Loading summary
Transcript64 lines
- [00:04]
Alberto Alamano
No migrants more in no Europe without Christianity.
- [00:09]
Guest or EU Scream Team Member
An alliance also with Russia.
- [00:14]
James Kanter
Welcome to EU Scream, the podcast that.
- [00:17]
Guides you through stories coming from the eu.
- [00:20]
We talk about the news a bit differently and with people who really know what they're talking about. I'm James Kantor. This is episode 121 ungoverning the EU with law professor Alberto Alamano. The buzzword in Brussels is simplification. In reality, that's a euphemism for sweeping deregulation and it marks a dramatic U turn for the European Union. For decades, the EU prided itself on being a regulatory superpower capable of extending its influence through protective and demanding regulation. Think of the GDPR rules on data privacy and leadership on climate action. Even standardized cables for phones. That's now changing. A year ago, Mario Draghi, the former president of the European Central bank, dusted off the time worn idea of cutting red tape to boost the economy. Draghi's message was eagerly embraced by most EU leaders, many of them from conservative and far right parties, and many of them increasingly aligned with hardline Trumpian ideas on blocking migrants, ignoring the environment and cutting overseas aid. Draghi's ideas have since snowballed. In the works are measures to water down laws on everything from technology and chemicals to to farming and finance. Executing on those plans and more is the European Commission's president, Ursula von der Leyen. She's been using the deregulation mantra to deflect criticism from her far right rivals and to placate US tech giants and Donald Trump and his threats to abandon Europe militarily. To be sure, deregulation is having a moment in Argentina, in India and across the Atlantic where Elon Musk's doge dismantled entire agencies, almost certainly illegally and where Russ Vogt at Trump's budget office openly says he wants to put civil servants in trauma. The approach in Europe is far less belligerent, but there are significant parallels. That's according to Alberto Alamano, the law professor at Aschesay Paris and the founder of the Good Lobby. Alberto sees an ideological and methodological alignment across the Atlantic that includes the sidelining of legislators, the privileging of executive fiat and a possible Doge style downsizing of the European Commission. Alberto also says von der Leyen is pushing towards illegality by bundling together deregulatory measures that into so called omnibus laws, laws that bypass the usual channels of evidence based policy making and of democratic consent. The European Ombudsman Teresa Anginho has opened an investigation into this omnibus process, but her opinions are non binding. Meanwhile, EU governments are pushing for continuous rollbacks, and von der Leyen has promised to deliver. But there is an even deeper unease here that simplification is not just about deregulation or pandering to Trump or to the far right, but that simplification is undermining the capacity and the legitimacy of EU administration itself. A pair of US academics have described this phenomenon as ungoverning, discrediting institutions and the machinery of government, creating circumstances where enforcement and the rule of law suffer and where authoritarians can thrive. Alberto doesn't see quite the same deliberate campaign in Europe as in the US but he warns that von der Leyen's willingness to take a chainsaw to previously agreed laws and to act as little more than the executor of member states demands is a kind of dereliction of duty. A dereliction of duty that risks permanently weakening the union and doing so at a moment when many Europeans are looking for answers beyond their national borders. As Alberto puts it, the EU is being ungoverned by its own political class.
- [04:57]
Alberto Alamano
Europeans tend to look down at Trump's America as if what is happening there in terms of democratic erosion would be an inherently American phenomenon. But this largely misses the point. With the due proportions, much of what is unfolding in the US is also penetrating the EU and heavily influencing the European political leadership and the practice of doing politics in Brussels and across the European capitals.
- [05:31]
James Kanter
And I think what you're underlining there is that we just cannot see what is going on in the United States in isolation from what is going on in Europe. Is what we are seeing an EU Doge or a Doge Light or something else like that, so called Department of Government Efficiency. It was famously run by Elon Musk for a few months.
- [05:54]
Alberto Alamano
I think an area of transatlantic convergence is also deregulatory space and the so called deregulation, the idea that much of what's wrong with our economies is excessive regulation. In other words, the same ambitious regulatory frameworks the European Union has been proud of has been bragging about over decades, be it in climate, environment, health or labor protection, they seem to have been suddenly identified as the culpr. And this is unbalanced and shortsighted. But nobody dares to protect regulations. Who would protect regulations nowadays? This belief that much of the lack of competitiveness of the European Union has to do with regulatory burden has been originated within the European conservative family and the far right for many, many years.
