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  Opinion: The Future of European Democracy

Opinion The Future of European Democracy

By Thomas Darnstädt

Part 2: German Parliamentarians Must See European Politics as Their Responsibility

The far-reaching responsibility which the Constitutional Court has given the German Bundestag -- and other national parliaments -- in relation to European politics, creates a new role for the traditional parliamentary system. Under the classical model of democracy, the parliament is responsible for every decision that is to be made within the territory of the community known as the "nation" -- in other words, for domestic policy. Members of parliament are only very indirectly responsible for those issues that affect others, namely foreign policy. Representing the nation beyond its borders has since time immemorial been the responsibility of the executive branch. Under that model, a member of parliament knows very little about foreign affairs.

But Europe is the ever-more-convincing proof that domestic and foreign policy can no longer be separated from each other. Each member of the government who sits on a council of ministers in Brussels is simultaneously carrying out both German and European politics. Each German representative on a council should, in the best-case scenario, take the EU's other 26 members into account when making decisions. Naturally he or she has taken an oath to serve German interests. But that is exactly why the European Union exists: so that everyone does not simply represent his or her own interests, but also considers the interests of others, in a spirit of solidarity. If the political arena is being relocated in this way from the nation-state to Brussels, then it is only logical that the sphere of responsibility of the parliament, which is elected to control the executive, should relocate too. That is exactly what the Federal Constitutional Court is demanding: The Bundestag -- even the Bundestag -- must become a European parliament. And Bundestag members must see European politics as their responsibility, and not just as foreign policy.

Governments Must Learn to Explain Europe

The most important counter-argument to this position is that members of parliament would be out of their depth under that scenario. In the past, they have failed miserably when confronted with challenges involving EU politics -- such as when the guidelines from Brussels regarding the European Arrest Warrant were being discussed. Then, too, it was the Federal Constitutional Court that in 2005 stopped the overhasty and unconstitutional implementation of the Brussels guidelines into German law. The Bundestag members who appeared before the Constitutional Court to argue their case stuttered like schoolboys in front of the judges. They could not say what they thought -- because they had not thought about anything.

In a representative parliament whose scope does not include big-picture politics, lawmakers are not used to taking responsibility for the actual subject matter of issues. Members of parliament play the role of providing a majority for the government -- or preventing it from forming a majority. End of story. Thus, it is not surprising that the Bundestag failed to reclaim for itself its right to exercise control when it came to the German laws relating to the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty.

Who, if not the Federal Constitutional Court, could have acted to change things? The Lisbon Treaty verdict is a massive appeal -- no, order -- to the people's representatives to finally engage with European issues. "A lot of work and little recognition," is how Bundestag member Gunther Krichbaum once described his work on the Bundestag's European Union committee, which he chairs. Is that all that Europe means for German democracy?

Card-carrying Europeans seem unanimous in the view that national legitimization of European decisions is impossible in the long run. A democracy consisting of 27 national parliaments would be too noisy, too slow and too nationalistic, they argue. But the Constitutional Court has neither ruled that political decisions by German government members who are on councils of ministers in Brussels need to be subject to approval by the Bundestag, nor ruled out further steps toward greater European integration. It is only trying to prevent the Bundestag from refusing to take responsibility for all these things. It is trying to prevent the situation where, in the words of the former Constitutional Court judge Dieter Grimm, "European politics continue to be conducted behind the Bundestag's back." The government should have leeway to make decisions in Brussels, just as it does in the national sphere, as long as it has the confidence of the Bundestag.

Tying European Union politics once again to the responsibilities of the parliament also means that future European integration will, in individual cases, need to be based on goals that can be communicated to the electorate. As of now, European integration is no longer something that will automatically continue by itself -- in individual cases, the government must be able to explain to voters the utility of further steps toward greater integration, and those steps need to have majority support. Explain Europe: That will be the challenge for all the fervent Europeans among German democrats.

Nothing Is Simple in a United Europe

The Constitutional Court's model of a Europe of European parliaments is not as impracticable as distraught Europeans are making it out to be. It all comes down to the Bundestag members -- in contrast to the election campaigners in the ranks of Bavaria's conservative Christian Social Union, with their garbled calls for grassroots democracy and the right to unlimited control -- thinking about how they can be good Europeans.

So far, however, Europe's political thinkers have only come up with provisional ideas about how that could work. The Munich sociologist Ulrich Beck, for example, talks of a creative political culture within a "Europe of differences." Under this model, national parliaments would promote, in the words of former Constitutional Court judge Dieter Grimm, "public discourse about European politics" within member states. The Frankfurt lawyer Erhard Denninger believes that a sense of "European solidarity" would emerge from an open competition between democracies.

And Ralf Dahrendorf, the respected German-British sociologist who died in June, even referred to ideas from the German philosopher Immanuel Kant in a bid to endow members of Western parliaments with a Kantian categorical imperative to be cosmopolitan. In a play on a famous line of Kant's, Dahrendorf writes: "Act in a way that your action's maxim could be seen as a principle of a global civic constitution that administers a universal law."

Not even the Federal Constitutional Court could have said it in a more complicated way. But then nothing is simple in a united Europe.

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