"Let EU citizens choose their president too", Peter Sain Iey Berry

Let EU citizens choose their president too

11.01.2008 - 07:47 CET | By Peter Sain ley Berry
EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - The assassin's bullet or bomb (we are still not sure exactly which) that killed Benazir Bhutto on 27 December brought 2007 to a close on a sombre note. She might have been a candidate for election in Pakistan but she embodied the hopes and aspirations of many of us in the West. That, of course, was why she was murdered.

The reaction to her death - among European leaders in particular - showed just how far we, and they, identified with her aim of bringing democracy, openness and the rule of law to Pakistan.

Or maybe that expression was all simply sentimental claptrap! Do our European leaders really believe in democracy and openness? Or if they do, do they believe that it should find its place in Pakistan, Burma, Afghanistan, The Sudan, Zimbabwe, Kenya, but not at home? Do we send election monitors to such places (where those governments allow us in) safe in the knowledge that we don't have to face the hard task of implementing democracy and openness ourselves?

'Absurd!' - you may say. No state may become a member of the European Union without being a fully functioning democracy. Besides, we have, at the European level, a legislative Parliament directly elected by the citizens.

But hold on! Let's take a New Year look at ourselves in the manner of the man or woman from Mars. He or she couldn't help but notice that the twin Atlantic pillars of the modern libertarian world - Europe and the United States - are both engaged in processes to select new presidents to take office in 2009.

In the case of the United States the process is in the papers and on television all over the world. We know the names of the would-be candidates, their supposed strengths and alleged weaknesses. For our benefit the media categorises them: black and white, male and female, religious and secular. They may even tell us also something about what each stands for - apart that is from 'change.' No doubt we shall learn more as the year progresses.

Here in Europe we shall also have a new President in 2009 - but who amongst us can even say who is in the race? There has been talk of Ahern, Aznar, Blair, Juncker, Kwasniewski - but none is a declared candidate. Indeed how could they be for there is no 'race' to be a candidate for.

Rather the expectation is that the title will be 'settled' on someone during Nicolas Sarkozy's French Presidency in the latter part of this year. How exactly we are not clear, but 'bargaining' is likely to be involved between national interests.

Is this democracy?
Whoa! Is this really the way we want to do things in Europe - 'settling' things by 'bargaining' behind closed doors? Is this the openness and democracy that we ask the rest of the world to judge us by? Is this what so many democratic campaigners down the centuries and across the globe - and most recently Benazir Bhutto - have died for?

Of course I know that the President of Europe won't, strictly speaking, be a proper president at all. The position merely provides a semi-permanent headship to the European Council, the body in which European heads of state and government meet four times a year. The role is technical and carries no executive authority. Moreover, it is dependent on the Lisbon Treaty, which still has to be driven through the minefield of ratification by all member states.

Even so, whoever gets the job will be perceived as the embodiment of the Continent in a way that the President of the European Commission never has been. Officials may claim that this is only a technical and low-key role. They may even wave a piece of paper to this effect. But try telling that to Mr Blair, or to Mr Aznar, or anyone else, when they are sitting opposite the President of the United States!

Try telling that to the world's press, hungry for a headline. Try telling that to the Russians, to the Chinese and to Africa, the Middle East, South America! The world will demand a 'President of Europe' even if Europe itself does not want one.

And is this really a position that we are intending to 'settle' by 'bargaining?' Against the sound of late autumn campaigning trumpets across the Atlantic, our Martian friend will find this, in equal measure, incredible and frightening. The exasperated sounds of Voltaire turning in his grave will terrify 'tout Paris.'

How can our European leaders be believed when they talk about 'listening' to the people and 'responding' to petitions and such like if they show no understanding that presidents in the modern world have to be elected democratically?

For Europe's President to emerge from some closed European Council meeting without any prior attempt to test the democratic will and without any requirement for the candidates to lay their credentials before the European public will be wrong, short-sighted, bad government and a disgrace.

Rome was not built in a day of course. We cannot expect this time a full-blown election, desirable though that might be. But Europe's citizens deserve the courtesy (at the very least) of knowing beforehand who the candidates are.

Not only that! They should have the chance to question them, and to write about them and to make their views felt about them through sample polls in each of the 27 member states. Then, after this, we might expect the European Parliament (what do we pay their salaries for?) to come to a considered judgement and to choose one of the candidates, publicly, to recommend to the Council in a way that it would be hard for them to ignore. That would be some sort of step in the right democratic direction.

We are not a banana republic; we are the greatest trading bloc in the world. It was European thought that minted the modern democratic foundation. Eight years into the new century Europe deserves better than to have the presidency 'settled,' quasi-medievally, by 'bargaining.'

The author is editor of EuropaWorld