On July 6

On this day in ...
... 2005, the House of Representatives of Malta unanimously approved a Motion for the Ratification of the European Constitutional Treaty, thus making the Mediterranean island nation the 12th state party to that European Union pact. But as we've posted, the treaty failed to take effect on account of "No" votes in referenda held earlier the same year in France and the Netherlands. As a consequence the EU then shifted, seeking member states' OK of the Lisbon Treaty, an agreement that includes much of its predecessor but eschews any claim to being a Constitution. The future of this treaty too is in doubt, on 2 fronts: 1st, the electorate in Ireland, having received certain new assurances from the EU since its 2008 "No to Lisbon" vote, will stage a do-over referendum in October; and 2d, a national court has just ruled that Germany's ratification is not yet valid. (credit for map at left, prepared before German court ruling, which shows Ireland, in red, as the lone Lisbon Treaty holdout among EU member states, otherwise in green)
... 1934 (75 years ago today), amid an uprising (right) that had begun the month before, Chilean troops killed hundreds of campesinos -- the exact number is disputed -- around Fundo Ranquil, an area at the Biobío River near Chile's midpoint. (photo credit) A detailed account, in Spanish, of this unsuccessful movement by the Mapuche people to establish a "República Indígena" is available here.

(Prior July 6 posts are here and here.)

Europe’s Political Deficit

(Thanks to IntLawGrrls for inviting me to do this guest post!)

The Irish government has announced that a second Irish referendum on the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty will be held in the autumn. As IntLawGrrls have posted, the treaty was rejected by Ireland’s voters in a referendum last June. (photo by Peter O'Neill of "No to Lisbon" poster in the west of Ireland, June 2008)

The Lisbon Treaty is effectively a ‘de-constitutionalized’ version of the EU Constitutional Treaty, which French and Dutch voters had rejected in popular referenda in 2005. (Prior IntLawGrrls posts).

At the same time, recent newspaper reports are suggesting that across Europe in one month's time, the turnout is likely to be lower than ever for European Parliament elections.

Each of these news reports highlights an aspect of what might be called Europe’s political deficit – in other words, the chronic lack of political engagement of ordinary European citizens with the EU, and the failure or unwillingness of Europe’s political leaders to fully grasp this fact.

In a recent paper, I criticized the EU’s response to Ireland’s no vote to the Lisbon Treaty on the basis that the EU leadership chose to treat the referendum result as essentially an Irish problem rather than as a European problem. According to the Europe’s political leaders, the no-vote reflected concerns specific to the Irish population. The solution proposed was for the Irish government to suggest ways for the EU to respond to these particular concerns -- ultimately, through a package of largely redundant legal and political ‘guarantees’ -- so that the Lisbon Treaty could be ratified.

In this sense, Ireland's no-vote to Lisbon was treated very differently from the French and Dutch no-votes to the Constitutional Treaty in 2005. On that occasion, the complex but overwhelming tide of discontent reflected in the no-votes was quickly recognized as a collective European problem rather than as a specifically Dutch or French problem, and the Constitutional Treaty in its original form was rapidly declared to be dead.

My paper argues that despite the various plausible reasons for distinguishing between the Constitutional Treaty no-votes and the Lisbon Treaty no-vote, the EU strategy of treating Ireland's rejection of the Lisbon Treaty as primarily an Irish problem is a short-sighted one which is likely to backfire in the longer term. Ireland's no-vote is merely the latest manifestation of an ongoing crisis of popular legitimacy in the EU, and the European Council's strategy of treating it as essentially an Irish problem is part of the ongoing failure of Europe's political leaders to acknowledge the link between this crisis of popular legitimacy and the deliberately de-politicized nature of the European Union.

If you’re interested in reading more about the debate on whether and how to politicize the European Union, have a look at this exchange on the subject between Simon Hix of the London School of Economics and Stefano Bartolini of the European University Institute.

Mourning Constitutional

Movement afoot to take a step toward greater European integration that's been moribund since 2005, when voters in France and the Netherlands said "non" and "nee," respectively, to ratification.
On the eve of this week's European Union summit Chancellor Angela Merkel (left) of Germany, current holder of the EU presidency, put forward a plan for a streamlined treaty that would do much of what the spurned document would've, yet would lose the name of European Constitution. Merkel's said her initial meetings, particularly with Poland, met with "'serious snags.'" New French President Nicholas Sarkozy, whose party won a legislative majority yesterday, wants things simplified, and outgoing British Prime Minister Tony Blair resists giving the Charter of Fundamental Rights supranational effect. Only time will tell whether Merkel's initiative will bear fruit.
In any event, proposals to pare the document seem like a good idea if Europe is to embrace fully the clarity of comprehension that popular sovereignty requires. To one schooled in the world's oldest written Constitution still in existence -- a charter that even as amended weighs in at well under 20 pages -- Europe's 474-page version has always seemed a tad on the long side.