After the Greek people went to the polls last weekend and offered up a sound rejection to the demands of their European partners, Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras returned to negotiations feeling legitimized to demand a better deal for his voters writes Rachel Tausendfreund. Angela Merkel, cheek still smarting from the Greek “no,” meanwhile also has voters to answer to — and they are no more eager to finance the supposed spendthrifts on the Ionian Sea than they were a week ago. Does this spell death by democracy for the euro and the European project? No. In fact, democratically legitimate standoffs are precisely why the EU exists.
There is no shortage of complaints about the EU’s “democratic deficit” — but these complaints ignore that democracies themselves have a deficit that the EU is meant to address. Democracy is a far from perfect system. Beyond the borders of one state’s democratic dictate, the shortcomings become all the more evident.
Democracies are inherently chauvinist. It makes perfect sense that Greek voters would reject harsh austerity policies that have seen a GDP fall of 25 percent over the past five years and unemployment rise just as high. It is perfectly legitimate, and indeed “democratic,” to put the choice for more austerity to the public. It is equally understandable and legitimate for taxpayers in Germany or Finland to reject sending money south. How to resolve conflicts between two democratically legitimate positions? The EU is how.
Brussel’s lowest common denominator policies are frequently maligned, and often rightly. Yet “lowest common denominator” is just another term for compromise. You start with two, or nineteen, opposing positions, and end with something no one loves, but everyone can live with. And compromise is not easy, which is why the denominator is often low. But we would not need the EU if it were easy. Yes, Tsipras’s victory in the referendum renewed his legitimacy at home, but that does not pit Greek democracy against the EU in any novel way, though it is a more obvious case than most. French and Dutch voters rejected the EU constitutional treaty, and if asked to vote on it, many of Europe’s publics would reject taking their share of the refugee burden faced by the southern EU states (and member state governments have accordingly said no to mandatory resettlement quotas). If this is a battle between democracy and Europe, it is the battle that is common, and is supposed to be there — and not because the EU is anti-democratic, but because democracies need to be helped to be more cooperative among one another.
Still, there is something beyond compromise as a technocratic processes of identifying the Venn diagram of Europe’s conflicting wills. What can move us beyond a lowest common denominator, beyond the short-term, self-centered democratic will, is political leadership. If democratic will is fallible, it is also malleable. Winston Churchill convinced a war-weary British public in the 1940s that the fight against Fascism was necessary and worth the massive sacrifice of life and treasure (after all, the U.K. essentially bankrupted itself for the war effort). This was not a natural position for Britons to take; they were led there. It is equally hard to imagine that democratic will drove the U.S. government to give $13 billion (in 1948 dollars) to Europe as part of the Marshal Plan. Americans supported, or at least accepted, the effort because their officials made a convincing case for it. Democratic will is not always wise. Nor is it firm.
A possible deal is again on the table, one that has at least some support outside of Athens. There is still a good chance to escape the standoff. Tsipras, if he chooses to, can lead Greece on a demanding path of reform — though debt-restructuring might still be necessary. The Greek public wants to stay in the euro and they have been paying a painful price for five years to make it possible. The referendum, despite being a “vote for sovereignty” does not give Tsipras legitimacy to be utterly intractable. Not if he wants to be part of the EU. Merkel, too, will have to lead her public if she believes accepting the new deal is wise. “If the euro fails, Europe fails” she has said. Convincing her voters will be more difficult now than it would have been if Berlin has staked a “whatever it takes” position at the outset. And yes, a deal poses a political risk for Merkel. It might also require a bit of uncharacteristic grandiosity. But Grexit poses its own risks for Merkel, as she will be given the burden of responsibility for the failure of the past years’ crisis policies, and for much of whatever fallout follows. If it were not venturesome, it would not be leadership. And if it did not involve painful compromise, it would not be European.
Rachel Tausendfreund is the German Marshal Fund’s (GMF) senior editor, based in Berlin. THis article was first published by the GMF.
