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Making Sense of the EU

THE CHALLENGE FOR

DEMOCRACY
Ralf Dahrendorf

Ralf Dahrendorf, the renowned German-born sociologist, is the author

of numerous books in both German and English, including Reflections
on the Revolution in Europe (1990) and After 1989: Morals, Revolution and Civil Society (1997). A member of Britains House of Lords, he
has served as a commissioner of the European Community (197074),
director of the London School of Economics (197484), and warden of
St. Antonys College, Oxford (198797). The text below is a version of
chapter four of Dopo la Democrazia (2001), a book based on interviews
with Lord Dahrendorf by Italian journalist Antonio Polito. It was translated from the Italian by Iain L. Fraser.

Q. We Europeans experience almost daily the extreme difficulty of

applying democracy to a supranational organization: the European
Union. None of the traditional mechanisms of the democratic mode of
government seems to be transposable to this level. It is even hard to
agree on a consensus version of the majority principle, as we saw at the
Intergovernmental Conference in Nice. Why is making democracy work
in the European Union so difficult?
A. In many respects this is the most fascinating question we have to
face. For talking about democracy in Europe amounts to talking about
Europe, about what it really is, and is not. Among idealists and
Eurofanatics, some still believe that the European Union can be turned
into some sort of nation-state, only bigger: the United States of Europe.
But an increasing number of Europeans, among them myself, consider
that this is not the correct description of what Europe is or can become.
The states that make up Europe have little to do with the 13 ex-colonies
that met in Philadelphia and said, It is true there are a lot of differences
between us, but we have even more things in common, so we need a
federal government in order to express them. It is not like that. For
Europe is made up of a large number of countrieswe dont yet know
Journal of Democracy Volume 14, Number 4 October 2003

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Journal of Democracy

how many, but I hope that very soon there will be 25with a long
history behind them, which certainly have something in common, but
much less than what united the 13 states that gave rise to the United
States of America in the late eighteenth century. Whatever Europe may
become, it will certainly not become the United States of Europe.
You are bound to know the witty remark, now no longer new, that in
looking at the conditions set for the candidate countries for enlargement, we can draw only one conclusion: Were the European Union
itself to ask to become an EU member, it would not be accepted. For its
structure does not fit the basic criteria of political democracy that the
Union imposes for the accession of, say, Poland or Hungary or Slovenia.
We are facing the historical absurdity of having created something partly
for the purpose of strengthening democracy, but having created it in a
way that is intrinsically not democratic.
And why is it not democratic? In part the answer lies in the very
origins of the project. There is little doubt that when the European
Economic Communityand still earlier the European Coal and Steel
Communitywas planned, democracy did not constitute the prime concern of those who designed and built the new construction. The central
issue was instead the need to set up an efficient mechanism for making
decisions. The result was a typically French solution: Two categories of
interests had to be reconciled, the European interest on one side, and
national ones on the other. So there was a need for two institutions: one
to represent the European interest, charged with putting forward proposals, and the other to represent national interests, charged with
reaching decisions. That was how the Commission and the Council
were invented. Rather a brilliant idea, but certainly not democracy.
Europe was designed in such a way that the European interest could
find a locus for expression in the Commission, while decisions were
ultimately made in terms of national interests, which in any case were
prevalent; and this was guaranteed by the Councils role. That is why,
right from the start, the unanimity rule has always operated, and failure
to reach unanimity still remains a trauma.
I would add that, in my view, the Assembly (as the European Parliament used to be known), which initially was made up of representatives
of the national parliaments, was nothing but an afterthought in the initial project. At bottom, it was not even necessary in the original structure,
and for a long time that was the way it was treated.
Q: Yet much has changed in the institutional structure of Europe.
A: So far nothing has happened but modifications and adjustments to
the original design. Europes birth certificate, its genetic inheritance,
its DNA, is still there. What have these adjustments brought us? A weakening of the Commission, with a consequent blurring of the very concept

