European Parliament

All’s well that ends well. There is a temptation to sum up the resolution of the European Union’s personnel-finding troubles in such a Shakespearean way.

If you are a New Zealander watching this strange post-EU elections process with a sense of disbelief from afar, do not be too puzzled: Most Europeans do not understand it either.

“I’d never join a club that would accept me as a member,” says Woody Allen’s character in Annie Hall. With the European Union, it is the other way around: The EU would reject new members as anti-democratic as itself.

Juncker has not even started his new job as President of the European Commission yet and he is already showing why there was so much resistance to his appointment, particularly in economically liberal and conservative circles. In the pursuit of his policies, he is free of any guiding economic principles and indifferent to legal constraints.

The problems with forming the European Commission are manifold, but there is only one written rule: Every EU member state will be represented by one commissioner, nominated by national governments. The difficulties begin once you realise that there are numerous unwritten rules to be considered when putting together the new Commission.

What is democracy? Well, usually democracy is when the people vote in an election and the winner then happens to form a government. It is as simple as that. And what is European Union democracy? It is when the people vote in an election and, regardless of the outcome, German chancellor Angela Merkel decides on the next president of the European Commission

By all accounts, these European elections have shaken political landscapes in many countries. Over the coming years, we will find out what these developments will mean in practice. However, the fragile consensus that hitherto governed Europe — closer integration and bailouts against austerity promises — will be hard to maintain.

Effective political decision-making has never really been the EU’s strength in the euro crisis. A closer look at the mode of the forthcoming European elections does not indicate that this is likely to change anytime soon. And the grand “European elections” are really quite a farcical exercise in the way they are conducted.