Whatever happened to Declan Ganley?
Published on by James Rogers
Last Sunday, Declan Ganley, the opposer-in-chief of the Treaty of Lisbon, and founder of the now defunct Libertas political party in the Irish Republic, penned a commentary in the Daily Business Post with Brendan Simms, a professor of the history of European international relations at the University of Cambridge, advocating that the peoples of Europe should renew their support for the principle of European integration – albeit in a radically different form. Quoting Edmund Burke – ‘Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government’ – they assert that the ‘Monnet method’ (that is, (neo-) functionalism), cannot take Europeans any further without damaging their constitutional democracy; or, indeed, even the economic growth on which all Europeans depend. In this sense, they are right: even the most committed pro-Europeans would find it hard to disagree that the European Union is currently in a quagmire, pressed down under the deadweight of intergovernmental procedures, outdated assumptions, and poor political leadership.
Developing their argument, Ganley and Simms assert:
Today, as we observe the now bizarre ritual of failed European summitry, the uninspiring posturing of Europe’s ‘leaders’, the short-term political risk aversion, leading to chronic errors and splits with potentially dangerous long-term consequences, one cannot but wonder to what extent these politicians grasp the magnitude of what they are putting at risk by their petty politicking. It is therefore necessary to draw greater attention to the sucking wound that is really eating away at Europe’s vitality.
That wound is the chronic lack of democracy, accountability and transparency now rupturing the heart of the European project and manifesting itself in everything from the machinations of the [European] Commission and the European Council’s Committee of Permanent Representatives, to the board room of the European Central Bank, to the back rooms of Europe’s newest self-styled elite, the so-called ‘Frankfurt Club’ whose policies, though not formed with malign intent, would still de facto turn the eurozone into what effectively would be a collection of vassal states.
This line of reasoning goes against the grain of almost every traditional pro-European assumption, which, in any case, are often rather schizophrenic. Indeed, I have often suspected that many on the pro-European side are simply delusional: they do not seem to have an endpoint in mind for European integration; they misunderstand the importance of nationalism; and fail to recognise the primacy of geopolitics. Schooled in the tenets of (neo-) functionalist logic, or dreary theories such as ‘liberal intergovernmentalism’, they seem to believe that a ‘post-modern’, (quasi-) ‘post-sovereign’ community of Member States can muster the means to uphold the common good, irrespective of what happens beyond the European Union’s borders. For these people, geopolitics is dead.
In this sense, Ganley and Simms throw down the gauntlet, and in two ways. Firstly, they claim – rightly in my view – that a ‘post-modern’ Europe is a quaint fantasy, a fictional product from a bygone age (in the form of the immediate post-Cold War era). This was a period when the United States, Britain and France were in a position of strategic primacy, and other Europeans could shelter safely under their wings. There were no emerging great powers to harm Europeans back then; and the Western economies were growing so fast that any form of financial crisis seemed very unlikely. Yet that world has long gone. Today, not only are Europeans faced by mounting external threats – ‘the return of geopolitics’ – as emerging great powers, which appear rather indifferent to European views, assert their own interests, but also by deep internal challenges: lagging economies, bad demography, and a resurgence of intergovernmentalism, particularly as a new ‘Group of Two’, comprising Britain and Germany, further splinters an already divided and poorly led European Union.
Secondly, Ganley and Simms have set the ‘my-little-democracy’ fantasists squarely in their sights. These people, such as the ‘Little Englanders’ in the United Kingdom, frequently assert that the European Union is an unaccountable and proto-imperial system, dominated by unelected elites. There is some truth in this: but in response, the ‘Little Englanders’ (or ‘Little Polanders’, ‘Little Francers’, ‘Little Hungarians’, ‘Little Czechs’, ‘Little Greeks’, and so on) offer nothing coherent and sink back into their pre-existing nationalisms, which often deteriorate into reactive and unthinking parochialism. Thus, these anti-Europeans fail to deal with the issues the pro-Europeans are trying to overcome (i.e. maintaining security within the internal European space and constituting an aggregated European Union to take on outside threats). In response, Ganley and Simms simply throw the ‘my-little-democracy’ fantasists’ accusations back at them: they argue that if this group is so worried about the loss of constitutional democracy, then why don’t they seek the European Union’s reformation – in a new, radical and democratic form?
All of this may come as a bit of a shock to many, and on all sides of the debate: after all, Ganley, unlike the pro-European Simms, led the assault against the Treaty of Lisbon, pouring money into supporting a referendum campaign in the Irish Republic that sought to stop the treaty in its tracks. Many have subsequently asked how such a – for want of a better term – ‘Little Irelander’, could then do a volte-face and support the construction of a popular, democratic and federalised European state. The answer is very simple: Ganley was never an anti-European in the first place! Rather, he merely opposes the form the European Union has taken – and is taking – not the concept of European integration itself. Instead of a weak and intergovernmental European Union, Ganley and Simms want a powerful Democratic Union, founded on a strong executive and popular sovereignty, electrified by a deeply embedded constitutional democracy, which has the power to protect all Europeans from internal challenges and growing outside threats during the twenty-first century. As examples of where small, disparate and ailing political communities grouped together in a quest for power, security and prosperity, they point to the grand unions of the United Kingdom, formed by the integration of England, Wales and Scotland throughout the seventeenth century and formalised in the Acts of Union in 1707, and the United States, forged during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries by the Thirteen Colonies.