- [06:50]
James Kanter
That's right. I mean, this is not a brand new thing, you know, whether Trump was required for this to happen in Europe.
- [06:59]
Alberto Alamano
No, you're absolutely right. This idea of scapegoating regulation as the responsible, the actor, the phenomenon to blame for everything that goes inside has been very tempting, in particular on the right of the spectrum over the past 20, 30 years in Europe. But now this idea got a major endorsement by possibly the most influential thinker or at least practitioner of Europe, who is Mario Draghi. So when the former European Central bank governor and former Italian prime minister writes.
- [07:34]
James Kanter
In his report, this was last year, right?
- [07:37]
Alberto Alamano
The last year report, the Draghi report, which has been celebrated as the mantra, the blueprint, current European political action is saying that we need to blame the lack of European competitiveness on its regulatory framework. And this is true for the digital space. This is true for the climate and space. Obviously, we see a huge U turn happening in front of our eyes. We have been spending as European five years to craft the best possible rules to potentially protect the environment and to tackle the climate transformation. We spent also five years to create a digital rule book. And all of this, almost overnight, has been thrown out of the window.
- [08:21]
James Kanter
This giant U turn has been dubbed something called simplification. And this simplification rhetoric has become the entire raison d' etre of Ursula von der Leyen's second term as President of the European Commission, along with defense. But von der Leyen has acknowledged in front of certain audiences that this drive is really deregulation. She actually used that term in addition to simplification at a recent talk in Copenhagen.
- [08:51]
Guest or EU Scream Team Member
Because when we look at simplification, we all agree we need simplification, we need deregulation.
- [09:00]
Alberto Alamano
James, like some of our listeners today, I'm old enough to have lived through other efforts at reforming and streamlining European policymaking Since at least 2002, when I was a fresh graduate of the College.
- [09:16]
James Kanter
Of Europe, where, incidentally, we were recording today in a basement underneath the College of Europe library. And it is very subterranean, but very welcoming.
- [09:30]
Alberto Alamano
And it's somehow symbolic that over 25 years ago I was a few meters away, just in the library, already trying to understand what the Commission could have done to cut red tape. This was the language coming from the other side of the channel, from the UK as a possible recipe, as a force of sort of deus ex machina, that kind of fix the European Union. There's very little evidence suggesting that the EU competitiveness problem is due to its regulatory environment. I think that evidence is very thin, assuming it exists. And even the Drug Report is not able to pinpoint any study that might explain why European Countries such as Poland or Spain that have been growing non stop over the past years, while subject to the same regulation as France, Germany or Italy have been potentially been doing well.
- [10:26]
James Kanter
And there's an OECD report actually from 20, it is from 2021, but it does say some of the same stuff that environmental regulations, there's no evidence to show that they have impeded growth.
- [10:39]
Alberto Alamano
Correct. And there's a second critique to the EU deregulation, a move which is the fact that essentially you are putting so much emphasis on the cost of regulation, on the so called compliance cost, without thinking or looking at the benefits that might be accrued over time. How would you explain the fact that Europe is one of the few regions in the world where life expectancy continues to go up? This is certainly a byproduct of European protective regulations being public health, environment or labor. And the overall public spending is significant in Europe is in average higher. And then when you compare it with similar standard indicators for quality of life in the United States of America, where life expectancy is actually going down, so it's reversing compared to Europe, you might perhaps realize that this narrative is not accurate. It holds on very shaky, shaky grounds.
- [11:44]
James Kanter
Let's step back and let's talk about how aggressive deregulation works in Europe. And let's start with these omnibuses. They're what you've called a new privileged method of EU legislating. These omnibuses, or omnibi, as some like to say, with no little sarcasm, of course, making this term sound that little bit more pompous. These omnibi roll back and trim and they defang laws on the environment, agriculture, defense, financial services, chemicals, artificial intelligence and transport. Fine. But what's really at stake are the things that these laws were crafted in the first place to address, like how to keep us healthy, how to make the transition to a greener world, and how to ensure no repeat of the financial crises of 15 years ago. And Alberto, you also use this term, lex satura, to describe the imposition of these omnibus laws, these omnibi. Talk to me about lex satura and how that term helps us to understand why omnibus laws like this that combine so many things are so problematic.