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103

A DEFINITION OF DEMOCRACY
Democracy is an ensemble of institutions aimed at giving legitimacy to the
exercise of political power by providing a coherent response to three key
questions.
1. How can we achieve change in our society without violence? The
simplest definition of democracy has been given by Karl Popper: a system
that makes it possible to get rid of a government without spilling blood. This
definition may be a little too restrictive, and perhaps it is laconic rather than
simple. Its implications, in fact, are really rather complex.
2. How can we, through a system of checks and balances, control those
who are in power in a way that gives us assurance that they will not abuse it.
I do not agree with the famous remark of Winston Churchill according to
which democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others.
Probably this great man was annoyed by the restrictions placed on his power
by Parliament, elections, parties, and all the rest. The same is true of many
great and not so great men, but it is precisely for this reason that democracy
is such a civilized form of government. It protects us from tyranny, even from
the tyranny of great men.
3. How can the peopleall the citizenshave a voice in the exercise of
power? Democracy is the voice of the people which creates institutions, and
these institutions in turn control the government and make it possible to
change it without violence. In this sense, the demos, the people, is the sovereign that gives legitimacy to the institutions of democracy.
Ralf Dahrendorf, Dopo la Democrazia, 56

of the European interest. A strengthening of the Council, which is

increasingly taking on legislative initiative as well as decision-making
power. And an indisputable advance in the role of the Assembly, which
has through the so-called co-decision system been transformed into a
parliament, but nonetheless continues to have powers infinitely inferior
to those of a real parliament. None of all this has created democratic
structures. I wish to state this clearly: A political body in which laws are
made in secret, in closed sessions of the Council of Ministers, is an
insult to democracy. What we are looking at is a body making decisions
totally outside traditional democratic institutions.
How important are these undemocratically made decisions? Here we
must avoid making mistakes of overestimation. One of Europes great
problems is the gap between the high-sounding language often used in
treaty preambles (starting with the solemn commitment to an ever closer
union) or in major speeches by political leaders, and the reality, which
is rather different. Only 1.2 percent of Europes Gross Domestic Product
(GDP) is administered by the European Union, whereas the majority of
the states making it up administer more than 40 percent of their countries GDP.
If it were a real democracy, the Union ought to be able to satisfy the
three demands set out at the beginning of our talk (see box above). Well,
if we consider the third, namely how the people can express their will,

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we immediately see that it cannot even be put in the case of the EU,
since there does not actually exist a European people, a European
demos for a European democracy. And this is a basic cultural condition,
I would venture to say a sine qua non, if we intend to construct institutions analogous to those of national democracies. For instance, Italy is
perhaps the only country where the political parties have sporadically
attempted to get non-Italian candidates elected to the European Parliament. French political scientist Maurice Duverger was elected, British
politician David Steel was not. But the very timidity and lack of success
of these attempts shows there is nothing that can be called a European
people. This is an extremely serious problem, which impels many to
ask for an involvement of national parliaments, which are more representative, in the decision-making process in Europe.
The first of my tests for democracy asked how to assure the possibility of change. How is this done in the European Union? Did you see how
difficult it was even to apply the mere text of the Treaty [of Rome] to
remove the Commission presided over by Jacques Santer (199599),
which was accused of financial mismanagement and corruption? It was
a moment of grotesque confusion: The Commission members were
sacked in March 1999, but present at the Cologne summit in July, and
still in office in September. Some of the members were reconfirmed on
the successor Commission. In short, it was hardly a shining example.
The problem is that governance functions are diffuse and dispersed in
the Union. So when we want change, we do not know whom to change.
And on the Council the real changes come more from national elections, which at least bring new people to the prime ministers table.
There remains the question of controls, the system of checks and
balances, in connection with which I believe it is possible to improve
things, and to which I shall return. But my fundamental conviction is
that decisions (sometimes important ones) are made in Europe in a way
that is incompatible with the principles of democracy. What is worse, the
institutional responses we normally make to these problems at the level
of national democracies are not applicable to Europe even in the future.
Q: Yet there must be some way to find new institutional solutions, to
divide power within a European federation and give it democratic
legitimacy. For example, what do you think of the idea of calling on
Europeans to directly elect the president of the Commission, or the
government of the Union?
A: Frankly, I do not see this as likely. If I consider possible solutions,
my thoughts run more to those institutions where national interests are
represented, certainly not to the Commission. I do not in fact believe it
has much future in a more democratic Europe. Nor do I believe we shall
return to a position where the right of initiative is firmly in the hands of

