What is a pan-European movement for popular initiative? Why did we feel the need to create it? In this first issue of a series dedicated to proposals and campaigns on European democracy run by Eumans, we explain the nature of this organization- A political movement breaking away from traditional models, Eumans was born as an answer to a simple observation: today, nation states and representative democracy alone fail to answer to the global challenges of our times. Where does this crisis come from? And what kind of new political organization can respond to it? We will try to articulate our vision.
Democracy needs to be grounded in direct interaction among citizens. European democracy will truly blossom when people of different nationalities start engaging directly – that is, dialoguing, sharing hopes, and even arguing – without the mediation of national parties and institutions. This is the raison d’être of Eumans.
Today, the mechanisms of the European Union are based on a sort of ‘intergovernmental democracy’. The sovereignty of the European citizens is mediated by national elections. National parliaments nominate governments, who compose the Council of the European Union and appoint the Commission. Popular sovereignty is indeed exercised, but filtered on a national basis, as for the elections to the European Parliament.
The ‘multinational’ method could be partially overcome with federalist institutional reforms, which include strengthening the power of the European Parliament and introducing transnational electoral lists, the direct election of the President of the European Commission, and the overcoming of the veto right in the European Council.
However, this path alone may be unrealistic and inadequate. ‘Unrealistic’, because European public opinion now mistrusts the EU, and any reform can be blocked by the veto of a single Member State. ‘Inadequate’, because democracy is a method as well as a set of values, and it is built from the bottom up, starting from urgent issues that emerge from society and demand European-scale responses. A leading example is the multistakeholder approach in Internet Governance – a global, decentralised, community-based method that defies traditional nation-state sovereignty.
Our goal is precisely this: to propose European solutions to issues that transcend national borders (e.g. techno-scientific revolution, climate change, migrations, civil rights), involving people of every nationality. We aim to activate all the fragile instruments of direct democratic participation accessible to citizens, such as European Citizens’ Initiatives (ECIs) to be submitted to the Commission, petitions to the European Parliament, judicial appeals and appeals to the European Ombudsman.
These instruments are clearly insufficient. However, through dialogue and mobilization on specific objectives, we want to help shape a European people, that is, a political community of citizens who interact directly with each other to change what concerns them. The ‘public sphere’, namely civil society and public opinion, is an indispensable element for any respectable democracy. Our goal is to “open up national European public spheres to each other” (J. Habermas), building a sense of true European citizenship and deliberative democracy.
As the European people gain self-awareness, they will be more empowered to achieve federalist institutional reforms and democratic participation on a continental scale: legislation by popular initiative, referendums, randomly selected citizens’ assemblies, civic artificial intelligence.
Institutional reforms from above, social mobilization from below, and a fair technological infrastructure are essential for keeping democracy alive in the European Union. Eumans wants to play an active role in this process.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
