190 foulard 154 FPO (Freedom Party): see Freedom Party (FPO) France: Civic Democratic Party (ODS) 195–96; Committee of the Regions 99; Constitutional Treaty (2004) 142, 181–84; gender 92; GM crops 50–51, 52, 55, 56, 57, 70; Islam 154; political class survey 86–87; right-wing parties 60; ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case 60, 61, 71 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 60 Freedom House 25, 40n.1 ‘Freedom in the World Survey’ 25 freedom of movement 146 Freedom Party (FPO) 58, 59; see also ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case Freedom Union (US) 172, 173–75 Friends of the Earth (FoE) 49, 118 full employment 144, 145 functionalism 80 Fundamental Rights Charter 2000 126, 141, 143 Garcia, Marisol 22, 37 Gary, Romain 156n.16 GATSwatch 131 gender in political class 87–88, 91, 92 Generic Technology Commission 55 George, Susan 192 Germany: BSE crisis 57; European Employment Strategy 65, 66, 68, 69, 72; GM crops 51, 53, 55, 57; political class survey 86–87; ‘sanctions’/ Article 7 case 60, 61, 71; Soziokultur 151; unemployment rates 47 ‘Gespra¨chskreis Gru¨ne Gentechnik’ (GGG) 55 Giddens, A. 38 Giorgi, Liana 19–20, 21, 22, 35–36, 184, 187–88 Giscard d’Estaing, Vale´rie 192, 196 globalization, influence of 7 Globalize Resistance 118 glocalists 109, 110, 113
Index GMOs (Genetically Released Organisms): see Deliberate Release Directive (DRD) Go-tbeborg Council 2001 146–47 governance mode vs democratic models 34–38 Grain de Sable 119 Greece 2, 57, 137 Green Party 54, 88 Greenpeace: anti-globalization 118; expertise 125; GM crops 49, 50–51, 70; public debate 51–52 Greens/Liberals 88, 92 Greenwood, Justine 130 Grondwet Nee 192–93 guardianship 24, 28, 41n.7 Guterres, Anto´nio 61 Habermas, Ju¨rgen: argument 16; Civic Democratic Party (ODS) 195–96; ‘co-originary’ 6; consensus, dialogue towards 11; Constitutional Treaty (2004) 181–82, 185–86, 190; law 15– 16; ‘otherness’ 8; public sphere 5, 185–86; rebirth of Europe 196–97; working society 33 Havel, Vaclav 136, 173 hegemonies 27 Held, David 2–3 historicism, banishment of 8 history, transformation periods in 27 holiday pay 146 homogenization 112 horizontal governance 27 human dignity 143 human rights: European Convention on Human Rights 132; politics and 4; ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case 61–62; sovereignty and 6, 136–37; as value 143 Human Rights Watch 118 humanitarian agencies 118 Hummer, W. 140 Hungary 158, 195 Ibsen, Henrik 150 Iceland 50 IDEA audits 25, 40n.2 idealism 107 identity: absence of 1–2, 14–15, 79; European 39–40; political action and 9; social values 149–54 ideology 21, 109–10, 113 Illner, Michal 21, 195
213
Imig, D. 38, 120 immigration 153–54, 190 impossibility theorem 13 inclusiveness, centrality of 25 industrial relations 147 Indymedia 128 inequality 17–18, 25, 31–34, 136, 142 information management 37–38 Institute for European Policy 163 institutions: European considerations 13–14; reform 1–2; strong democracy and 7–8; variable geometry 38 Integration 163 interest mobilization 38–39 Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) 2000 58, 71, 72 intergovernmental negotiations 47 internal borders 153–54 International Labour Organization 132 internationalization 93–94, 111 Iraq 196 Ireland 92 Islam 154 Italy 56, 61, 139 Job Insecurity and Exclusion 118 Johansson, K. M. 98–99 justice 143 Kant, Immanuel 7, 9 Karlhofer, F. 141 Keane, J. 38 Kjaer, U. 90 Klaus, Vaclav 173 Koestler, Arthur 150 Kostelecky´, Toma´sˇ 22 Krenzler, H. G. 168 Krok-Paszkowska, A. 159, 168 Kronenzeitung 52 labour law 142 Labour Market Group 68 Laeken European Council 2002 143, 184 Latvia 171, 195 law and order: co-decision procedures 46; Europeanization and 14; legal democracy 3; publicity and 15–16; respect for 143 left-wing parties 88; educational background 92 legitimacy crisis 1–2, 30, 195–97 Liberal Party 88 liberalism 2, 32
