Thread by @battleforeurope

Most EU countries will vote for the European Parliament today. But the body itself is an insult against democracy that exists only to rubber-stamp neoliberal rule. 🔥🔥🔥

jacobinmag.com/2019/05/europe…

OK, some here are some points I make in the piece: 1/ the European Parliament has very limited powers: for starters, unlike national parliaments, it doesn’t even have the power to initiate legislation. This is a power uniquely reserved for the EU’s “executive” arm, the Commission

2/ This fact alone (lack of legislative initiative of the EP) sets the EU firmly apart from any meaningful democratic tradition, and casts serious doubts over the alleged importance of this weekend’s elections.

3/ The Commission itself is by no means democratically elected. Its president and its members are proposed and appointed by the European Council, which is made up of the leaders of the EU member states. The Parliament may only approve or reject the Council’s proposals.

4/ The introduction of the so-called Spitzenkandidat system "represents a largely cosmetic change", says Lapavitsas. In fact, the Council is only required to “tak[e] into account” the results of the European elections. Ultimately, the final word still lies with the Council.

5/ Thus, as has always been the case, the appointment of the Commission is more likely to be the product of power-plays between countries rather than a true exercise of democracy.

6/ Even more worryingly, it is practically impossible for the Parliament to dismiss the Commission, as this requires two-thirds of votes cast and a majority of all MEPs.

7/ The notion that Commission can be considered to be indirectly chosen by the citizens of Europe because the heads of state and government are themselves elected perverts the very concept of democracy.

8/ While the national leaders are generally elected, as a body the Council is neither elected nor accountable. Though Europe’s governments are theoretically accountable to their national parliaments, precisely what the Council allows them to do is to escape this accountability.

9/ The entire architecture of the European Union thus favors executive and technocratic power over legislative power. This represents a huge step back even from the “bourgeois” understanding of liberal democracy.

10/ Indeed, the European treaties themselves state that “the functioning of the Union shall be founded on representative democracy” — an aspiration more than a reality — but they don’t actually claim the EU itself to be a democracy.

11/ This reminds us why national elites and oligarchies have been so keen, over the course of the past decades, to transfer power to the EU. Their aim was precisely to insulate economic policies from popular-democratic challenges.

12/ The undemocratic nature of the EU becomes evident when we look at its legislative process. The entire process is opaque to say the least. As German investigative journalist Harald Schumann writes: “For citizens, Europe’s most powerful legislator is de facto a black box".

13/ Even Emily O’Reilly, the official European Ombudsman, noted that the overwhelming secrecy of the legislative process makes it practically impossible not only for citizens, but even for national parliaments, “to scrutinise how their national representatives have acted".

14/ This is very dangerous, because it makes the legislative process highly susceptible to the pressure of lobbyists and well-organized vested interests, at all levels, including that of the European Parliament.

15/ Rather than a bug in the system, this should be seen as an inherent consequence of the supra-nationalization of politics. As the Italian researchers Lorenzo Del Savio and Matteo Mameli write, the problems of oligarchic capture "are exacerbated at the supranational level".

16/ This is particularly worrying if we consider that nowadays a very large portion of the laws adopted by national parliaments are in fact decided at the EU level and then simply transposed into national law by national parliaments.

17/ Furthermore, EU treaties embed neoliberalism into the very fabric of the EU, by codifying the four capitalist freedoms par excellence — the free movement of goods, services, capital, and persons — and placing huge barriers in the way of state intervention in the economy.

18/ The EU’s constraints on left-wing policies don’t just apply to eurozone countries but to all member states. If Brexit is ultimately derailed, EU rules would place severe restrictions on a future British government led by Jeremy Corbyn.

19/ There is another problem: even assuming that the Parliament actually had a decisive voice in shaping EU policies, it would still have very few economic tools at its disposal. EU budget is notoriously meagre. Hence talks of a “European Green New Deal" are frankly laughable.

20/ Indeed, monetarily sovereign countries such as the UK are much better equipped to implement a Green New Deal than the EU as a whole is.

21/ On a more fundamental level, however, the depoliticized nature of the European elections isn’t just a consequence of the EU’s undemocratic architecture; rather, it has to do with the very nature of democracy itself: i.e. the lack of a European demos.

22/ Simply put, if there is no demos, there can be no effective democracy, let alone a social democracy. Thus, there can be no "European democracy".

23/ Indeed, the lack of significant EU-wide class struggles or social movements testifies to the difficulty of mounting a coordinated challenge against the economic oligarchies in almost thirty countries with twenty-four official languages.

24/ Hence, for now, the only possible locus for class struggle and democratic conflict remains the nation-state, and that is where socialists and progressives should focus their attention.

25/ Ultimately, EU critics should also be aware that by participating in the European elections they are legitimizing its institutions by adding a democratic veneer to a structurally post-democratic system. They are also fueling the dangerous illusion that the EU is reformable.

26/ Those who believe in democracy and popular sovereignty should aim at tearing the EU down — not at reforming it. END OF THREAD