The School of Public Policy hosted the “Rolling Back the Rollback” Forum on April 7 to analyze recent events and developments in a number of European countries that give rise to serious concerns about the stability of democracy in parts of the continent and pose growing challenges to the prospects of open societies in Europe.
“This conference has a strong affirmative message,” said CEU President and Rector John Shattuck, who gave opening remarks. “It's a message that carries with it not only an analysis involving democracy in various places, but looking at new approaches and strategies. Today we are in a new contest between fears of change and hope for the future. That contest has intensified and CEU is in the middle of it, and our mission is more urgent than any time since the University was founded. We are on the front lines of this contest over democracy and that's where we belong.”
SPP Founding Dean Wolfgang Reinicke pointed out that headlines fill European papers asking what has gone wrong with democracy and noting that “democracy has earned as much praise as it's seen disenchantment” over the last 20 years in Europe. He stressed that changes regarding freedom of the press and the rise of xenophobia, corruption and an erosion of trust in government cannot be ignored. On a positive note, Reinicke emphasized that dynamism is necessary and that changes can be healthy if they replace ineffective democratic mechanisms. The Rollback conference was set up to be a forum for reflection and ideas to address these major issues.
CEU Trustee Kati Marton, a native Hungarian, chaired the first panel and opened with a discussion on the previous day's national elections within the context of the conference theme. “Hungary is not famous for its optimism,” she said. “As someone who stood in Heroes Square in 1989 [when communism fell], I have to express my surprise that in the intervening 25 years Hungary has become a highly questionable democracy if it is, in fact, even still a democracy. Hungary is such a perfect laboratory case for democracy under threat; nowhere else have democratic institutions been so systematically weakened.”
Both the head of CEU's Department of Legal Studies Renáta Uitz and Professor Béla Greskovits of CEU's Department of International Relations and European Studies pointed out the low level of voter turnout, which was the lowest since 1998. “For some reason, the voters in Hungary did not feel the need to go and cast a vote,” Uitz said. “The two-thirds majority – if it succeeds* – will be based on the votes of two million people, which is not two-thirds of the Hungarian population.”
Uitz, a specialist in comparative constitutional law, said that the Hungarian story fits into a broader story of constitutions being weakened in Europe and the U.S. “This is partly due to the fact that constitutions have become victims of their own success. The problem is that national constitutions don't really have an alternative that could constrain them. Currently you have gentleman's agreements, only the people who participate aren't gentleman.” She noted the example of the post-9/11 changes to the U.S. Constitution that were accepted almost “without protest” within an atmosphere of fear and paranoia. “In Central and Eastern Europe, certain things were necessary to enable membership in groups like NATO,” Uitz said. “Instead of amendments being a reflection of the sprit of the country...they became politics as usual.”
G. M. Tamás, visiting professor in CEU's Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology believes the fate of Hungarian democracy has been decided by the way in which Prime Minister Orbán's government has been seen by the middle class, most of whom feel they were the beneficiaries of certain economic policies. This is, according to Tamás, at the expense of the nation's vast number of poor. “A cold civil war is going on against the powerless and the poor,” Tamás said. “It's an elitist and statist government that doesn't want to win hearts. Orbán isn't a baby-kissing politician. He doesn't want to be loved and he isn't. He is respected and feared and followed.”
During the second panel, experts debated whether or not the EU serves as a guardian of democracy. The moderator, Andre Wilkens of the Mercator Centre Berlin, also asked the audience to participate using remote-controlled voting devices to weigh in on questions like “Who should monitor the state of democracy in the EU?” with immediate results being reported on a large screen. The audience and the panel experts were leery about the EU's role as a custodian of democratic principles.
Franziska Brantner, member of the German Bundestag and foreign affairs spokesperson for Alliance ‘90/The Greens, said that the EU is, in a way, a guardian of democracy because countries must become democratic and follow certain steps in order to join it. “We have some mechanisms to punish those countries that go off track,” she noted. “However, as a member of the EU Parliament, I was always amazed at how much we looked at budgets but didn't look so much at human rights issues.”
