 Good afternoon. Is this on? Yes. So it is a great pleasure and an honour to welcome Professor Gronje de Boca to the IIA. Professor de Boca is one of the most distinguished scholars on EU law and its relation to national legal systems and international legal systems. Today, Gronje is coming with a very provocative title and subject matter. So it's the EU responsible for the rise of a liberal authoritarianism and the decline of democracy in Europe. So we are at such a perilous political moment in Europe that I think this is exactly the type of question we should be asking ourselves and questions that challenge the status quo. And so without any further delay, I will pass on the floor to Gronje. I would just ask you to switch your mobile phones to silent mode, your encourage to tweet with the handle at the IIA. And so contrary to what is common practice here today, the entire session is on the record including the Q&A session. Thank you. Well, good afternoon and thanks to the IIA for inviting me here. It is a provocative title and I also sent in a little blurb which was even more provocative because I referred to this UK minister's comment comparing the EU to the Soviet Union because of the terms of Brexit. That was just what they call click bait. I'm not actually going to compare the EU to the Soviet Union but I do want to ask about two related phenomena that are very worrying today, one being the rise of a liberal authoritarianism and the other being the decline of democracy, the declining of liberal constitutional democracy across Europe. And this is a phenomenon we're all familiar with, unfortunately too familiar with. The most notable examples are Hungary and Poland where in Hungary Orban has actually coined the term a liberal authoritarianism to describe or a liberal democracy in fact to describe the kind of regime there but more generally we're familiar with this development towards an electoral democracy which once elected then begins to consolidate power and to dismantle checks and balances to control the media, to pack independent institutions, to roll back rights, to turn on minorities and so on and to the populist element being to refer to a single people to which others or outsiders don't belong and to turn inwards and away from external cooperation and engagement. So liberal authoritarianism is on the rise not just in countries like Poland and Hungary but elements are coming to the fore in France, in Austria, in Sweden, even in Italy, in many parts of Europe we see elements of this and we also see a more gradual erosion also of democracy, of liberal constitutional democracy in many birthstates and this is a matter of grave concern to anyone who cares about democracy and human rights. The question I'm asking is whether, because this is something that I've heard and in fact I was asked to address this question at a previous event and it made me think well what is the EU's role in this really this unhappy turn of events, the place where we find ourselves, is the European Union and its system of supranational governance, its system of integration, is it responsible? What's the role, what's the relationship of the EU to these developments? So that's the question that I'm asking. Now unfortunately the PowerPoint is very small so those of you with the back probably won't be able to read it. Let me go very quickly through. Initially the question seems odd and the reason why it seems odd is because the EU is itself as being founded on protection for democracy, the rule of law and human rights. So how could an organisation that's founded on respect for democracy, the rule of law and human rights and has them in its criteria for accession, the Copenhagen criteria which require any state that joins to respect democracy, human rights and the rule of law. Those criteria even though they were only put into the treaty at the time of the Amsterdam Treaty in the late 1990s have been there as early as the 1970s when the dictatorships were defeated in Spain and Greece and the Spain, Portugal and Greece exceeded to the EU. Those conditions were put in to prevent a return to dictatorship or to make sure that those states would not be able to be members if they didn't respect democracy, human rights and the rule of law. We also have article six which addresses those three foundational values. Article seven which is known as the sanctions provision which introduces a provision where the rights of a member state can be suspended, the political rights of a state if it backslides sufficiently on those requirements. So the EU seems like a project of democratisation spreading democracy to Central and Eastern Europe and ensuring that it's maintained by its own member states. However, since the Maastricht Treaty, this is what I would call the beginning of Europe's real crisis period, the Maastricht Treaty brought in a move away from functional economic integration to a kind of an overt political project even if the political project was always latent, now it was overt, political union and European economic union with a single currency and this great shift away from economic integration to a political union brought with it the beginnings of a backlash at the same time and since then at least we've heard a lot of criticism of the EU's own democratic deficit, the weaknesses of the EU's own commitment to an impact on democracy, but even since then we have had really a series of multiple crises or poly crises as some refer to it since 2007 beginning with the Euro crisis, the banking crisis, the refugee crisis, Brexit, the continued spread of Euroscepticism, the rise of the far right across Europe and the emergence now of liberal authoritarianism within states and liberal governments coming into power in a range of states which are now arguing for a different kind of EU overtly arguing that the EU should not be this liberal system committed to a particular version of democracy and human rights. So all of these developments have affected the quality of democracy in the EU and across Europe. So that's the first reason for asking this question. So I'm going to look first at three sets of developments across Europe over the last number of decades and talk about the relationship between them and then I'll move on in the last part of the talk to look specifically at the ways in which the EU challenges the way democracy functions both across Europe but also within member states. But the three sets of developments that I want to talk about are first the growth of Euroscepticism. This is something that has been spreading over the last number of decades. Second is the rise of the far right and the spread of illiberalism and authoritarianism across Europe. And the third is a growing opposition to what's referred to as economic neoliberalism, kind of the presentation of the system of global capitalism in its modern functioning. It's referred to as economic neoliberalism and the EU is seen to embody a particular regional version of that and I'll come back to this and talk about it in a little more depth. So I'll take each of these in turn, the growth of Euroscepticism, the growth of the far right and the turn against economic neoliberalism and talk about the relationship between them. So Euroscepticism broadly speaking is the opposition to the EU. The reason why we have a distinct term for it, we don't have anything like that domestically, what would be opposition to Ireland, to opposition to the state, maybe anarchy, something of that kind, but we don't really have something of that kind at the nation-state level, maybe separatist movements might be something of that kind, but we have Euroscepticism in the EU and there have been hard and soft versions, hard versions being opposition to the existence of the EU, to the EU's very idea of the European Union. Soft Euroscepticism we've seen in terms of, you know, skepticism about what the EU currently stands for, what it