RESTORING CONFIDENCE IN THE EU CALLS FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION

Hit by the crisis, Europeans have lost their confidence in the EU.  In countries like Spain,  72% of citizens express mistrust. In Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy and Cyprus, the EU is viewed with a distrust as overwhelming as we see in Spain. Significantly, however, the leap of distrust in the EU is taking place not only in the debtor countries, but in the creditor countries, or those financially better off: the people of Germany, Austria, France, the Netherlands and Finland have also lost their trust in the EU. Clearly, the distrust is not just directed at the EU, but at other countries of the EU and their citizens. As things stand, everyone is coming out a loser, it seems.

On one hand, although the austerity policies may be succeeding in controlling deficits (though not in reducing debt), they are producing neither jobs nor growth, and so are failing to generate the support from the public that they need to sustain themselves. What's worse, forcing governments to push through the same policies regardless of their political colouration also undermines the legitimacy of the national political institutions. As witnessed in the countries that saw intervention, political systems are wearing out (as in Spain and Portugal) or breaking down (as in Greece and Italy). Meanwhile, on the other hand, the dominant mood in the creditor countries, where there is no economic growth either, is that the countries of the south are a heavy burden, eating up scarce resources and dragging down their own progress.

It is with this interwoven disaffection and distrust, so sharply deteriorated, that the EU must complete an indispensable political and economic integration.

What Europe is lacking today is confidence in the EU and mutual trust. To make Europe work, its citizens, from north and south, from creditor countries and debtor states, from the centre and from the periphery, must be willing to provide the European institutions with adequate financial instruments and, at the same time, with government agencies that are both effective and have democratic legitimacy.

A European Union that cannot longer rely on a general public support will lack democratic legitimacy, which in fact is already suffering from a plunging public bias, not only through the already low European election turnouts. The European institutions and the national governments will have to address this rising “EU fatigue” by pointing out the overall achievements despite the economic crisis. THE CITIZENS HAVE TO BE MADE AWARE OF THEIR CONSEQUENCES OF CONTINUOUS DISENCHANTMENT FOR EUROPEAN POLITICS AND THEY HAVE TO BE RE-INVOLVED IN ACTIVE EUROPEAN AFFAIRS.

Time is running out. In June next year Europe's citizens will be called to the polls. If the citizens' confidence in the EU is not restored by then, we may be in for a rather unpleasant surprise!