- [13:02]
Alberto Alamano
So a very specific technique, legislative technique, omnibuses that has been very seldom used in the past, almost never put together different pieces of legislation that have already entered into force, or in this case which are about to enter into force, and to basically package them as an opportunity to have one vote instead of many votes and to cut the corner. So you are turbocharging the. The simplification or the deregulation of these frameworks by putting them through an expedited procedure. This technique is so controversial that already during the Roman time there was this prohibition. The prohibition was to have a law that was tackling more than one issue. So if you had multiple issues that lex would have been full satura. There would have been too many issues. They would have been saturating.
- [13:57]
James Kanter
Saturated. Saturated, yeah. Warnings from antiquity about this approach completely.
- [14:04]
Alberto Alamano
We get this intellectual attraction for cutting corners, finding ways that are still legal, but clearly pushing towards illegality that nobody seems willing to question because there is a bipartisan consensus that simplification is the right thing to do, that the only way to reignate some power in our economy is by adopting those rules as soon as possible.
- [14:33]
James Kanter
And let me just explain a little bit more about this first. So called omnibus. It does a variety of things as an omnibus bill suggests it will. There's a bunch of stuff in there, but in particular it waters down the rules that are meant to get companies to disclose their own and their suppliers impact on the environment and impact on labor rights.
- [14:57]
Alberto Alamano
Due diligence requirement, meaning basically doing their homework and ensuring that during the supply chain you don't have slavery or low wages or the number of companies that should be subject to reporting obligation when it comes to emissions.
- [15:12]
James Kanter
There are lawmakers like Heidi Haltala, former Finnish Green mep, and Laura Walters, a Dutch socialist mep, and Manon Aubry, a French left MEP who dedicated years of their lives to getting these rules right. But the rules are still on the chopping block. And what's been going on politically in recent weeks is also interesting in terms of how the conservatives have been trying to weaken these rules. And these supply chain rules are one of a number of instances where we've seen the conservatives fully prepared to join forces with the most extreme elements of the far right to get the results they want. We basically see the conservatives in using extremist parties as a bargaining chip as part of this omnibus process. It is that toxic.
- [16:03]
Alberto Alamano
This unprecedented rollback will not only lead to the dismantling of the long negotiated regulatory framework on sustainable development before it does even enter into force, which is paradoxical, but it will also be extended to other policy areas. So we are generalizing a way of doing policymaking which is contraligum, is clearly contradicting every single basic principle and which is already prompting some reactions from the business community that has been investing long term in order to be able to comply with many of these reporting obligations. But Then all of a sudden, these obligations are no longer there. So in a way, the omnibus is the perfect recipe for injecting unpredictability that might rather slow down the economy instead of accelerating it. So here again we see the EU embracing self defeating practices that might, in the long term prove contrary to the objectives they are trying at least publicly, to attain.
- [17:12]
James Kanter
And concretely, the omnibuses that are upcoming, they're hardly attractive to the general public. These include a push to ease rules introduced after the rolling financial crises that began in 2008. There are rules on farming, noteworthy for introducing fewer checks, fewer checks on environmental compliance. Great. There's another that seems set to loosen restrictions on cancer causing substances and the chemicals and fertilizers, which is expected to give a helping hand. Yes, to the chemicals industry. And what seems to be in the pipeline too, is a reopening of the EU's AI Act Artificial intelligence Act. It was a landmark act, the first in the world, or among them, which was adopted only last year. And now we're watering that down too. Now there is an investigation into at least how the first omnibus is going. The European Ombudsman is a kind of in house maladministration watchdog and it's looking at whether the Commission neglected proper assessment of environmental laws before taking an axe to them in this first omnibus, which deals with supply chains and other forms of environmental criteria that corporate actors have.
- [18:33]
Alberto Alamano
To abide by European Teresa, we have.
- [18:39]
Guest or EU Scream Team Member
Asked the Commission to explain, among other things, why no impact assessment or public consultations were carried out, why climate consistency was not assessed and why inter service consultation lasted only 24 hours. The citizens are anxious because the common procedures, the ones that were taken as normal legislative procedures, are being deviated.
- [19:06]
James Kanter
Alberto, what are your expectations here when it comes to the European Ombudsman's investigation into Omnibus 1? Will the investigation show abuse of executive power, lack of due process, and will it even matter if it does?
