Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

Europe’s future: democracy and equality should come first

Jan Zielonka 25th June 2019

In our ‘Europe2025’ series, Jan Zielonka offers a vision of a normative, not a technocratic, Europe, driven by the values of democracy and equality.

democracy and equality

Jan Zielonka

Governments are fond of long-term strategies which are seldom implemented in practice. This is because political reality is usually about coping with unexpected shocks, which turn neat strategies and careful planning on their heads. It is also because we are confronted with many challenges and have limited resources to address them. Choosing priorities is therefore the most important and contentious exercise.

While priorities should emerge from our vision of a good society, they must also be guided by practical considerations. Not everything can be achieved overnight and there are various routes to our destination. In the next few years, I would like the European Union to make progress in two crucial domains: democracy and equality.

My vision of the good society envisages a government by the people and for the people. The latter is primarily about equality, the former democracy. Of course, there are as many notions of democracy and equality as there are different ways of achieving them. And what I consider priorities may clash with other objectives. Security may demand some curbing of democracy, while prosperity and equality are not necessarily mutually reinforcing. We would therefore need to perform a difficult balancing or ‘rebalancing’ act.

In recent years, the EU has however put more emphasis on prosperity and security than on equality and democracy. The acquis is very thin in social policy and democracy has been perceived mainly in terms of representation rather than participation, deliberation or contestation. Unfortunately, representation at the European level is still opaque, while representation on the national level has been discredited. We therefore need to be innovative and engage in experimentation.

Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content.


We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Thank you!

Please check your inbox and click on the link in the confirmation email to complete your newsletter subscription.

.

Enhancing democracy

Without enhancing democracy, it is hard to implement any other task in Europe. The era of elite-led ‘permissive consensus’ on European politics has ended. The Eurosceptics may not be in the driving seat but this does not mean that we can take pro-European citizens for granted. They want to see more transparency within European institutions and they want to have a greater say on European matters. They also want the EU to work for them and not just for a privileged few, which highlights the issue of equality.

Transparency should not just concern the process of political decision-making. The EU is primarily an economic giant and citizens ought to be granted more insight into financial and contractual matters. The existence of tax havens in Europe is particularly deplorable and the fact that we learned about them from WikiLeaks speaks volumes about the selective transparency of European institutions.

These EU institutions also have murky relations with lobbyists. It is telling that the European Parliament recently snubbed a proposal to make contacts with lobbyists more transparent. This kind of attitude must end or else it will be impossible to talk seriously about enhancing Europe’s democratic credentials. There is no democracy without transparency. The EU is cosy with big business and lobbyists while ignoring its citizens, especially the poor ones. (As the EUobserver recently revealed, the European Commission has for months refused to disclose the results of emissions tests it did on a Porsche diesel vehicle—at the request of Porsche.)

Democracy can also be enhanced by curbing central powers in Brussels and bringing them closer to the local level, both territorial and functional. When decentralisation within the EU is discussed, the focus is on subsidiarity, which is about giving more power to states rather than citizens. I am more interested in empowering citizens, as individuals or as members of various sub-and trans-national public and private bodies. And dividing power helps to enhance transparency, accountability and access. The concentration of power, far from citizens, is usually difficult to understand or engage with, let alone control.

The first step towards dispersing centralised power within the EU could be to set up a second chamber of the European Parliament, featuring representatives of cities, regions and non-governmental organisations. The latter category would include business associations and trade unions. I would prefer entrepreneurs to argue their case in the European Parliament, rather than in private dining rooms in Brussels, Berlin or Paris.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

This second chamber would likely have not only a different membership but also a different logic from the first chamber, which is dominated by professional national politicians. Cities, regions and NGOs handle migration and poverty differently from states. They are from a different political universe in terms of their priorities, organisation and corporate culture.

Another step to curb centralised power would be to strengthen the numerous European regulatory agencies. These are located across the entirety of Europe, not just in Brussels. Actors involved in distinct domains, from food safety and maritime traffic to human rights and migration, watch them closely and take part in their work.

More power and resources could also be given to the European ombudsman, who has proved effective in enhancing transparency and ethics within the EU. Numerous documents have been made public upon the ombudsman’s insistence and the College of Commissioners has bowed to demands to tighten the rules on the declaration of interests.

Combating inequality

Enhancing equality within the EU is probably more difficult than enhancing democracy. This is because creditor states do not want debtor states to ‘grab’ what they deem ‘their’ money. This is also because economic distribution is chiefly in the hands of ‘the markets’, with their peculiar ascribed views on inequality. Moreover, redistribution is difficult to enhance in a period of economic stagnation.

It is also true, however, that inequalities have grown in an ideological climate which has given priority to the private sector over the public. Neoliberal ideology was chiefly about individual liberty, not social justice. Challenging this ideology is therefore the first step in combating inequality.

