Il suicidio dell’Unione europea

Despite common opinion, the juridical structure of European Union’s powers and institutions may already be considered as federal. However, on the political level it shows a lack of unity and a dramatic lack of democracy, both at the bottom and at the top. Three elements are particularly relevant in the current crisis of the EU integration process: (1) the absence of a European public sphere capable of promoting policies oriented to the interest of the Union rather than to the interest of the member states; (2) the weakening of the national public spheres, of the welfare state and of social rights to the benefit of national and transnational economic power; (3) the breakdown of legitimacy of European institutions, which is due in part to the their deep transformation moving in an antidemocratic direction. Today we are witnessing the reversal of the relationship between society and political representation, between legislative and executive branch, between politics and economy; we can find dramatic examples of this tendency in the inflexible austerity discipline imposed to Greece and in the xenophobic and racist reaction of many European courtiers facing the refugee’s emergency. This crisis of the EU’s groundwork turned the promise of a supranational democracy in a new technocratic system where the democratic constitutions vanish from political horizon.