CHANGING THE WAYS THE EU DEALS WITH ITS MEMBER STATES AND CITIZENS

The old explanation for Euroscepticism was the alleged existence of a democratic deficit within the EU. Decisions, critics said, were taken by unaccountable institutions rather than elected national governments. But the current crisis is born not of a clash between Brussels and the member states but a clash between the democratic wills of citizens in northern and southern Europe, the so-called centre and periphery. And both sides are now using the EU institutions to advance their interests.

To an increasing number of citizens in southern European countries, the EU looks like a golden straitjacket that is strangling the space for national politics and emptying their national democracies of content. In this new scenario, governments come or go but policies remain basically the same and cannot be challenged. Meanwhile, in northern European countries, the EU is increasingly seen to have failed as a controller for the policies of the southern rim. If sovereignty is understood as the capacity of the people to decide what they want for their country, few in either the north or the south today feel that they are sovereign. A substantial part of democracy has vanished at the national level but it has not been recreated at the European level.

In a fully-functioning national political system, political parties would be able to voice these different perspectives – and hopefully act as a referee and find common ground between them. But that is precisely what the European political system cannot deliver: because it lacks true political parties, a proper government and a public sphere, the EU cannot compensate the failures of national democracies. Instead of a battle of ideas, the EU has been marred by a vicious circle between anti-EU populism and technocratic agreements between member states that are afraid of their citizens.

Enthusiasm for the EU will not return unless the EU profoundly changes the way it deals with its member states and its citizens.