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105

the Commission. I have thought a lot about this point, having been a
European Commissioner myself. Brussels has appeared powerful only
in periods when there was a clear, preponderant objective.
There have been two phases of this kind. One was at the dawn of the
Community of Six in the 1950s, when the common market was the foremost objective. The other was under the presidency of Jacques Delors
(198594), when the single market had to be constructed. In neither
case did the Commission define the goals, but it was nonetheless strengthened because it took up the torch and ran toward the finish line. In both
cases the Commission exercised the power of speeding up the process,
even though it originated from member-state decisions that could not
be departed from. In the second case, the construction of the single
market, the objective was also really complex, and Delors proved to be
by far the best of all the Commission presidents. For he managed to give
it such a broad meaning as to take in a whole range of things, to the
point that even today the integrationists are moving within the spaces
Delors opened up at that time. He greatly enlarged the tent that had
originally been set up by the governments. But as soon as you step
outside the tent of the single market and take new paths, from Schengen
to foreign and defense policy, the Commissions power shrinks and the
decision passes into other hands, sometimes of a special representative
of the governments, as with Javier Solana, the EU High Representative
for the Common Foreign and Security Policy.
Q: Yet the Commission under the presidency of Romano Prodi (1999
present) has a great and historic project ahead of it: enlargement. Might
that not become its torch?
A: It will indeed be interesting to see how far theyll manage to carry it.
But I dont have too many illusions. Enlargement, by contrast with the
single market, which corresponded to a European interest, is precisely
one of the cases where national interests become stronger and prevail. I
remember when we were discussing Britains accession in the Commission. I was the German representative, sitting alongside Frances. And he
said, Clearly, if the member states want the negotiations with London
to fail, I have a series of questions here that I am ready to raise that would
inevitably lead to the breakdown of the negotiations. In these matters,
the Commission has at most a potential blocking power. But when Paris
gave the green light for British entry, all of a sudden the French Commissioner and the whole Commission forgot every possible objection. In the
same way, today there are numerous problems due to which the negotiations for Polands accession might have failed. But it would not have
been the Commission that decides whether or not to make them fail.
The Commissions role stops where the Councils political decisions
begin, and its role will increasingly be limited to the internal market. In

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Journal of Democracy

a way, the Commission is the administrator of the single market; everything else needs other sorts of institutions. Even a really powerful,
independent commissioner like Mario Monti derives his strength from
the fact that he has the responsibility of acting as regulator of competition within the single market. If he had to deal with external relations,
for example, he would be nothing but an agent of the governments,
exactly the opposite of what he is today. In my opinion, the Commission has reached the limit of its competences, and so I do not think it
can play an important role in the future. The new ideas in the air aim at
institutional patterns modeled more on German federalism, with the
Council and Parliament as the two chambers of Europe, one the chamber of states, and the other the chamber of something that it is hoped
will one day become the European people. It is questionable whether
even this system can be regarded as more representative of public opinion, but at any rate it seems to me to be the start of an attempt to bring
European institutions closer to those of a genuine parliamentary democracy.
Q: What you are saying is exactly the opposite of what Prodi maintains.
A: In my opinion Prodi has patterned his actions in a substantially wrong
way. He is the second Commission president to make this mistake; the
first was Roy Jenkins (197781). Both believed that being Commission
president is in some way like being prime minister. That is not the case.
The Commission president is the head of an agency that has to achieve
objectives decided by the national prime ministers. That is why I cannot
see any sense in the proposal for direct election of the Commission presidentnot even from the viewpoint of democratic legitimacy. We would
be calling on Europeans to vote for someone whom three-quarters of the
electorate do not even know, or who means nothing to them. Naturally,
the fact that this proposal has no meaning does not mean that it cannot
pass. Almost all European decisions are the outcome of compromises
and horsetrading among national governments. So we cannot rule out
the possibility that one day France, in exchange for maintaining the
Common Agricultural Policy, may decide to concede something to Germany in terms of new institutional solutions. The very decision taken at
Nice to tackle constitutional questions in a new intergovernmental conference was the product of a trade-off. Since Germany did not get bigger
voting power on the Council than France, despite having a bigger population, it was compensated with this promise.
Q: So, to get back to the classics, do you agree with John Stuart Mill
when he says that free institutions are almost impossible in a country
made up of different nationalities. Among peoples without common
sentiments, especially if they read and speak different languages, a