214
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liberalism, beyond 9–11 liberty 7, 10, 143 Lidove´ noviny 164–65 Lie`ge summit (2001) 133n.17 Linz, J. 26–27 Lisbon goals 29, 146 Lithuania 195 lobbies 82, 125 London Forum 131 Lord, C. 34–35 Luka´cs, G. 136 Luxembourg 56, 92, 184 Luxembourg Process 67, 146; creation of 63 Maastricht Treaty 1992 32–33, 152 McAdam, D. 122 McDonalds 52–53 Machiavelli, N. 7, 8, 9–11 majority rule 139 Malta 157, 171, 195 management by objectives 63 market regulation 41n.8 Marks, G. 122 Marxist democracy 2 media 5, 51–53 MEPs: biographical analysis 89–90; career path diversity 99–100; career paths 82, 94–100; interviews with 88– 89; multiple mandates 94–96, 111; national level contacts 98; opinions and attitudes 100–110; past vs future activity 96–97; re-election rates 97; types of 94 methodological framework 19 Michels, Robert 81 Mickiewicz, Adam 150 Miller, D. 41n.10 Moı¯si, 141 mobility 94–95 mobilization: Deliberate Release Directive 49–51; European Employment Strategy 64–66; factors affecting 71–72; legitimacy dilemma 75–76; relevance of 44–45; ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case 59–60 monitoring democratic practices 34–39 MPs/MEPs 94–96, 111 multiculturalism 154 multiple mandates 94–96, 95 Musil, Robert 136 NAPs (National Action Plans) 64–66, 147, 149
nation-states 30, 40 national democratic audits 37 nationalism/nationality 1, 40, 88, 105– 6, 110, 41n.14 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation) 157 negative liberty 10 neo-corporatism 81–82 neo-functionalism 45–46 neo-institutionalism 46 neo-liberalism 119 Netherlands 35, 181–84, 190–92 new politics 107–8 NGOs 68, 163–64 Nice Treaty 2000 58, 62, 138–39, 141, 146 Nordic Green Left 88 Noury, A. G. 101 Nouvel Observateur 185 objectives 143, 146 ¨ ffentlichkeit 17 O oligarchies 27 OMC (open method of coordination) 36, 63–64, 144, 145, 146–48 ‘One Europe of Several’ programme 34 openness 17–18, 45, 53–56, 61–62, 67– 68 opinions and attitudes 100–110 organizational embeddedness: DRD (Deliberate Release Directive) 70–71; EES (European Employment Strategy) 73; hypotheses 77–78; impact of 74; participation and 45– 46, 69; public debate and 72; ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case 72 ‘otherness’ 8 Oxfam 118 parliamentarianism, crisis of 31 participation 24, 25, 38–39 participatory democracy 3, 20–21, 34, 35 participatory governance 43–78; conditions for 47–48, 48t; expected levels of 46–48; factors affecting 74– 75, 74t; hypotheses 76–78; impacting factors 45–46; important factors 74– 75; key dimensions 44–45; legitimacy dilemma 75–76; levels and factors 69–74; overview 188; timing 77 partnerships 145, 147 party politics 81, 87–88, 100–101 peace, promotion of 143
