Europe's Elitist Revolution
By David Ignatius
Sunday, July 22, 2001; Page B07
Beyond the noise of this weekend's Group of Eight Summit in Genoa, Italy, a silent revolution is sweeping Europe. It will transform the continent's political and economic structure as much as any of the wars and upheavals of the past 500 years.
The problem is that this European revolution is undemocratic. It is being imposed, from the top down, by a European elite that thinks it knows what's best for ordinary people -- over their clearly expressed opposition. No matter what you think of the European Union's expansion plans, this kind of corporatist revolution cannot be good for Europe, or for the world.
By the time the G-8 gathers next year, the EU's revolution will be rushing forward financially and politically. A real monetary union will begin in January, when French francs and German marks and 13 other European currencies disappear and are replaced by a new common currency, the euro. Political enlargement will begin by the end of next year, when the EU has announced it will complete negotiations to admit the first wave of 10 new members in Central and Eastern Europe.
"The enlargement process is irreversible," proclaimed the EU's leaders after their summit meeting in Gothenburg, Sweden, in June.
Among the great and the good of Europe (or, to be more precise, the rich and powerful), support for this wider European Union is almost a matter of political correctness. Typical of this Euro-correctness is the Economist magazine, which acts as journalistic cheerleader and enforcer of the elite consensus -- regularly drubbing anyone who dares to question whether it makes sense to surrender national sovereignty to bureaucrats in Brussels.
For the elite, it's axiomatic that all right-thinking people support an ever wider European Union -- and that opponents are either political dinosaurs (like Margaret Thatcher) or the moral equivalent of soccer hooligans.
But the gap between elite and mass opinion is startling. The awkward fact is that ordinary Europeans just don't like or trust the new Europe. The latest EU "Eurobarometer" poll released last week reported that only 45 percent of the people living in the EU trust the European Commission in Brussels, and only 48 percent believe that EU membership is a good thing for their country.
Even in the two pillars of the new Europe, Germany and France, less than half the public supports the EU, with the percentages at 45 percent and 49 percent, respectively. In Britain, just 29 percent of the public believes EU membership is a good thing. Given this negative feeling about the current EU, it's no surprise that the public doesn't want to see it broadened to include such countries as Poland, Slovenia and Estonia, to name just a few of the candidates.
Only one EU country has actually held a referendum to test whether the public supports the Treaty of Nice, which pledged last December to expand the EU eastward. That was Ireland, and the result of its June vote was a solid "no," with 54 percent opposing the treaty. It's widely believed that if referenda were held in other countries, the results would be similar.
The elite's response to this evidence of public opposition, when you boil down all the rhetoric, is: The public be damned. Some commentators dismissed the Irish, for example, as ingrates. How could they question the EU's plans after receiving subsidies from Brussels all these years? Other commentators have expressed relief that ratification of the Treaty of Nice is mostly in the hands of relatively docile parliaments, where Euro-correctness rules, rather than with the public.
Europe's elites don't seem to realize that they are building their grand new house on the shakiest possible foundation. For surely it is unwise to impose a treaty that will forever bind Frenchmen to Czechs and Belgians to Estonians without first obtaining broad popular support. This isn't the kind of thing you can ram down people's throats. Indeed, if the elites press ahead in the face of public opposition, as they now seem determined to do, the structure will eventually topple.
The new Europe will be built on free-market economics and democracy. The first pillar is already strong -- recent studies like "Profiting from EU Enlargement" are pulsing with excitement about the wider market. But in their enthusiasm, Europe's business and political leaders are ignoring the democratic side of the equation.
The right course for an expanding Europe is not to run away from democracy but to embrace it. The Eurocrats need to take their case to the people in a series of votes, polls and referenda. That may be risky in the short run. But in the long run, it's the only way to build a solid foundation for a Europe that isn't just bigger, but more democratic.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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