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The Danish Vote and the European Crisis
Dec. 4, 2015 The Danish rejected a series of changes to Denmark’s laws in order to bring it into
compliance with EU requirements, reflecting a growing challenge for the union.
By George Friedman
Danish voters have dealt another blow to European integration. It is a small blow, but in this
environment a significant one. The issue involved Danish membership in Europol, the European
Union’s police agency. Denmark had been exempt from some of the regulator requirements of
membership back in the 1990s. The Danish government decided that modifications needed to
be made in Danish law in order to bring it into compliance with EU requirements. The impact of
these changes would have been to change to some degree the autonomy of Denmark’s selfpolicing. The government sought to get approval for 22 separate modifications in Denmark’s
relationship to Europol, all quite obscure and of no great urgency. It was the European process
grinding away. However, the government, which wanted to pass the laws through parliament
without subjecting them to direct public approval, wound up with a referendum on the whole
process, and lost. More than 70 percent of the public opposed the modification.
There were two parts for this outcome. One part was that the trust in European institutions has
declined severely over recent years. The idea of aligning Denmark’s internal policing with the
demands of a European agency meant a loss of control over their own policing, as well as
potential intrusions into Danish policies and inevitably, since this is policing, into some of
Denmark’s criminal laws and processes.
But there was a deeper reason. The changes appeared minor, were highly technical and poorly
understood. This very opacity represents one of the challenges to a united Europe. The
European bureaucracy is breathtaking in its complexity. Like most bureaucracy, it does not
appear to be answerable to anyone simply because even senior politicians don’t know always
what they are doing and, most important, very minor laws have booby traps in how the
bureaucracy can interpret them. What appears to be a minor adjustment sometimes turns out to
be an enormous power grab by Brussels and, worse, a redefinition of how things are done. The
very fact that the laws were said to be minor was the problem. It was difficult to understand
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precisely what the 22 laws meant and impossible to predict how Brussels would interpret them.
The problem of sovereignty is complex. It is not simply a question of nations stubbornly clinging
to their authority. The EU and its administrative structure is inherently opaque. Its opacity
comes from the complexity of its founding documents, and the complexity of those documents
derive from two facts. First, they were essentially treaties negotiated by many governments and
the resulting compromises rendered the documents so complex they couldn’t be understood.
Second, and more important, the EU was trying to do the impossible. On the one hand, it was
trying to integrate members under a single bureaucratic structure and harmonize the
constituent nations. On the other hand, it was trying to preserve the sovereignty of its individual
members. Combining all these factors created a system of administration that would make
Washington appear the height of transparency. The very process that created the EU, the
compromises between nations and between national sovereignty and European integration
made the administration of Europe a nightmare. It was not that Europe’s bureaucrats were more
fiendish than other bureaucrats. It was that their job was to manage the unmanageable — an
incoherent founding. The bureaucrats, genuinely dedicated to the task of administering the
apparatus, were constantly encountering regulations that contradicted each other, or that were
so vague in the compromise that had been reached, that their intent was absent. The
bureaucracy filled the vacuum that diplomacy and intellectual incoherence created.
All of this became evident in the 2008 crisis and its aftermath, and it was compounded by the
fact that, being a new entity, the EU lacked the oral tradition, the unwritten protocols
collectively called political tradition, to draw on. The EU faces a crisis not extraordinary in its size
or occurrence. Financial crises happen regularly under industrial capitalism. But the
bureaucracy’s authority was hidden in a mass of regulations that were unknowable by any one
person and had not had the time to be tested in courts that would flush out the inconsistencies
and compel decisions. Indeed, many of those decisions were not in the hands of European
parliamentary members, but rather in the ministries of more than two dozen countries. The
system was either paralyzed or the bureaucrats had to freelance.
And, therefore, the distrust of the bureaucracy swelled. Brussels seemed to be generating
regulations that were fundamentally changing important matters, and was using small
regulations, apparently innocuous, to solve extremely complex problems. It was using what it
had to try to do what it taught had to be done. The European system recoiled from the
bureaucracy and power flowed back to the capitals of nation-states. Europe shifted from
integration to every man for himself.
We see this in the immigration and terrorism crisis, which have merged. Europe is moving to
abandon the principle that its internal borders have no more meaning than those between
American states. Instead, EU members are resurrecting the old internal borders and passing
authority of managing them back to the nation-states. It is said to be a temporary measure,
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lasting perhaps two years, but in fact, nothing is more permanent than a temporary measure.
Just as Europe did not have a unified response to the economic problem, it has moved even
further from unity. The more important the issue, the less tendency there has been to allow
Brussels to manage it.
It is in this context that the Danish vote is to be taken. Even with the best will, no one in
Denmark could be certain how the new laws on policing would be interpreted by the
bureaucracy. They were being asked to approve of measures called minor, whose meaning,
viewed naively, might have no relationship to how they might ultimately be administered. And
given the opacity of Brussels, there was no system guaranteeing Denmark the right to interpret
later what they had agreed to.
The Danish vote shows the depth of unease with the European project. It is not simply Greece
that resists, nor Britain, whose own referendum will be defining. But even a tiny country, not
suffering the grievous problems of southern Europe and closely linked to Germany, lacks enough
confidence in a European process that it will block the EU by overwhelming numbers, rather
than take a bet that it would all work out.
It is in the Danish vote where you can see most clearly what is tearing Europe apart. The
manner in which Europe was created has generated a complexity that is beyond understanding
and a bureaucracy that, no matter how it tries to follow the law, must fill in the blanks on its
own. The Danes no longer feel they can risk that happening. As this feeling spreads in Europe,
and the borders re-emerge — and the signs saying “passport control” sprout on Europe’s
highways – Europe has reached a point from which there is no turning back. No one will vote for
a simple constitution of a few pages that creates a more perfect union. They do not agree on
fundamental things. And few are prepared to allow Europe to continue as it is, except for the
most committed Europhile. And this is the core crisis of Europe, driving everything else.
Nationalism vs. Internationalism
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Nationalism has influenced recent elections across the world. Learn how
this resurging trend will play out in the coming years with our free
special report Nationalism vs. Internationalism. Click the button below to
claim it now!
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