Part One: The Democratic Deficit
By rights the European Union (EU) should have been a global empire. With a population of almost 500 million (100 million more than the US) and a well-educated, technically advanced workforce, it should be a comparable power to the US and China. OK, you can argue that they lack critical natural resources, unlike the US, which is a true autarky but Russia always fulfilled that role, delivering cheap commodities on time and at a favorable cost. But now they find themselves in a financial and social death spiral. So, what went wrong?
The idea behind the EU goes right back to the 1920s, with luminaries at the time expressing a need for a pan-European structure, like Austrian aristocrat Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi (who founded and ran the Pan European Union – a right wing, Christian centric prototype of the current EU, for almost 50 years), left leaning French prime minister Aristide Briand (who advocated a federal Europe to bring an end to the countless French/German wars), French center-left mathematician and politician Emile Borel, British economist John Maynard Keynes, Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega Y Gasset, Greek prime minister Eleftherios Venizelos, Polish statesman and soldier Jozef Pilsudski (who put forward his version of what he called Intermarium – between the seas – which mainly comprised of the old Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth, including Belarus and Ukraine, but did not include western Europe as it only went west up to the, then, western Polish border) and Russian communist Leon Trotsky.
They each had a different vision for the future of Europe – for example Coudenhove-Kalergi and Trotsky had diametrically opposed viewpoints on how it should be structured, with the former desirous of a right wing, Christian based Europe, while Trotsky favored a communist Soviet system. But they all agreed on the fundamental point that divisions within Europe had led to numerous wars and economic degradation and that unity would lead to prosperity and peace.
Nothing substantive was done about forming a consensus for the proposed union or indeed the form it would take until the second world war. It was Hitler that actually brought Europe under a single umbrella, albeit an odious one, and many German soldiers, when interviewed after the war, stated that they were fighting for and motivated by a united Europe.
The second world war provided the impetus for moving the project forward. The 1943 Yalta Conference resulted in the first formation, by the UK, the USA and the Soviet Union, of the proto-European state by creating the European Advisory Commission, whose mandate was to put forward solutions to the problems Europe would likely face after the war.
The European Advisory Commission was replaced after the Potsdam Agreement, which provided for for the division of Germany. The three triumphant powers were called the Allied Control Council USA, the Soviet Union and the UK (nominally excluding France but France ended up controlling parts of Germany).
This council fell apart after the flawed election in Poland, which the Communists won, but was marred by pro-communist violence. This was regarded as a blatant breach of the Yalta agreement. The Communist coup d’etat in Czechoslovakia marked the final demise of the Allied Control Council after the London Six power Conference, to which the Soviet Union was not invited. There, it was decided that it was imperative that Germany, or at least the parts that the USA, France and the UK controlled, should become a Western led democracy.
The relations between the Soviet Union and the other great powers were already strained because of the signing of the 1947 Treaty of Dunkirk. On the face of it, this treaty was designed to offer mutual assistance in case of another attack either by or on Germany, but was regarded as offering mutual protection in case of attack by the Soviet Union.
This stance was confirmed, within a matter of days, by the release of the Truman doctrine, which offered military support for any country that was being threatened by the Soviet Union, which in turn led to the formation of NATO. After these events, the Soviet Union, under Stalin, took no part in further discussions with the Western allies and the Cold War was born.
Events in Europe moved apace with the advent of the cold war. Following on from Churchill’s 1946 speech where he called for the creation of a European Union, the Treaty of Brussels was signed, which is regarded as the founding document of the European union.
In addition the Organisation for European Cooperation (the forerunner of the OECD) founding document was signed in order to manage the Marshall Plan, which was set up by the USA (and seeded with over $13 billion – equivalent to over $174 billion at today’s prices) in order to bring prosperity and democracy to Europe and to provide a bulwark against creeping Soviet encroachment.
In response, the Soviet Union created Comecon, which covered both economic integration between members of the Eastern Bloc (as well as allied states such as the DPRK) as well as bilateral relations. In May 1948 the Hague Congress took place during which the European Movement International, the College of Europe in Bruges (which was created to train future ruling elites to uphold European values of mutuality, freedom and openness) and, most importantly, the Council of Europe, with the goal of upholding human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Europe, were founded. The importance of this conference can be recognized by some of the attendees, who represented a cross section of European elites at the time such as Albert Coppé, Altiero Spinelli, David Maxwell-Fyfe, Édouard Daladier, François Mitterrand, Harold Macmillan, Konrad Adenauer, Paul Ramadier, Paul Reynaud, Paul van Zeeland, Pierre-Henri Teitgen and Winston Churchill.