- [19:23]
Alberto Alamano
This inquiry by the European Ombudsman is very welcome because it may act as the only guarantee for European policymaking to continue being inclusive, predictable and certain for all stakeholders. We all know the way in which this simplification omnibus has been put together. It has been led by the political as opposed to the service level within the European Commission, under immense pressure coming from the European Council, meaning head of state and government, which is a pretty unprecedented situation.
- [20:01]
James Kanter
This is the government's now in charge.
- [20:03]
Alberto Alamano
Leading this and that somehow legitimized from the top, an approach that has been cut in corners by first not having a Proper public consultation. Every single time the Commission propose something new, legislative or non legislative, he has to convene all stakeholders, the people who might be affected by that change, change of the law. Well, if they don't, clearly we have a breach of the treaty that says we need to be inclusive, we need to collect all these evidence. In this particular instance, the Commission decided to have a consultation by invitation only, which essentially gather. 90% of the participants were coming from the industry, only 10%. Like a token, you had a few NGOs who had no chance to actually influence that particular process. And essentially this omnibus will go down in history as one of the first time in which the Commission decided to shift away from evidence based policymaking before legislating to a situation in which they basically already knew where they were going and therefore they said this is a political conversation, we don't need the evidence. Lara Walters, the rapporteur of the file.
- [21:17]
James Kanter
About corporate sustainability due Diligence Directive, what.
- [21:21]
Guest or EU Scream Team Member
About the Commission says that the lack of an impact assessment and the 24 hour Inter Service consultation were justified as the economy had dramatically deteriorated. So to be clear, the Commission says that between May 2024 and February 2025, the omnibus proposal there was a dramatic deterioration. Now, I myself am not aware of oil shocks, massive layoffs in large companies in Europe and so forth. In my team we have counted five different typos, just simple typos in the omnibus proposal. Granted, some are repetitions of the same mistake that to me would seem to go counter the Commission's claim in its response that its work on this was robust.
- [22:11]
Alberto Alamano
So the question is, what are we going to be learning when it comes to the next omnibuses? We have six in total, three to come, nine omnibuses, possibly more, which is becoming the de facto way of legislating. We don't see any other proposal coming from the European Commission pipeline which are not included into an omnibus. So this is the new norm. The norm is to package pre existing legislation, simplifying it by cutting scoping and obligation and requirements on the illusion or the pretense that this will save the European economy. I think it's a very poorly proven technique that might lead to a lot of deception and a lot of confusion for the very same business community and not only disempowering civil society that de facto lost a seat at the table.
- [23:09]
James Kanter
There's another reason that is trotted out for this process by the Conservatives in Europe, that some of this massive chainsawing, particularly with regard to the Green Regulations and the Environmental regulations, is necessary. To beat back the challenge of the far right. For example, pressuring to withdraw to the legislation that's meant to stop companies making false claims about the environmental credentials of their products. This was the Green Claims Directive and it was pushed back in part by Manfred Weber, the Bavarian, who's the head of the European Conservatives, the largest group in the European Parliament. Now this seems doubly egregious to me. First, as we've been talking about evidence based approaches were taken to creating these kinds of laws. Green businesses, environmental NGOs, scientific and legal experts who've perhaps worked for years on the kinds of methodologies that are involved to get these laws right. Same for rules about deforestation. Again, this is the kind of thing that has been chainsawed quite. It's an unfortunate metaphor, but that is what is going on. And then moreover, doesn't pandering to the far right's agenda simply hand the far right more influence?
- [24:39]
Alberto Alamano
It's very difficult to find the logic, if not moving fast, and break things. So there is this Silicon Valley alignment between some far right parties of Europe with these technobros that basically say, let's be disruptive, let's break things. And the only possible rationale from Weber, Alfred Weber or the APP side is that this might potentially help them deliver. And they are obsessed with this idea of output legitimacy, saying the European Union and our party is there to stay only if we can show citizens that the union is working for them. This is the mantra, has been the mantra for a long time. And this totally neglects the fact that for a growing part of the population today, the outcome is not necessarily as important as the process that might lead to that outcome. In other words, people want to see how the sausages are made. They want to know that these processes, these evidence collection, these possible solutions are workable. They are no longer falling in love with a narrative that says, you know, we are going to deliver for you in particular, when there's not very convincing evidence, as you highlighted, that by not imposing on companies to substantiate their green claims, you're going to be able to preserve stability in Europe is very, very phantomatic as a claim to make. And quite frankly, I think the average consumer would like to know whether before buying a product what is written on that label, what is claiming that label correspond to a reality because otherwise the they realize that these forms of washing are currently not being very kind to him. Greenwashing.
