The European Union, according to a widespread opinion, is today at a decisive turn in its history. Either it rapidly succeeds in proceeding in a...

The European Union, according to a widespread opinion, is today at a decisive turn in its history. Either it rapidly succeeds in proceeding in a clear way towards a true Federation, endowed with efficient and, simultaneously, consensus legitimated powers, or it risks falling back and disintegrating, opening in Europe a frightful Pandora’s box made of nationalisms, separatisms, xenophobia and racism; more in general, of populist deviances. The world context in which the European integration is today embedded, and the unresolved knots of an unruled globalization that are surfacing, have made apparent and, so to speak, prepared the “explosion” of the two substantial structural limits the integration so far accomplished has: the lack of democratic legitimation of the decisional processes, and, simultaneously, the lack of efficiency of, in particular, the policies concerning economic development and social inclusion. Confronted with the crisis originated in the United States between 2007 and 2008, and the progressive extension and maturation of that crisis (through its various phases, first the financial one of private debt, then that of sovereign debt, and finally the recession of the real economy), and confronted with the dominance of global finance and the markets, with the ever more evident impotence of the States and politics, the European Union appears weak and paralyzed.

The Union, in particular, seems to be unable to react to the social consequences of the debt crisis and recession, in other words to the requests of security and jobs that come from ever wider social sectors harshly hit by the crisis. More than 25 million unemployed in the Union of 27¹, exhibiting a sharply rising trend, are a figure that speaks by itself for appreciating the size of such requests. Beyond the austerity and the policies aimed at reducing public expenditure and reining in the debt (the “homework” assigned to the more indebted States), nothing else seems to emerge from the Union’s strategies and policies. Or at least this is the ever more widespread perception of the European citizens, with the consequence, easily predictable but often underestimated, of a growing and ominous delegitimization of the idea itself of Europe’s political unity and of the spreading of euroscepticism and populism. Legitimation through participation and consent, and efficiency of the policies aimed at answering the citizens’ needs are two interconnected requirements. The lack of efficiency in guaranteeing the fundamental “public goods” (work, security, currency, etc.) delegitimizes rulers and institutions, and, vice versa, the lack of democratic legitimation contributes to the impotence of policies. If it wants to get out of the crisis and propose itself to the European citizens as a credible, attractive and shared project, the Union must be able to meet both requirements more adequately. In other words, it must succeed in proposing itself as promoter and guarantor of both democracy and development. Prospectively, but at this point inevitably in a short-term prospective, this implies the need, already mentioned, of a new statehood of a federal type, at least and first of all for the Eurozone countries, of a real, efficient and legitimated European government, of a supra-national power able to speak, at last, with one voice to the world (many voices, as at present, produce only noise, and nobody hears anything).

The European Citizens Initiative (ECI), provided in Art. 11 of the EU Treaty, represents the new right that may offer a great opportunity for both democratic participation and promotion of development, making it an instrument potentially capable of contributing to confer legitimacy on the European project. As a right of popular legislative initiative (that can be made operative through the collection of at least one million signatures in at least seven EU’s member states), the ECI falls within the category of the model of participative democracy, integrating the traditional representative democracy. Compared to similar national experiences of legislative popular initiatives, the novelty is represented by the transnational character of the ECI. From this aspect too the European Union, although threatened by the crisis, constitutes a laboratory of institutional innovations. The exercise of this instrument of direct democracy an authentic European “public space” may originate, ranging across the political national spaces, in which the political debate and the process of consensus-building will provide instruments for the legitimation of a new common statehood. The ECI represents the opportunity for the maturation and the active intervention of true political parties and transnational movements of a European dimension, the absence or weakness of which constitute today one of the reasons for the Union’s legitimacy and efficiency crisis.

But for which issues and contents is it possible and convenient, with regard to the goals here considered (the Union’s legitimacy and efficiency), to exercise such a popular legislative initiative? In other words: which ECI, in this specific context, is to be put forward as a priority?

The European federalists have recently launched an ECI project aimed at promoting and proposing to the EU Commission a great “European Special Plan for sustainable development and employment”. The conviction, widespread beyond the federalist circles, is that without a strong European New Deal, without a development plan financed through new Union’s own resources (essentially a carbon tax, a tax on financial transactions and the issuing of euro project bonds warranted by the European budget), Europe cannot get out of the crisis, cannot successfully participate in the world competition and, finally, cannot keep its “European social model”, that constitutes one of the most meaningful and universally acknowledged aspects of its civilization. To say it in Rifkin’s terms, the very heart of the so called “European dream”. The originality of the plan lies in its environmental “sustainability”, envisaging significant public investments mostly in the energy field, but also in the research, education and sustainable mobility sectors. The green economy, in essence, is the great opportunity offered to Europe for its development and growth in competitive capacity on the global level. The European development plan, relaunching investments and employment, should be able to spark a veritable “paradigmatic leap” of the European economic model, assuring also, through development, the resources for maintaining in a socially sustainable way the European welfare. The launch of such a plan would radically change also the expectations of the economic and social actors: a “reversal of expectations”, today widely depressed and negative, with a re-legitimation effect of the Union and of the European project. In conclusion, the ECI may well be, if resolutely exploited by the federalist and pro-European forces, a potential instrument for pushing forward European unification. A new right for democracy and development, whose potential is worth researching and experimenting with Europe’s federal unification in mind.

Translated by Lionello Casalegno

¹ Eurostat data, October 2012