Index peaceful conflict 11 Pedersen, M. N. 95 Pelinka, A. 140–41 the people, nature of 4, 6 performance indicators 26 PES: see European Socialists (PES) Peterson, Martin 22 Petite, M. 137 Petrella, Riccardo 119–20 philosophy, politics and 8 Platform of European Social NGOs 68 Plihon, Dominique 126 pluralism 2–3, 8, 137, 143, 150–53 Pochet, P. 147 Pocock, John 9–11 Poland 158, 194, 195 Polanski, Roman 150 policy area flexibility 34–35 political action, community and 8–9 political action, scale of 4 political allegiance 169 political attitudes 106–10 political class: career paths 82, 94–100, 111; conceptual map 81–86, 111; educational background 91, 112; members of 84–87, 85; methodology 86–90; opinions and attitudes 100– 110; overview 21, 110–13, 189, 193– 94; sociological profiles 90–94 political correctness 15 politics: judgement 4–5, 6; political disenchantment index 106–8, 108; political field 17; subject matter 4, 6; theory 35; values 170 Polyarchy (Dahl) 25, 26–27 popular government 25–26 Portugal 137 poverty issues 66 power 6, 8–9, 45 Pradel, M. 37 preconditions 25, 41.n4 ‘principles’ 143 Prodi, Romano 30 protest movements: demonstrations 118, 123–24, 132n.1; strengthening of 115–16; see also anti-globalization public contestation, centrality of 25 public debate: Deliberate Release Directive 51–53; European Employment Strategy 66–67; factors affecting 71–72; legitimacy dilemma 75–76; ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case 60– 61 public interest, defining 15
215
public opinion 13, 161, 165–66, 168, 169 public political communication 45 public sphere: anti-globalization 127– 32; characteristics 6; concept of 5–11; emergence of 115; existence of 185– 86; normative considerations 12–13; overview 184–86, 196; as a sociological process 15–18; specific European considerations 13–15 publicity 15–18 Puszati, Arpad 53 ‘Quo vadis Europa’ 180–84 racism 136, 140 radicalism 130 rational consensus 11, 18 rationalism 46 Reclaim the Streets 118, 130 recruitment 98 referenda: for accession 158–59; for constitution 181–88; overview 22–23 ‘Reflection Group’ 136 reformism 130 regional goals 151 regional representation 31 Reising, U. K. H. 128 relativism, banishment of 8 ‘religious man’ 2 representativeness studies 90 republicanism 2, 7–11 research design 19 resources, sharing 15–18 responsibilities, division of 29–30 responsiveness: DRD (Deliberate Release Directive) 56–58, 70; European Employment Strategy 68– 69; relevance of 45; ‘sanctions’/ Article 7 case 62–63 right-wing parties: accession and 170; danger of 63; defining 88; educational background 92; observation of 139; rise of 47; see also ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case Robert-Koch-Institute (RKI) 55 Rodousakis, Niki 22 Rokkan, S. 41n.9, 41n.10, 41n.13 Rousseau, J. J. 7 Ruzza, Carlos 125 Saint-Denis Forum 118, 119 ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case: Amsterdam Treaty 1997 137–40; common
216
Index
affectedness 71; expected participation 48, 69; imposition of 58–59; lawfulness 155n.6; legitimacy dilemma 75–76; mobilization 59–60, 71, 74; openness 61–62, 71; participation 47, 74; public debate 60–61, 71, 74; responsiveness 62–63, 71; sovereignty and 136–41 scale of political action 4 Scarrow, S. 94, 99 Schro¨der, Gerhard 57, 60 Schumpeterian model 3, 12 Schwarzenberg, Karl 59 Seabrook, John 150 self-government 2, 5 Shore, C. 152 Siedentop, L. 40 Single European Act 1986 137 Skinner, Quentin 10 Slovakia 157, 158, 195 Slovenia 171, 195 SNS audit 25–26, 40n.2 Social Agenda 2000–2005 146 social-democratic welfare state 32 Social Dialogue Committee 68 ‘Social Europe’ 33, 143–45 Social Forums 67–68, 118, 119–20, 124, 