So what do Ganley and Simms propose in order to refound European integration? In their words:
1. The position of president of the European Commission and president of the European Council should be merged into one office-holder and should be made subject of a popular democratic election to be held not later than December 2013. Voters should be weighted in an ‘electoral college’ type format so that smaller Member States voters are not made irrelevant. This president would serve for one six-year term only and would be chief executive in the same manner as the president of the United States. An accommodation could be made to remaining European monarchies in respect of their historic traditions, to allow for some ceremonial roles.
2. The [European] Commission should become the servant of the executive arm and be filled by the nomination of the democratically elected president, and the ratification of a newly created upper house of the European Parliament.
3. An upper house or senate should be created, with four representatives of each Member State each holding equal voting power. That is to say, Ireland will have four senators, as will Germany and other states. This upper house will be given the co-right to initiate legislation along with the lower house, the current European Parliament.
4. The European Parliament should be reformed to give greater balance for population (which would favour larger Member States) and should be given the power (along with its upper house) to initiate legislation.
5. All lobbying of the executive and legislative branch must be registered and transparent.
6. A full insolvency purge of all European financial institutions should be immediately undertaken. A liquidation and asset sale of all unhealthy institutions should take place forthwith. A writedown of significant size, together with a Hamiltonian scale re-negotiation should take place on all distressed Member State debts. The federalising of all remaining state debt should immediately follow, backed by the issue of union bonds backed by the entire tax revenue of the eurozone.
7. The union civil service should be kept small and highly efficient; this should be enshrined in Europe’s new constitutional arrangement. A debt ceiling will also be set constitutionally.
8. The union should have monopoly of external action both in soft and hard power.
9. The European Central Bank should be guaranteed full independence and a low inflation policy be pursued.
10. The official language of the union should be English. We understand the major sensitivities involved, but it is necessary to have one official language amongst so many, so as to remove any scope for ambiguity in laws and regulations or their interpretations.
11. The automatic right of secession for any Member State should be provided for with a two-thirds majority of the acceding polity.
These proposals are certainly timely, and – if implemented – could transform the European Union into a mighty democratic federation in the twenty-first century, like the British and American unions in the past. The key question is whether Europeans and their leaders have the vision to make it happen, or whether petty interests and insularity will get in the way. Perhaps as important, is whether Europe’s shrivelled civil society is up to the challenge, or whether it will continue to cling to ‘post-sovereign’ mishmash? Whatever happens, the visions articulated and the decisions taken over the next few years will have an impact well beyond their time.
Image credit: Indymedia Ireland.
Dear James, thank you for this exposé of Declan Ganley’s and Brendan Simms’s work – after seeing your piece I’ll gladly proceed to read the cited article itself. Although I more or less agree with the stated goals, I wonder if you don’t think that adopting English as the administrative language has only one (but admittedly strong) justification: that of its practicability. I understand that from the perspective of geopolitics the most approachable means to achieve the end of a strong Europe is to go along with the language that is currently most widespread. But geopolitics is not all that matters and I believe there are multiple reasons why English is perhaps the worst of all language options we have at our disposal.
Culturally speaking, language is not just a vessel or tool that conveys information (memes), but is inseparably intertwinned with our identity, values, goals, a historical way of Being (Heidegger). That is, with European civilisation. By opting for English, we don’t just go with the ‘Anglo-Saxon ticket’ (that obviously forms only a fraction of our rich cultural background), but above all with the ‘American ticket’, which is in essence the path of an impoverished, consumerist, globalist and ultra-capitalist Disno-village. In political terms, it’d be also rather difficult and contradictory to fight for European sovereignty while choosing the language of one global hegemon as one’s own. Given that countries on the European continent lack the deep memory and roots in the English language that the English/British culture has – with Shakespeare, regional accents and numerous other facts which come with it – and that the American corporate media hold the effective grip on the production of cultural imagination, this would amount to our collective cultural suicide.
I absolutely agree that we need one administrative language, but I’m afraid we’ll have to go by the less practical, but ultimately more worthy option of learning a language different than English. What language should it be then? For historical reasons, I personally prefer the ‘utopian’ choice of Latin – the only language that has truly pan-European qualifications. (A choice that would actually have a precedent in Hebrew, that had been an equally ‘dead’ language before it was revived by Zionist scholars starting from the late 19th century on).
But there are yet other options – an artificial language (which, however, is as culturally empty as the ‘globbish’, precedent here is Indonesian), a European language of a large nation other than English (but which one should it be? and in sociological terms, it’d again lead to the predominance of one European ethnicity over others), a small language of Europe (whose speakers low numbers would serve as the strongest credentials for its adoption – they wouldn’t be able to dominate European institutions and its culture wouldn’t be able to overshadow national ones), or a language foreign to European continent. One thing is certain – Europeans have already vasted at least two generations by indecision and the total absence of discussion.