Heather Grabbe, director of both the Open Society European Policy Institute and EU Affairs for the Open Society Foundations, does not believe that the EU has ever or will ever be a guardian of democracy. “Which democracy do we believe in?” she asked “There is a huge variety across the Union. The EU cannot play a role as individual countries have to decide for themselves. Where they can play a role is in good governance and respect for fundamental rights.”
Referring back to the discussion during the first panel, Jan-Werner Müller, professor of politics at Princeton University said that the real issue is “constitutional capture.” He believes that the EU is in a position to judge whether or not a country is a democracy but sees weakness in the process of joining the Union. “The Copenhagen Criteria (conditions to enter the EU) are deeply flawed,” he said. “I think these should be our starting point. Of course the EU is in a position to decide whether or not a country is a democracy but we need to make a system that is more accountable.”
And what of the mechanisms to enforce democratic principles once a country is in the EU? Grabbe said there is no middle ground when it comes to punishments – only ones that amount to an ineffective slap on the wrist or a “nuclear option,” meaning stripping a country of its voting rights. “Material sanctions are based on an extremely narrow legal basis. There aren't sanctions on the democracy issue that can be used. There is a very, very high threshold to remove country voting-rights and it has to be agreed upon unanimously. They are not likely to use it, number one, for fear of it being used against them at some point. There is a suggestion of an interim step, but it's still too high a threshold. Member states are worried about democracy but not worried enough to do anything that might rebound on themselves.”
In general, “sanctions don't work in a club and the EU is a club,” Grabbe noted. She recommended “hugging EU nations tight,” in other words, making sure that national governments cannot just go off and do their own thing. She suggested including transparent proceedings that allow the public to be in on decision-making. She also proposed giving life to the European Charter of Fundamental Rights, but calls it “soft law.” András Jakab, director of the Institute for Legal Studies at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, disagreed and said the very key is the Charter. “It's not soft law, but real law,” he said. “The question is how and when it can be applied. The Charter should be applied also in domestic cases, if there is a systematic abuse of human rights. EU law has primacy over national law. Ordinary courts should have the possibility to rely on the charter to overrule national laws.”
Several experts agreed that country monitoring could be helpful, where commissions can give detailed reports that allow a wider public debate. “I think naming and shaming is important,” said Brantner. “It's my right as a German to have a democratic government, or your right as a Hungarian, etc. The EU is supposed to be there to defend that.”
Mathieu Lefevre, executive director of New Cities Foundation, led the final panel on digital democracy and its inherent opportunities and limitations. “It's worth starting this off by looking into the past,” he said. “I think democracy has always been in crisis. If you look at the 20th century, there have been seven or eight major crises. I'm hopeful that we'll get out of the current crisis and, looking at the past, democracy has always gotten out of these crises.”
While concerned, Tim Dixon, managing director of Purpose Europe, still has hope the future. “I share a lot of the concerns that have been expressed today. I think the institutional state of democracy and political parties is weak,” he said. “At the same time, I have optimism because there are a lot of tactics and innovation that still haven't been tried yet. Often it is the breakdown of traditional institutions that create opportunity for innovation.”
Dixon recently worked on the campaign to raise the minimum wage for fast-food workers in New York City, an initiative for which their spokesperson was a real single mother struggling to raise her family. Dixon recommended concrete tactics in using digital media to strengthen civil society, including having a strong narrative and authentic voices. He also believes issues should be built around people's identities in order to foster a personal stake in the movement. Making it easy to do something for the cause – like host a house party – is another good way to get people involved, he said. And, finally, he recommends unusual tactics that will draw attention, such as the group in Brazil that moved dozens of toilets to the beach to emphasize that, even though everyone pays for public utilities, some of the poorest in the city don't have functioning sanitation facilities. “Do something that has something of a rebel energy to it,” he urged.
After the panels concluded, panelists and other participants broke off into working groups. Their conclusions and recommendations will soon be published in a public policy paper. The conference was supported by the Open Society Initiative For Europe (Open Society Foundations), and the Robert Bosch Stiftung (Robert Bosch Foundation).
*The conference was held the day after the election, before confirmation of the final results.