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107

common public opinion, necessary to the functioning of representative

government, cannot exist?
A: I would agree, with the addition of one adverb: free institutions are
almost impossible in a country made up of totally different nationalities, whether from a cultural, historical, or economic viewpoint. I am in
agreement with Mill if we use the term nationality as he did, not the
way we tend to use it today. I believe, for instance, that democracy is
perfectly possible in Switzerland, where different nationalities do coexist. The United Kingdom itself is made up of different nationalities. But
neither country is even remotely comparable with the European Union
not as it is today, and still less as it will be tomorrow, after enlargement.
Q: Yet Europe has scored its greatest successes precisely when it was least
democratic. If we had asked the peoples of Europe if they really wanted
the euro, perhaps we would not have a common currency today. Might
this mean that the European project is intrinsically nondemocratic?
A: It is, if we judge democracy by the parameters of parliamentary government in nation-states. The point is that, apart from nation-states, we
shall never find appropriate institutions for democracy. This is not, of
course, an argument for ceasing to worry about democracy in Europe. It
is instead an awareness that ought to impel us, as the world advances
beyond the nation-state, to revisit the principles of democracy and ask
ourselves how they can be applied in the new situation.
We must seek and find institutional forms that come as close as possible to those principles. We shall find that the hardest principle to apply
beyond the level of the nation-state is the leading role of the people,
their sovereignty, the possibility of expressing their own opinion and
their own will. Ways can be found to guarantee change without violence; means can be found to set up an effective system of controls. But
we shall not find ways to make the peoples voice heard. This is the
fundamental problem that democracy has to tackle throughout the world
in the next few decades. For people want to have their say, and we cannot
even imagine how to do that at the supranational level, except through
street demonstrations or through the media, undoubtedly influential
methods but with highly doubtful legitimacy; or else through discussion on the Internet, which is important but certainly not democratic, if
only because many people, starting with myself, do not take part.
Q: To tell the truth, it does not look as if the peoples of Europe are
moved by any great interest in participating in the institutional debate
on the future of the Union.
A: That is true, and its an interesting phenomenon. Lets take the case

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of the euro. Some define it as the completion of the single market. Others see it as the beginning of political union. Yet it is regarded by the
people as little more than a technical question. Not even in Britain,
though the debate is so vigorous there, was it central to the election
campaign. Those who tried to make it so, like the Conservatives, quickly
had to reverse course. The politicians know that people who have to go
to work in the morning are thinking about everything except the euro
the fate of the firm they work in, their childrens school, the hospital
where their mother is a patient. I would almost say thatespecially in
continental Europepeople have swallowed the single currency as one
of the many technical decisions made by Europe. And the actual printing of banknotes has accentuated this process, because the euro has
become nothing more than a conveniencenot something one generally gets excited about.
Q: Yet this situation is odd. We are all convinced that what counts is
only the economy: Its the economy, stupid! But then we find that in
Europe its much simpler to construct the Economic and Monetary
Union than political unionas if people ultimately get more hot and
bothered over political independence than monetary independence.
Can this be proof that a strong democratic instinct continues to
animate the European peoples?
A: Europe means two things to people. On the one hand, its a series of
technical measures necessary for international cooperation. On the unification of weights and measures everyone agrees: It is obviously useful
for the Italian meter to be as long as the French one (though in Britain
there are still those with enough imagination to conceive that the dropping of the inch and the foot is a dreadful loss of sovereignty). On the
other hand, there is politics, embodied in each country by national politicians whom people want to keep because they are part of an elementary
democratic sentiment: the people chose them, and they can vote them
out. Now many Europeans, especially on the Continent, regard the
economy as part of the technical aspect, on a par with weights and measures. This may very well be a mistake. For there are very specific cultural
aspects of the economic systems of the various countries. Let me give
one paradoxical example. What would the Italians say if Brussels suddenly decided to set limits on family firms because they distort the proper
functioning of a modern economy based on shareholding? Obviously,
its not going to happen, but Im saying it in order to recall that there are
profound cultural differences even when it comes to economic values.
Until now, though, the single market has not on the whole been seen as
a threat to these values. It has been assessed as a phenomenon belonging
to the technical side, not the emotional side. My theory about the euro is
that currencies, once upon a time part of the emotional side, have lost

