Explaining the European Union

The turbulent events that have shaken the European Union over the last few months have been a double-edged sword for Chris Bickerton. He has been writing a book explaining how the EU works. Events, including Grexit, Brexit and the Syrian refugee crisis, have combined to make the EU “a constantly moving target”, but at the same time they have meant that the public is now interested in the EU in a way it never was before.

Bickerton, a University Lecturer in politics at POLIS and a fellow of Queens’ College, says the fact that the EU is now so high up the news agenda has meant writing the book, The European Union: a Citizen’s Guide, was quite a challenge.

“The European Union has long been seen as quite a technical organisation and for some time people have not been that interested in it,” he says. “Since the financial crisis of 2008, that has really changed. On the one hand, it was difficult to write about such a constantly moving target, but on the other hand it is an advantage that people are interested. It makes it easier to write about it.”

The book, which took him six months to write and is published this week, is part of the relaunched Pelican Series and was commissioned to coincide with the UK’s EU referendum, although it is about the broader issue of how the EU functions.

One of its main goals is to try to explain what the European Union is and what it isn’t as well as how it works, where the power lies and how it makes its decisions.

Bickerton says people have for long felt detached from the EU, something he puts down in part to the failure of journalists and academics specialising in the institution to translate its “impenetrable jargon” into terms that the public can understand.

He says: "People have a very good sense that it is important, but it seems too difficult to grasp and not that interesting. It’s not a mystery. There is a way to solve the riddle which is by not using the jargon. I have tried to write the book in an engaging, accessible way. I’ve also tried to paint a picture of the EU as it is, and not as its supporters or critics might wish it to be.”

He says that many myths have grown up about the EU as a result, some of them based on truth, for instance, that it is distant and its decision-making process is not transparent, and some based on false impressions, for instance, that it is a vehicle for German domination of Europe, something Bickerton says there is no appetite for in Germany.

Similarly, he says, there is a lot of misinformation from both sides around the Brexit debate. This has led people to ask for ‘the facts’, as if they will be decisive. However, Bickerton says knowing, for instance, what the UK spends on the EU - 0.5% of GDP, about £8.5 billion a year - will not help people to decide if that is a good investment or even it is a large or a small amount. That will come down to their political views. “The idea that if you give people the facts people will agree is bogus. It’s very frustrating when academics working on the EU suggest that simply giving the public the facts will settle the debate,” says Bickerton, who will be speaking on 30th May in a panel debate on Europe as part of the Cambridge Series at the Hay Festival. Other speakers include  Dr Madeline Abbas from the Institute of Criminology, Dr Katharina Karcher from the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Brendan Simms, Professor of the History of International Relations. 

It is not only individuals who view the EU in different ways according to their politics - different countries approach it in different ways too, says Bickerton. “For Germany it is about rules and limiting the power of government. For Spain it is about modernity and a cultural opening out. In Poland it is about access to markets whereas for the UK and Denmark it is more of a voluntary transactional affair where you can buy into as much or as little as you want,” he says.

Bickerton himself is not optimistic about the future of the EU and says whatever the vote is in the British referendum, its underlying problems will remain. He likens it to a cartoon figure running towards a cliff, who keeps running even when they are on air before they crash to the ground.

“We are very near to that cliff edge and it’s difficult to see where the possibility to stop us falling over it would come from,” he says.

He cites the 2014 elections for the European Parliament which saw a low turnout in spite of the introduction of a system for connecting the result of the elections to the choice of president of the European Commission. After a big increase in votes for Eurosceptic parties across Europe, there were promises of reforms at the time but nothing has changed since.

He states: “Anyone critical is viewed as a Eurosceptic, as wanting to get rid of it. The EU may come tumbling down as institutions can usually only embrace reform if they are confident about their own existence, when the foundations are solid. The EU is not in a situation where its foundations are solid. It rests on the willingness of member states to respect the rules they create. If they are not willing to respect the rules, it will come apart. That said, the EU is so important to the way national governments rule that they will do everything they can to keep it in place.”

He points to the Schengen agreement, which he says is “dead in the water” and to calls from the Dutch for a referendum on the TTIP agreement as examples of member states beginning to break rank. Brexit would be another example and "a devastating but not necessarily a mortal blow".

Bickerton thinks it is time to focus on whether there are alternative forms of cooperation between European states which could work better and be more compatible with national democracy.

He adds: “It was very interesting to write my book at this moment in the EU's history to explain how it works and to provide the foundations for considering whether there might be better ways that European countries can collaborate with one another."