Ugardian discovers EU democratic deficit

An unusual piece in teh Gruan today, driven to some sort of critique by the threat posed by right wing parties in the European Elections (a few dots to join up there). There is an upbeat note too:

Despite 60 years of union there are no real cross-border parties. But times are changing

There is a problem with European elections: they are not very European. When EU citizens go to the polls this month, they will vote under national electoral laws, for candidates representing national parties, campaigning on domestic issues....The “Europarties” the newly elected MEPs will join are not parties at all but loose, often fractious coalitions, so a vote for Germany’s Christian Democratic Union party also amounts to a vote for the far-right populists of Fidesz 

More than 60 years of European union have, in short, signally failed to create anything that might reasonably be called a European political space....“We don’t yet have a European politics – there’s no real pan-European public opinion, no transnational political debate or dialogue on the issues that affect our common interests as Europeans – unemployment, the environment, migration, data protection.

The quote is from a Professor of European Law. So come on then Grudian --ask him what is European about European law? If European law is not grounded in any sort of 'European political space',what is it grounded in? Whose laws are those embodied in the Acquis Communitaire, patrolled by the ECJ? In whose interests are they initiated? The GUardian moves on, all unconcerned:

Previous [nice, Green] attempts at a cross-border European politics have made little progress....The most recent transnational stirrings have come, paradoxically, from the far-right fringe: by building a common discourse, focusing on just one or two hot-button Europe-wide issues such as immigration, and consistently attacking the EU, rightwingers have “actually Europeanised Europe’s politics in a way no moderate national party has even attempted”

Liberal analysts have never understood right wing politics, especially nationalism.That failure produces their shock and horror (and impotence)  at the rise of the Brexit Party, as well as their fears of European rightwingery. I hope they will now realise that patronising lecturing about being nice to each other and just getting on with picking the bloody strawberries without complaint will not help. Luckily:

But progressives are now trying too...a pro-European group called Volt hopes to become the first true pan-EU party to win seats in the parliament.

They seem to be pro-European in the sense that their members include: 

Colombe Cahen-Salvador, now 25, a French human rights lawyer, her partner, Andrea Venzon, 27, an Italian consultant, and a German friend, Damian Boeselager, 30...Entirely crowd-funded, Volt claims 25,000 members, aged from 14 to 92, in 32 countries...its goals include “fixing the EU” by allowing MEPs to propose laws and member states to decide by majority rather than unanimous vote, and ensuring the bloc’s funds are invested to make a palpable difference to ordinary Europeans’ lives – in education and infrastructure, to create jobs....

So pretty much soft EC policy before the financial crash and austerity? Moving to majority votes (and ending vetoes, which is what the more polite ending 'unanimous vote' would mean),is also a key plank in Macron's move to greater European unity, of course.

Finally, there is: 

The left-leaning European Spring, headed by Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, its lead candidate in Berlin, is a coalition of small, radical national parties rather than a single pan-European party but will nonetheless present a single reformist programme – a “New Deal for Europe” – to the EU electorate.

That might be popular, perhaps even with the British Labour Party? However, for nice centrist liberals, the problem with extreme parties of the left, is that there are always equally abhorrent (because equally extreme) parties of the right:

Also standing on a common platform in more than one EU country is a rather different kind of group: Génération Identitaire, which bills itself as “a political movement for young people from all across Europe … fighting mass immigration and the Islamisation of Europe” and has made headlines staging anti-immigration stunts in the southern Alps and the Mediterranean.

Clearly European elections are very dangerous, as those dreading Faragism will testify. Perhaps we should just have lots of plebiscites (confirmatory votes) instead?