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symbolic importance because people now pay by credit card, travel a

lot, use dollars, and will have no problems with using the euro tomorrow
in place of the lira or the franc. In the long run, I even think that we will
see what Nobel prize-winning Economist Robert Mundell has predicted:
a single global currency in the not-too-distant future.
Of course, the boundaries between these two perceptions are continually shifting, and we shall have to see what will happen with the
passage of time, that is, when new spheres of public life will be regarded
as merely technical questions. It is interesting, for instance, to assess
what is happening in the defense sector. Europe started with economic
cooperation precisely because the project for a European Defense Community failed in the French parliament in 1954. Now we are trying
again. And it would appear from opinion polls that the boundary between the technical and the emotional is changing, because we are seeing
less resistance from public opinion today to considering defense too as
a natural aspect of international cooperation.
Q: Do you not believe instead that, however slowly and laboriously, a
sort of European patriotism is being born?
A: I do not see any signs of that. I often meet young Germans or Brits
back from Ecuador or East Timor who tell me decisively: Outside Europe, I realized that I am a European. And I ask them, do you mean that
if you go to, say, the Greek city of Thessaloniki or the Spanish city of La
Coruna you suddenly feel at home? Well, more or less, is the less
convinced response. I am afraid their Europeanist enthusiasm stops at
the obvious discovery that Ecuador or East Timor is different from the
country they live in. That is not enough for European patriotism.
Yet something new is happening. Recently in Italy I met a group of
businessmen. We organized a little snap poll. I put this question to
them: For what purpose ought we to have closer European unity? I
indicated various possible options: One was to avert new wars; another to be more prosperous; yet another to keep Germany under
control. The result surprised me somewhat, since after prosperity, which
scored 60 percent, 30 percent replied that the purpose of greater European unity is to become more competitive with the United States. And
we are talking about Italy, a country that certainly does not cherish
anti-American feelings. This theme of competition with America is becoming very important. You can find an echo of it even in the newspapers,
which portray a sort of battle of the currencies, euro versus dollar. In
itself, it is rather silly to present the course of the markets as a race, and
in fact it is the last thing we need. But it does reflect a state of mind.
Q: From your analysis one can see that one of Europes problems is
the absence of a European political class. Recently, former Italian

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prime minister Giuliano Amato launched a proposal to engage a number of prominent Europeans in a democratic debate, seeking to involve public opinion in a work of persuasion similar to the one that
inspired the United States in the times of the Federalist Papers. Might
that be an answer?
A: The complete absence of a genuine European political class has
been one of the great failures of Brussels, right from the outset. Instead, there is a Brussels orthodoxy, carefully cultivated, which creates
not a political class but, on the contrary, a besieged minority of superEurophiles who do not have much say in their respective capitals
because they speak a strange language, incomprehensible outside the
palaces of the Union. European political parties, for instance, do not
function except at a bureaucratic level. If the social democrat Tony
Blair discovers that the social democrat Gerhard Schrder is no longer
interested in the Third Way, he does not hesitate to make common
cause with the conservative Spanish prime minister Jos Mara Aznar,
who is interested in the Third Way. It is very sad for me to have to say
that, because I consider myself a Europeanist, albeit a cautious one
sometimes indeed I am called a skepticand so I deeply deplore the
absence of a genuine European political class. I greatly admire Amatos
intelligence, so I wish him every success in his endeavor. But I am
rather pessimistic as to the outcome of such an enterprise, however
useful it may be for the purpose of putting the institutional debate on
a proper footing with an eye to the convention and the intergovernmental conference.
For some strange reason, Europe has become the last remaining political utopia, especially for the left. This amazes me, since originally it
was the other way round. European unity was the great program of the
Christian Democrats. It was the project of people like Alcide de Gasperi,
Konrad Adenauer, and Robert Schuman. Many of the parties on the left
even opposed it rather firmly. The German Social Democrats voted against
the Coal and Steel Community and were divided over the Treaty of
Rome. The same thing happened with the French Socialists. In Italy,
even during the phase of Eurocommunism, Berlinguer voted against
Italys entry into the European Monetary System. Labour in Britain
nurtured a similar opposition. It would be worthwhile to analyze separately this choice by the left to launch itself into a project that is not in
fact having great popular success. I have many friends on the Left who
find my position on Europe incomprehensible, because they associate
Europe with the dream of a better future.
By contrast, the center-right today tends, almost everywhere, to be
more skeptical. Perhaps this inversion of roles is to be explained by
intrinsic genetic traits of the left and right. The right needs enemies, and
as long as the Soviet Union existed it had a formidable one for justify-

