How do you keep the help down in the scullery and well away from the drawing room where they might upset their betters? For several decades, the EU thought it had the answer: The common taxpayer would be dealt with by member state governments who would in turn remain completely committed to the great European project. Suitably filtered and vetted, the democratic will in any member state would find expression in a single seat on the European Council. The Commission would be free to realise the vision of a federal European state unhindered by hoi polloi who’d shown their unfitness for the exercise of popular sovereignty during the 1930s. A pantomime parliament was bolted onto the basic structure, but with the assurance that its MPs would remain beholden to their standing on party lists rather than actual constituents.
Despite this elegantly designed power vertical, the commoners still manage to disrupt things by sending their chosen tribunes upstairs, where they sow disquiet among the EU loyalists. Viktor Orbán has taken up residence in the parlour, oblivious to the tut-tutting of his peers. Poland has again elevated a Euro-sceptic populist to the presidency, and Romania narrowly elected a reliable EU devotee only after a heroic intervention by the Romanian supreme court.
Popular democracy remains a chronic problem for the EU, which was conceived as an elite project with limited popular input. It thus remains ill-equipped to understand, much less incorporate the views of those disquieted by grand ambitions conceived in the Brussels bubble. In both Poland and Romania, there is a stark political divide between urban elites who are doing very well out of the EU, and the much poorer provincials who have begun to fear and resist intrusions from Brussels. Bucharest has a GDP per capita rivalling any EU capital, while the rest of the country remains relatively impoverished. Polish farmers see their livelihoods threatened by a Commission more inclined to help Ukrainian wheat exporters. Like beleaguered industrial workers in Ohio, hard up rural voters in Poland and Romania support candidates who promise to discomfit the comfortable.
The EU looks like a conspiracy against the common man because it is a conspiracy against the common man, and one that shall not be questioned by a mere election result. The Romanian Supreme Court cited Călin Georgescu’s suspect loyalty to the EU in its decision to bar him from the runoff. Yet the treaty commitments of any normal liberal democracy are always subject to popular approval and change. Declaring the terms of the Lisbon Treaty immune from democratic oversight reveals an innate illiberal aspect to the Union. “There shall be no more Brexit votes; there shall be no European Donald Trump,” sayeth Brussels. EU loyalists like Donald Tusk are rewarded even as he hounds his political rivals by ransacking the public broadcaster and seeking the dismissal of hundreds of judges appointed by his predecessors. Fealty to Brussels demands the persecution of Euro-sceptics, no matter the subsequent boost to their popular support. Much as the contrived legal persecution of Donald Trump magnified his popularity, so did Tusk’s political overreach help revive the appeal of PiS candidate Karol Nawrocki.
The surprising capacity of populism to threaten the EU’s power vertical would not come as a surprise to Harvard economist Dani Rodrick, who argues that liberal democracies don’t live in a neat hierarchy between international organizations and their citizens, but reside in a triangle bounded by democracy, the nation state, and integration. Any move toward one requires a sacrifice in another. The EU prizes integration, constrains the nation state and beggars democracy. Yet the democratic will endures and can pull a state back from subordination to Brussels by electing chippy outsiders dubious of further integration. While Brexit remains the extreme example of this “dis-integration,” the persistent refusal of several states to accept the Euro, agreements on migration, or the membership aspirations of Ukraine show a popular will declining to remain below stairs and safely away from grand machinations up in the Berlaymont. Even in the founding members of the union, the popular will is making life difficult for EU loyalists. The AfD is now the dominant party in eastern Germany and the official opposition in the Bundestag. Populists on the left and right hold the balance of power in the French Parliament. Gert Wilders just imploded the Dutch government over its inaction on migration. The EU’s preferred power vertical is becoming less relevant than the dynamics of Rodrick’s trilemma. Democratic expression is pulling member states away from the “ever closer” integration demanded by Brussels.
Rather than launch a good faith effort to address the various grievances motivating the supporters of populist parties, the EU has embarked on a campaign of disenfranchisement that amounts to genteel authoritarianism. Brussels quietly endorsed the cancellation of the Romanian election result, leveled no criticisms as Berlin mulled an outright ban on its second largest party, and winked at the conviction of Marine LePen for financial shenanigans widely condoned in the EU Parliament. These attempts to decapitate the leadership of populist movements are coupled with a truly dystopian effort to control the information available to European voters. Social media will be monitored by “independent” NGOs funded by Commission grants, and thus likely to unleash the full force of EU law on posts mocking the EU, skeptical about the benefits of migration, or dubious of open-ended support for Ukraine. Insults directed at European leaders will of course be investigated and punished, even if fully merited, as they often are.
Will this work? Will restive EU citizens, deprived of their leaders and safe from contrary opinions quietly submit to the wisdom of their EU overlords? Can Rodrick’s triangle be hammered back into a pleasing vertical? Possibly, were the EU entering an era of expanding economic prosperity. But it is not. Stagnation, budget cuts and job losses are haunting EU economies facing the decline of their traditional markets abroad and an inexorable demographic contraction at home. Economic hardship is the engine of populism, and has already transformed regions previously loyal to the traditional left into redoubts of reactionary anger. Citizens deprived of a viable claim on future prosperity are taking their revenge at the ballot box. These angry voters may soon pose a greater danger to the precious EU construct than aggressive Russians or dismissive Americans. A Commission airily insulated from the gathering distress of its citizens will lose its legitimacy and ultimately, its powers.
Downstairs is headed Upstairs.
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