Note, the council of Europe is often confused with the European Union, mainly because the EU adopted its flag, but is, in fact, a separate organization.
The formation of the structures of the future European Union, led a French politician, Robert Schuman, to create the Schuman Declaration, on May 9th 1950 (which is now celebrated as Europe Day). He proposed that West German and French Coal and Steel industries be brought together in order to foster cooperation between former belligerents, France and Germany, leading to some form of political union.
This led in turn to the Treaty of Paris, which was not just signed by the two protagonists, but also by Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg and the Netherlands (but not the UK) under which the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was formed and, importantly, a degree of political integration was declared.
The ECSC also led to the formation of the European Economic Community (EEC), which was later ratified by the Treaty of Rome. This was regarded as the de facto founding of what would later become the EU.
Note that the leaders of this community were not elected but were appointed, which has led to the undemocratic structure of the future EU that plagues it today. The ECSC was backed by the vast funds available from the US under the Marshall Plan, which gave it the breathing space to create the future political structures of the EU, such as the European Commission and the European Parliament (initially called the European Parliamentary Assembly). This parliament cannot be regarded as a true legislative body in that it cannot propose legislation but exists merely to rubber stamp legislation proposed by the European Commission or the European Council (who propose the President of the EU). It doesn’t even have a permanent home as it shuttles between Strasbourg and Brussels, with the administration and bureaucracy located in Luxembourg (which was the original home of the parliament).
Initially the European Parliament was, under the Treaty of Rome, appointed; primarily, because the members could not agree on a voting structure. By the time it changed from an assembly to a parliament in 1962, there still was no consensus on how voting in members of the new parliament were to be chosen. As a compromise, the members were chosen based on the electoral systems in place in the member states. Direct parliamentary elections were not held until 1979 and even then, it was based on a party list system in which a constituent had no say in who was supposedly representing them, but instead voted for a party who in turn assigned the seat to members of its own choosing.
From the start, the European Parliament tried to create the structures of the EU and to take certain aspects, such as the choice of the EU President, under its control but the structure of the putative union prevented its primacy. Instead, it was ‘consulted’ on proposed legislation (even fundamental proposals such as the Schengen agreement) and had, up until the signing of the Lisbon Treaty (aka the European Constitution), no control over the budget. Notably, this latter document was renamed the Lisbon Treaty as the original constitution was rejected by a majority (55%) of French voters and almost 60% by the Dutch in referenda held in 2005.
Even though the Lisbon Treaty was indeed a constitution and therefore a fundamental document of which the population of the EU should have been consulted, But, no countries, aside from Ireland, was allowed a vote on it (Britain, under Gordon Brown refused a referendum, primarily because the Dutch also voted against it and he was concerned that the British would too, so, instead he proposed a parliamentary debate, which was heavily whipped to ensure that no opposition could arise and no vote was taken). Being renamed as a Treaty (in fact it was just the original constitution in a smaller font – in order to make it look less all-encompassing – with a new cover page – the ex French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the chair of the Constitutional Convention that drafted the text, passed it off by saying: “the difference is one of approach, rather than content.”) meant that under EU member states’ democratic rules, the people didn’t need to be consulted. So, the French and Dutch referenda were effectively nullified by their respective senates.
The Irish also rejected the treaty, but under what was to become normal EU voting procedures, the referendum was simply run again and again, with a few political points being conceded, until the Irish relented. These concessions have since been largely nullified.
Referenda, when they are run, are almost always ignored (except Brexit); for example, after the 2006 Dutch referendum on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement, a 61% voted against the proposal, it was adopted nevertheless, only with a ‘explanatory declaration’ added to the treaty.
Political differences, even during the embryonic stages of the creation of the EU, particularly the lack of any sort of consensus regarding the electoral system, should have set alarm bells ringing regarding the viability of the project. But these obvious flaws were papered over and the project continued
The EU has, particularly since the adoption of the Lisbon Treaty, been marked by subterfuge where the public is told one thing but with the EU actually going forward with something different. In part two we’ll look at how the EU has deviated from public opinion, particularly on closer political union (which was proposed way back in the 1940s), which the populations of the member countries plainly don’t want but which the EU elites are hell bent on implementing. The public vision is primarily about a customs union and the free passage of people across borders (which is what was proposed in the UK’s referendum in the 1970s on whether it should stay in the European Customs Union – as Edward Heath, the then Prime Minster, had unilaterally decided to join without any public consultation – there was no mention of closer political integration).