Europe démocrate

It is a common feature of modern democracies that, in order to participate to your national debates as a party or an individual, you must first comply with a number of formal rules that make the participation of everybody possible, identifiable and intelligible. Such rules can be for instance an equal access to television time, the transparency of funding for organizations, the right to organize meetings in certain places, to distribute a certain type of documents... but most importantly a strong set of civic rights that make it possible for the ordinary citizen to examine freely the various proposed solutions, compared to the political, economic, ecological context of the moment.

Those rules for participation are meant to be neutral, because, purposedly, they will allow the expression of any partisan opinion. But what do you do if those rules are not neutral, and are conceived in such a way that they will allow you to express only a certain type of opinions, or even just one opinion, among the many that would be democratically reasonable?

Recently I had to re-examine the so-called "codecision procedure" of the European Parliament, being told by many proponents of the Yes at home and abroad that this constituted a "major advance" towards a "more democratic Europe". What I discovered - sparing you the technicalities - is that even if this codecision procedure is a "success" for the European Parliament, it doesn't mean at all that the parliamentary amendments are passed, it just means that they are rejected together with the initial proposal of the Commission. There is in reality no real room in the present European institutions for a genuine application of the diversity of opinions of democratically elected representatives.

And the codecision procedure doesn't even mean that the Commission cannot try again a bit later, by renaming the text and adding a few superficial changes. Does it ring a bell? The refusal of the Constitutional treaty in 2005 didn't open a new era for a more democratic European future, it just allowed the elites to submit the same text two years later.

I was a proponent of the No vote in the Irish campaign, but I must admit I was sometimes shaken by the sincerity of some partisans of the Yes, especially those who genuinely wished a stronger Europe, which they imagined as a new democratic state and an example to the world of an intelligent renunciation to narrow nationalisms. But those who were sincere all admitted the basic principle that when an election is lost, it is lost. Democracy was sacred for them, above their own opinions. And what do we observe now? For the European elites democratic expression just means that the Irish will have to vote again... just a bit later, when passions have softened enough. I think that a majority of Yes voters in Ireland are now scandalized being told that their fellow citizens have not voted the correct way.

For the partisans of the No in Ireland, I must say this was not a "victory" either. Saying No is only what you do when you are cornered, without true democratic possibilities. As for the French and the Dutch in 2005, saying No was mere survival, not the start of a happy, prosperous and legitimate democratic life. By saying No you did not escape, you were still trapped into the impossibility of proposing other forms of European construction. You are still in the hell of "No to Europe" against "Yes to Europe". We the French, Dutch, Irish and all the others who were denied a referendum, we are playing a foul game whose rules maybe we should not accept.

A truly democratic Europe should instead offer us or our representatives the possibility of criticizing parts of the text, not merely accepting of refusing the whole. Which remains in both cases a ban from the select circles of the "responsible" guys who will actually draft the next text. And it should offer our opponents or their representatives as well the possibility to state clearly what other parts of the text they wish to improve.

Therefore, it is not only the treaty itself that should be rejected, but the whole process. Even if there had not been such insistence on saying the Irish have "voted wrong", even if the ratifications had been abandoned immediately, the result would still not have been fully satisfactory. Think of 2005. What will be proposed to us next? A choice between "the end of the world" and "paradise on Earth"? This is not democracy. This is not even Europe in fact.