Is democracy in Europe challenged?

Marilisa Anastasopoulou discusses with Steven Erlanger, chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe for The New York Times, about democracy in Europe today.

Athens is the birthplace of democracy. 25 centuries later, freedom and democracy are the foundations of the European project. But there are always challenges and threats.  As Ursula von Der Leyen said at the Athens Democracy Forum “We started to take democracy for granted. …And it is every generation's task to fight for democracy.”

Democracy in what form? The invasion of Russia in Ukraine angered every man who has liberal and democratic thought. The democratic West provides unwavering support to Ukraine against autocratic Russia.  

What is happening however with democracy in Europe? Does it suffice to have governments that are democratically elected, but have no respect for the rights of the minorities, like Meloni in Italy?  Are we contempt when countries within the EU, like Hungary and Poland, are electoral autocracies? When parties with extreme ideologies are being elected? Can we separate ideology from the day-to-day politics?

And what about today’s youth - that is primarily concerned with climate change ? how do they perceive democratic institutions? How can they be involved in the democratic process?


Στην Αθήνα γεννήθηκε η δημοκρατία. 25 αιώνες μετά η ελευθερία και η δημοκρατία αποτελούν τη βάση της ενωμένης Ευρώπης. Όπως, όμως, είπε και η Ούρσουλα Φον ντερ Λαίεν στο Athens Democracy Forum «Αρχίσαμε να θεωρούμε τη δημοκρατία δεδομένη…και είναι χρέος κάθε γενιάς να πολεμήσει για τη δημοκρατία».

Ποια μορφή όμως δημοκρατίας; Η εισβολή της Ρωσίας στην Ουκρανίας ταρακούνησε κάθε άνθρωπο με δημοκρατική και φιλελεύθερη σκέψη. Η δημοκρατική Δύση στηρίζει απερίφραστα την Ουκρανία απέναντι στην απολυταρχική Ρωσία.

Όμως τι συμβαίνει με τη δημοκρατία εντός της «ανεπτυγμένης» Ευρώπης. Μας αρκεί να έχουμε μία δημοκρατικά εκλεγμένη κυβέρνηση, η οποία όμως δεν συμμερίζεται τα δικαιώματα των μειονοτήτων, όπως η Μελόνι στην Ιταλία;  Είμαστε ικανοποιημένοι όταν  χώρες- μέλη της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης, όπως η Ουγγαρία και η Πολωνία, χαρακτηρίζονται ως εκλογική απολυταρχία; Όταν εκλέγονται κόμματα με ακραία ιδεολογία; Μπορούμε να διαχωρίσουμε την ιδεολογία από την άσκηση πολιτικής;


Οι σημερινοί νέοι, οι οποίοι δίνουν πρωταρχική σημασία στην κλιματική αλλαγή, πώς αντιλαμβάνονται τις δημοκρατικές διαδικασίες και θεσμούς; Με ποιο τρόπο τους αφορά η δημοκρατία, όπως έχει εδραιωθεί τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες;


Ο κ. Erlanger μοιράστηκε τις σκέψεις του και κατέληξε ότι «Αλλά εξακολουθώ να πιστεύω μαζί με τον Τσόρτσιλ ότι η δημοκρατία, από όλους τους πιθανούς τρόπους διακυβέρνησης, κάνει πολλά λάθη, αλλά στο τέλος απαντά με τον καλύτερο τρόπο στις προσδοκίες των ανθρώπων για μια καλή και ισότιμη ζωή».

Transcript

[00:00:06.990] - Marilisa Anastasopoulou

The word democracy comes from two Greek words that mean people "demos" and rule "kratos". The ancient Greeks were the first to create a democracy. Twenty five centuries later freedom and democracy are the foundations of the European project. But there are always challenges and threats. As Ursula von der Leyen said at the Athens Democracy Forum"For more than 70

[00:00:32.020] – Ursula von der Leyen 

years, our continent has marched incessantly towards democracy. We started to take democracy for granted. Today, we realize that history does not always move in a straight line. There are setbacks and comebacks and it is every generation's task to fight for democracy."

