The last two days have seen two events here in Brussels that for me highlight the mountain that has to be climbed in order for Europe to become really connected to its citizens.
Today we had the gathering of the European Council with the usual display of political arrogance as our leaders are whisked around Brussels with adreneline charged outriders who get a chance to live their TV dream, whilst the rest of us end up snarled in their wake. Its nothing less than feudalism masquereding as democracy. Our political elite is itself so far removed from its citizens that its no wonder that there is an abyss between the Brussels institutions and the people who are affected by the decisions and laws made here.
We were treated to the sight of Sarkozy giving a press conference in which he defended his decison to expel EU citizens on the grounds that they were a soure of "insecurity". They were living in "bidonvilles" which were not consistent with the right to live in dignity. Leaving aside how many people French colonialism condemend to live in bidonvilles to this day, the irony of his defence is that he was, so to speak "doing the right thing". Of course we know that "security" is the magic word that allows the state to intervene irrespective of human rights. So the solution was to get rid of them. They posed asecurity risk. Furthermore , he went on to say, that were living outside the law. "No-one" he reminded us is above thel aw", except of course politicians. He himself is mired in the revelations around how he got money from Betencourt and now Le Monde has accussed him of using his powers illegally to try and uncover the name of the source of the Betencourt story.Of course he is in good company. Chirac was able to secure a nice deal withe the mayor of Paris to simply overlook his embezzlement of public money when he was mayor of Paris. What's a million euros between friends. I don't have to labour the point of corruption in our political class.
How is it possible for a leader to be able to disciminate against a minority . Surely, the EC should be proscuting the French government. If living in poverty is a crime, then the criminals are infact our political leaders not the powerless and excluded families who were expelled.
Unfortunately, that will never happen as the EC is lead by a bunch of unelected Commissioners who themeselves are appointed by the same politicians.
The European Council is a democratic disgrace. Their meeting are held in secret. We are simply told the decisions. This is feudalism masquerading as democracy. Issues of transparency and accountability just simply do not apply.
Sadly the European Parliament is nearly as bad. During the period 2004-2009, the EP made 83% of its decisions in secret session with the European Council.
This huge democratic charade is possible because hardly any citizen is aware about it. In a recent Eurobarometer survey , only 19% of respondents agreed that the EU institutions were democratic. Its well established that only about 5% of the electorate even know who their MEP's are let alone what they do.
The apologists for this awful state of affairs will say that the need to connect Europe to its Citizens is now high on the agenda. In other words the bureaucrats and politicians have realised that their number is up unless they resussitate the European project. The turnout at the last EP elections(2009) were a wake up call in that they showed the lowest level of turnout since the start of elections in 1979.Whilst the headline average turnout figure was bad enough , what the average masked is that in nearly half of the member states turnout was infact less than 35%. Moreover, where the analysis has been done the participation of under 30 year olds was less than 25%.
Here I turn to the second event, which was a hearing regarding the European Citizens Initiative(ECI). The ECI is an instrument contained in the new Lisbon treat ratified last year.
The ECI is about citizens collecting 1 million signarures and then being able to present this to the EC in order to trigger action.This is all part of the Lisbon teaty that seeks to try and bridge the lacuna between its citizens and its governing institutions. The irony of course is that the treaty came into being by actually ignoring citizens. The No from France , the No from Holland , the No from Ireland, and what would have No's from Denmark, Czech Republic and the UK was just a case of too much citizen input. Hence a process of ratifiaction without any citizen involvement. So this treaty born out of the disregard of the views of citizens , has created the possibility of an intrument to put the C back into Europe.
The hearing of course had no citizens present, it was dominated by MEP's , their assistants and brussels intertest groups.
Alain Lamassoure,MEP spoke about the need through the ECI to create a "direct line for citizens to Brussels". The aim he also said was to "enable citizens to initiate legislation". Coming from an MEP who has grazed around in Brussels for 4 mandates without doing anything to address this issue , I thought it was encouraging to hear of what sounded like direct democracy and real power sharing. Unfortunatly you can't teach an old dog tricks, so after raisng my intertest he proceeded to kill it with a string of technocratic issues and conditions which will reduce the ECI to a relatively toothless instrument. Signicantly he only want those on the electoral register to be able to sign petitions. That in itself will exclude about 30% of EU citizens.
Vice CommissionerMaros Sefcovic(unelected official) proceeded to apply the "brussels methodology" by stating that the EC would have the right to register or not all ECI's. That is to say if a group of citizens want to get a petition together they have to first secure the Ok from the EC(who are unelected). Not only that , he made it clear that once a million signatrures were collected then ther was "no obligation on the EC to act". Infact we then heard from Green peace and the Disability Alliance , that they had "piloted" the ECI and had gone to considerable lengths to secure the required Million signatures and the net result of their effort was a letter from the EC thanking them for their effort but they were not going to take any action.
Last but not least just to add the coup de grace to any illusions of real democracy, the ECI cannot introduce any amendments to the Lisbon treaty.
ECI, I bet, will sadly emerge from the Brussels undemocratic machinary as a technocratic instrument that the average citizen will run amile from let alone see it as a way to democratise Europe.
I left the hearing wondering what currently happens with petitions that the Petitions Committee of the EP receives. The answer is nothing because the vast majority of the petitions are complaints. I suspect that is the real issue that frightens the Brussels elite. Imagine complaints signed by a million people. Now that's something worth considering .
