International

On a Dutch television programme this weekend, European Council president Herman van Rompuy mentioned a couple of times the fact that the European Parliament is directly elected. Just as heads of government try to unload responsibility on to their national parliaments, he claims that the EP is responsible for generating the necessary support. Europhile parties such as the Netherlands’ Green Left and D66 often cite the strengthening of the European Parliament as a solution to Europe’s democratic deficit. But is there really support for such solutions? This week the leading Europe-wide opinion pollster Eurobarometer published the results of a new survey revealing that in the Netherlands the number of people who want to see the EP strengthened has fallen from 53% to 47% since November 2011 and that at the present time 35% of Dutch people want it to play a smaller role, up from 30% in 2011. In order to attract support we must therefore first and foremost strengthen the national parliaments. The EP can play an important supplementary role, but is no panacea for the democratic deficit.

Slowly but surely the Europhiles and Eurosceptics are coming to agree over one thing at least: the developments of the last few years have removed Brussels to a greater distance than ever from Europe’s people. Something has to be done about this lack of support, closely linked as it is to the democratic deficit. Officials and government leaders press for greater European integration, while the electorate finds this back-room politics wholly unacceptable, but doesn’t know how to influence developments. Europhile parties want this solution to arrive via the rapid rigging up of a European democracy with real European parties and a strengthened European Parliament. There’s just one little problem: for that too there’s absolutely no support.

The survey on how people in Europe see the European Parliament offers a clear result. Only 29% of Dutch people interviewed believe that the EP pays enough attention to the public. A good 59% see it as inefficient. No wonder that the number of people that want to lessen the EP’s powers is growing, while the number that wants it strengthened is in decline. Such figures are typical of Europe as a whole, but the most important discovery is surely that since 2007 the number having a positive impression of the EP has fallen from 39% to 27%, while the proportion with a negative impression has almost doubled, from 15% to 28%.

Strengthening the EP is therefore not the solution. The European public has as things stand a much stronger bond with its national parliaments than it does with the European Parliament. This does not means that good teamwork between the two sides is of no importance. Rather a good two-pronged monitoring process from both European and national parliaments than, as is the case in relation to economic governance, no parliamentary oversight whatsoever. Euro-MPs would be better keeping their feet on the ground: they themselves are not the solution. That lies in The Hague, and other national capitals. But if after the elections of 2014 the EP emerges with a more socially progressive face, and, if possible, MEPs were to spend somewhat less time on Brussels and somewhat more with the people in Europe, the European Parliament might at length become an ally of the social forces within the national parliaments. So there is still hope.