Protecting the European Way of Life

Putting together a European Commission is no small feat. Every five years, the president-elect has to distribute portfolios determined not by the logic of the Commission’s competences but by the number of member states. In addition, the president has rather limited options in choosing team members, being more or less dependent on candidates chosen by the member states and approved by the European Parliament. It is roughly as if a national football coach had to put together a team of twenty-eight players he hadn’t chosen himself, all of whom had to be on the pitch the whole time. Preferably all in attack. Portfolios in the European Commission often give the impression of being illogical and artificially created. Most influence therefore lies in the hands of the unelected bureaucratic apparatus. From the point of view of the European Union’s democratic legitimacy this is rather questionable, but from the point of view of minimal efficiency, given the EU’s current institutional setup, it is practically inevitable.

The newly appointed President of the European Commission tackled the distribution of roles with zeal and plenty of imagination. We got a proposal for dividing up the commissioners’ responsibilities that sounds like a mix of a TED Talk and Alan Ford. One of the most amusing appointments is the split between the Italian Paolo Gentiloni, responsible for “the economy,” and one of the three executive vice-presidents, Valdis Dombrovskis from Latvia, who will be in charge of “an economy that works for people.” I leave it to your imagination whom the Italian’s portfolio will work for.

In this muddle, our Janez Lenarčič did quite well, with responsibility for crisis management. His portfolio is clear and concrete. Most of Europe’s population understands that crisis management is a portfolio that works for people. Some of the other newly minted commissioners may have considerably more trouble with the clarity and visibility of their mission. We Slovenians, of course, turned our noses up at the crisis management portfolio, which is not surprising. Once again we proved that no one can make us smaller and more insignificant than we can ourselves. In our eyes, a commissioner from Slovenia cannot get an important portfolio, because any portfolio a commissioner from Slovenia gets is by definition unimportant, because it was given to a commissioner from Slovenia.

The most attention and criticism, however, was caused by the name of the portfolio given to the Greek Margaritis Schinas. The former chief spokesperson of the Juncker Commission is to be responsible in the new line-up for “protecting our European way of life.” What irritated some most about this poetic denomination is that the portfolio is to include migration policy. Although von der Leyen denies it, many understand the terminology as a message that the European way of life is most threatened by migrants. Whether von der Leyen’s decision was a deliberate flirtation with the populist far right or just clumsiness is not known, but the fact is that the incoming Commission president is sticking to it for now. In fact, she has little choice. The procedure for appointing the new Commission so far, both because of the choice of candidates by some member states and because of the European Parliament flexing its muscles, gives the impression that the former German defense minister does not have all the reins in her hands.

In the dilemma between a concession to far-right populism and the need to maintain the new Commission president’s political authority, there is also a third way. Von der Leyen can keep the name but give the future commissioner new responsibilities. Instead of migration, which deserves a portfolio of its own, the future commissioner for protecting the European way of life could be put in charge of fighting the anti-liberal populism that threatens this way of life the most.

To help shape the portfolio, I therefore offer a proposed organization chart for a new EU Directorate-General for the Fight against Populism (DG POP OUT), which would come under the remit of the future commissioner for protecting the European way of life.

Directorate for History

To understand the importance of protecting the European way of life, it is good to know how we Europeans arranged our lives in the past. Apart from rare and short-lived periods of peaceful coexistence, the history of the European way of life has been marked above all by the search for ways to take each other’s lives as efficiently as possible. The European project arose from the need to protect Europeans from themselves. As a rule, danger did not come to Europe from outside. The directorate’s task is to prevent historical amnesia and the political manipulation of historical facts aimed at undermining the European way of life. The directorate also includes an officer to assist heads of state, especially in Southeastern Europe, who do not understand why laying wreaths at monuments to collaborators of Nazi criminals is not cool. Could be an intern.

Task Force for Critical Thinking

The European way of life requires critical thinking, knowledge and the ability to make rational decisions, as opposed to populism, which is based on so-called common sense, the term we usually use for the accumulation of all the prejudices and fears people collect by the age of eighteen. Among other things, the task force provides pedagogical and therapeutic help to anti-vaxxers, to those who claim the Earth is not round, and to those who believe that reckless deregulation, privatization and aggressive tax cuts for the wealthiest end up benefiting all sections of the population and society as a whole.

Inter-Service Group for Political Integrity

The mandate of the inter-service group stems from the fact that populism is the opportunistic exploitation of problems, injustices and discontent that, in most cases, were not caused by the populists—for the simple reason that they were not in power—but by those who otherwise never stop talking about Europe and liberal democracy. The aim of the Inter-Service Group for Political Integrity is to help this politics, through more integrity, consistency and principle, stop sawing off the branch it is sitting on.

Think Tank for a Democratic European Architecture

In the name of the people, populism undermines democratic oversight of the executive and narrows the space for democratic decision-making in society. Technocracy without democratic legitimacy and oversight can have a similar effect, even when it acts with the best possible intentions. The Think Tank for a Democratic European Architecture is responsible for bureaucratic self-reflection.

Directorate for Social Justice

The European way of life is based on the liberal democratic values of pluralist democracy, human rights and the democratic rule of law. These values can truly come to life only in a society that is not excessively stratified. The populist attack on the European way of life was largely made possible by the neoliberal economic doctrine that has prevailed over the past thirty years in the politics of many European countries and within the EU institutions. Economic neoliberalism has economically, socially and politically marginalized a good part of the traditional electorate of Europe’s traditional social democratic, centrist and conservative parties and pushed them into the arms of populist extremes. Without social justice, there is no Europe as a political, economic, social and civilizational model. The directorate’s mandate is based on the fact that social justice is not an obstacle to economic success but, on the contrary, a necessary condition for long-term competitiveness. It is the difference between a low-wage economy and a society that is creative, innovative and able to mobilize all its resources fully. If we want to preserve our European way of life, it is not enough just to have a European Union; we need a European Union that works for people.