Sir, – Dan O’Brien needs to redefine his terms in what he has to say about “the right and its reactionary agenda” (Opinion, July 30th). He needs also to look at the supposed reality of any form of democracy in the elections taking place periodically in different European countries. These, as he says, change the membership of assemblies from centre-left to centre-right and back again. They do not lead to the elected exercising much power.
Power is now centralised in the most right-wing force in modern European government, the EU Commission and its adjuncts. They govern by treaty, never debated and rarely changed by the centre-left or centre-right elected representatives in 27 countries. These treaty instruments are changed when necessary at the instigation of the Commission using a form of persuasion that is unanswerable.
As to the term “reactionary agenda”, nothing could be closer to this than the frequency with which European treaties are changed, abandoned, added to or reinterpreted by the European oligarchs. They repeatedly react to the crisis. They seem not to understand its intractable gravity. And each time they have got it wrong. They “are the right”, in the sense that their overwhelming concern is to preserve the banking system and wealth at the expense of people, jobs, savings and normal democratic demands about the transparency of what they do.
Their latest progression, through the ESM, will lead to a two-tier EU, divided between the euro-zone countries and those outside the euro zone. This is contrary to their own treaties, but will stave off collapse of the euro for a time.
Hitler governed in the same way, by edict and decree instead of treaty, by putting gauleiters into countries to rule them, instead of troikas, and by presenting a case for remaining in power for fear of something worse (Russian Communism). He added murder, terror, racism and eventually world war as did other right-wing leaders in Europe in the inter-war period. In using the parallel, however, Dan O’Brien should also acknowledge that, for the greater part of the Third Reich’s rule in Europe, many Irish people gave Hitler and his ideals widespread support. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Dan O’Brien’s useful synopsis of the political trends across Europe (Opinion, July 30th)missed one crucial point. We are not witnessing a return to far-right extremes as occurred in the 1930s but the emergence of a new political phenomenon, the rise of market technocracy.
Since the onset of the crisis, technocratic governments have been imposed in Italy and Greece. National governments in Ireland, Spain and Portugal have effectively become debt collection agencies on behalf of financial markets. Decision-making is increasingly handed over to economic technocrats, within a complex multi-level governance system, that prioritises market over social integration.
What we are witnessing across Europe is a tug of war between the democratic sovereign state and the powerful interests of financial markets. The role of the democratic state in this context has been reduced to ensuring balanced budgets through aggressive cuts in public expenditure, tightening eligibility for social protection, and imposing structural reforms in the labour market. This is not democracy. – Yours, etc,