EVEN THE LEFT GETS WHAT'S WRONG WITH TRANSNATIONALISM?:

Europe's Democracy Deficit (Gary Younge, June 2, 2010, The Nation)

[E]urope's primary problem—the reason it has been lurching from crisis to crisis as the markets tank, the Greeks and Spaniards protest, and the Germans and French bicker—is not its fiscal deficit but its democratic deficit.

For the only thing more breathtaking than the scale and pace at which the EU has developed, from a small, tariff-free trading area to a twenty-seven-nation union with a common currency, court of human rights and central bank, is the lack of democracy that has gone with it. Go back to that imaginary North American superstate and imagine this—absolutely no direct democratic control over anything as an explicit feature of the system.

The president of the European Central Bank is appointed by democratically elected governments but is not accountable to them. The ECB publishes neither the minutes of its meetings nor its voting record and sets its inflation targets and interest rates without any democratic consultation. The European Parliament, the only directly elected component of the EU, cannot even initiate legislation, which explains why voter turnout in European Parliament elections has slumped by more than 30 percent in the past thirty years, with turnout last year at 43 percent. Whenever people vote no to a phase of integration—as Ireland did two years ago—the EU simply orders them to vote again until they produce the right result. Once they vote yes, there is no turning back.

In the good times most countries—with the exception of Denmark and the United Kingdom—traded democracy for prosperity and joined the euro. But in a crisis, that consensus of convenience breaks down, and there is no means of resolving disputes and deciding on a course of action. Whatever Americans think of the bailout or the stimulus package, their elected representatives have had their say. Many citizens protested; Congress members who displeased them have had to explain themselves. Given the influence of lobbyists and markets, one would not want to exaggerate the control the people have over their economic destiny. But, at least in the public arena, there is an aspiration to democracy.

In the EU, however, democracy is not always even a goal. So the essential problem is not that the Germans seek the kind of fiscal austerity that could stall a fragile recovery, or that the French prefer more stimulus, which might lead to inflation; it's that there is no democratic means of mediating that tension.