The EU’s scurrilous anti-democratic dealings prove once again that it is beyond reform

There has been plenty of earnest talk since the financial crisis about reform and facing up to the challenge from the populist and authoritarian right. The appointments have shown that most of it was hot air

There is only one positive thing that could be said about the recent top EU appointments: the crucial posts went to women. Germany’s defence minister Ursula von der Leyen will be the next European Commission president, while Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF and former French finance minister, will lead the ECB. If parliament approves their nominations, the EU will gain points in gender representation. And that is it.

With the exception of Lagarde, all appointees are political mediocrities and international unknowns, while some are even tainted with scandals. Suffice it to list the others: Charles Michel, Belgium’s prime minister, who will become president of the European Council; Josep Borrell, Spain’s foreign minister, who will become the head of EU foreign policy; and David Sassoli, an Italian MEP, who will become president of the European parliament.

They typically come from the centre-right and centre-left that have jointly run the affairs of the EU for decades. All are stalwarts of a political class that has been the pillar of harsh neoliberal economic policies in Europe and across the world. Their nomination confirms that EU politics is marked by immobility and is bereft of ideas.

In the European elections in May both the centre-right and the centre-left suffered defeats, although they remained the largest groupings in parliament. The results reflected a palpable sense of popular frustration across the EU due to weak growth, severe inequality, immigration tensions, and failure of representative democracy.

There is no doubt that the EU project has faltered since the global economic crisis of 2007-9. During that period there has been plenty of earnest talk about reform and facing up to the challenge from the populist and authoritarian right. The appointments have shown that most of it was hot air.

In fact, things are even worse. The appointments were supposed to confirm the victory of the Spitzenkandidat system for the European Commission, injecting a much-needed dose of democracy into the workings of the EU. The system was first tried in 2014, aiming to replicate the normal democratic practice of national parliaments, whereby the head of government is selected by the party with the parliamentary majority. The party groupings in the European parliament would propose candidates, and parliament would elect the new president of the Commission. That would presumably begin to plug the well-known “democratic deficit” of the EU.

The system now lies in ruins, proof of the impossibility of normal democratic practice within the EU. The potential appointees of party groupings were entirely ignored, and the actual appointments resulted after cynical horse-trading within the Council of ministers. The true balance of power in the EU was made abundantly clear: member states rule the roost and parliament is very much secondary. There is no basis for normal democratic politics within EU mechanisms, at least as that is usually understood. Democratic politics in Europe is always and without exception national.

As for the horse trading, it appears that the Franco-German axis has lost much of its effectiveness. Germany is clearly the dominant partner, although it suffers from domestic political disarray as Angela Merkel is on her way out. The German establishment is fully aware of the need to confront the existential crisis of the EU, but also knows that German industrial exporters are loath to bring major changes to EU economic structures that serve them so well.

France, on the other hand, is steadily losing economic and political power to Germany, despite the grandiloquent effusions of Mr Macron. The country finds it difficult to compete globally, except perhaps in finance and luxury goods, and does not have the power to bring about major change in the EU.

Not surprisingly, the EU is drifting economically and socially, while regressing politically, as is manifested by the appointments. Meanwhile, it continues to fall dramatically behind the USA and China in the competitive struggle over new technologies that will determine the future of the global economy.

Two lessons from this sorry affair are clear for the UK. The first is that, as the new deadline for Brexit approaches, Britain will be confronted by an EU that is certainly not the confident giant some imagine it to be. The second applies more specifically to those who are furiously agitating for the Labour party formally to declare in favour of remaining inside and reforming the EU.

The proposed appointments are still more evidence that it is politically impossible to reform the transnational juggernaut of Brussels. Remain and Reform is a wild goose chase. If the aim is to achieve economic transformation in favour of the many together with democratic renewal, Britain will have to mobilise its own resources.

Costas Lapavitsas is a professor of economics at SOAS university and a former Syriza MP in Greece. His book ‘The Left Case Against the EU’ was released last year