‘The rejection of the constitutional treaty in the Dutch and French referenda has put in question the fundamental structures of the European Union. They will need to be razed to the ground in order to build a democratic, social Europe, truly independent of the United States, that will maintain relations of solidarity with the rest of the world and with the generations to come.’ This was the burden of the 5 June 2005 declaration, ‘For the Democratic Refoundation of Europe’, by the Administrative Council of attac.footnote¹

attac was justly charged by the French media with spearheading the No campaign against the eu constitutional treaty, which turned France into a vast popular-education forum during the spring of 2005. Thousands of citizens followed a crash course on the history of the eu, the workings of its institutions, the content of preceding treaties, especially that of Nice, and the prospects opened by the ‘constitution’. The two hundred-odd local attac committees played a decisive role, both in analysing the terms of the constitutional treaty, explaining its content and the issues at stake, and mobilizing support on the ground. The campaign itself brought a new dynamic into play, unifying activists from anti-globalization movements, trade unions, grass-roots associations, political groups and thousands of unaffiliated citizens. This coming together produced its own elan which was central to the final result.

The collective appropriation of the treaty also had the effect of ‘naturalizing’ the European question, long considered beyond the scope of national politics. For the first time, the link has been made between neoliberal policies formulated at eu level and those pursued ‘at home’. There are very few fields now, especially in the twelve countries that make up the Eurozone, in which national legislation retains any degreee of independence. On the whole, domestic policy is no more than the application in a national context of decisions taken either by the twenty-five member governments, or by autonomous bodies such as the European Commission or the Court of Justice of the eu. The notion that ‘Europe’ is something external is fast losing ground.

Why has it taken so long for the peoples of Europe to break the silence over mechanisms of rule that make such a mockery of democracy? Three reasons suggest themselves. First, the political processes involved derive from a different logic to that of national decision-making, confounding normal reference points. Legislation, for example, is largely the task of the Commission, which has a monopoly on initiating bills; the European parliament can only participate in law-making in those areas where it has been granted powers of co-decision; and a considerable amount of the legislative process falls exclusively upon the Council, that is, upon member governments. It is no easy matter to distinguish the legislative from the executive in such a jumble of genres. Secondly, for those who run the governments and media in most of our countries, the notion of Europe is sacrosanct. Any serious critique of its anti-democratic character is said to give ammunition to the Euro-sceptics. There is some truth in this: a comparison between the institutions of any member state and those of the eu can only reflect badly upon the latter; the eu famously fails to meet its own membership criteria on democratization. In fact—and this is the third reason for the silence—our rulers are eminently comfortable with the eu arrangements, in which the combined national executives constitute the legislature. The dream of every government to lay down the law without interference from elected representatives becomes reality at European level.

The classification of eu business as foreign affairs is an additional boon for European rulers since it ensures that its agreements are governed by diplomatic procedure. Heads of state or prime ministers retain the discretionary power to sign eu treaties, even though these are usually more concerned with regulating the daily lives of the national populations than relations with other states. Thus the free-market provisions of Maastricht or the Single European Act have the same legal status as the Treaty of Versailles. Parliamentary ratification normally presents no problem, if the government holds a majority. But referenda are more unpredictable. Neither Chirac nor Jospin were prepared to risk putting the treaties of Amsterdam and Nice to the sovereign judgement of the people, after the Maastricht Treaty only scraped through the 1992 referendum in France by 50.5 per cent. How long will it be until Europeans are next allowed to cast a vote on an eu agreement?

The effect of successive eu treaties since 1986 has been to accelerate the homogenization of social and economic policies throughout the member states. Theoretically there were two possible approaches: an upward harmonization of norms, which could have extended social gains, or their levelling down by market forces. The second course was chosen. The outcome was facilitated by the anti-democratic nature of the eu structures—the Commission’s monopoly over proposing legislation and the Council’s power of decision over it; that is, governments acting free of any effective parliamentary controls. With the zeal of the converted, Europe’s centre-left parties have protected themselves against any social-democratic temptation by signing up to the Single European Act and the successive treaties, from Maastricht on, that have enshrined neoliberalism as the eu’s guiding principle, and the Court of Justice as its watchdog.

These mechanisms have been particularly successful in generalizing neoliberal policies because they can build on the ideological convergence between the executive in Brussels and the national governments. For the Commission, European unification should take place first and foremost through economic integration, through the market, and thus through the primacy of ‘free and undistorted’ competition over all other considerations. Since the early 1980s European governments have adopted the same approach, but through a sleight of hand they have managed to pass off the policies as ‘Europe’s’, despite the fact that ‘Europe’ is constituted by themselves. On pensions, education, health or public services, national governments present themselves as compelled to implement policies which they had already drafted and adopted at eu level.