does, broader than just this policy and that policy, but what it stands for, the kind of EU we have. And there's left versus right Euroscepticism, the more familiar one is right-wing Euroscepticism. You know, we've seen this in, I would think of this as the kind of force that really came to the forefront in the Brexit debate, that idea of, you know, the EU as kind of controlling, taking away national sovereignty, preventing states from running their own show. Left Euroscepticism was more of the kind, and I'll talk about that when I talk about economic neoliberalism, that it was a corporate Europe, it was a Europe for the wealthy, a Europe for business and not for the people. But there were these different variants. The main concerns, I think, being the dilution of national sovereignty, so undermining the capacity of states to do their own thing, including their economic sovereignty, and more recently, and more notably, opposition to migration to a liberal or an open immigration policy. And these, the two dimensions are their belief to undermine economic security and also cultural identity, or cultural homogeneity or unity. And in a sense, a kind of an opposition, so Euroscepticism, I'm going to argue, is a kind of a regional version of a broader move that we see in recent years, which is a new political cleavage, not just right-left, which we think of as a natural social cleavage, but also a new cleavage in our interdependent world, a globalism nationalism, or transnationalism nationalism cleavage. And in the EU, that reflects itself in a Eurosceptical or pro-European kind of cleavage. So that's sort of explaining, sorry, explaining the growth of Euroscepticism, and that's been something that's really on the rise since the Maastricht moment, I would say, that has really grown. It's always been there to some extent, in a latent way, and I think the UK and Denmark, the states that were always a little unsure about joining and ambivalent at best about joining, you always have that element within them a resistance to the idea of sovereignty, but it has grown and spread beyond those states and came to its kind of apotheosis, you could say, in the UK with the decision to leave. The second development, then, the rise of the far-right. And so there is a very big, for academics, a very big literature on this phenomenon, the rise of the far-right. And the sad thing is that it is not a recent development. We might be very aware of it now because it's become overt because there are neo-Nazis in many, you know, overt movements in many states in a way that no one ever thought possible after the Second World War, but it has been a secular trend over many decades and it's been traced by political scientists looking at how the far-right, you know, there is an element in society, there always has been, always will be, that this strand reflects, but how did it emerge and grow so strong again after it had been apparently defeated or pushed out to the margins after World War II? One of the ways in which that happened was through the far-right successfully learning and reframing themselves as the true cultural upholders of the civic values of the nation, you know, so cleaning up their act instead of being the boot boys, being the real receptacle, those who really understand the true civic nation. Secondly, this phenomenon, written about by a very eminent Irish academic who sadly passed away a few years ago, Peter Mayer wrote extensively about the sort of move against the establishment, the shift away from traditional political parties and the political system that's been happening for some time, not just in the EU, so your skepticism ties in with this, but it's a disenchantment also just with the political system, just a cynicism about whether it really delivers and who's interested in serving and so on and that was taken advantage of by the far-right who were like, we understand your disenchantment. Growing concerns across the political spectrum about immigration are connected world as well as the wars we generate in parts of Africa and the Middle East and so on and the vast waves of migration which are generated partly through natural disaster but also through intervention and so concerns across the political spectrum about migration feeds into the agenda of the far-right and draws new support for those movements and finally, very strategically the poaching by the far-right of the policies of the left, the economic policies, the distributive policies of the left challenging austerity but not anymore from the left but from the right and of course always a redistributive policy for us, only for the real people not for outsiders, not for refugees and migrants but nonetheless, otherwise very much sounding like the left and so that also helped to spread and strengthen that movement then the third movement which as I said links to these other two is an opposition to economic neoliberalism which has also been a movement growing in recent decades, initially very clearly a movement on the left, a leftist movement so the pioneer writers on this Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Susan George and Irina Hertz, there was an intellectual movement but also a political movement political activism, if you remember the WTO the protests in Seattle against the WTO preventing that round from taking place the establishment of organizations like attack, the movements for a international financial transactions tax, the World Social Forum generally the anti-globalization movement all of these sorts of political movements not came together but arose and they were acting on or reflecting the ideas in the intellectual critique of global capitalism which was that it is really about liberalizing capital and free flows of of capital for and it benefits one sector of society but not all of the others and that it undermines and erodes all kinds of other values environmental, social, cultural and it leaves out a great number of people so that critique, the critique of and it's quite developed by now gradually began to be shared by those who became disillusioned with international financial institutions and the system of global capitalism as it was being emerging and spreading and being instantiated and it moved in the more interesting and troubling move of course as I described was that it then became not just an agenda of the left and the centre but also of the far right so that the move against economic neoliberalism was something that gave grist to the concerns and the preoccupations of those on the far right and so now economic nationalism is very much on the rise and different versions of the move against economic globalization and neoliberalism in particular are really gaining strength and the EU as a project of market integration and market liberalization is and has been seen by a lot of its critics as a real kind of regional example of what is being opposed at the global level which is this kind of economic neoliberalism which weak or I won't say non-existent but weak social policies very weak or distributed policies but very strong market liberalization privatization and other policies favouring economic actors oh my goodness the writing is getting smaller as the slides go on how are these three developments related well the short answer is that it's not and I hope that's become evident from the way I described these three developments it's not the EU itself that has given rise to the rise of the far right or given rise to the critique or embodied neoliberalism but the EU is part of the problem and the three different movements fed into each other so the rise of the far right the real sort of origins of liberalism and authoritarian sentiment on the far right that movement has been able to grow, strengthen and really establish itself because of the way it spoke to the cleavage against internationalization and cosmopolitanism and the move towards nationalism which