How the weakness of national leaders is paralysing decision-making in the European Union

Once again, the only purpose of Charlemagne's article is to say something bad about Europe. What's more it shows little understanding of the EU.
The Economist will never understand the EU because the mindset is opposite.
The EU believes in regulation, the Economist in autoregulation
The EU believes in team work, the Economist in self interest
The EU believes in democracy, the Economist in plutocracy
This newspaper reads Adam Smith and Joseph Schumpeter like others read the Bible or the Koran. It is certainly very interesting but Europe has to deal with reality and actual problems.

This article is pure junk. The problem is the EU itself and its community method, and especially that this method of decison-making (which totally lacks democratic legitimacy) has been extended to more and more politically-sensitive policy areas for which it is unfit. Every area of decsion-making that has ever been handed to Brussels has ossified. Look at the CAP and CFP which have been unreformable to 30 years already. All that is new is that additional policy areas have become subject to this undemocratic and dysfunctional system.

The Economist is here calling for some Strongman who will force decisions through at EU level, irrespective of what any national electorates think. You should be ashamed of yourselves. That is a subversion of liberal democracy which The Economist used to have a reputation for championing. What is needed is to remove all these policy areas from EU control and return them back to the democratic institions that exist in each nation-state (parliaments and govenrments). This would immediately free up decision-making amd restore democratic legitimacy because decisions could once again be reached based on eletions and manifesto promises put before the people. The log-jam is Brussels consiting as it does of countless unseen faces who are either beyond the reach of any ballot box or only subject to democratic accountability in another country and who therefore should not be taking decisions on behalf of anyone except their own voters.

I guess the Economist forgot to add David Cameron and his low popularity at home.

Lorenzo31: The EU believes in self-aggrandizement. The only policy proposals ever made at EU level (by the Commision which has the monopoly on initiative) are those that will increase the powers of the supra-national institutions. The EU Parliament (and also ECJ) shares the same institutional self-interest and is an ally of the Commission in its relentless campaign for more powers at EU level. Predicted policy outcomes are only a pretext for Brussels power-grabs that do not rresult in practice, becuase the EU institutions immediately move on to looking for new pretexts for self-aggrandisement in other areas. That is policy outcome at EU level is an accidental by-product of the self-interest of the Brussels institutions in more integration. And why positive policy outcomes are so rare at EU level. The Economist may bemoan the dysfunctional policy that the EU produces, but it is deeply mistaken in thinking that a Strongman will improve matters. The Strongman exists already and is only interested in getter stronger, i.e. in further integration whatever the policy outcome.

The EU is handicapping Europe, reducing the eurozone to the 2nd slowest growing region in the developed world (after Japan), destablising economies, and condemning entire nations on the eurozone periphery to bankrupcy. That is what happens when governments run one anothers countries and each national electorate is only able to replace 1 of the 27 member political cartel that governs them in practice. Power must be retruned to national institutions so that each electorate can actually change its real government when it fails, and put in a new government which has the power to change something.

TheInformer (1): The Lisbon Treaty did not increase the influence of national parliaments. Political power does not grow on trees. Any new powers given to the EU institutions by the Treaty of Lisbon must come from somewhere else, and that somewhere has mostly been national parliaments. The EU Commission gained in power from Lisbon because it holds the monopoloy of legislative initiative in a wideneded scope of policy areas. The EU Parliament gained in power because it has been given co-decision power alongside the EU Council of Ministers. And the change in blocking thresholds in the EU Council of Ministers makes it is easier to overrule national ministers and impose EU laws on a country irrespective of what its national parliament thinks. All these gains for the supranational institutions came at the expense of national parliaments, and the voters who elect them.

I'm sorry, but Charlemagne's diagnosis is that the Union is blocked by weak national leaders, and too much influence of the national level at the federal level (oops).

As a solution, he proposes more democracy, which is then described as more influence of the dead hand of the national level.

No, we need more democracy at Euro-EU level. Make the counsel's meeting public. Allow all-EU or all-Eurozone votes on political issues.

That's the democratic way to break the deadlock of our weak national midgets.

In a show of European solidarity it would have been appropriate if Sarkozy had lent his hat to Silvio Bare-lust-only.

I assume that the aim of this article is to demonstrate that democracy is being replaced by the "EU" - whether we like it or not.
Is that it?