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ing European integration. The left, by contrast, has an inexorable need

for utopias.
Q: If no European demos exists, does it follow that it is not possible to
have a European Constitution, even though that is the objective many
would like to reach in 2004?
A: In my view it would be wrong to try to write something that might be
called a European Constitution. There is no need to go to Latin America
to see what happens when constitutions not based on the peoples true
aspirations are continually being written. It is no coincidence that Latin
America is a graveyard of constitutions. And I do not want Europe in its
turn to become one. I think German politicians, among the most committed to asking for a European Constitution, would do well to reflect
on the fate of the Weimar Constitution, a sublime example of a perfect
constitutional text that was never rooted in the German people; paradoxically, it became effective only when the emergency powers that it
itself provided for were used to dismantle it in the 1930s. Constitutions
not based on genuine popular demand can do more harm than good.
Q: You have painted a rather pessimistic picture of the state of democracy in Europe. At the same time, you maintain that the solution to the
problem cannot lie in imitating at the supranational level institutions
resembling those that exist in nation-states. What, then, can we do in
order to democratize the European Union?
A: As far as my first test goes, namely how to ensure a possibility of
peaceful change, I think it is essential, for the European Union and for
international institutions more generally, to set rigorous limits on terms
of office. These periods should not be negotiable; they should be absolute, as in the case of the U.S. presidency. In other words, commissioners
must not be able to extend their appointment beyond their five years.
This is how to avoid the risk of their being tempted to maneuver in order
to get reconfirmed, or of having their decisions influenced by a concern
to win the sympathy or support of those in power in the various countries. This mandatory limit of only one term of office should also apply
to other European appointments. It may seem an obvious measure, but
in fact it is not an easy objective to reach. For the system of do ut des,
you scratch my back and Ill scratch yours, is deeply rooted in the
European Union.
I also think that it would be appropriate to apply the same rule to the
IMF, the World Bank, and other international organizations as well.
As far as the system of checks and balancesthat is, the power of
controlis concerned, it is easier to think of effective methods. In the
first place, there is the whole area of judicial review of the acts of the

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legislature and the executivethat is, the need to have agencies that
assess the measures on the basis of agreed-on basic rules. Such mechanisms are weak in Europe at the present stage, but they can be
strengthened. Then there is the instrument of audits of accounts: I would
give a reasonably positive verdict on how it works at the moment in the
European Union, though I know that many raise doubts as to the way
the auditors are appointed, their professional capacities, and the efficacy of their action. At any rate, this is an important aspect. When the
Santer Commission ended up under accusation, the fact that irregularities were discovered in the way some Commissioners were spending
public money was due more to the Court of Auditors than to the Parliament.
Finally, there is the question of the European Parliaments role, however it may be elected. Though it may be said that its powers are limited,
the Parliament does exist, it is one of the Unions institutions, and it is
one of the agencies that can exercise control, operating through committees that have the task of asking those in power to answer for their
actions and be judged in public debate.
Q: And in the broader international sphere, where parliaments, whether
weak or strong, do not even exist, what can be done to reduce the
democratic deficit of organizations that make decisions of great importance?
A: I believe we are today called upon to tackle a new problem for democracy. Many of the questions discussed and decided in international
bodies are in fact highly technical. As such, they escape the verdict of
common sense. One of the basic assumptions of traditional democracy
is that every citizen ought to be in a position to judge the decisions of
the powers that be. Today, however, the citizens common sense is not
enough to judge, say, the monetary policies of the European Central
Bank, or the decisions on international trade made by the World Trade
Organization (WTO). At most, common sense might usefully be applied
to certain nonsensical European directives, like the one laying down
the proper shape for bananas. But there is now a broad range of highly
technical questions on which the man in the street or the typical housewife is in no position to reach an informed opinion. Well, I believe that
in these areas the solution most in line with the principles of democracy
is to turn to independent technical bodies. This is, in my opinion, also
the case within nation-states.
I do not wish to be accused of doing public relations for an institution of which I am part, but I sincerely believe that the House of Lords in
Britain, for instance, does this job very well, made up as it is of persons
appointed for merits gained in their lifetime and hence representative of
a vast range of competence. I must tell you I am rather surprised to find

