What's Wrong With The European Union & How to Fix It.

• Author: Ghinea, Cristian
• Position: Book review

What's Wrong With The European Union & How to Fix It

Simon Hix, Polity Press, Cambridge, UK, 2008

However different they are, John McCain and Barack Obama have a common message: unifying a divided America. Both candidates aim to come across the aisle for less divisive politics. This sort of message seems to become a mantra for politicians and scholars. And yet Simon Hix swims against the current in his newly released book 'What's Wrong With The European Union & How to Fix It'. Hix analyses the political system of EU as a classical case of a consensualist democratic model. And he points out precisely to this consensualism as being the main problem of the EU. The political game at European level needs a real stake, with clear winners and clear losers.

Author of a well known study text about the political system of EU and a reputed scholar of European studies, Hix offers the readers a spectacular melange between academic research, political realism and bold anticipation literature. He starts by underpinning the historic achievements of the European Union. Sustainable peace and internal market went further than many hoped 50 years ago. But that era has ended in the early '90s. In that sense, EU could be considered a victim of its own success. Given its achievements, what is wrong with it? Why has decreased the trust of Europeans in that project with 20% in the last decade only? Could it be the lack of information about EU? The European bureaucracy prefers to blame the lack of information for its unpopularity and pays for propaganda like activities that bore the public. Actually, the citizens are more informed today about the EU than in the past. Why is that? Hix says that EU's problem is deeper than bad PR: 'Citizens who perceive that they gain new economic opportunities from market integration in Europe tend to support the EU, while citizens that perceive that market integration threatens their economic interests tend to oppose the EU' (64). This example illustrates the Hix's argument at its best. Given the nature of the problem, more politics could help EU in gaining popular legitimacy: 'In democratic political systems, if a citizens loses from a particular policy or suffers economic hardship, the citizen does not blame the political system as a whole, but rather blames the government of the day. In the EU, in contrast, those who lose from economic integration or from policy reform simply blame the EU system a whole, as they do not perceive a...