Laurent Fabius / Flickr, creative commons
The Slovakian Parliament has rejected the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) because of internal power politics. Comparable tactical games have played a significant role in the French rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in 2005, which led to a severe crisis. How can we avoid the abuse of European issues by national politicians in the future?
Apparently, the Slovakian Parliament’s vote wasn’t that important after all. Although before the vote it had been claimed that a refusal to ratify the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) by the last of the 17 Euro-zone countries would be a threat for the future of the said fund, when it was indeed rejected on October 11th, politicians and the media barely took notice. The prospect of a second – positive – vote was raised immediately, and with reason. Less than 48 hours later, the Slovakian government had struck a deal with the main opposition party and the bill was passed without any problems.[1] Why did the oppositional Smer (Direction – Social democracy) party[2] change its mind about the exact same bill from abstention to agreement in such a short time? The answer is domestic politics. As the government had (perhaps unwisely) linked the EFSF vote with a motion of confidence, the negative outcome of the vote led to the fall of Prime minister Iveta Radicova, who had to agree to new general elections in March 2012 in return for Smer’s support.[3] It was pure party tactics, therefore, that led to the rejection of the EFSF bill in the first vote. Strategic games like these can be potentially damaging for the entire EU, as the case of the French rejection of the Constitutional Treaty in 2005 showed quite spectacularly.
In an attempt to explain the negative outcome of the French referendum, Grossmann and Woll (2011)[4] and Crespy (2008)[5] find evidence that a leadership struggle that was going on inside the oppositional Parti Socialiste (PS) played an important role. While the official party line was in favour of the treaty, Laurent Fabius campaigned against the treaty in order to destabilize the party leadership and gain internal support for himself. Thus, the PS gave contradictory cues to their voters and failed to achieve cohesion among their electorate, which caused a split among PS supporters in the referendum and ultimately may have been the pivotal element that led to the failure of the referendum. There are some important differences between this example and the Slovakian case, but both cases show how national politicians try to exploit and thereby abuse European issues for their own power games.
The crisis caused by the rejection of the Constitutional Treaty has eventually been overcome with the Lisbon Treaty. This time around, a second vote of the Slovakian Parliament was sufficient. But in the future, the interests at stake may be even more vital for the whole of Europe and the time may come when party-political tactics or national power struggles have serious impacts on the future of the European Union. Unfortunately, avoiding this danger may prove difficult as long as all vital matters have to be approved and ratified by every member state. Unless we advocate the transformation of the EU into a federal state, which one can believe to be very difficult in the present climate, there are but few possibilities to limit the influence of national politics on European issues. A solution that comes to mind is one many wise people have written about, but nobody has yet found out how to do it: the creation of a European public sphere, a European demos that differentiates between national and European issues. Calling upon everyone to be vigilant and to denounce sudden changes in the opinion about Europe of national politicians or parties may help to avoid an excessive abuse of the European issue.
Katharina Rettig
M.Sc. candidate
European Affairs – Sciences Po Paris
[1] Wearden, Graeme. “Slovakia backs rescue fund by big majority”, Guardian.co.uk, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/oct/13/slovakia-backs-european-financial-stability-facility-extension?INTCMP=SRCH.
[2] Link of the party’s website (in Slovak): http://www.strana-smer.sk/.
[3] Phillips, Leigh. “Slovak parties reach deal on EU bailout fund”, EUobserver.com, http://euobserver.com/19/113919.
[4] Grossman, Emiliano, and Cornelia Woll. “The French debate over the Bolkestein directive”, Comparative European Politics (2011) 9, 344–366.
[5] Crespy, Amandine. “Dissent over the European Constitutional Treaty within the French Socialist Party: Between Response to Anti-Globalization Protest and Intra-Party Tactics“, French Politics (2008) 6, 23–44.