I leave to everyone’s judgement how we should steer through this language quagmire, but having a debate on the issue rather than just going along with English by default is a good start.
@Stanislav Maselnik: Thanks for your comment. You raise many interesting issues. But I’m afraid I don’t think anyone will be resurrecting a dead language – Latin – anytime soon. As a Briton and a European, I don’t equate English to the things you seem to equate it with – nor the United States, for that matter (‘impoverished’?!). Most Europeans already know English; it simply makes sense for everyone to know it. In any case, it is going to become the administrative language of the European Union, just as it is for the United Kingdom, India, the United States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and many African nations. It’s also the language of education; many European universities are already using it as their medium of communication. Trying to fight the power of English is like trying to fight the incoming tide. Seriously, don’t even bother going there!
PS: Granted, it would be nice if most non-British Europeans used English instead of American English! That’s to say, ‘ised’ is so much nicer than ‘ized’; and ‘colour’ is so much more accurate than ‘color’, etc.!!
Just to clarify one comment in particular so there is no misunderstanding – my ‘impoverished point’ is not an attack against the English language, but rather against the essentially American, one-world culture it currently transmits in the form of simplified English (‘globbish’) thanks to the likes of Hollywood, Murdoch, or Time Warner, which is something entirely different than the English spoken in Yorkshire or, for that matter, Texas or California (just as traditional ways of life that go with them). I think this is fairly obvious: authentic culture until now always arose with a particular people, place and time and was not something artificially made in the forge of large media corporations and then broadcasted into unsuspecting heads of people at every place around the globe. Since it has to be understood and followed by everybody – as that is the way to maximise the profits – it is by necessity impoverished when compared to millenia of development of civilisations such as Iranian, Chinese or European. These cultures were made through series of intellectual clashes of scholars, disputes of politicians in public spaces just as by lives of common folk in the city and countryside. I think that the ‘memes’ produced by global media in the last 50 years can be called ‘culture’ when compared to these civilisations only with a grain of salt.
Only because traditional links with space-bound communities have been cut and these corporate giants hold the reins over TV, printed and internet media that have effective monopoly on the creation of public consciousness is not the reason why one should see it as something to be accepted and not fought against. In fact, I have no doubts that Europe that is true to its history can only be made by fighting that incoming tide – as the only other option is being washed away by that current.
@Stanislav Maselnik: No, no, I understood what you meant. I just don’t think modern culture is in any way ‘impoverished’. In fact, I think I disagree with you, profoundly, and in two ways: firstly, forgive me if I misunderstand you, but you seem to imply that modern culture, articulated by large media conglomerates (which are not exclusively American; there are many British ones too – the BBC being the largest in the world), is less worthy than something articulated by Mediaeval monks, scribes and other writers of that time. You also seem to imply that whereas modern culture is constructed, ‘ancient’ culture is organic. I disagree: ancient cultures (what you describe as ‘civilisation’) were as politically constructed as any other, except back then the mouthpiece of construction was the church or temple (as opposed to the secular media outlets of today). For example, the modern English language was given form by the King James Bible, which was the first translation of an elitist Latin text into something everyone could understand.
Secondly, I think the problem in Europe is that we have failed to create ‘modern culture’, at least since the 1970s. Instead many Europeans seem more willing to sink into the so-called ‘civilisation’ of yore. The United States (and United Kingdom) has been so successful in dominating ‘modern culture’ because its media companies produce films and music that the general public want to watch and hear, not classical music and operas from the eighteenth century, and ‘art-house’ films that only appeal to a small – dare I say, elitist – minority. Of course, the fact that most of the American (and British) productions are made in English probably helps to sell them. English is the language of democracy and modernity, after all…
I read the article, succinct points and a cognitive call to action. I think this is better than watching this gangrenous existence, or model we presently have, only deplete Europe further (and I’m not pro-European). Years of watching bungling politicians jump on the European Union gravy train and be rewarded for their incompetency at even greater costs to the final taxpayer has made me very suspicious of the existing format. Also the top-heavy mandarins who need to be jettisoned I expect would make Ganley and Simms’ proposal very difficult to implement. However, I’d vote for this kind of policy/ party and give up some hours working on it, rather than see the present implosion coming. As a wise woman once said to me: ‘you may like your arm, but if gangrene sets in you’ll do anything to ensure it stops spreading’. Time to ‘up our game’ and, as Apple would say: ‘think different’. That means a whole lot of acting different too. A total mind shift, I’m relying on entrepreneurs and people under thirty to support this quicker, and seriously hope they use every medium I can support whatever way possible. We can live in desperate times, or challenging times, I’d prefer to make it the latter.
Strong stuff, and I think you are correct in identifying intergovernmentalism as one of the main issues in European federation. I wrote a commentary piece a while back, which I think corresponds somewhat to the views in this post. I agree that recognising an endpoint for integration is absolutely key, and a concept that is embedded in the very name of the EU needs to be brought more clearly into focus: European unification. Academic handwaving about post-modern communities and all the rest is not going to cut it in the impending age of twenty-first century international relations.
@Vince Garton: Great piece in Varsity! I agree with every word, as well as the points made in your comment.