EU structures leave it at one remove from growing crisis

WORLD VIEW: There is no effective way for voters to effect major EU policy change on the economic crisis

THE EUROPEAN Union has been relatively invisible during this economic crisis even though it sets the terms of much domestic policy and will probably be a central part of the recovery. Few of the protests erupting in member states make direct demands on the EU, nor have most governments. And the European Parliament elections in June have not as yet thrown up coherent calls for policy or leadership change in the European Commission.

This dog that hasn’t barked is an instructive lesson in the limits of European integration. Most of the protests have been at national level, directed at governments for incompetence or seeking special protection. That is to be expected, given that spending powers and tax-raising are concentrated there. The EU is at a remove, usually with neither the resources nor competence to protect jobs or save vulnerable industries.

And yet the logic of national decisions has consequences for EU economic governance. Protection of car jobs in France, preventing Italian or Portuguese workers taking up jobs in British oil refineries, or prolonged budgetary deficits outside the rules of the Stability and Growth Pact, if aggregated by similar action elsewhere, could quickly threaten the single market and currency regimes. Greek, Bulgarian and Latvian farmers’ demands for protection against fluctuating national currencies, if they spread, could similarly affect the Common Agricultural Policy.

The commission, already alert to these issues, plans a special session on them next week. The regular spring summit on March 19th-20th will be dominated by the crisis. The EU complained vigorously and effectively this week at potential protectionism in the “buy America” clauses of the US stimulus package. Moves are afoot to co-ordinate banking regulation through the European Central Bank or the commission. The posted worker directive at the heart of the protests by British refinery workers needs an overhaul because of ambiguities about how it is transposed into national laws. And the new globalisation fund, although pitifully small, will be used to protect those who lose their jobs.

The centre-right cast of this commission meant it bought deeply into the neoliberal model now widely blamed for permitting the borrowing and other excesses that caused the meltdown. The mainly right-wing governments are equally responsible. Their joint culpability is disguised in the scramble to rebalance market fundamentalism with state resources. This could be seen as a shift leftwards, even without electoral change; but it is better understood as a pragmatic response to cataclysmic events, since only the state has sufficient capacity to take such corrective action. One way or another the neoliberal model is discredited, and taxpayers bear the burden.

There has hardly been time to reshape this redundant framework into demands for political and policy change for the recovery. Conspicuously absent so far from debate have been alternative programmes offered by the party groups contesting the European elections. They are being drawn up all right, but lack the ambition and confidence that could make a difference in what is, after all, a transnational crisis crying out for common solutions.

A key problem is that there is no direct relationship between these elections and executive change in the commission. Supporters of the Lisbon Treaty hoped to have it ratified before the elections so that this relationship would be clearer. Ireland’s No last June is much the greatest barrier facing the greater clarity which would flow from that. Party groups are politically constrained from nominating candidates as commission president because its term will be extended until November in the hope that an Irish Yes in October would allow it to be ratified.

José Manuel Barroso has used this opportunity to press his case for a second term despite the likelihood that the new parliamentary majority will be less centre-right than the outgoing one. It could contain more radical right- and left-wing MEPs, and it will be a surprise if the Greens and social democrats do not make gains.

Without this clarity EU political outcomes are diffused through the existing obtuse relationship between executive and parliamentary power. While the council elects the commission president and is required to take account of the parliamentary majority the confusion over Lisbon means it is unlikely that there will be an accountable relationship between the two processes so that voters can be confident of seeing their preferences expressed in new policies. That lack of coherence takes from the democratic legitimacy of the election in the middle of this huge convulsion.

It may be argued that the transnational parties are still too weak to sustain such an exercise in choice of executive. Governments are reluctant to see that happen, since they fear losing control. But if the outcome is reduced turnout and political credibility, all will suffer.

Talk this week of widespread social protest across the EU, even of revolutionary change in some member states, shows this is no small matter. People need to be given a vision of socio-economic recovery from the various points of this multi-level system of governance. The EU will have a central role in co-ordinating a greener and more sustainable system in coming years, between its members and in negotiation with other world regions. It will be fascinating to see whether social protests fill out the political vacuum created by the Lisbon hiatus in months to come.

Breda O’Brien is on leave