Democracy in Europe

"On the one hand it’s very relevant to what is going on in Europe right now, and on the other it illustrates the need to create new systems, rather than trying to rebuild the political and economic structures that have obviously failed. Everybody now recognises that the euro can only survive as part of a political project to create a new federal Europe. This was the point that many of us who were Eurosceptics were making in the early 1990s. It was also the point made by true europhiles back then too. [The former president of the European Commission] Jacques Delors, the most prominent among them, always described the euro, when he invented it, as the most decisive step towards political union. But for the next 20 years, the connection between currency union and political union was disregarded as an issue for the long-distant future. Well, we’ve now reached the historical crossroads where Europe must decide: Does it become a political federation and keep the euro? Or does it remain a community of independent sovereign states, in which case the euro has to be abandoned? Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Larry Siedentop, who wrote this book 10 years ago, gives a clear account of what the necessary conditions for creating a successful European federation would be, but he also argues that the political hurdles are too high for a successful federation in the foreseeable future. He points out that the most important condition for a successful nation state is a sense of demos – a sense of community among the people who are going to be jointly ruled. His view, at least back in 2000, was that Europe was decades away from creating the sense of community and mutual solidarity that nationhood required. Unfortunately for Europe, the moment for decision has arrived much faster, partly as a result of the financial crisis. If it hadn’t been for [the collapse of] Lehman Brothers in 2008, Europe could probably have muddled on with this incomplete euro project for another 10 or 15 years. But that is no longer an option, and Europe has to decide. Siedentop’s book identifies the two essential issues. First, the sense of mutual solidarity which is so obviously absent in the present arguments over whether German taxpayers should support Greece or Spain. And the second issue is that even if a sense of solidarity exists, there must also be a philosophy of government. The problem Siedentop identifies very clearly is that the two crucial European nations – France and Germany – have philosophies of government that are almost diametrically opposed. So even if there were a sense of common demos in Europe – and I personally think Europe could create this in response to the euro crisis – creating a United States of Europe would face another huge obstacle: Would the new federation be run along French or German lines?"