In the past 6 months, about 270 millions EU citizens (or 60% of total EU population) have faced major voting opportunities. In the five countries where those elections or referenda took place a similar pattern is clearly emerging. In cases of legislative elections, the ‘winning’ political party does not represent more than 20% of the electorate thanks to major abstention and a growing dispersion of the votes. In cases of referenda, the parties in power and representing the ‘usual’ alternative (Conservative or Socialist) were largely defeated, with a very high voters turn-out.

These facts are strong evidences of a fast growing divorce between EU citizens and their national political elites. The good news for European integration is that it is now obviously a trans-European trend. At least if economies are not yet converging, public opinions seem to be doing so. The bad news though for the EU and for the national political classes is that the latter are getting more and more weakened by the European integration process both in terms of credibility and in terms of consistency , while for the EU it means that the sole source of its democratic legitimacy is rapidly fading away.

Such an evolution was foreseen by some for many years. Now it becomes an obvious reality at a surprisingly rapid pace and starts to open the eyes of large sectors of the European society, from business to Ngo, while ‘usual suspects’ of politics and media keep on refusing to look at it. They prefer to stick to analysis based upon alleged ‘stupidity’ and ‘fear’ of voters, rather than to put in question their very own existence and legitimacy. One of the best example of that state of denial by most opinion leaders of the Euro-national political scenes is the following analysis of these recent electoral ‘shocks’ which one may find in almost everything single dominant media: ‘The European voters are afraid of changes’.
The Euro-national elites are repeating such a statement like a mantra. And it is indeed a statement, not an explanation. Citizens are on the contrary giving all the signs that they do expect changes: they vote for alternative parties, they kick-out the incumbents, they say ‘No’ to the ruling elites, they refuse to vote. All that does not look like the usual features of passivity, fatalism, conservatism which are linked with the very idea of ‘refusing changes’. It rather looks like the attitude of people trying to convey a message and not finding the right way to do so. So they try different channels, different methods to pass it over. Maybe they want some more radical changes that what is proposed to them? Maybe they do not believe that the proposed changes are valid or will produce any results? Maybe they do not trust those proposing the ‘changes’? Maybe they want to change all those who currently propose them those ‘changes’? All those options seem to be much more consistent with what one can hear in the streets of EU cities and villages rather than the ‘Europeans refuse changes’ making the headlines of major medias.

For this reason, this sentence ‘Europeans refuse change’ does indeed look more like a mantra than an explanation. It aims at reinforcing one’s self belief, at averting a spell, at refusing to face a worrying reality. Far from being an analysis of the current trends affecting European voters, the conviction of the Euro-national elites that citizens refuse change is for them a way to prevent any further analysis which could lead to a frightening discovery: their fellow citizens, their voters are simply fed up with the way they do politics, the way they talk or write about politics, the way they refuse to acknowledge that they have lost most of the powers to change anything but details. EU citizens just want their leaders, their parties, their media pundits to adapt to XXIst century’s Europe where powers and issues are at least trans-European, when the elites are still national.

In a ‘calm, cool and collected’ way they are trying to convey this message by all available democratic means. But if the Euro-national elites, using their monopoly of control over political institutions and major medias, keep on denying to this very simple reality a right to exist and modify the European political fabric, then one must consider that the EU will enter a very dangerous downward spiralling process, which could lead its democratic fabric to a breaking point.

Nobody has ever played with the common feelings and convictions of something like the EU public opinion and its about 500 millions components. It is still in a process of maturation and could very well start to react as ‘teenagers’ often do, loosing patience and breaking down rules and order. Now that it gives clear signs of awakening, I am not sure that the EU public opinion will indeed show much patience. In European history such ignored call have always led to the worst of xenophobia and dictatorship.

If one thinks that such dangers do not belong to our common European future, just look at who is now becoming the second political force in a growing number of EU countries. Those forces are the seeds of what may fast become one of the most dangerous trans-European political force, ‘national-europeism’ .

That’s why we are building Newropeans at a fastening speed. A new force, democratic and necessarily trans-European has to rapidly emerge on the European political scene if one wants to avoid the dangers of 500 million citizens feeling that nobody is listening at their call for changes in democratic leadership.

Franck Biancheri
Paris (France)