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A critique too far

The European Commission must do better in handling future constitutional crises than it has in the case of Romania.

José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, was certainly right to say in his ‘state of the Union’ speech last week that we need a more integrated and democratic Europe.

The plight of the eurozone means that we now face an unavoidable choice between further integration and the inevitability of disintegration. We know that we have to move forward, but we can only do so on the basis of consent. Securing that consent will be a huge challenge, requiring a delicate balance between the diverse national and political traditions that make up our continent. It can only therefore succeed if the European Union is able to build real popular legitimacy.

That is why many of us are concerned about the Commission’s recent handling of the constitutional crisis in Romania and why we hope that Barroso will seek to draw a line under it when he meets Romania’s prime minister, Victor Ponta, today.

It is, of course, essential in a system of shared sovereignty that there should be the highest possible confidence in the democratic integrity of the participating countries. It is also clear that the EU institutions must have an important role in safeguarding democratic standards. But the seriousness of that task carries with it the additional responsibility to be scrupulously fair and even-handed in assessing the claims and counter-claims of different political forces. Against that admittedly high standard, the commissioner responsible – Viviane Reding, the commissioner for justice and fundamental rights – has fallen short in her dealings with Romania and undermined the objectivity of the Commission’s handling of this issue. The implications are worrying.

Wrong focus

Romania’s political difficulties are complex. The Romanian government certainly deserves criticism for acting with too much haste and without having explained its intentions internationally.

But Reding reacted as if the government was the main and only cause for concern. She chose to ignore the abuses of office for which President Traian Băsescu was found guilty by Romania’s constitutional court, his repeated attempts to influence the judiciary, his unwillingness to respect the limits of his constitutional authority and his refusal to accept the majority will of parliament.

The majority coalition of liberals and socialists was perfectly entitled to suspend Băsescu according to the provisions of the Romanian constitution. As the constitutional court confirmed, they followed the rules at every stage, securing a parliamentary majority, holding a referendum and respecting the result. For Reding to describe this as an attempted “coup” was irresponsible and insulting, especially as she repeated it days before the referendum.

Those supporting suspension were exercising their democratic rights peacefully.

One of the Commission’s main complaints was the use of an emergency decree to change the law on referendums by removing the turnout threshold of 50% plus one. The fact that it reversed a change made weeks earlier by Băsescu, also by emergency decree, was not mentioned. This highlights a serious inconsistency. Whereas the issuing of a few emergency decrees by the new government was presented as a threat to democracy, the hundreds issued by Băsescu during his period in office were considered unworthy of mention, let alone criticism.

In demanding a restoration of the referendum threshold, the Commission forced Romania to accept a rule that puts into the question the democratic European norms set out by the Venice Commission and which applies in no other member state. Despite an 87% vote in favour of impeachment, the Romanian people now find themselves saddled with a president they manifestly do not want and political uncertainly is likely to continue.

Because of this, many Romanians have concluded that the Commission’s intervention had less to do with enforcing democratic standards than keeping a political ally from the conservative European People’s Party (EPP) in power. The negative impact on Romanian public opinion is already clear. Trust in the European Union, which had already declined since accession, dropped by a further 10 percentage points over the summer. If this is a victory for democracy, the demos apparently does not agree.

Taking the high ground

EPP leaders meeting in Bucharest next month should be careful not to repeat the triumphalist tone of some of their recent statements. Their claim to the democratic high ground would be rendered absurd by the presence of the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán. His infringements of media freedoms and judicial independence have been treated with extraordinary leniency compared to the attacks directed at Ponta, his Romanian counterpart. As with Silvio Berlusconi, whose efforts to intimidate the judiciary and avoid accountability while Italy’s prime minister became legendary, the EPP’s sense of democratic outrage appears highly selective.

The Commission must do better in handling similar crises in the future. In particular, it remove the suspicion of partisanship by widening dialogue and acting in consultation with the European Parliament and the political groupings represented there. If it does not, we will all pay a price in lost trust and declining legitimacy. The united and democratic Europe envisaged by Barroso cannot be the property of one institution, one political family or one group of countries. It can only be built if all Europeans are prepared to work together for the same vision.

Hannes Swoboda is the leader of the Socialists & Democrats group in the European Parliament.

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