Phoenix Europe: How the EU Can Emerge from the Ashes

[FarCenter]

The old European Union didn't work, that much has been made clear by the ongoing debt crisis. But many in Europe think there is now a clear path to a new, more integrated -- and smaller -- bloc. What must happen first? Greater democracy and less nation-state sovereignty. By SPIEGEL Staff

The old EU is finished. The 27-member bloc has never been as unpopular as it is today. Citizens have taken note that the massive bureaucracy in Brussels clearly lacks the power to master the crisis spreading through the currency union. It has likewise become apparent that the national governments they have elected are in the process of dismantling the historic project of European unification. After all, it isn't the European Council, the European Commission or the European Parliament that the world is relying on to pull Europe out of crisis. It is Angela Merkel.

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"Neither a Frankfurt group nor a troika, and certainly not the G-20, which answers to no one, should have the right to decide what Europe's citizens should pay for and how much they should save," says Ulrike Guérot, the fiery Berlin spokeswoman of the European Council on Foreign Relations, the international think tank to which Joschka Fischer also belongs. According to Guérot, such decisions ought to be made by a strong European executive branch, "supported by a parliament for the entire euro zone."

"We must invent and establish Europe a second time," says Sigmar Gabriel, the chairman of Germany's center-left Social Democrats (SPD). It's easy enough to say this from his standpoint as leader of the opposition. But many in Merkel's party, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), tend to agree -- they just don't talk openly about it. Officials at the Chancellery are also looking for concepts for the day when the crisis is over.

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There is no lack of bold ideas. Charles Grant, founder of the Centre for European Reform, a London think tank, has come up with a vision for a democratically united Europe in which the citizens of the various member states vote directly for European commissioners -- replacing the present system whereby they are chosen by national governments behind closed doors. Grant's model sees the EU president selecting the 10 best of the 27 citizens' picks, with the remaining 17 becoming deputies. This concept would produce a strong and democratic European government.

The idea of a single, robust Brussels government for all EU countries -- or at least for the euro zone -- is also shaping plans promoted by certain groups within the European Parliament. And most agree that citizens in any future United States of Europe must have a stronger voice and Brussels have greater powers. Which would in turn mean a transfer of sovereignty from individual countries to the European Union.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,797626,00.html