EU and national democracy?

MEP Esko Seppänen in the shadow seminar of the Youth Convention 9.7.2002

Democracy is often referred to as a decision-making system where the majority rules. More precisely, however, it is participation, common preparation, language equality, openness and transparency of the whole decision-making process that constitutes a democratic system.

The decision-making unit of democracy could - or should - be the multitude as described by Hardt & Negri in their book The Empire. They speak about the universal multitude, but I prefer to speak about the national or republican multitude.

There is no standard model for democracy. Democracy is about balancing different opinions. It is about solving problems and compromising peacefully. It is about self-governance and sovereignty free from external pressures to standardise.

The midwife of democracy is the nation state, or the republic, in any case the people, not the elite. Conceptually there is no supranational or even international democracy. The very concept is bound to the nation state.

Even the UN is not democratic, but it does not exploit the sovereignty of its member countries.

The European Parliament and the constitutional Convention on the Future of Europe are unrepresentative. There is an over-representation of federal ideas in both the European Parliament and in the Convention; therefore, the system produces an unbalanced division of opinions. In the European Union there is a political hegemony of the federalists.

The electoral systems in most EU countries favour big political parties, the conservatives and the socialists. In the lists of the national parties, those favoured are those who agree with the federalist line of their party leaders. They are at the top of the lists.

In Finland we have a better system. In our proportional system, the voters vote primarily for a person and not a party. This way the people decide who is elected. This is not the case in most other EU countries, where they use the system of list vote. In this system it is not the voters who decide who will be elected, this is decided by the Parties. The voters, therefore, can only give their support to the party of their choice.

In this sense we have a better democracy than many other EU countries. However, this is under threat as the European Parliament has decided to request a uniform electoral system for all member countries. This is not democracy for us. It is dictatation by the EU. Full uniformity and full standardisation is not democracy.

We should not hand our national democratic power to the EU superstate under construction, in the hope that it will become democratic. It should, at least, be democratic first.

In a democratic system the question remains as to what is an appropriate unit of democratic decision-making. Should the unit be an individual, a nation state or a community called the European Union? It is becoming more and more the Union.

The legal basis for EU initiatives is found in the Treaty of the European Union. In the Maastricht Treaty, three pillars were established to deal with: 1) Community affairs, 2) foreign and security policy and 3) legal affairs. The first pillar is already fully federalised; the other two pillars are undergoing a federalisation process.

There are two different methods for the development of the European Union: the community method and an intergovernmental method.

The Community method means that the decisions are made inside the Union by the rules stipulated in the Treaties, including voting by the qualified majority.

The intergovernmental method is different. Every member country has, in all important questions, a right of veto. Now this veto is under attack. The federalists want more qualified majority voting, which favours bigger countries.

In Nice, the veto was taken away for decisions in various different policy areas and a new right of veto was given to the more populous countries. When the countries that represent 37,5 % of the EU population got a new veto right, it was given to the three most populated countries.

If there is a referendum on the constitution now under preparation, the result should be counted by country. Every country should individually accept the final result. That is democracy. It is not democracy if all the votes are counted together. It gives the big countries the possibility to walk over the smaller countries.

The fundamental question is whether the EU is to be developed as the federation of states or as a confederation of nation or independent states.

It is already, more or less, a federal state. It has its own flag, its own anthem (stolen from the Council of Europe) and people are recommended to stand up when it is played, the common passport, its own Parliament (without real legislative power), and its own money.

Next in line is the European army, the EU government (in the form of the Commission) and, possibly, the EU president. The right of veto is under attack particularly in foreign and security policy and in defence. This federalist approach will put pressure on the neutral countries to join Nato, even though in Finland only 20% of the population are in favour of such a development.

National languages, differences and diversities in Europe are in danger. A new identity for EU citizens is now being created from the top to the bottom and synthetically, by political force.

The unit of the democracy is the multitude, and democracy should be safeguarding the rights of minorities. Many nation states are minorities in the European Union and need democratic protection.