The European Union is a political system. Like any political system, it can do left-wing or right-wing things, depending on who’s running it. But some of the major problems we face will not be solved by nation-states alone. The left’s response should be to organise itself in the EU, not to abolish it
It's you
It’s a funny thing, the European Union.
It’s an evil machine imposing low spending, liberalisation and all manner of other right-wing economic policies. Yet it’s also an evil machine imposing high spending, red tape and all manner of other left-wing economic policies. Both at the same time – no mean feat. That’s, like, quantum.
Of course, in reality it’s neither of those things. Calling the European Union “right-wing” is like calling the British political system “right-wing” (or “left-wing” for that matter). It doesn’t really make sense. The people currently running it can be one or the other, but the system is just the system. Within it, right-wing and left-wing governments come and go.
So that term “right-wing” doesn’t describe the European Union. But it does describe, say, the current European Commission. The Commissioners set the agenda and propose new European laws (a bit like a European ‘government’). Since its members are appointed by European national governments, and the Right is in power in most of Europe, so the President and most of the Commissioners come from right-wing parties. Similarly, the Right controls the European Council and has the largest share of the European Parliament (think of these as like the two Houses of the UK Parliament).
That means the European Union is doing right-wing things. Right-wing politicians are using the EU to entrench austerity; to water down Europe 2020, originally supposed to be a growth strategy; to avoid strong commitments on carbon reduction. This Commission is advising European governments that “Member States facing very large structural budget deficits… need to frontload their efforts in 2011” and that “Indirect taxes are more growth-friendly than direct taxes;” the fact that all this hits the poorest hardest is presumably just a small price to pay. Counterproductive, short-sighted, self-interested. Even with Greece on the brink, this is the only answer Europe’s right-wing leaders have to offer.
But it’s not always been so. The Left has achieved a great deal in Europe, even when there have been right-wing Commissions. Comrades in the Trade Union movement will know that British workers’ rights are guaranteed by EU law. We didn’t enjoy a guaranteed right to paid holiday until it was brought in by EU politicians, for example. They also brought in a rule which would have given European workers protection against overly long working hours – if the UK government hadn’t secured us an opt-out. (It is not a coincidence that British workers have the longest working hours in Europe.) There are many more examples.
So it’s frustrating that so many on the Left just want to leave the EU rather than engage with it – even when those very same people will use the UK political system to organise and fight for radical causes. Leaving the EU could leave us even more exposed to internationally mobile capital, as things like workers’ rights or bank taxation or carbon reductions become increasingly difficult to fight for at the national level. The European Union has been, and can be, a way for member states to organise themselves against the worst effects of globalisation.
Leaving the EU would also leave us more exposed to the Cameron Government – or future Tory governments. And not only on workers’ rights. Recently, despite the UK Government’s attempts to water them down, new EU restrictionshave been placed on bankers’ bonuses – with at least one Labour MEP instrumental in ensuring the tougher rules were adopted. Even with a conservative Commission, here the EU was our last bulwark against rampant Toryism in the UK.
The biggest problem is, admittedly, a lack of democracy at EU level. We have an elected European Parliament, and our MEPs have made some fantastic gains on our behalf. But unlike elections to the UK Parliament, elections to the European Parliament don’t determine who’s in charge. The European Commission is appointed through shady negotiations between governments, away from voters’ prying eyes, and without regard to the way they have voted. It also makes the EU political debate poorer; it is difficult to create a true ‘public debate’ unless a real choice is presented to voters – as political scientists such as Simon Hix at the LSE have argued. A priority for the Left should be to argue for a democratic Europe, whose leaders are chosen by voters.
There’s a lot to criticise in the European Union, but when we do, we should remember that we are all part of it. EU decisions don’t come from nowhere; we get right-wing policies in Brussels when the Right wins the political battles, just like in Westminster. We aren’t leaving the EU any time soon, and if we did, we would be leaving ourselves without a real way of tackling big problems like globalisation and climate change. There is admittedly a ‘democratic deficit’ which needs to be filled. But instead of wasting our time calling for the UK to leave the EU, we should be thinking about how we can organise ourselves to win in it. ■
I have become aware of a tussle between yourself and The Green Benches about an article which I wrote. I would like to draw your attention to two sentences.
