Reaction of Paul Magnette to Andrew Moravcsik’s article on the collapse of the Constitutional treaty

Andrew Moravcsik’s faithful readers will find here the qualities that earned his work its reputation: a tight argumentation systematically structured, and polemic in the noblest sense of the word. They will also rekindle their acquaintance with several of the theses the author has set forth in his best known earlier publications: The European Union is not a federal State in the making, the status quo is sturdier and more rational than it may appear at first, and democratic deficit is a myth. Moravcsik both condenses and extends these theses, after the Schumpeterian method he favours: pick out a conviction achieving quasi-axiomatic status in the literature, and pull it apart calling on the authority of contemporary social sciences’ most robust resources.

To dispute such an argumentation is no mean task: the rigour of the demonstration does not allow much room for objections. I think nevertheless that four points need qualifying.

The argument asserting that citizens are not interested in European questions because they do not rate very high among what they consider « salient issues » is too perfunctory. Although it is true that EU competences are concentrated in spheres which do not appear among the citizens’ priorities whereas the most sensitive political questions fall essentially to national governments, the breakdown is, in the event, more complex. Taxation and social legislation are indeed almost exclusively national competences but this has not stopped a large section of national opinions to perceive the EU as an organisation which, by setting social and tax regimes against each other, influences national conventions. That the European effect were not as great in everyday life as it is in political declarations does not alter the fact that it is well and truly there and that it constitutes a “social fact” the analyst cannot discard. Politicisation always rests, to a greater or lesser degree, on a mistaken perception of the issues at stake: by generating misguided outlooks, the EU generates politicisation, be it negative. Moreover, the European legislative calendar has shown over the last few months that European legislation can attract a significant political mobilisation – far beyond the relevant microcosms – if they touch on entrenched national practices (see the controversies over the Bolkestein directive, but also regarding the liberalisation of postal or port services, or the working week…).