De redactie van NRC selecteert de beste artikelen uit The Economist voor een breder perspectief op internationale politiek en economie.
Weak governments cannot conjure the support to make crucial deals.
Dit artikel komt uit The Economist
To keep the European Union ticking along has always required a certain sleight of hand. National leaders of its 27 member states act as the bloc’s chief conjurors, selling the illusion to voters back home that every compromise hashed out at some interminable summit in Brussels marks yet another victory for Poles, Spaniards or whoever. Alas, such tricks become harder to pull off when voters stop trusting the magicians. And European publics these days seem to have seen through the smoke and mirrors: across the continent, leaders have been plumbing recent depths of unpopularity. In France and Germany, the EU’s two biggest countries, approval ratings have sunk to something akin to contempt. This is more than a mere obstacle to politicians’ hopes to one day sell a fat pile of memoirs and earn handsomely on the lecture circuit. Like the best magic, the reforms which Europe needs still depend on the audience’s willingness to be taken in. The EU cannot outrun the unpopularity of its political class.
Becoming disliked by voters is an occupational hazard for elected leaders the world over. But Europe’s current heads of government stand out for their lack of public appeal. France’s Emmanuel Macron has the confidence of fewer than one in five voters; over three-quarters think of him unfavourably, a net support score of -49%, according to YouGov, a pollster. Perhaps that is inevitable after nine years in the job; his predecessor François Hollande once enjoyed an abysmal 4% public support. More strikingly, Friedrich Merz in Germany has seen his popularity vanish faster than a coin down a street magician’s sleeve. After less than a year in the job the chancellor has a net approval of -43%. Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Pedro Sánchez in Spain may feel smug, given they have only about twice as many detractors as fans. But that is still worse than Donald Trump, whose net score among American voters is a mere -19%. Newish leaders in Canada and Japan, meanwhile, still manage positive approval ratings.
De redactie van NRC selecteert de beste artikelen uit The Economist voor een breder perspectief op internationale politiek en economie.
Unpopular leaders struggling to get reforms through is a familiar pitfall in any democracy. In Europe’s case, the ramifications stretch beyond the usual political gridlock. The EU runs on the borrowed authority of its national leaders—and currently they have precious little. Call it the coalition of the weakened. Placating a grumpy coalition partner, or fending off a Eurosceptic rabble-rousing opposition, makes it all the harder to do deals at EU level. This could scarcely be happening at a worse time. The list of problems European countries have to handle collectively is daunting, from how to deal with the mercurial Mr Trump, a reheated energy crisis, an enduring war in Ukraine, a flabby economy and a clogged enlargement process. Haggling over the bloc’s next seven-year budget is in full swing, too. All these require compromises and trade-offs—the sort that cannot easily be pulled out of a hat by unpopular politicos. Weakness at home makes it hard for national leaders to be ambitious in Europe.
Take deepening the single market, which leaders from Poland to Portugal all claim to want. In the short term this involves national leaders spending political capital: some domestic interest group—be it local banks in Germany, pharmacists in France or what have you—is bound to lose out. The broad benefits come later, often after the next election. Even popular leaders find it hard to convince voters that a little immediate pain is worth a greater gain tomorrow. (As Jean-Claude Juncker, once a prime minister of Luxembourg, astutely noted when it came to economic reforms: „We all know what to do, but we don’t know how to get re-elected once we have done it.”) Getting a deal done at EU level requires many of Europe’s top politicians to be prepared to defy public opinion, at least for a time. Starting off popular helps.
Fans of ever-closer union in Europe often posit that some mythical „grand bargain” needs to be struck, whereby every country sacrifices a little but benefits from the end result. Big leaps forward, like the creation of the euro, involved such sweeping trade-offs. (A divided Germany was allowed to reunite in 1990, if it shared with others the benefits of its hard currency.) The likes of François Mitterrand, Helmut Kohl and Margaret Thatcher had the luxury of voter support; their current successors lack such margins for manoeuvre. Imagine if Sir Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, had the kind of public backing Thatcher once enjoyed (or believed herself to enjoy). Might some of that political capital have been expended on a more ambitious rapprochement with the EU, perhaps even a bid to rejoin the bloc? Alas, Sir Keir’s poll ratings are at levels only Mr Hollande might have envied.
Instead of making ambitious deals, European leaders have turned to bashing the EU—a cheap bit of misdirection to distract the disgruntled crowd. Mr Macron has clashed with the European Commission over a free-trade pact with Mercosur (a group of agricultural powerhouses in South America) that has annoyed France’s farmers. Mr Merz, for his part, has taken to blaming the EU for Germany’s economic ills. His allies have suggested the commission should be slimmed down, for example. This risks triggering a doom loop: the more national politicians bash Brussels the less effective it becomes, and thus the more worthy of bashing.
Ironically, the EU should be in a period where thorny compromises are relatively easy to pass. An odd glitch in the electoral calendar means that none of its ten most populous countries is scheduled to hold national elections this year. Once upon a time there was hope that this would open a window for politicians to ignore short-term electoral pressures, and strike the kind of bargains reached during the Kohl-Mitterrand-Thatcher era. It was not to be. If such an opportunity ever existed, poor polling numbers have made it vanish in a puff of smoke.
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