Foreign Affairs article by Clear Europe Managing Director Gareth Harding on how to win over euroskeptics and win back the trust of European voters.
The European Union’s democratic deficit has rarely been on clearer display than on May 26, the day after polls closed for elections to the European Parliament. Despite the fact that forces hostile to the EU had made enormous gains, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso announced that the pro-austerity status quo had “won once again.” In a narrow sense, Barroso was correct: pro-Europeans did manage to win more than three-quarters of the seats in the parliament, the EU’s only directly elected body. In four of the union’s six largest member states — Germany, Italy, Poland, and Spain — the country’s ruling party topped the poll. And the motley crew of europhobes who were elected to the next parliament are united only in their disunity. Read More
