MANIFESTO NFI 2007 MANIFESTO FOR A NEW EUROPE - ΜΑΝΙΦΕΣΤΟ ΓΙ | Page 17

committed to social justice, solidarity, democracy and peace
economy’ will be focused on the economic and monetary in-
tegration of Europe, on the opening up of new markets and
on the free movement of capital, services, goods and people.
Long-term productivity growth brought about by integrating
more people into the labour market (on precarious conditions),
by better training and upskilling as well as by better conditions
for economic competition and innovation are part of the Strat-
egy. The emphasis of the Lisbon Strategy is on ‘cost and budget
minimisation’ rather than on sustainable values and targets. As
a result, the pressure on workers is mounting and the processes
of individualisation and desolidarisation are enhanced.
What is missing is a corresponding collectivisation of social
security systems and a Europe-wide environmental policy. In
line with the ‘open method of coordination’, national states
are supposed to remain responsible for more or less residual
social policies. The role of the EU is reduced to that of a mod-
erator, which is no less than a perver-sion of ‘subsidiarity’ and
becomes the driving force behind growing inequality and dwin-
dling social security.
In June 2006, the EU adopted a new sustainability strategy
in Vienna, which is supposed to complement and/or replace the
Gothenburg Strategy of 2001. The objective of this strategy
is to improve the quality of life within the EU and to warrant
prosperity, health, environmental protection and social cohe-
sion by tapping the economy’s potential for ecological and
social innovation and by subscribing to ecological and equita-
ble policies in the areas of transport, consumption (develop-
ing and distributing sustainable products, changing behaviour
patterns of consumers), migration and international develop-
ment. Currently, the Vienna and Lisbon strategies contradict
each other and no attempts are being made to clear up these
contradictions. What we witness instead is the de-facto revival
of a neoliberal, economic hegemony.
WE DEMAND
The EU Lisbon Strategy needs to be enlarged or reformulated
to include a sustainability dimension. The economic space con-
stituted by the European Union holds enormous potential for
promoting exemplary sustainable and/or low-impact methods
of production and consumption. In its competition with the USA
and Asia, and in particular with China, the EU should perceive
itself as a proactive agent in shaping sustainable global govern-
ance rather than as a rival for markets, economic growth po-
tential and profits. To this end, instruments serving sustainable
development in Europe (monitoring and evaluation) ought to
be upgraded and, most importantly, positioned within a demo-
cratic-participative process (‘multi-stakeholder fora’).
Europe can only become the most competitive and suc-
cessful region in the world, if it concentrates on the produc-
tion and supply of public goods, such as social and ecological
security, health, education as well as diversity and democratic
participation. The Lisbon Strategy needs to be revised with this
in mind, and the European national states ought, once again,
to step up investments into state social tasks.
In order to build citizen trust in Europe’s development, the
European economic space needs to be reinvented and rede-
fined from qualitative and sustainable perspectives instead of
purely quantitative ones.
Hence, the process of European integration must bring forth
common social, employment and environmental policies. The
future-oriented goal of a sustainable Europe is to put in place a
European social model informed by the right to life-sustaining
and satisfying work and by the principles of fair distribution
and equitable access to public goods.
Democratic deficits in the EU – Europe as
a democracy and rule-of-law project
OUR GOAL
A social Europe needs to be democratic and participative. EU
institutions and decision-making processes must permit EU
citizens to participate and have a say in decision-making on a
basis of equality. In the European Union, democracy ought to
become a way of life.
WE KNOW
Democratising the EU is a project demanding immediate atten-
tion in the years to come. Against the background of Europe’s
bellicose history, the political integration of the European Union
is a welcome project. Integration will not happen spontane-
ously, however, and the same goes for the democratisation of
the community of states. The EU is not a state modelled on the
conventional nation state, but a political ‘multi-level system’.
Its democratic legitimacy is currently derived from that of its
member states and from the output of political decisions taken
by EU institutions, such as the Commission, the European Cen-
tral Bank or the European Court of Justice. When comparing
the Community with democratic national states, it becomes
obvious that its democratic deficit is due to the European Par-
liament’s lack of legislative power. Though directly elected by
the EU citizens, the EU Parliament is not empowered to exercise
‘sovereignty’ as exercised by the European citizens. The legis-
lative power rests with the Council of Ministers and thus with
the national governments that are not directly elected. This lack
of separation between legislative and executive powers within
the EU multi-level system is at the root of another democratic
deficit. Still another problem is the lack of a European public
opinion, i.e. of media or public discussion fora that comment,
criticise and put new topics on the EU agenda – in other words
a ‘fourth democratic power’.
One of the paramount ‘democracy issues’ is the participa-
tion of EU citizens, their opportunities of political will formation
and the enforcement of their interests. In national democra-
cies, parties and social partners represent citizen interests; at
EU level, parties are only superficially institutionalised. What
is also lacking at EU level are participatory and direct-democ-
racy procedures.
The ‘post-national’ EU democracy has admittedly gener-
ated new structures and institutions that are founded on the
accreditation of civil-society groupings by the EU Commission.
Whereas the integration of the civil society is a welcome new
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