The purportedly most democratically legitimate President of the European Commission has made a surprising statement, just days before the Greek parliament votes on a new president of the republic. He would not like to see “extremist forces” reaching power in Greece, and would prefer “known faces” who “understand the necessity of European processes”.
There would have been nothing surprising had he spoken as a politician in support of his Greek partners in the European Popular Party – New Democracy – but he has spoken in his institutional capacity. The President of the European Commission cannot tell European citizens, or their representatives, what to decide, it should be the other way around: Greek citizens and their representatives, together with the rest of Europeans, should be telling Juncker what to do. And this must be via the means they have at their disposal, which include national elections in the first instance.
Despite minor changes in the recent elections for the European Parliament, and the appointments at the helm of the Commission, Mr. Juncker is far from acting on a direct mandate from the European people. He should, therefore, take particular care in respecting the processes that yield or are the result of a direct popular mandate – if he believes in democracy, that is. Should Greeks have a desire to change the faces of those that rule their country, it is precisely because they know them. Mr. Juncker should perhaps be thankful that his face, and his intentions, are not known to many Europeans.
If he is to be consistent, Mr. Juncker will be making similar statements on the occasion of elections in France (with respect to the National Front), United Kingdom (with respect to UKIP, and even to Cameron and his intended referendum on EU membership), and Spain (with respect to the new political party Podemos, which is at the top of the opinion polls). If he does not make such statements he will prove, in addition to his already proven poor evaluation of Greeks’ political judgement, a blatant double standard in his approach to big countries versus small ones.
At katoikos.eu we do not support eurosceptic options although we do, of course, uphold their right to exist. But we believe that the European establishment needs to be strongly shaken, if it is to react, get out of its limbo, and stop generating further disenchantment with the orientation the European construction has taken. This can only come from robust messages from the electorates across Europe. This is not an editorial in favour or against the Greek political party, Syriza. This is an editorial in favor of European democratisation. One cannot, as Mr. Juncker just did, imply that citizens do not understand “the necessity of European processes”, especially so when he is the one in charge to make it understood.
The editorial team of Katoikos