130–31 social model 142–49 social objectives 144, 146 social partners 145, 147 social values 142–49 social welfare 14 socio-economic relations 31–34, 41n.10 sociological profiles of political class 90–94 sociology of public sphere 15–18 Soil Association 50 solidarity 126, 143 sovereignty: criticisms of 9; human rights and 6, 136–37; pooling of 170; values in democracy and 136–41 Soziokultur 151 Spain: accession 137; Constitutional Treaty (2004) 182; European Employment Strategy 65, 69, 72; GM crops 51, 53, 55–56; political class survey 86; ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case 60; sociological profiles 90; unemployment rates 47 Stability and Growth Pact 147 Stachova´, Jana 22 Standing Committee on Employment 67
the state 3–4, 5 Stepan, A. 26–27 Stockholm Council 2001 146 Stolz, K. 82 Strauss-Kahn, D. 30, 37, 139 Streeck, W. 33 strong democracy 5–11 ‘structuring’ 41n.9 subsidiarity principle 28, 29–31, 109, 144, 163 supra-national institutions 19, 28 Sweden: accession 142; audit 25–26, 40n.2; European Employment Strategy 65, 66, 68, 72; GM crops 51, 53, 56, 57; political class survey 86; regional development 151; ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case 61; sociological profiles 90, 92; unemployment rates 47 Switzerland 35 Tampere Council 1999 156n.8 Tarrow, S. 38, 120, 122 Tassin, Etienne 8–9 technocracy 2, 24, 28, 35, 36 TEU (Treaty of the European Union) 62 TEU (Treaty of the European Union) Article 7 revision: see ‘sanctions’/ Article 7 case Third World debt 118, 122 Thursday demonstrations 59 timing and participation 77 Toggenburg, G. 139 tolerance 143 top-down government 27 trade agreements 131 trade unions: anti-globalization 118, 119, 124–25, 128–29; EES (European Employment Strategy) and 64–66; embeddedness 46, 47; NAPs (National Action Plans) 149; ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case 59 trans-national activities 84 trans-national/supra-national 41n.6 transfer of competences 45, 46 transformation periods 27, 28 Transnational Institute (TNI) 192 transparency 1, 5 ‘Treaty for a Europe of Solidarity’ (ATTAC) 126 Treaty of the European Union 140 Tripartite Social Summits 67–68 TUC (Trades Union Congress) 65
Index Turkey 29, 135, 154, 190, 194 Tutte Bianche 130 UK: BSE crisis 49–50; competitive democracy 35; Constitutional Treaty (2004) 195–96; European Employment Strategy 65, 66, 68, 69, 72; GM crops 50, 53, 55, 57, 70; MEPs 114n.1; political class survey 86–87; ‘sanctions’/Article 7 case 60; unemployment rates 47 UK Democratic Audit (Beetham) 25, 34 unemployment 32–33, 47, 118 UNICE (Union of Industrial and Employers’ Confederations) 64–65 United Left 88 United States 14, 50 USAID democracy framework 25, 26, 40n.2 Vajdova´, T. 162 values 143, 149–54 Van Gogh, Theo 190 variable geometry 38 virtual representation 24
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virtue 9–11 Vogel, Jean 122 von Homeyer, Ingmar 20–21, 30, 38, 188–89 voting 13, 25 wage policy 35 Waldheim, Kurt 59 Weber, Max 81 Weir, S. 25 welfare provision 32–33, 142, 41n.10 Wesselius, Erik 192–93 White Paper on Competitiveness, Growth and Employment 53–54 White Paper on European Governance 2001 30, 43 Wiesenthal, Simon 59 Wildhaber, Luzius 61–62 Winkler, G. 140 Wise Men 61–62, 138, 155n.6, 155n.11 workers’ rights 146 working class, end of 33, 81 Working Group ‘Social Europe’ 33, 143–45 xenophobia 136, 140
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