- [26:26]
James Kanter
Yeah, greenwashing. There's also this general issue that we have in the EU right now of non enforcement you know, take the Digital Services act, which is supposed to stop the most harmful content online. Elon Musk's X has been preliminarily found in violation of the actual this DSA Digital Services act in a bunch of ways. And yet nothing is being done by the European Commission. There's also been a very marked drop in so called infringement actions. This is where the European Commission, this body sometimes referred to as the EU executive, they include the body's president, Ursula von der Leyen. This is where the Commission is meant to enforce the EU treaties. Through these enforcement actions, it can bring litigation against companies and member states that do not follow EU law. The Commission is supposed to be an enforcer, but what we're seeing is more and more non enforcement. And I think that's part of the picture that we're talking about.
- [27:30]
Alberto Alamano
This is certainly a fact. Over the past decade or so, the European Commission decided to no longer go after member states when departing from the rules of the game. This is true when it comes to the transposition of a directive all the way to a situation in which a country is no longer abiding by the Article two values, from human dignity all the way to democracy of the rule.
- [27:59]
James Kanter
Of Law, Article 2 of the European.
- [28:01]
Alberto Alamano
Treaty, which basically represent the starting point for your membership to the European Union. So if you have a country that all of a sudden is criminalizing LGBT as a phenomenon, you clearly are departing from Article 2 values. If an executive start controlling the judiciary by giving them instructions, you're clearly departing from Article 2 values. Despite this, the European Commission has become very shy. And we have empirical studies, including the one by Dan Kellerman and Tom Pavone, that clearly shows how over time the number of infringement actions, meaning proceedings, that the European Commission is bringing against the member state has been dropping dramatically. Why this matters? It matters because a member state today is no longer deterred from not complying as it used to be, because they know that even though they might depart from the rules of the game, this won't per se lead to an action. So this relaxation in enforcing the rules of game are weakening the entire edifice of the European Union and they are weakening the ability and credibility of the European Union not only internally, but also to the outside world.
- [29:23]
James Kanter
So it's almost like for the people running the European Union of today, keeping the states together as part of a European Union is more important than the definition of what the EU is and does as a democratic entity that is looking after its citizens. It's almost like the EU as a brand counts more than the EU as a quality product.
- [29:49]
Alberto Alamano
Right. This self imposed timidity the European Union is having vis a vis its own member states when enforcing the rules is also reflected on the external side. So the EU has been very hesitant in relying on its digital rulebook when pushing back against political interference by Mr. Musk. It has been extremely hesitant in, in using its repertoire of tools to retaliate against the United States before the so called tambourine deal, the EU US deal, which is a very lopsided asymmetric deal. And finally, the European Union has not even considered to mobilize its most powerful tool, what we often call it as the bazooka. So this anti coercion mechanism that may allow the European Union to actually act to the point of limiting access to the European market to companies coming from countries that have been exercising economic coercion against us. Quite frankly, you don't need a better case study for this plutocratic moment in which Musk and Trump were de facto pushing Europe towards the same direction. They were exercising political interference. They were using the the instrument of economic coercion combined with security cohesion in order to get and extract the best concessions.
- [31:26]
James Kanter
These examples of pressure and coercion coming from the United States have been nonstop for the past few months. J.D. vance speaking in Munich. Mark Zuckerberg saying repeal your or do away with the AI laws. Exxon mobilization and the Supply Chain Directive, Apple and the Digital Markets Act. The EU US Trade deal this summer in Turnberry in Scotland included, promises to address American concerns about the kinds of rules that are being thrown into these omnibuses. The Americans say and hear, I don't think we can avoid this point. The Americans say that unless they get these kinds of changes, they hint and sometimes say out loud that they will cut Europe off from military protection, compromising what foreign policy analysts grandly call Europe's security architecture. These analysts generally intone that Europe has no choice but to kowtow. And what we are discussing here today is that that's not necessarily true, particularly if you were to invoke your toughest trade weapons. But you know, to what extent is there really another way when there is this question of the Russians pushing at the eastern border in Ukraine and threatening the Balkans.
