POLITICAL SUSTAINABILITY OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

by    Cristóbal Fernández de Soto T.    Publisher / Editor

 

September 22, 2012        

​

The European Union —as we know it—, is ill-fated because of its structural legitimacy deficit. If only the ideal of Europe remains for the greatest part of the people, its governance is perceived as decision-making centred (Germany and the rest), distant from citizen’s aspirations (both for the German constituency and for the rest), distant from citizen’s experiences (technocratic rule by unelected bureaucrats), imposed by the north and imposed upon the south.

 

Worldwide, representative democracies are displaying increasing signs of unsustainability and the European Union is no exception. (1) The political order that maintains the capitalist production system and consumer culture is showing declining levels of electoral turnout, distrust in democratic institutions and dubiety of the political authorities.



In the input side, quantitative results during past presidential elections (those with the biggest convocational power) are consistent with the disenchantment of the electoral masses and qualitative studies suggest the erosion of the social capital, public participation and the overall capacities of citizenship. (2)

 

If this downward trend is to continue, the current representation may at some stage become pseudo-democratic or openly undemocratic because the provenance of the mandate originates from a narrowing minority of the population. This has already occurred to the European Parliament whose members have been directly elected by universal suffrage since 1979 but turnout has fallen consecutively at each election. In 1999 the Parliament was elected by less than 50% of the voters for the first time and during the last election in 2009 turnout stood at 43% (18 out of 27 member states were under 50%). 



Due to the low turnout and the legitimacy deficit that became apparent after the Constitutional referenda in the Netherlands and France in 2005, the EU is always looking for legitimacy mainly from the output side of the equation like transparency, adequacy, performance, etc.. As a matter of fact, in the absence of a “shared vision”, EU’s legitimacy has been always based on outcomes for a continuos closer union insofar the core economic argument for a unified Europe under a unified currency is to be the surest path to growth and welfare. 



Yet again, the overall performance does not comply and behind the evident divide between centre and periphery lies a general decline in GDP, real wages, public welfare and general well-being, widening income inequality and rising levels of unemployment, unhappiness and distrust.  A common pattern among developed economies, severely hit by the ongoing late 2000s recession, but while for most of them 2010 was a transitional period towards recovery, 2011 saw the European economy to continue to fall into recession (‘double-dip’), affecting the global economy. 



In the European periphery negative outputs are more pronounced because the first wave of credit crunch choked most small and mid-size businesses and after applying the imposed fiscal adjustments, the contraction of the demand moved at a faster pace. Besides its chronic high rates of unemployment, the EU’s general and the juvenile will run high and endemic long after significative economic growth comes back. 

The best of the better-educated generation was forced to emigrate and as for those that couldn’t leave, are not likely to ever apply what they studied for, after more than five years without a job. A complete generation has been lost and the consequences will be felt in many aspects for the years to come. 



European management of the financial phase included different kinds of interventions (4). In some countries, excessive national debt and current account deficits drove the sovereign bond yield so high, they couldn’t finance further budget deficits or service the existing. Bailouts and nationalisation of banks lead to higher taxes, cuts and public debt and they are perceived to benefit those interest groups responsible, yet never accounted for, the origin of the financial crisis and the subsequent speculative attacks on the sovereign bonds during its debt phase.  Thus, by supporting bankers and financiers, the political establishment not only exacerbates the efficient causes of the crisis (transferring more debt to the entire population and weakening the productive economy by a contracted demand) but aggravates the mounting legitimacy deficit by jeopardising the European welfare state by limited tax revenue. Resultant widening inequality is consistent with the structural flaws attributed to the productive system (5) but it's up to the ability of the ideologic apparatus to resupply the required minimum legitimacy levels what is going to test its resilience.

 

Among political institutions, only the EU was trusted by more than 50% of the population but prior to the financial turmoil of December 2007, this trust had started to erode. Since the spring of 2008, it remains below that level and steadily decreasing. Significative erosion occurred during the last quarter of 2009 when the risk of a ‘double-dip’ recession emerged from bad results in France, Germany and Italy and fear for a sovereign debt crisis. In May 2010 the enactment of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) provided some assurance for the rest of the year but after the 2011-2012 bailouts in Greece, Ireland Portugal, Spain and Cyprus, public confidence continues to decrease.

__________

(1) Turnout in US midterm elections usually falls below 40%.

(2) Macedo et al., 2005

(3) Smith and Gjerstad, 2009 and Ashwani Saith, 2011

(4) Iceland’s entire international banking system collapsed in 2008 but it was not affected by the sovereign debt crisis because its citizens refused to bail it out in a referendum.