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that in every debate, on subjects from monetary policy to genetics, a

handful or two of people who know exactly what they are talking about
stand up to speak. The House of Lords acts as an agency of counterexperts,
independent experts, free from the conditionings of the electoral process because they are appointed for life. We have not yet found similar
solutions at the international level, but I believe we ought to look for
them. In a way, the meeting parallel to the World Economic Forum in
Davos, held in Porto Alegre, was a fairly good idea from this point of
view, even if it was a purely private initiative. Let us say that it met the
need to have an independent, authoritative counteropinion on highly
technical questions.
Finally, we come to the hardest and most delicate problem to solve.
How do we bring public opinion, the people, into this? Here, transparency becomes crucial. In the European Union, for instance, I feel it is
absolutely essential for the Council to meet in public session when it
legislates. I cannot see any reason for its not doing so. Then there is the
theme of publicizing its decisions, which emphasizes the role of the
media, but also of the Internet. The Internet ensures that all the necessary information is at least available somewhere to those interested in
having it. It is obviously not enough by itself to inform the broad public, but the mere fact that there is always someone who, if he wishes, can
get the information potentially ensures a form of popular control. I am
accordingly not convinced by proposals aimed at restricting the availability of information and the freedom of speech on the Internet.
I must go on to add that demonstrations, protests, active exercises of
critical judgment, promoted by nongovernmental organizations, even
ad hoc ones (however questionable, and if violent, certainly unacceptable), are nonetheless a useful reminder of the enormous gap there is in
our democratic world between the people and power. And as long as we
have not found some other way to fill that gap, as long as those who are
elected have not discovered other ways of enabling the people to have
a say in decisions increasingly being made in remote, inaccessible places,
those demonstrations will remain a good sign. For they tell us something importantthat people do not accept this state of affairs.
Q: Might not national parliaments also play more of a part in the
democratic control of decisions made at the international level, although they instead seem to be pretty distracted and uninterested?
A: This is a real but largely unexplored possibility. I was a European
Commissioner when there was an Assembly not directly elected by the
people. And I have to say that in many respects the situation was better
than the present one, since the members of the Assembly had a national
base, coming as they did from their respective parliaments. Today, by
contrast, politicians who really have a national base do not go to the

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European Parliament because they are too busy. In great, important

votes in the European Parliament, dozens of members have been absent,
particularly the French and the Italians.
But for scrutinizing decisions made at the international level, there
is wide room for committees and commissions of national parliaments.
The doubt is only about the point in time at which this action should
come: whether before the decisions, as happens in the Danish Parliamentwhich indubitably limits too much the freedom to negotiate of
Danish ministers who have to make deals in Brusselsor after, as in
Britain in the House of Lords. The British prime minister, for instance,
reports to Westminster after a G-8 meeting, but nothing similar happens
for decisions made by the IMF or the WTO. The international role of
national parliaments, where a more solid democratic legitimacy resides,
is undoubtedly still undervalued.
2001 Guis. Laterza & Figli. The English translation of chapter 4 is published by
arrangement with Guis. Laterza & Figli S.p.A., Roma-Bari.