- [32:52]
Alberto Alamano
I think Europe needs to make itself respected by the United States in the same way as it's trying to make itself respected by Russia or China. We should stop thinking about America as a privileged ally because clearly the most recent months have shown that debt is no longer an ally and therefore we need to leverage on the unique powers. We have, we have been mentioning about the power of regulations, meaning exercising sovereignty on our territory. We have been discussing about the possibility to make access to our market conditional upon respect of certain rules of the game. And unless we use those tools, we will never be able to actually cut this kind of dependence. That in any event won't be a guarantee anymore. The fact of accepting coercion is not a guarantee of having the security umbrella offered to us in case of an invasion to the EU territory, neither within NATO nor outside of NATO, we can expect the United States of America to help Europe today. In other words, we are still, I mean, at least our European leaders are paralyzed by this kind of scenario and they don't want to move on. They don't want to address the most difficult question, who is going to act when this invasion on the territory, the territory integrity of one of the member states is going to be breached. The question of who will determine that particular decision, this is a taboo question. Instead, we are basically providing further support and funds to our individual military as if this was enough to create deterrence vis a vis our enemies. So again, this is very self defeating, but is possibly understandable when look through history and the fact that we have been building and accepting this dependency on the United States for such a long period of time that we are not even be willing to accept that One of the likeliest or at least plausible scenario is that not only there might be a breach into the territorial integrity of a NATO EU country, but also the fact that in that case the United States is not going to come to save us. This is to me the kind of scenario we should force our European leaders to face as soon as possible. And they have a moral duty to provide an answer to their citizens today, not tomorrow.
- [35:39]
James Kanter
As we're having this conversation, it occurs to me that it's really hard to avoid the conclusion that Ursula von der Leyen is using simplification as a pretext. This word, simplification, quite euphemistic, as a pretext to bury the old priorities like climate action and to do that in favor of corporate interests and even to placate Donald Trump's complaints about Europe, which are very politically driven and very driven by corporate interests. And this ability of Ursula von der Leyen to rely on the far right to some degree, to rely on a right wing majority helps explain really deregulation, even in the face of very strong protests in the European Parliament and outrage from civil Society. This month, 19 EU heads of state and government called for a, quote, systematic, systematic review of All EU laws and for a quotes, constant stream of rollbacks over the next four years. And there are telltale signs of this ongoing deregulatory drive of Ursula von der Leyen's new so called work program for 2026. I mean the fundamental shift that you identified as long ago as February in a column for Project Syndicate called the dark side of EU deregulation, that that fundamental shift is snowballing. But Alberto, let's go a bit further. Should we also see this snowballing, this promise to keep wielding the knife, as an attack on the capacity and legitimacy of EU administration itself? Some academics, at least in the context of the United States, they call this kind of thing ungoverning, removing governing such that the state itself is discredited. And I just wonder, even though we're of course not talking about a single country like the United States, we're not talking about a standard government. Nonetheless, could this be a slippery slope for the eu?
- [37:53]
Alberto Alamano
I think some ango verning is happening also in Europe, of course, to a different extent than in the United States. But let me make a step back. The way in which the European institutions are operating today have very little to do with the original design taught by the founding fathers of Europe. And an example comes directly from the European Commission, an independent supranational institution that should be leading the way by identifying the European general interest. But this prerogative has been transferred to the European Council. That basically means our head of state and government. So the member states are calling the shots, as opposed to be providing advice to an independent commission that is tasked to identify the European general interest, which is much broader than the sum of national political interests that might emerge at 4 o' clock at night when a European Council ends today, the Commission is acting as the executor, as a sort of secretariat of the will of a majority of member states usually is the minimum common denominator, but is not really going towards a vision. That's why Europe looks so reactive. There's no space or time for the Union to have a window of five year time vision that might potentially enlighten decision over time. So this EU ungoverning is somehow dismantling in a very difficult to decipher way the capacity of the European public administration to do its work. Unlike the American one, it is not entirely deliberate. I think it's still latent some political forces, they want to do it in a deliberate way. And they are not shy of saying this Viktor orban and possibly Mr. Fitzo or Babish, who is again back to power.
- [39:38]
James Kanter
Babish of the Czech Republic.
