National Democracy Will Stifle Europe’s Constitutional Debate

By: Erik Jones, SAIS Bologna Center

The European Union’s heads of state and government drafted their Constitutional Treaty to strengthen European democracy. In doing so, they overlooked the fact that the most potent arena for democratic expression in Europe is at the national and not the European level. The popular referenda held in France and the Netherlands in 2005 should have driven that point home. Apparently they did not. Now Europe’s heads of state and government are poised to make the same mistakes all over again.

 

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is eager to restart discussion about European Union (EU) institutional reform as one of the pillars of her European Council presidency. She is hardly alone in this desire. ‘Friends of the constitution’ can be found across Europe. Their goal is to salvage as much as possible from the original European Constitutional Treaty. Their shopping list includes a more stable European Council Presidency in lieu of the current six month rotation and a more prominent European Foreign Minister to replace the ‘High Representative’ of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). They would like to push for a dual majority voting system and a reduction in the number of fully-fledged European Commissioners. If possible, they would also like to embed the European Charter of Fundamental Rights in such as way as to imbue it with the force of law.

 These friends of the constitution have strong arguments in their support. In principle, a stable presidency would give Europe’s agenda more coherence; a more prominent European foreign minister would give the CFSP more heft; dual majority voting would strengthen the EU’s legitimacy; a streamlined Commission would render it more efficient; and a clear statement of fundamental rights backed in law would make Europe more just. Of course, European integration is about power as well as principle, and the friends of the constitution have leverage on their side as well: Any future enlargement of the European Union would be difficult without some reform of the Union’s institutions; enlargement to include Turkey would be inconceivable.

 

 What the friends of the constitution fail to recognize is that the arguments are irrelevant to the debate. Whatever the strength of the pro-constitution (or pro-institutional reform) position, the weakness is democracy–and particularly democracy at the national level. Any future European constitutional treaty is more likely to fail because of divisions within member states than because of differences among them. Indeed, the lesson that Europe’s heads of state and government should have drawn from the recent experience in France and the Netherlands is that weak governments cannot make strong treaties.

 

 Everyone has their own pet theory for why the constitutional referenda failed and for what motivated voters in both countries. The treaty went too far and not far enough; the voters worried about the threat of migration from new member states and the prospect of immigration from potential candidate countries; the document was too liberal and it threatened to create too much red tape. Yet a simple narrative lies beneath this complex of interpretation. French President Jacques Chirac and Dutch Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende called for referenda out of choice rather than out of necessity. They did so when their governments were weak and when public opinion polling suggested that popular support for a European Constitution was strong. Things only spiraled out of control after the referendum dates were set and despite the best efforts by both politicians to ensure a positive outcome. Europe as a whole has had to pay the price.

 

This is not the first time that domestic weakness led to European folly.  François Mitterrand’s decision to call a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty almost resulted in disaster. Bertie Ahern had to call the June 2001 referendum in Ireland as an act of constitutional necessity. His choice was not to campaign in favor of the Nice Treaty while standing for reelection. Moreover, referenda are not the only sign of weakness.

Obstinacy works as well. Time and again when politicians cause problems at the European level it is because they have no room to maneuver on the domestic front. That is when bargaining positions harden, discourse breaks down, and reason takes a holiday. When Leszek Miller blocked final agreement on the draft European Constitutional Treaty in December 2003 his motivations derived from domestic weakness rather than international division.

 

Balkenende played a similar role in the negotiation of European finances in October 2002, although he narrowly escaped responsibility for bring down the summit.

 The illusion is that European Union’s heads of state and government have been filling their period of reflection since June 2005 with thoughts of Europe. The reality is that they have not. Instead they have been pre-occupied with their own political weakness. The evidence of this weakness is everywhere. Austria took months to form a government and succeeded only under strong presidential pressure. The Czech Republic is in a similar mess. So is the Netherlands. And that is not to mention the right-wing populist coalitions in Slovakia and Poland or the scandal that erupted around the left-wing government in Hungary. Gordon Brown has enough on his plate dealing with David Cameron (and Tony Blair) to worry much about negotiating institutional revisions for the EU. Romano Prodi has a nine-party coalition and an unstable plurality in the Senate: He can hardly negotiate a domestic budget. Even José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, whose star shown brightly after his surprise victory in the March 2004 parliamentary elections, is now to wrestle with a renewed bout of Basque separatism.

 

Now is hardly an auspicious time for a new constitutional effort. Far from strengthening democracy at the European level, such an effort is likely to generate a negative democratic backlash. Populists will accuse pro-European politicians of selling out the national interest. Politicians will harden their international positions in response. At best, the result will be a difficult and unsuccessful treaty revision. However, it could make Europe’s problems of domestic political weakness even worse.

---