Europe is trapped between technocracy and democracy

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The writer is director of Carnegie Europe

This week, more eyes will be on the US elections than on the European parliament’s hearings to confirm the EU’s incoming leadership team. But regardless of who the next US president may be, Europe is so caught between technocracy and politics that it may be unable to address the monumental list of challenges it faces.

The weakness of governments in France, Germany and elsewhere may suggest an empowered European Commission, but that impression is deceptive. Over the past five years, commission president Ursula von der Leyen showed mastery in handling two crises — the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This strengthened her grip on the executive by centralising key powers to oversee her agenda. 

A strong executive in Brussels is a formidable asset. It has the technocratic competence to provide steady policy implementation relatively shielded from political ups and downs. Unlike alternating governments, it can secure some continuity across mandates beyond the electoral timeline of politicians. It is therefore ideally placed to pursue long-term goals such as upscaling Europe’s single market and investing in security and defence. Mario Draghi’s report documented Europe’s widening competitiveness, productivity and innovation gaps with the US and China.

Smooth EU leadership transitions are a misleading indicator of the commission’s ability to shape Europe’s fate. Von der Leyen risks becoming a leader without followers. Governments excel in rubber-stamping initiatives in Brussels and not carrying them out at home. The already visible drift between the EU and its members could become a rift.

National politics are intruding everywhere. A growing number of EU governments are only interested in transactional deals for domestic ends. The radical right increasingly frames the debate. When EU leaders met on October 17, discussions about the US elections or how to implement the Draghi report were cut short by the priority accorded to migration. The radical right dangled the bait of a dystopian vision of immigration, and the other leaders fell for it. 

Notwithstanding the radical right, no European country is willing to invest in the Draghi report’s recommendations. Smaller countries fear losing out to larger ones; frugal governments fear being exploited by supposedly spendthrift ones. No one wants to pay an extra euro into the EU.

Europe’s past unity in facing Russia’s threat was facilitated by Washington. Victory for Donald Trump would exacerbate Europe’s divisions rather than jolting it into more concerted action. A Harris win could feed with inertia the complacency of EU leadership.

Europe has a deeper problem in finding the right balance between technocracy and representation. In the past, a “permissive consensus” allowed political elites to invest in EU integration with little opposition. Now technocracy has become a problem, fuelling Euroscepticism and the radical right. Few pro-EU leaders are willing to make a case for integration. On the contrary, flexing nationalist muscles is a common practice across the political spectrum.

Rather than identify new processes for democratic accountability and political participation in a complex and multi-layered European system of governance, national leaders have chosen to fall back on items of domestic interest, while the commission tries to garner support by smartening its communication strategies.

Here lies the trap: the more complex the world, the more it requires competent multilevel governance of the sort that the EU can provide, but the less connected technocrats are to democratic politics, the less able they are to carry out their responsibilities. The more the EU struggles to provide answers, the less credible it becomes to its national leaders and voters. The greatest danger for the EU is a descent into irrelevance.