was not reflected in the programs of any of the mainstream political parties all political parties mainstream parties across Europe were pro-EU conservative or left and so these fringe parties began to appeal to the really significant sections of the population that are concerns about, worries about uncertainties about what the implications of integration, globalization were and secondly the sense that that brand, the form of globalization that we had was really benefiting the wealthy and the business sector and not people who was undermining many things that were valuable about life in smaller communities particularly in the state so those three different developments fed together and I think you know did it wasn't that the EU by ignoring these was stoking the far right but the EU did not respond adequately nor did member states respond adequately to those concerns that were arising that the concerns about the extent and the shape and the nature of globalization on the one hand and who was really benefiting from it and the other and fears about migration so what we have is the far right and the liberal right benefiting from this neglect or this lack of response and that has left the EU in a position now where these far right parties have arisen have grown have strengthened and centre right parties have begun in turn to borrow from them so that what happens now is we have these parties that were centrist or centre right that have moved further and further to the liberal end of the spectrum and are repositioning themselves electorally in order to try to copy and to mirror what's happening on the extreme end of the political spectrum so that's the first set of ways in which the European Union has not responded to and fed into in some ways the rise of illiberalism and populist authoritarianism I want to talk now about a number of other ways in which the EU despite its commitment to democracy the rule of law human rights and the ways in which it's written those into its treaties and its accession criteria and so on, nevertheless challenges democracy I'm going to put it in that way because it's sort of neutral to say it challenges democracy some of the ways in which it challenges democracy are deeply worrying some of the ways I would say are more an interesting challenge to which we could react and states could react constructively and productively so democracy could be renewed through the interaction of the EU and its member states but so far that hasn't been happening and I'll try and end on a more positive note and say something about how the EU's challenge to democracy could be a renewal of democracy domestically and at the EU level if there was a real political will to do that so two critiques that have been made about the EU despite being committed to democracy isn't actually or is weakening or is not adequately democratic the democratic deficit argument as it's been articulated for quite some time one argument has always been well the EU isn't a proper democracy and can't be properly democratic because it doesn't have a demos and that's an argument that says you can really only have democracy in a political community that is contained like in the nation state context I think there have been very good arguments against this too but none of them have ever been properly built upon in reality in other words the argument against it would be you can create a different kind of demos at the trans national level there are connections between people feel European and European citizens have a connection with the European polity that isn't the same as their connection to their own state but for example the Scots who are really upset about Brexit say you often hear that I feel Scottish, British and European so there are different types of civic connection and so Europe might not have a nationalist demos but it could have its own trans national demos nevertheless that's been one of the arguments used to say well the EU can't be democratic more serious one I think is the EU's democratic weakness is this I'm just putting it in an overall sense it's lack of responsiveness to citizens the lack of responsiveness of the EU as a political system its institutions and so on to the people that that's been a real problem and it remains an ongoing problem and I'll come on to that in a little more detail so the EU not being properly democratic itself there's then the probably the most serious critique is does the EU undermine or weaken national democracy so does the EU erode is it contributing to this what we're seeing the erosion of national or constitutional democracy so even if the EU is doing bits and pieces itself to strengthen its own democratic quality powers of the European Parliament giving the yellow card to national parliaments on subsidiarity the citizens initiative policies on transparency the institution of the ombudsman the EU has done nothing there are initiatives it's doing here and there to improve its own democratic quality but there are two ways in which it is said to challenge national democracy that I'm going to mention here the first being what has been called the problem of executive dominance so this is a problem not just of the EU but of international organizations more generally and that is that they empower executives so who goes to the international organizations who takes the decisions committees of ministers the council that it is executives that are empowered through international organizations and particularly through the EU and what happens when you empower executives you are taking those powers away from parliaments or at least weakening them national parliaments have really and it varies from state to state in the EU but the extent to which they really control what happens when ministers are participating in the European council and decision making a considerable dilution of the powers of national parliaments so in all kinds of ways that's just giving you the most obvious example the problem of executive dominance and the ways in which executives are empowered through the EU has the effect of weakening and marginalizing the role of national democratic institutions particularly parliaments and it takes real effort and fight back to make sure that doesn't happen to strengthen some states have done it better than others Denmark has a very good parliamentary system and so on but many states it suits them this is the problem of what's sometimes called it's actually on the next slide but called a collusive delegation so there's the element of collusion it suits states to do this the second way then in which the EU has said to undermine national democracy is its prioritization of economic integration and market liberalization over social goals so I've sort of referred to this slightly in talking about the critique of neoliberalism in general but in the EU that there's always been and it's become exacerbated in recent years a kind of a an almost deliberate treaty based law based prioritization of the economic over the social goals in ways that undermines and that's not just bad for the EU that also undermines national social democracy those states that have made a commitment in their constitutions to social democracy so here I've gone through a little bit the problems of executive dominance I already mentioned the collusive delegation idea the idea that whether intentionally or not and it's sometimes intentional that it suits states to empower their executives to be able to operate free of domestic constraints when they go to these international meetings and to the EU and even when it's not intentional but also and again another Irish scholar you think I'm only citing the Irish scholars but they're the best Deirdre Curtin has also written a lot about executive dominance in the EU and the ways in which the technocratic and secretive ways of the EU so not just that they undermine national power but they themselves operate with a