‘Red Labour should sign up to holding a referendum on EU membership with a view to withdrawing or RENEGOTIATING OUR RELATIONSHIP (apologies for the capitals which are intended to draw your attention and not to shout). The EU is not the idealistic coming together of geographically close nations to create common good but via the GATS treaty it has become the vehicle for imposing the needs of transnational corporations throughout the region.’
Essentially, there is probably little between our understanding of the EU. However, I cannot dismiss the lack of democracy as lightly as you appear to do. I am also aware that there is considerable support across the EU for a rejection of the domination of a Neoliberal Commision which, in the view of some observers,is fanatical. There were many ‘GATS-free towns’ set up in protest when the GATS was first signed (without input from the European Parliament). Incidentally, I agree with you that the left MEPs have achieved a great deal given their constraints. If there is a disagreement, it is where our respective ‘tipping points’ cut in.
Thanks for your comment Sue. As I said to Eoin, this wasn’t a direct reply to your article – merely your article pushed one of my buttons and I felt I had to blog about this
I don’t dismiss the lack of democracy lightly at all. I could have gone into more detail, but there was just a lot to squeeze into a single post. I absolutely think that the priority is to argue and campaign for EU democracy. That would give the EU more legitimacy, and hopefully would mean that many people would switch from being generally ‘anti-European’ to being able to oppose current policies or politicians more finely.
Of course I understand that there is considerable resistance to the current Commission, and I am just as opposed to it as you are. But I want to get the message out to people that neoliberalism isn’t an inherent feature of the EU; rather, it can be changed by getting involved in the political system and campaigns, much like the current UK Government. Again, the caveat to that is that the EU isn’t fully democratic, and that is also something we have to campaign for.
Turning to specific points in your article – I know you said ‘withdrawing or renegotiating,’ but you do appear to be recanting a bit now. In your article you put this in the context of calling for a referendum on our membership of the EU, and you said “Removing the UK from the straitjacket of EU neoliberal policies would be a major step in undoing the huge institutional blockage of neo-liberal capitalism.” You certainly gave the impression you were calling for a walk-out.
Just like the right-wing tabloid press, you talk about EU political decisions without letting on that all decisions taken at EU level are taken in a process which involves UK MEPs, the UK Government, and our UK Commissioner – they’re not just imposed on us without our input – and that we can affect those decisions through the EU political system. You said “elected representatives in the member states cannot reverse laws once they have been passed as EU law is supreme” without mentioning that politicians at EU level can indeed do just that.
I also have to take issue with this – “It is worth remembering that 50% of UK laws derive from the EU and most EU derived laws are passed without debate or votes in parliament because of the use of statutory orders.” There’s no basis for the former assertion – a study by Richard Corbett (former MEP) found it was something like 8%, I’ll dig that out if I can find it. And there’s no basis for the latter either – EU directives are mostly transposed into *primary* legislation, not secondary legislation – and even then, statutory orders are still debated and voted on (even if it’s a negative-resolution statutory instrument, the option is always open to MPs to debate it and vote on it if they want to).
In any case, the problem with ‘renegotiation’ is that it implies the UK would be on different terms to the rest of the EU, for example by securing opt-outs (as we have already done). It also means that the UK would be very much on the outside, with (even more seriously) diminished influence, reducing our ability to win the political battles at EU level. In general, anything done through intergovernmental discussions/negotiations at EU level means a lack of transparency and accountability. The answer is to push for more democracy.
In any case, I thought the rest of your article was interesting. The WTO isn’t inherently evil – again, it does what its members decide – but the negotiating position taken by the EU in trade talks has indeed been controversial. For much of the time it was actually Peter Mandelson who was the EU Trade Commissioner, so it wouldn’t be surprising that he took a very liberal stance – there was resistance to his position even from European conservatives (particularly the French government). The only thing I disagreed with was the implication that the EU was somehow inherently set up to promote neoliberalism, and that therefore we should leave it.