- [39:40]
Alberto Alamano
Correct. So these are the countries where we see rebellious members of the European Council ready to challenge the day to day operation of the European way in a way which is not so dissimilar from what is happening in United States of America. To the point that even in the symbolism of these political parties and leaders, they pretend to be little trumps for their own countries and they get their political consensus as a result of this particular issue. So to sum it up, Europe is not necessarily dodging itself, is not necessarily ungoverning itself, but many ways in which certain particular regulations or decisions are crafted or decided are clearly leading to an erosion in the predictability in the expectations which are legitimate of civil society and companies themselves have in relation to this machine. So although to a different extent also the EU is somehow becoming ungoverned by its political class.
- [40:42]
James Kanter
Alberto, what you're saying there is that this drift towards what is again euphemistically in some ways called intergovernmentalism, whereby it is the governments, it is the heads of state and government leading EU policy making, instead of vision and ownership of these policies coming from the European Commission and the Community, if you like. We should see that not just as a pendulum swinging this time between intergovernmentalism and the idea that the European Commission has a lead role. We're seeing more than a pendulum swing. We're seeing kind of something like a revolution. Have I got you right there?
- [41:26]
Alberto Alamano
You're absolutely right. The entire European integration process can be described as a process that has been led by a coexistence of different methods. Certainly there has been this initial Community method that allowed the European Union to be set up. Then there has been intergovernmentalism. When new issues pop up, the governments took the lead again in order to return it to the very same Community institution. And then a third dynamic of parliamentarism has also been introduced. But now we see that is no longer a pure coexistence. We see that intergovernmentalism has changed the nature of the creature to the point that it seems almost impossible to invoke the Community method, the old rules of the game, which are simply no longer capable. And I think the best possible example is a scandal in the past few days or weeks. We see a member of the European Commission who is representing, not the Hungarian government, is representing the European interest, Oliver Varhely.
- [42:27]
James Kanter
Oliver Varhely, Commissioner for Cats and dogs.
- [42:30]
Alberto Alamano
Correct. Well, Commissioner for Public Health, Animal and Animal Welfare today, but also previous Commissioner for enlargement, a very important portfolio.
- [42:39]
James Kanter
And previously the Hungarian ambassador to the European institutions.
- [42:44]
Alberto Alamano
And it's exactly in those dates that Mr. Barheli has been, according to allegations which have been partly already confirmed, has been running a spy network of intelligence service operators that have been acting undercover. They look like diplomats, but in reality they were intelligence operators who have been approaching during years, Hungarian civil servants working for the European institutions in order to obtain information that would have been impossible for the Hungarian government or any other institution, if not the EU themselves, to actually have and gather. And this intelligence gathering made Mr. Bareilly part of this network, because obviously he was the major beneficiary of those information which were then reported back to the capital. This dynamic is absolutely unprecedented because it breaks the principle of independence, which is a pre requirement for anybody serving as a European Commissioner. That means that basically Mr. Barheli, according to these allegations, would have never been eligible to become a European Commissioner in the first place. So, ab initio, he has never been the right person for the job. But since those facts were not unveiled or disclosed, then he is today exercising the prerogative of a European Commissioner. This raises a bigger question. It would be very hypocritical not to recognize that over time commissioners have been playing the double game by reporting some information to their capital. We shouldn't be naive, but obviously here we're talking about a different game. And the Hungarian government, who actually wasn't playing by the rules and was receiving much more information, enabling it to actually have greater power, greater influence in the EU decision making process. So we are really going to the heart of the loyal cooperation which is needed. The idea of mutual trust, without which the EU cannot exist, cannot survive. The entire edifice will crumble if these basic rules of independence are not abide by everybody.
- [44:50]
James Kanter
And this is reinforcing the idea that it's the governments that are running the show, both at the European Council and within the European Commission, and that in fact the European Commission itself, which is meant to stand above these issues, is becoming overtly a tool for governmental interest.
- [45:13]
Alberto Alamano
There is indeed a mission drift of the permanent representations, which do not limit themselves to be representative of the national interest in the institution which has been created for that function, which is the Council. But they are penetrating other institutions, notably the European Commission, in order to play a greater role in somehow hijacking the entire autonomy that the European Union should have, in order to identify a common way of acting and thinking and moving forward. In particular, when other regions of the world are challenging us both from the Inside and the outside.