kind of an almost compulsive sort of secrecy and that it's been a constant project and again another great Irish woman in the EU institutions in the Ombudswoman but anyway Ombudsperson has done a great deal Emily O'Reilly in recent years to try to challenge this kind of technocratic bureaucratic functioning of the EU institution so in fairness there is at least the office of the Ombudsperson but nonetheless it's a constant struggle in the EU there's an inclination towards that kind of secrecy and technocracy and bureaucratic distance that weakens the quality of democracy so that's a major problem for the EU the second then way I mentioned that the EU has seen to undermine national democracies undermining national social democracy and here there's been an extensive critique by this is German scholars mostly because Germany is one of those states that is strong it guarantees the existence of a social state in the constitution so it's not just a political issue it's a constitutional issue that the EU's what they call order-liberalism rather than neoliberalism this is stemming from a kind of a German intellectual school back in the 40s order-liberalism being enshrining these rules as kind of immutable rules free competition market liberalisation into constitutional systems that the EU has kind of done that in the treaties with its free movement rules and antitrust competition rules and hasn't compensated for that in any way with its social policies social policies are weak and marginal contested and very diluted so that's the first way then on top of that came economic and monetary union with the new monetary and budgetary constraints the excessive deficit procedure the stability pact and so on that those further constrain the social choices and political choices of states and then compounded by what happened during the euro crisis and the ways in which the EU together with the IMF imposed these straight jackets on the data on the bailout countries and that those each one kind of layered on top of another mean that they're kind of taking Greece as the apotheosis of this that the democratic choices and economic choices of states that are committed to some kind of social provision for their citizens are drastically reduced so conclusions there's a lot of different elements to what I'm saying but I think I've tried to say two different things the first being that the EU didn't cause the rise in consolidation of the far right but many aspects of the way in which the response to the development of the EU and the kind of EU that developed fed into and made easier and sort of facilitated the strengthening and growth of the far right and the lack of an adequate response in mainstream political parties to the growing cleavage around nationalism globalism as well as a lack of response to the critique of economic globalization and neoliberalism in particular meant that centre-right parties followed the growth of the far right and we are where we are today that although the EU, then the second point is although the EU aims to support and promote democracy, human rights, the rule of law and has built those into its own treaties executive dominance at the EU level combined with the secrecy and opaqueness of its system of government has weakened domestic democracy has taken power away from national parliaments and other institutions and its prioritization of economic integration and market liberalization has weakened national social democracies and their capacity to provide for their citizens so how could I possibly end on a positive note given all of that well, I am and remain a strong believer in the EU as a project of transnational cooperation as the capacity of the EU in the, I believe in the capacity of the EU to provide an alternative to a more deregulated and much less humane form of globalization that could otherwise states would find themselves confronting that the EU as a system of transnational cooperation could provide and in some ways does provide a system of cooperation that could enhance and benefit the welfare of all of its citizens all of its residents and it could be a very positive and also an example to the rest of the world of how globalization could be managed but if it is to respond to or contain the challenge presented by liberal populism and to avoid continuing to fuel support for these parties which are claiming to respond to popular dissatisfactions I think the EU needs to be more responsive and really importantly needs to take seriously the need to reform itself so we talked a little bit about this at lunch just before this event and I was asked well doesn't the EU really need to communicate better what it does well and the ways in which it's made a positive difference to people's lives and I do agree with that I think some of the problem is about not allowing you know the populist right to kind of run away with the rhetoric and to win hearts and minds through claiming everything that the EU does is bad and to try and show some of the things it does but more importantly I think it's not enough just to say wait we've done good things you know there are things the EU does not do well and I've outlined some of them in this talk and one of the things the EU doesn't do well is to listen you know so the EU does not so the idea of reform has been discussed for decades in the EU they're always reforming but there's a reform circle within you know within the elites I'm going to use the words that the populists use but you know what I mean is within a small group of those who are concerned with the running of the EU and I don't think it's very open to arguments views from outside and to innovation there's a sense in which it's almost like a fear the EU has to keep doing what it always did because this is what it does and if it doesn't do that it's going to collapse and so it's an unwillingness to listen to some of the proposals for reform that are coming not from the usual suspects and the wise men's groups and the papers that are published by the think tanks very closely connected to the commission and the council but instead to actually listen there are a whole host of organizations it's actually quite inspiring of some grassroots some civic all kinds of different trans national groupings at the moment trying to respond to all these crises in Europe there's a book I would really recommend by Richard Young's called the EU Beyond the Crisis and he has a chapter in that where he describes and he says this is just the tip of the iceberg of these different sort of pan-European movements different youth movements because it's always with the younger generation where the ideas are going to come from and they're coming up with all kinds of ways of reform what the EU would need to do to reform itself and I really think that is a major issue and it's not just the EU but states, member states so member states are part of the problem not just the issue of executive dominance or collusive delegation I talked about but really of not being willing to contemplate reform to things as they are for fear of losing influence but really the EU does need to respond does need to reform itself does need to change if it's to respond to the many many challenges at the current moment and I think I started this slide with a quote from Timothy Garten Aschow I think spoke here recently and I agree with him on this he says well populism and he was talking about especially the kind of right wing version of populism but populism it's opposite within a nation state context is pluralism you know instead of this homogenous one people and outsiders are excluded and there's a sort of speaking for the people by the government that pluralism is the opposite of that contestation pluralism the many and so on he said at the EU level the opposite of populism is the EU is the opposite of populism it is something at its best that's what the EU could be and I agree with him but