This should be followed by a few specific and largely experimental measures. We should aim to make the EU a genuine transnational institution with a meaningful redistributive capacity. It should chase firms failing to pay taxes as heartily as it is chasing indebted states. It should also be given a budget which would allow it to pursue meaningful redistributive policies—the current EU budget is tiny and each member state wants to get ‘its’ money back from Brussels under various pretexts. EU laws and regulations should also start defending those in the most dire social and economic positions.

The concrete measures to pursue these goals include a tax on financial transactions, a Europe-wide minimum wage and regulations benefitting workers from the poorest parts of the continent, mainly living in suburbs of large cities or agricultural plantations where modern slavery and social deprivation are notorious.

Policies should be legitimate as well as effective. The EU has been concerned principally with the latter, while neglecting the former. Enhancing democracy and equality can put Europe back on the right track.

Jan Zielonka

Jan Zielonka is professor of politics and international relations at the University of Venice, Ca Foscari. Until 2020 he was Ralf Dahrendorf professorial fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. His latest book is Counter-revolution: Liberal Europe in Retreat (Oxford University Press).

Home ・ Politics ・ Europe’s future: democracy and equality should come first

Most Popular Posts

schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling
world order,Russia,China,Europe,United States,US The coming world orderMarc Saxer
south working,remote work ‘South working’: the future of remote workAntonio Aloisi and Luisa Corazza
Russia,Putin,assets,oligarchs Seizing the assets of Russian oligarchsBranko Milanovic
Russians,support,war,Ukraine Why do Russians support the war against Ukraine?Svetlana Erpyleva

Most Recent Posts

trade,values,Russia,Ukraine,globalisation Peace and trade—a new perspectiveGustav Horn
biodiversity,COP15,China,climate COP15: negotiations must come out of the shadowsSandrine Maljean-Dubois
reproductive rights,abortion,hungary,eastern europe,united states,us,poland The uneven battlefield of reproductive rightsAndrea Pető
LNG,EIB,liquefied natural gas,European Investment Bank Ukraine is no reason to invest in gasXavier Sol
schools,Sweden,Swedish,voucher,choice Sweden’s schools: Milton Friedman’s wet dreamLisa Pelling

Other Social Europe Publications

The transatlantic relationship
Women and the coronavirus crisis
RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?
US election 2020
Corporate taxation in a globalised era

ETUI advertisement

Bilan social / Social policy in the EU: state of play 2021 and perspectives

The new edition of the Bilan social 2021, co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), reveals that while EU social policy-making took a blow in 2020, 2021 was guided by the re-emerging social aspirations of the European Commission and the launch of several important initiatives. Against the background of Covid-19, climate change and the debate on the future of Europe, the French presidency of the Council of the EU and the von der Leyen commission must now be closely scrutinised by EU citizens and social stakeholders.


AVAILABLE HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Living and working in Europe 2021

The Covid-19 pandemic continued to be a defining force in 2021, and Eurofound continued its work of examining and recording the many and diverse impacts across the EU. Living and working in Europe 2021 provides a snapshot of the changes to employment, work and living conditions in Europe. It also summarises the agency’s findings on issues such as gender equality in employment, wealth inequality and labour shortages. These will have a significant bearing on recovery from the pandemic, resilience in the face of the war in Ukraine and a successful transition to a green and digital future.


AVAILABLE HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

EU Care Atlas: a new interactive data map showing how care deficits affect the gender earnings gap in the EU

Browse through the EU Care Atlas, a new interactive data map to help uncover what the statistics are often hiding: how care deficits directly feed into the gender earnings gap.

While attention is often focused on the gender pay gap (13%), the EU Care Atlas brings to light the more worrisome and complex picture of women’s economic inequalities. The pay gap is just one of three main elements that explain the overall earnings gap, which is estimated at 36.7%. The EU Care Atlas illustrates the urgent need to look beyond the pay gap and understand the interplay between the overall earnings gap and care imbalances.


BROWSE THROUGH THE MAP

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

Towards a new Minimum Wage Policy in Germany and Europe: WSI minimum wage report 2022

The past year has seen a much higher political profile for the issue of minimum wages, not only in Germany, which has seen fresh initiatives to tackle low pay, but also in those many other countries in Europe that have embarked on substantial and sustained increases in statutory minimum wages. One key benchmark in determining what should count as an adequate minimum wage is the threshold of 60 per cent of the median wage, a ratio that has also played a role in the European Commission's proposals for an EU-level policy on minimum wages. This year's WSI Minimum Wage Report highlights the feasibility of achieving minimum wages that meet this criterion, given the political will. And with an increase to 12 euro per hour planned for autumn 2022, Germany might now find itself promoted from laggard to minimum-wage trailblazer.


FREE DOWNLOAD

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us on social media

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube