One evening, a Soviet joke relates, Stalin decided to see if he was as beloved as his cronies insisted, so went to a Moscow cinema in disguise. Sitting in the dark as the newsreels began, the tyrant was moved to tears as the audience stood - apparently unbidden - and wildly applauded his image on screen. His reverie was cut short when his neighbour leaned down and hissed: “Comrade, we all hate him too. But it's safest to stand and clap.” The old joke prompts a question relevant to today's European Union: what does it really mean when unelected leaders fret about public opinion, or yearn to know if ordinary citizens support their favourite policies? Take the European Commission, the union's powerful executive arm. The politicians who make up its ruling “college” need not fret about elections, as they are nominated by national governments for five-year terms. And many commissioners are sent to Brussels as a consolation prize, after rejection by voters at home.
Yet the commission still spends hefty sums (€16.5m, or $22m, last year) on waves of Europe-wide surveys under the “Eurobarometer” banner, some of them involving tens of thousands of individual interviews. The research can be worthy, technocratic stuff. Robert Manchin, European boss of the polling firm Gallup, points to surveys carried out when Malta and Cyprus joined the single currency last month, charting on a daily basis how locals were adjusting to the new currency. Without polls, “this kind of data does not exist at a European level,” says Mr Manchin. But the use of polls by Brussels is often more political than that, and is set to become more political still. Barring last-minute problems with ratification in some member nations, the new Lisbon treaty is expected to come into force around the end of this year, triggering big and unpredictable shifts in the institutional balance of power in Europe.
The commissioner charged with “communicating Europe to citizens”, Margot Wallstrom, has unveiled proposals for opinion polling to be used “strategically”, so the wrinkles of pan-European opinion are not just taken into account when selling finished laws and directives to the public, but during the cut and thrust of policy making. On paper, the commission's aim is straightforward: to respond to citizens' concerns about big, trans-national phenomena such as climate change, migration or globalisation, and convince them that action at the European level is the answer. Tantalisingly for Eurocrats, Eurobarometer polls tell them that voters like European-wide action on all sorts of issues (fully 81% say they want joint European action against terrorism). Yet national governments can point to other Eurobarometer polls showing that among the very same citizens, support for the EU is not that high. Across the club, support for EU membership has hovered stubbornly around the 50% mark for years (recent polls show 58% support, a 13-year high).
To some officials, supportive opinion polls offer a form of quasi-democratic mandate. One Brussels official admits that his commissioner “absolutely” uses poll data to browbeat reluctant governments, in private and in public. With the new Lisbon treaty about to create the first full-time president of the EU Council (that represents national governments), the same Brussels official says the Commission must become more political and “open” to survive, “especially if we get some fantastic Mr Blair-type as president of the council.”
Not all agree that poll-driven accountability is desirable. A sceptical Eurocrat notes that finance ministries, say, are not loved: competence is enough. “The European Commission is distracted by a desire to be liked by the public,” he says. “There is nothing wrong with being unelected: you need an executive in every system.” Worse, poll questions lead his colleagues to “gigantic conclusions” that may not be true. “We keep saying that everyone in Europe wants the EU to have a louder voice in world politics. But what does that really mean?”
The grandest Euro-mandarins such as Mrs Wallstrom agree that public opinion “should not rule us in the same way as it does national governments”. But Mrs Wallstrom admits that polls have helped change the commission's agenda. Eurobarometer reported that Europeans wanted “visible results” from the commission, which under its president, José Manuel Barroso, was under fire for pursuing too business-friendly an agenda. The result, she says, is less dry talk about “better regulation”, and more crowd-pleasing consumer initiatives, such as bullying mobile-telephone companies to lower roaming charges.
Since their birth in 1973, Eurobarometers have pursued multiple goals. The Frenchman who invented them called the polls a means of promoting integration, by showing Europeans in different nations where they agreed and disagreed. But officials cannot reasonably pretend that their polls equate to a democratic mandate. For one thing, the commission is notorious for only asking questions to which it wants answers (Eurobarometer data must be published within two years, unlike national polling which is often kept secret). In an infamous incident last year, the commission trumpeted a poll showing 80% support for the European satellite navigation system, Galileo, and 63% support for spending billions on it, though only 40% of respondents had heard of Galileo before they were telephoned for the survey. Polls on sensitive subjects such as racism or religion are routinely neutered, to avoid questions that might reveal differing degrees of tolerance in EU nations. The European Commission has always been a strange hybrid: a civil service run by politicians, with a monopoly on proposing new EU laws and rules. In power-struggles with national governments, claiming voter support must be tempting.
But Brussels should remember that detecting public support is not the same thing as actual democracy: just ask any Soviet-era comic.
Dit commentaarstuk verscheen ook in The Economist.
Meer Eurokritische opinies op www.jpfloru.com.
Yet the commission still spends hefty sums (€16.5m, or $22m, last year) on waves of Europe-wide surveys under the “Eurobarometer” banner, some of them involving tens of thousands of individual interviews. The research can be worthy, technocratic stuff. Robert Manchin, European boss of the polling firm Gallup, points to surveys carried out when Malta and Cyprus joined the single currency last month, charting on a daily basis how locals were adjusting to the new currency. Without polls, “this kind of data does not exist at a European level,” says Mr Manchin. But the use of polls by Brussels is often more political than that, and is set to become more political still. Barring last-minute problems with ratification in some member nations, the new Lisbon treaty is expected to come into force around the end of this year, triggering big and unpredictable shifts in the institutional balance of power in Europe.
The commissioner charged with “communicating Europe to citizens”, Margot Wallstrom, has unveiled proposals for opinion polling to be used “strategically”, so the wrinkles of pan-European opinion are not just taken into account when selling finished laws and directives to the public, but during the cut and thrust of policy making. On paper, the commission's aim is straightforward: to respond to citizens' concerns about big, trans-national phenomena such as climate change, migration or globalisation, and convince them that action at the European level is the answer. Tantalisingly for Eurocrats, Eurobarometer polls tell them that voters like European-wide action on all sorts of issues (fully 81% say they want joint European action against terrorism). Yet national governments can point to other Eurobarometer polls showing that among the very same citizens, support for the EU is not that high. Across the club, support for EU membership has hovered stubbornly around the 50% mark for years (recent polls show 58% support, a 13-year high).
To some officials, supportive opinion polls offer a form of quasi-democratic mandate. One Brussels official admits that his commissioner “absolutely” uses poll data to browbeat reluctant governments, in private and in public. With the new Lisbon treaty about to create the first full-time president of the EU Council (that represents national governments), the same Brussels official says the Commission must become more political and “open” to survive, “especially if we get some fantastic Mr Blair-type as president of the council.”
Not all agree that poll-driven accountability is desirable. A sceptical Eurocrat notes that finance ministries, say, are not loved: competence is enough. “The European Commission is distracted by a desire to be liked by the public,” he says. “There is nothing wrong with being unelected: you need an executive in every system.” Worse, poll questions lead his colleagues to “gigantic conclusions” that may not be true. “We keep saying that everyone in Europe wants the EU to have a louder voice in world politics. But what does that really mean?”
The grandest Euro-mandarins such as Mrs Wallstrom agree that public opinion “should not rule us in the same way as it does national governments”. But Mrs Wallstrom admits that polls have helped change the commission's agenda. Eurobarometer reported that Europeans wanted “visible results” from the commission, which under its president, José Manuel Barroso, was under fire for pursuing too business-friendly an agenda. The result, she says, is less dry talk about “better regulation”, and more crowd-pleasing consumer initiatives, such as bullying mobile-telephone companies to lower roaming charges.
Since their birth in 1973, Eurobarometers have pursued multiple goals. The Frenchman who invented them called the polls a means of promoting integration, by showing Europeans in different nations where they agreed and disagreed. But officials cannot reasonably pretend that their polls equate to a democratic mandate. For one thing, the commission is notorious for only asking questions to which it wants answers (Eurobarometer data must be published within two years, unlike national polling which is often kept secret). In an infamous incident last year, the commission trumpeted a poll showing 80% support for the European satellite navigation system, Galileo, and 63% support for spending billions on it, though only 40% of respondents had heard of Galileo before they were telephoned for the survey. Polls on sensitive subjects such as racism or religion are routinely neutered, to avoid questions that might reveal differing degrees of tolerance in EU nations. The European Commission has always been a strange hybrid: a civil service run by politicians, with a monopoly on proposing new EU laws and rules. In power-struggles with national governments, claiming voter support must be tempting.
But Brussels should remember that detecting public support is not the same thing as actual democracy: just ask any Soviet-era comic.
Dit commentaarstuk verscheen ook in The Economist.
Meer Eurokritische opinies op www.jpfloru.com.
3 Reacties:
- At 14:40 Anoniem said...
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Wie vertrouwt die Eurobarometer? Het is de STAAT die eigenhandig bewijzen fabriceert om het bestaan van de STAAT te legitimeren. Nochtans zijn er voldoende onafhankelijke en private diensten beschikbaar om zulke peilingen te organiseren...
- At 15:46 Anoniem said...
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Ik zie geen bezwaar dat de staat cijfermateriaal bij mekaar sprokkelt en het dan gebruikt, zolang er via de privé (en dat is vandaag zeker het geval) ook een concurrentiebeweging mogelijk is. Als bvb. Guy Verhofstadt naar de Eurobarometer verwijst om te zeggen dat 8 op de 10 Belgen voor de Europese Grondwet zijn, is het aan zijn tegenstanders om equivalente onderzoeken aan te halen die dat tegenspreken. En op dat vlak doet bvb. Open Europe enorm werk. Gelukkig maar.
- At 17:27 Anoniem said...
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Gelukkig is er The Economist nog om terechte kritiek op de EU te spuien, los van bepaalde radicale individuen die veel te snel persoonlijk worden en hysterische teksten neerpennen. Zij winnen het debat niet, The Economist doet dat wel.
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