I think that in order for the EU to be the best opponent of populism that it needs to take reform seriously and to listen so I'll end there thank you thank you very much Gronja for a presentation that was at once critical balanced and very precise and I think that this is your hallmark as a legal scholar so you opened up many paths for reflection and I will immediately invite you to ask questions to Gronja and would you please before you do so introduce yourself briefly and mention your affiliation thank you yes John thank you very much indeed thank you very much Gronja John O'Brennan from Menuth University my question is about central and eastern Europe what the EU might do to respond to the challenge of what Orban very craftily called illiberal democracy what we're really talking about is autocracy the building or rebuilding of autocratic structures yesterday you may have noted that the Central European University one of the best in Europe more or less said it was moving lock, stock and barrel to Vienna because of the intolerable encroachment of government into its affairs just imagine UCD having to move to London because of the oppressive policies of an Irish government so I just want to ask you what levers do you think the Commission in particular might have to respond to all of this and there has of course been real criticism especially from EU law scholars of the Commission's failure to respond to what law and justice was doing in Poland in Hungary and belatedly we saw an article 7 procedure opened against Poland but not against Hungary at least not yet there's a role there of course for political parties for the European People's Party in particular to stop protecting Fidesz but I just wonder what you might sketch out in terms of the capacity of the Commission to use leverage respect to Poland and Hungary infringement procedures for example other things of that kind and it's not just about Poland and Hungary in Bulgaria and in Romania the problem is accelerating as well so this is a systemic problem and I just wonder as an EU law scholar how you think the existing mechanisms and the proposed ones in terms of budgetary linkage to rule of law how that might work out in practice I might take another question if it is connected to John O'Brennan's question otherwise Yeah, so please Hello, sorry Stephen Coots School of Law, UCC It's a follow up to that and more specific I suppose it's in relation to the the interim order that was made by the court a few days ago and here the Commission acting I suppose as a technocratic institution undermining what the Polish Government would certainly call their democratic right to refashion their institutions and so I mean I just I suppose any comment that you might have on that and that there is a tension there right that you complain about the Commission acting as executive and technocratic and the court in this case as well to be undermining national democracy but again at the same time maybe that's the only way of securing it Francis Jacobs, my question is also related but it's linked up to how the European Union would respond to the Italian budget crisis Yeah, okay So one initial answer to John would be you said as a lawyer of course the problem is if you're a hammer all you see is nails but so I think the legal response is really just one small part of a bigger set of strategies that are needed to respond to these. First thing is I don't think it's a silver bullet okay so I don't think it's well we should have withdrawing structural funding or the court or what's happening is a change within a state so what's happening is the people are voting for PIS PIS is in power PIS is turning against liberal democracy against constraints and governments is turning itself into an autocracy I think through the Constitution and by actually ignoring its own Constitution so I mean I have a view on this it's just this is my view and it's not I know from discussing with others it's not shared by all but my view is that if there are countries such as Hungary and Poland being the most obvious but as you say there are others really genuinely overtly coming to turn against liberal democracy because that is what that's the model that's protected and that's what the EU was founded as at a time when there was a belief in liberal democracy as a good system of government I think the EU would be better without them so I think the EU these states are not Eurosceptic states they want to be part of the EU they want the EU to turn into something they would like to spread the model of illiberal democracy I think that that's not what the EU was founded for I would no longer I would take back what I said there I would no longer support the EU and I wouldn't regret seeing its demise if it became primarily one of illiberal democracies and so I would say that to the extent that there are a robust majority of states that remain committed to liberal democracy that they should assert that and that if it is the case not that they're dealing with a delicate situation in a state and trying to manage it but that there's a commitment on the part of the majority then although there's a part of me that wishes it were possible to support those within Poland and within Hungary who are fighting to keep democracy alive properly to keep plural voices to protect the institutions of the state if there's a takeover and so on of the courts if the media is controlled if human rights organizations are defunded and imprisoned most of them it's not just the Central European University the Roma rights has left many organizations NGOs have to move out or have been shut down in Hungary there comes a point where then I think there will come a point to me where it's not compatible anymore with what the EU stands for so I would rather there were a way in which I would like to see very robust assertion by the EU and its institutions of these values with a clear sense that if you're not committed to those there isn't a place here so I'm very disappointed the European people's party I think this is you know long ago Orban's party should have been expelled the problem is of course that there are many parties edging this way so it's a bigger problem than just these states but I'm so I come to Steven's question about the court in a minute but so I would take a strong view on that the one that we talked about this also before that I'm not in favor I think of defunding of removing structural funds I think there may come a point in a certain instance where that's appropriate but while a member state is still a member state I think that's a counterproductive way of responding to an illiberal government it's tempting because you want to say why should we be giving money even you're but you know I can see a reason for there's a there's a regulation of the EU to defund or doesn't fund political parties that have very illiberal political program and I can understand that but the structural funds and so on which can do a lot to you know improve the quality of citizens lives in some of these states I would be hesitant about that but you know I'll come to the court but certainly the use of Article 7 I think is appropriate I'd like to see it go further and I wish that the EPP had expelled if it is so to the court yes the court is here telling Poland what it can and can't do on this occasion I think that's absolutely right if you're packing a court if you're fired if you've breached your own constitution in order to do this and you removed improperly removed judges and are replacing them with political appointees then I think yes I think the court of justice is right it's written into the treaties all what they're doing now is what they've done with you know economic freedoms for years so I think yes they are it is coming from on high and so on that's one instance in which a court is saying you cannot if you want to be a member of this political system you can't do that to your courts it is going to generate I'm sure a backlash but I would I mean interestingly enough I haven't followed closely enough to my surprise I read that the Polish government said oh we're going to abide by the court's ruling I mean the interim ruling which surprises me I'm not sure what that's about but I can't imagine the longer run they've stood up against the EU and over and over on all of these different legal reforms I can't say or reforms legal changes I can't see that they'll capitulate now but I could be wrong and then that would be something very positive to see I would take a different view on Italy I don't think the voting of a budget a state choosing to vote its own budget I think that you should tread very carefully here I think it's very risky what the EU is doing at the moment you know they haven't enforced the stability pact rules against France against Germany against others in all kinds of situations in the past these are very fluid this is one of the areas where there's a lot of contestation around the EU's your own rules and I think this is one particular moment where they would be very foolish and I'm very surprised to see the EU responding as it has apparently done which is taking this very hard line I have no idea how this is going to end but it doesn't look promising at the moment this is exactly the kind of unlike the confrontation of the court to the Polish courts where it's something very clear and I don't feel that this political choice to take suddenly a very strict line on these budgetary rules is the right move for the EU thank you very much Alex White excuse me my name I'm a lawyer and a former Labour Party minister the former goes with the minister not the Labour Party I found your talk really compelling and I think particularly when the question that's been asked because the force of the questions that have just been asked are perfectly reasonable legitimate what actions can be taken and so on but what you're focusing on the question is is the EU or the institutions the EU or the whole legacy of what the EU has been doing itself responsible and we have to address that question I mean actually the Brexit debate is obscuring that because we're also concerned about so can we just say I think the question is the right question or it is a right question and I suppose I have two things that flow from that first of all is your very interesting point which I know you knew and I know you're not claiming it is but you know the predominance of the economic questions and so on to the detriment of any social and for example protective rights workers' rights the whole delure achievement of whatever two decades ago seems to have disappeared what are the prospects do you think it's a largely a political question what are the prospects for that being rebalanced in the period ahead and the second question is this I don't know if you have an opportunity to choose this book on crashed so the emphasis there is I mean I don't think we can get away from in all the list of things that you've put up as being contributory factors we cannot I think avoid the central critical importance of the crash and the legacy of the crash and his emphasis when you look at he looks at the European institutions and the response he is actually on the bank and on the ECB and what he's written about I can't say that I've read the whole book but what he seems to be saying is that if the European centre of the behaviour in particular of the Trichet bank was really really detrimental not just directly to Greece and other countries and to a lesser extent here but it was a critical factor and has left a terrible legacy in terms of how those big central question I know you can never democratise a bank a bank as a bank including a central bank but the ECB as one of the institutions that really is one that we need to look at in terms of how this thing is going to play out in the future I'm a member of the institute I was very pleased to hear you cite a dirger curtain you mentioned German scholars criticising the absence of social provisions at the EU level something that the law drew attention to in a small article in about after you know I don't read German unfortunately but I did come across an article by a guy who was very sharp and he talked about the deconstitutionalisation of the a majority rule as a means of I think if I understood it correctly reviving the EU project and the second one I want to quote something here is from a Danish scholar working in the Copenhagen physics school whom you may know he talked about the European crisis of legal he constituted public power he said in the short and medium in the medium term and long term endurance of the EU is strictly linked to its democratisation something I think you refer to a process of democratisation which is taking the nature of policy and previous experience into account is most likely to succeed in a gradual step by step process rather than a singular constitutional exercise in order to avoid or return to the past built in a step by step manner while still at sea you hinted in referring to Jung's book that that's actually going on I think the answer to your question is because the EU institutions don't accept that the answer to your question is yes they are destroying the European project which I see as a peace process with a common market and accustomed to being attached thank you so perhaps you might start with Alex White's question about the prospects of rebuilding social cohesion and of perhaps reviving Jacques Delors legacy we're sitting under this portrait downstairs Adam Tooze is also I think an interesting reference because he would give an answer also to the question on the Italian budget saying that there's nothing as fiscal rules that are acceptable to all economists which was yes what's frustrating about both of the questions in a sense is that there are things that can be done these aren't problems that can't be overcome it's a lack of willingness to change and the question is where is the lack of willingness coming from we could say the EU institutions are very much caught up with the Commission to decide on reform these are political choices so it's the States the States' willingness to have a strong social dimension for the EU a social dimension the Fritz Sharp paper on de-constitutionalization some of that it's not like there has to be some changing of the treaties a lot of that was just how things were interpreted what kind of laws were passed and so on a lot of this is not inevitable these are the choices that were made along the way similarly the ECB those were all choices so you can't control central bankers but they have choices there has been a big project recently by Piketty and a number of others to democratize the central bank it's called I can't remember what it's called a dim something but to bring in a political system which seems like against a paradoxical to democratize the euro zone in fact rather than but where the bank would actually have some accountability even though it's a central bank so independence and accountability don't have to be against each other you can be independent and accountable at the same time so there are ways in which these institutions could be reformed these policies could be changed I share Donald's sense of I don't believe it's being rebuilt when I said there are all these initiatives I'm talking about grassroots efforts to rethink what you could be political involvement but none of them are reaching I think those who would need to be reached in order for reform to come about in order for there to be a real commitment and so I mean the parliament is a bit more open by definition because it's elected but it doesn't have the power and it doesn't take initiatives big reform initiatives of this kind so a lot of it has to come from states themselves and there obviously needs to be more of a sense of crisis that the EU is really going to fail as a project it may exist like what they call a zombie institution continuing on doing what it's always done but not responding to what's happening in the world something like that which is tragic to think it could come to that but unless there is some more sense of crisis of the need to really take the bull by the horns and to do something more profound that responds to this uprising almost of whatever is happening right now a sense in which politics as usual won't do it and the institutions as usual won't do it but I don't get that sense from the EU either whenever I actually encounter people from the EU institutions there's a real sense of which no no we've got under control it's business as usual it just seems so out of sync with what's actually happening out in Europe and the states many questions I'll start with this lady I have a couple of questions one is if you had a magic wand and you could change everything again sorry if you had a magic wand and you could change everything again going back to the Colin Steele community of 1950 looking at the Treaty of Rome going right through Tramastric and beyond what would you say were the main points of which if they had done something differently or had not done things that we might not be here today discussing this topic what do you think were those critical moments that you would say if they had changed different points in time Nice Treaty whatever you know just even from a legal point of view and secondly do you think that the Irish constitution which I know you are very familiar with as well obviously do you see that as a very robust constitution comparative to maybe the other member states constitutions that actually is a very good ball work against some of what the EU is maybe not doing so well and I'm thinking about the way in which we use referenda for example to allow as you're saying there are much more feedback from citizens of states and do you think that the Irish constitution is that ball work against some of what the EU doesn't do so well and the legal arguments about Yes just behind there there yeah Hello William Quill lawyer as well just a small question there was touched on briefly on the EPP and Oregon and in terms of your third question there about the opposite sorry the second but the rise the far right and this is really with Martin Weber likely to be well a strong candidate really for the next European Commission president and having scouted the support for all Orban within the EPP granted with every other EPP government leader but the fact that he specifically campus to support and does this mean that that there's essentially essentially my question is what would they say about the willingness within a key European institution to address any of the issues that you raised here today My name is Michael Farrell I'm a member of the Council of Europe's Commission Against Racism and you were you mentioned as one of the factors in the rise of the far right as being resistance to immigration policies immigration policies of the European Union at the moment obviously this is a major challenge to the European Union and to a democratic institution but it seems to me that at the moment what is happening is that the leadership of the European Union is retreating to a more polite version of what the Hungarians and some of the other countries are doing to prevent the building of the European border force and trying to keep people out rather than developing a policy for integration of people who are coming or resolving the situation of where the people come from so what do you think about that issue? Perhaps yes so last question here in the front Thank you Bobby McDonough I just wonder is there a slight risk of exaggeration the growth of populism was extremely valuable because the European Union always has to see how it can reform and so on but some of the opinion polls recently suggest that there is a lot of popular support that has actually grown since Brexit so is there a risk of talking up populism and secondly this may sound a little bit facetious but hearing some of the criticism of the European Union if you like the European Union being criticized for some of the phenomena that are out there would it be possible to compare that with a victim of domestic abuse being accused of being responsible for their own abuse? I like that analogy so let's start with the question about critical moments actually there's a connection between your question and that which is that the phenomenon we're talking about is bigger than the EU I live in the US it's happening there it's happening everywhere in Brazil it's happening in Turkey it's happening all over so the crisis of democracy is a very big one it's a global one the crisis of political institutions is a very big one I think the thing about the EU and maybe what's disappointing is to see that an organisation that was set up that could have challenged some of the excesses of globalisation and channeled some of the benefits of democracy has I won't say entirely failed but it's failing so there were lots and lots of junctures of moments for reform potential there were lots of moments of you know right back at the origins the idea of having social rights in the EU treaties that were before the not called in steel but economic community treaty in the EUC treaty in 1956 there was a whole paper on do we need a social dimension and that was always floating around just like do we need a bill of rights in the end there were lots of opportunities for change and instead the incrementalism you know in all ways continued to reinforce mainly I think the market emphasis of the EUC was about building a market first and foremost you know sometimes I think that was a response to there was an early attempt for a real political union in the 1950s with a serious kind of political integration capital P that failed when France rejected a defence community treaty and the political community treaty was part of it and that failed and after that there was a sort of a mentality like don't ever go down that don't go down that route it's going to only work as a common market that's where we have consensus and somehow the consensus has always remained around the market and that's still true today the consensus is around the EU's good because it delivers a common market and we all benefit from this market and there's far more contestation around the political dimension so to me in some ways it's the same political contestation domestically about social policy economic policy redistribution the corporate sector and so on that those are just the same debates it's a much more unwieldy political system in Europe so there were many points at which change might have been made the problem I think there is a bigger problem with the EU which is just the lack of political responsiveness of the system so European parliament elections don't correspond to what comes out of the council and the commission in the weakest possible way so there isn't a mechanism for making the political system responsive to what people want other than through the states you know so it's the states the ministers that are elected domestically there's a lot more responsibility at the national level for what the EU is and has become so there's always the possibility to change always just as we talked about the central bank so it's about political will and I think a lot about what's happening nationally at the domestic level I think Ireland has a very interesting kind of flexible but robust constitution very interesting though how we see referenda here because there have been some positive outcomes in recent years from referenda compared with say what's happened with referenda in the UK or elsewhere where referenda are used and come out with results that maybe become a big political block to either European developments or like Brexit for example so referenda are complex tools they're