- [45:56]
James Kanter
Let me just say that I think that ungoverning in Europe may have yet another dimension. But in order to do that, I just want to explain the situation in the US in a little bit more depth. In the US there's this guy, Russ Vogt. He's Trump's head of the Office of Budget Management. He's a zealous Trump loyalist. He's been taking a machine gun to programs and policies. It's Vote who pushed through the elimination essentially of usaid, the US overseas aid arm, and the mass firings of government workers, including in things like special education, you know, for kids with special needs. Vogt is also noteworthy for saying that he wanted civil servants to be put in trauma. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want to put them in trauma. His goal being explicitly to terrorize civil servants. Now, it's not in the same league at all, at least not yet. But here in Europe, we also do see attacks on the EU bureaucracy. That's nothing new in a way, but it's not just coming from ultra libertarians and anti system actors. Take the recent comments from German Chancellor Friedrich Mertz. He said he wants to, quote, put a stick in the wheels of EU lawmaking and thus enforcement. Mertz also said recently that EU integration is essentially over, it's reached its limits and that everything, I repeat everything now depends on cooperation between governments. This leaves the very idea of a European executive a little bit in doubt. So if we're not ungoverning the EU yet, we are kind of getting to a language that gets us closer to that.
- [47:52]
Alberto Alamano
I think attacks to our public administrations and career public servants are multiplying also in Europe. At the national and partly at the European level, they are certainly less visible than in the United States. They are less flamboyantly presented. We see public administrations being or director generals being partly defunded or weakened or captured, but also delegitimized by the same deregulation narrative we have been discussing. If the public servants are those blamed for slowing down the economy and for creating cost, obviously those are going to be the first one to be the object and the target of possible criticism. And the best example, I think, is the very same German Chancellor Frederick Mertz, appointing a doge style czar, Mr. Wilderberg, the former CEO of Seconomy, which owns the electronics retailer Saturn, and whose mission is very similar to the mission letter that Mr. Musk received from President Trump. The Federal Minister for Digital Transformation and Government Modernization Carsten Wildberger Our style of regulation too often stifles innovation before it starts. We must give companies, especially small ones, but not only room to move fast, to test, to learn, and then regulate wisely. For Germany and Europe, the lesson is urgent. We must first give innovation the space to thrive and then ensure that our ethical and social processes evolve and adapt in step with the technology. We must learn to live with ambiguity.
- [49:43]
James Kanter
So Alberto, what should we make of the idea that Brussels can still be a regulatory superpower? With all of this going on, wither the much vaunted Brussels effect. This effect being the influence that the eu, which doesn't have an army or a particularly coherent foreign policy at the best of times, supposedly actually exerts internationally some power by shaping rules and standards that are then adopted globally.
- [50:17]
Alberto Alamano
To me it's extraordinarily self defeating that the European Union is giving up on the exercise of its only superpower. And that superpower is the ability to regulate society and its economic, financial, socioeconomic systems together to actually exercise self determination in a multipolar world. It's very difficult to argue that by caving in on the exercise of regulatory power upon US demand you are attaining the independence of the European Union. I think we are strengthening the dependencies we have vis a vis many other regions of the world. So intellectually, and I would say from a logical standpoint, is very difficult to justify this. And if the US administration is asking us every single day to scrap our rule book, be it on climate or digital, in order to exempt their companies from abiding by those rules to gain access to our market, that means that we have power vis a vis the US companies. How could you justify this power? Endless demand by the US administration to the European Union not to exercise its regulatory autonomy, if not because that's what they are afraid of. And this obviously curtail the credibility of the European Union to do so in the future vis a vis China in relation to the earth minerals. What China is doing to the European Union is also potentially meeting the threshold to trigger this anti cohersion mechanism. And yet even today there doesn't seem to be enough political will to rely on the superpower. The European Union has been exercising, has been training as a muscle over time and when the opportunity arises, they just decide not to use that muscle, not to use that force and not to strike back. It's a deliberate choice that our political leaders are making today.
- [52:28]
James Kanter
That's it for this episode. EU scream is non profit journalism. We might occasionally do partnerships and take advertising. And we're grateful to Full Beam Media for an annual grant. But here's the thing, we need your support to bring you more content more regularly. It's your support that helps us delve into this new, darker era in our politics, into how the EU should be responding, and into the thoughts and experience of people who really know what they're talking about. Small donations to large ones, it's all incredibly appreciated. It also helps when we get a five star rating at Spotify or a review at Apple. Podcasts and passing on episodes to family, colleagues, friends. That's another great way to show support. For more details and for more EU scream do, please visit EU scream.com Thanks for listening.