Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, voter suppression in the US, and democracy backsliding in Hungary and Poland all highlight the importance of a robust and healthy democracy, which must never be taken for granted, writes the European Democracy Consulting Stiftung.
The European Democracy Consulting Stiftung is an Austrian non-profit, which runs the European Party Funding Observatory.
Modern, liberal democracy is based on representation. But representation need not be – and clearly should not be – the mere choice of our political leaders once every few years.
It is also a process through which citizens actively contribute to the political landscape via their input and engagement, and where political actors, in turn, respond to citizens.
This engagement by citizens takes many forms, from addressing one’s representatives, to making donations to candidates and parties, to being a member or militant of a political party, all the way to becoming a candidate or setting up one’s own political party.
Democracy therefore requires continuous, two-way interactions between citizens and their parties and elected officials. A precondition to these interactions is for citizens to, at least, know the political parties that claim to speak and decide in their name – and this, at each level at which decisions are made.
It is therefore not sufficient to say that we should have democracy at the local level, and at the regional level, and at the national level, but that anything beyond that does not matter.
And this is the pitfall of the European Union. Even if all Member States were democracies (surely a big “if” these days), there can be no European democracy – democracy at the European level, that is – without two-way interactions between citizens and their European political parties. And, therefore, without citizens knowing their political parties.
While established sources of information – newspapers, radio, TV – continue to focus largely on local and national politics, the digital space provides an opportunity to reach out to citizens.
Unfortunately, this opportunity is not seized. The European Parliament and the Authority for European political parties – both in charge of monitoring European parties – dutifully publish the minimum amount of information legally required of them, often as dull collections of PDF documents. No charts, no appealing tables, no visualisations.
Despite this, successive reviews to the Regulation on European political parties have failed to dramatically increase transparency – in 2007, 2014, 2018, 2019, and another one currently under discussion: a bit more information here, a few more documents there, but information remains scattered and invisible to citizens.
Even European parties themselves, most likely limited by their own national member parties’ desire to retain the upper hand, fail to extensively reach out to citizens – as one would expect, at the very least, ahead of European elections.
Faced with this institutional apathy, there is no quick fix or magical solution: we must play the long game. Those concerned with the strengthening of European democracy must push again and again for more transparency on European parties.
This means continued pressure on decision-makers in the Commission, Parliament, and national governments to increase transparency, and to adopt a user-centric approach aimed at making information visible – not merely on a duty to publish documents. Either by amending legislation or changing practices.
For instance, in June, European Democracy Consulting successfully challenged the European Parliament’s long-standing legal arguments on the redaction of its documents regarding European parties. This challenge reversed years of practice of heavy redactions, sealing the Parliament’s reasoning for up to eight years after the facts.
This also means, short of adequate efforts by EU institutions, ensuring the periodic provision of official information in a user-friendly manner, and helping citizens get acquainted with their political parties.
And not just citizens, who will not suddenly wake up craving knowledge about European political parties they don’t know. We must give researchers the tools to discuss and analyse European parties.
We must give journalists material to understand and write about European parties. We must give decision-makers concrete facts to inform their reform of the European party system.
In this chicken-and-egg scenario, more information on European parties is expected to lead to more media and academic coverage and more citizen interest in European parties; and more coverage and interest will lead to more demand for information and participation. Inciting interest via information; inciting demand with offer.
In the absence of an official, public platform, the European Party Funding Observatory aims at filling that role. The Observatory leverages public data from official sources to directly answer citizens’ questions: how much money do European parties receive? In which countries do these funds originate? And what happens to all that money?
We hope that this observatory will provide a template for similar endeavours (both institutional and individual) at the national and European levels, and pave the way for the strengthening of transparency and open data regulations applicable to EU institutions.
Should this be done by European institutions? Without a doubt. But, in the absence of action, it is the role of civil society to step in and help citizens connect with their representative parties and find their place in our common democracy.
And with European elections only a few months away, it’s party time.
Source: euractiv.com