not complex they're very simple they're just these both but they have to be I think it would be a little too easy to say if you have a system with a lot of referenda that's always a more robust system I think it can be a very volatile system but it's an interesting one I think the citizens assembly was a very interesting thing here so I think there are really nice initiatives I think citizens assemblies are great things they can feed in to keep a constitution alive through that but real participatory mechanisms are hard and slow but they're really important that's what keeps people in touch prevents this rise of populism I don't think you know the term populism there are books and books and books written about it now if what you meant by it is a sense of popular disenchantment with traditional political institutions I think it's very real I think it's very real right-wing illiberalism I think there'll always be a lot of that and there'll always be left-wing progressivism and they're just two political forces and at different times one's in the ascendancy and there are reasons why at the moment the right illiberal is in the ascendancy I hope the pendulum will swing back but it'll take a lot of human action for that to swim back I do think that there is a lot of dangerous populism in the sense of just absolute disenchantment with politics as usual political systems I think Ireland is very lucky that it's both a small country it has an electoral system that's quite responsive you know it's local enough to be able to be responsive and for various reasons I think we haven't seen the rise of populism in Ireland we've seen new political parties that have actually taken up the space maybe that the far right has in other countries and it's not of that kind and I think Ireland is very lucky in that respect but I would never say never things change in all countries so I think it's a constant politics as we constantly renegotiated and I think the most important thing is popular participation actually so it's paradoxical we're afraid of populism understood as this movement because one voice to squash minorities to elect majoritarianism override other kinds of checks and balances that's what's frightening about populism not the participation part of it so I'm all in favour of reasoned and engaged political participation yes I do think the leadership of the EU is retreating in this and again the EU is the states that come together they are not developing strong integration of migrant policies instead they're building up front-ex because they're responding to their political constituencies into what everybody is clamouring about even when it's not a threat like in Hungary it doesn't have any migrants but migration is the big issue so some of it is not real some of it is real but the concerns are certainly there the EU is when we talk about the EU doesn't have this kind of policy it's the states that are participating in the council that are choosing to take that response and to build up the borders and the fortress rather than to put resources into integration of migrants within the EU I also think a similar sort of what would I call it it's not the same question at all but a similar sentiment behind the question that William asked yes so this candidate I hope he's not successful as president of the commission but being endorsed by Orban very canny moved by Orban it's very depressing and if that's this is the argument that the EU is going to end up defeating itself and that may happen it's going to end up with an illiberal EU that gradually the building up of the borders and the front-ex and the prevention of the refugee boats coming in on the one hand and then on the other hand moving towards the far right and borrowing their policies and the centre moving to the right and so on and if that happens it could be a very different EU from the peace project with the common market so if it does, I think that's right I think if it heads in that direction then we're talking about a very different European Union than the one that was created and I'm sad to say it will gradually lose my support I hate to end on such a pessimistic note but we have to believe it won't happen I might take a last I hope for a question please Tony lift our spirits what's the answer Tony Brown, member of the institute that was a very simple question how do you evaluate Emmanuel Macron is he real or is he a passing phenomenon I might also ask a question, you said that the EU can provide a model on how to manage globalisation to the rest of the world what strikes me on the other hand is the way that China was mentioned as a model by Orban in his 2014 speech on the advent of illiberal democracy in Poland China, the Asian model in general is one that attracts a lot of attention and even in Italy as there is a lot of talk about sovereignty the same economic minister who is talking about that is also organising this fund to perhaps sell national assets to China so what do you think the EU can offer or can oppose to that rising model of China and Turkey again it all comes down to what people choose so I feel if the choice is stark and clear, what the Asian model the China model, the Singapore model the Erdogan model is saying we'll offer you, China is quite clear about it, we offer you economic security, development growth, don't ask for political freedom so you don't ask for political freedom just give that you do what the party chooses the party leads and the party delivers and you get your standard of living and so on but not political freedom no freedom expression no contestation, no challenge if people choose that what can we do I think if the EU can only and should only stand for the opposite which is that political freedom and economic welfare belong together these are two things they're part of the system that we believe in the system of liberal constitutional democracy is that we believe in political freedoms and we believe in economic welfare what's happened in Europe is that the economic welfare part and with a lot of globalization in general has not been that promise hasn't been met because we've seen the growing 100% and that continues that part of society has grown wealthy but the wealth hasn't been spread and there hasn't been a delivery on that promise and there's corruption and other kinds of things corruption is probably more than migration even the biggest thing that drives liberal populism the sense that there's a kleptocratic state that politics as usual is about the goods towards the friends of the politicians and so on or towards the the wealthy so I think Europe has to stand for the opposite that's what I would say to those who say well that's a different model that's not what the EU is about if the EU became about that I would withdraw my support so I sincerely hope that the EU there's enough strength and support within the EU for continuing to defend political freedom and economic security and welfare with Macron the short answer would be I feel like to me he's a little bit like the EU has lots of promise but not living up to it and there are many problems with him we all wish he had been the great saviour that it might have seemed at one point someone speaking up for Europe speaking up for migrants speaking against the liberalism and so on but there are so many different problems with the way Macron is running France and dealing with politics internally that are really disappointing and depressing nobody is perfect unfortunately but anyway we can only hope that there will be some you know change there and that he will not fizzle out as you know another elitist that didn't listen to what the country needed what people were hoping for reflection is probably what we can listen maybe this is also a lead for this institute listen to those who are not the usual suspects and perhaps this is also a project for the future of Europe reflection group thank you very much