In Defence of the European Union

The European Union isn’t exactly the flavour of the month right now – just ask Greek voters or rebellious Conservative backbenchers. So, since I like playing devil’s advocate, I thought I’d outline the positive impact of the EU, as well as suggesting how it can overcome its shortcomings.

I tend to think of the EU as the modern equivalent of the early United States. It lacks a national party system (which the U.S. developed at some point between 1800 and 1840), a full monetary union (which the U.S. had from the start), and the European Council is eerily similar to the government under the Articles of Confederation. Its political norms are still evolving, but are evolving in a democratic direction: witness the Parliament’s 2004 rejection of one of the nominees for the Commission, or the Lisbon Treaty’s provision calling for the composition of the Commission to reflect the various party groups’ seats in the Parliament. The eurosceptics who label the EU’s institutions ‘undemocratic’ are missing the point – it is evolving in much the same way as other federations have throughout history.

The original idea of the EU is a brilliant one, and Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, and the other founders deserve to be remembered by history as the trans-Atlantic equivalents of Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and co. They prevented a resumption of the Franco-German rivalry which had led to two world wars, and gave western Europe a supranational structure which could hold its weight against the United States and the Soviet Union. Today, the existence of the EU gives workers from eastern Europe (the famous ‘Polish plumber’ stereotype) the chance to ply their trade in the west, and makes it easier for British retirees to live in the warm climate of Spain and southern France.

Perhaps the most important advantage of the EU lies in the influence it has on the extremist, anti-democratic politics all too common in today’s Europe. The prospect of EU membership is a cause behind which liberal, decent people outside the EU can rally. In Serbia, for example, it is the demagogic nationalists who oppose integration; in Turkey, it is the AKP, corrupt opponents of the nation’s secular traditions and recipients of funding from questionable sources in the Arabian Gulf; in the Ukraine, it is the pro-Kremlin elements who opposed the EU- and American-supported Orange Revolution. And, of course, euroscepticism is common among extremists within the EU: both on the right (the BNP, Front Nationale, Jobbik, etc.), and the Moorite-Chomskyite left.

The thrust of my argument in support of the EU is not, however, based on listing its positive achievements, but in pointing out that it isn’t exceptionally centralised among large, democratic federations. Eurosceptics talk about regulations enforcing straight bananas, but such things can just as easily be issued from Washington, Ottawa, Canberra, New Delhi, or Brasilia (or from Westminster). They portray Brussels as some giant bureaucracy sucking up the continent’s economy, but the EU is actually rather cheap, costing only 1.05% of its Gross National Income. They whinge endlessly about the fact that European courts can overturn national legislation, but a federation isn’t workable if its constituent parts can nullify federal laws. In fact, EU member states have a lot more protections against majoritarianism than the states or provinces of any other federation.

All this is not to imply that the EU is not without its faults. Its Parliament is prevented from introducing its own legislation, its seats are malapportioned in favour of smaller countries, and it has yet to develop continent-wide parties. The Commission is selected without strict reference to the composition of the Parliament, and too many decisions are made by the heads of government (in effect, Nicholas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel). But the European ideal contains within it the possibility of establishing a pluralistic, supranational democracy, which might serve as the model for a global confederation. Rather than focusing on straight bananas or Greek bailouts, Europeans should remember this ideal.