So it is a leadership problem: oh yes me miss Hitler, Mussolini, Petain, Franco, Chamberlain, Leon Blum.
Those were real leaders... oooops, it was 1936 and after few years Europe became a blood bath.
If Europe is still a reasonably peaceful place it is because of its lack of leadership. God bless the mediocrity, Van Rompuy, Zapatero, Berlusconi, Lady Ashton, Sarkozy, Merkel. IF we would have more serious and less scared leaders we would possibly have been on the edge of a war.

This article is also politically dyslexic is calling for greater involvment of national parliaments as as remedy to the weakness of heads of government. Heads of government are heads of government for one reason only; because they command the majority in the national parliament. To expect that majority to say anything other than the so-called weak government leader is to misunderstand the very nature of parliamentary democracy. And that is very clearly exactly what the author of this piece has done. From that starting point the rest of the article is pure intellectual mush.

I agree with Lorenzo31. Moreover the deeper problems at hand about the private-public bank plutocracy can only escape The Economist, but they are at the heart of the difficulties of the West (USA, EU).

Over the last two centuries, the (public) governments have given (private) banks a monopoly of money creation, through leverage. The banks, and their friends the shadow banks, have discovered in the last decade, that they could direct the money thus created towards themselves exclusively. Not too many economists on the payroll of the establishment are keen to explore this subject.
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/

Anyway one could ask why in the picture Sarkozy looks like a Napoleon,while the other tree appears like poor losers.And one at the end of the article asks himself why with all these lame ducks leading Europe we are not performing worse than Britain.There was room for Cameron also,in the above picture

If the consequence of the current EURO crisis is political "immobilismo", the cause may be voter "infantilismo".

Everywhere voters are shocked-SHOCKED!- to find out that major adjustaments are needed. That's why voters are prone not only to reject bad news but to punish the few courageous messengers at the voting booth.

To change this, things may have to get worse before they get better. German voters will have to accept that "there's no fee ever-increasing trade surplus", voters in the net importing countries will have to realize that they cannot live on ever-increasing credit forwever.

Even Mr Berlusconi's indiscretions are insignificant next to this naked truth.

You recommend "strengthening the influence of national parliaments over EU decisions".

The Lisbon Treaty did just that, did anyone notice?

And are national parliaments so much more popular and esteemed by voters than EU leaders, or indeed EU institutions?

The campaign to discredit the EU is becoming a bit too obvious and disgusting. Get the UK out of the EU once and for all,if the UK doesn't believe in the EU they can always leave, I mean is anyone holding you back? No? then just leave.

The Economists desperate attempts to talk down the EU and the Euro have long become tiresome.

As they are so clumsy and naive, you obviously have both a fine contempt for the niveau of understanding of your readers, and you reveal the extent of the despair of the actors in the anglo-saxon model.

I agree with the Economist's assessment of Europe's leaders, however I think there is a more institutional cause. The EU's current half-way house between a club of nation states and a federation has allowed a generation of leaders to grow up who are unable to articulate a vision for their countries, hide behind the EU on key decisions, blame the EU / other member states for problems of their own making and have grieviously failed to either deal with or honestly explain to their electorates the enormous changes that have taken place in the wider world over the past 10-20 years.

The answer is to either go forward, to a full federation, with powers properly limited and a government answerable to all the people of the EU, or back to a looser club where the people of each member state can holder their own leaders properly accountable. I think either would be preferable to where we are now, however I think the recent screw-ups, moralising and mud-slinging have so poisoned the EU in the minds of many Europeans, that real federalism has no chance whatsoever. Anyone able to repeat after me "It's not you, it's me. I was hoping we could still be friends?"

... and if wishes were horses, beggars would. It is no good blaming the leaders: they are the products of the system that elected (and in some cases) re-elected them. If they are no good, suggest how to improve the system. If we cannot improve the system, then it is pointless and platitudinous to say that we need better leaders.

Manneken Given that Emperor Pompous of the EU Empire has already decreed that nationhood is dead, and the EU Empire is all, where is the need... unless your trying to take the right of self-determination from those that didn't join the failed euro, and still hold veto's.

"Lastly, European need to realize that you can remain prosperous by working hard - you cant remain prosperous by working 4 days a week and be appreciative of arts and culture. Germany is prosperous because people work with strong ethics. Rest of Europe has just been eating off on fiscal giveaways, underpriced borrowings and superficial export of moral values. Time to go back to work and earn the bread rather than begging for it."

ENOUGH OF THIS GARBAGE ALREADY! I work 45 <-> 60 hours/week and demand a bit more respect