[00:01:01.610] - Marilisa Anastasopoulou

We're in Athens, the birthplace of democracy. The Athens Democracy Forum is taking place as we speak, and of course, our discussion will be about democracy today. We have a special guest with us, Steven Langer, who is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe for The New York Times. Steven, thank you so much for spending the time with us today.

[00:01:22.990] - Steven Erlanger

Thank you.

[00:01:26.060] - Marilisa Anastasopoulou

We have a broad theme that is "the end of democracy as we know it", and we're going to see developments in Europe, focusing in Europe, and see how democracy works. I'm going to start with the general, the broader view that is Russia invading Ukraine, which came as a shock. We have many events that challenge democracy. We have countries like Poland and Hungary that, as you also wrote, are an electoral autocracy, according to the EU. We have challenges here and there from many places. Melano was recently voted. Is it a trend towards the right wing, towards populism, towards extremism? Is there a problem? Where is Europe heading?

[00:02:13.390] - Steven Erlanger

Well, I think Europe is heading to the right. I think populism is coming back partly because of the Ukraine war, COVID and the Ukraine war and the big debts that all these governments have incurred, first for COVID and now to help Ukraine. And obviously, Russia has been playing energy politics. So prices are going up and people are worried. They're worried about how to pay for heating, they're worried about how to pay their rent, how to pay mortgages. So this tends to result in anger against the governments who are supposed to protect them from all these problems. But I don't think this is the end of democracy. I think democracy is about listening to people's grievances. It's about having a debate in a society. It's about voting, and very often it's about voting the government out so you can try somebody new. And that's not antidemocratic. I mean, people seem to think that if Meloni is elected in Italy or the Sweden Democrats get the largest part of the conservative coalition this is the end of democracy. No, it is democracy and the votes reflect real grievances. What governments need to do is not patronize people who are voting for these parties, but listen to them and try to respond to their concerns.

[00:03:51.420] - Marilisa Anastasopoulou

So you just mentioned that we need to respond to people's concerns, and I'm going to go to Italy. And Meloni, that you also mentioned, Meloni was elected despite her ideology, and not because of her ideology. This is how I understand it, precisely because the Italians right now are looking at their pocket and the fact that energy prices have gone up and so on and so forth. Nonetheless, Meloni, a woman of many talents, undoubtedly has some roots or some relationship,  some admiration to fascism or neo-fascism, put it any way you want it. Can we separate ideology from real life? Politics is not relevant anymore.

[00:04:31.240] - Steven Erlanger

Well, I think we have to separate real life from history, and history is real. Her party does have roots in Mussolini's fascism. It does have roots in neo- fascism. She has distanced herself from many of these issues. She grew up poor, she was an outsider. But she's also been in government. She's been in the Berlusconi government before, so she's already been normalized in a way. And she is also, unlike her coalition partners, Berlusconi and Salvini, she has no interest in Putin, she has no love of Putin. She's pro Nato, she supports Ukraine in its fight against Russia. And though years ago she talked about Italy leaving the Euro currency, something Greeks will know something about, she's pulled back from that. And I think Brussels will have real constraints on what she does because of the large sums involved in the COVID Recovery Fund. Italy needs that money. It's already 1% of GDP this year. The next two or three years, it's 10,5% percent of GDP. So she has no real interest in having a big fight with Brussels, or given Italy's mountain debt, which is 150% of GDP, having a fight with the markets, she's not going to have a Greek one fight with the markets.

[00:06:09.870] - Steven Erlanger

So I think it will be okay. But people are worried because if in the EU, which of course, as we know basically by consensus, if she lines up with Orban, if she lines up with Peace Party in Poland, if the Slovak government falls, which it may do, it's much harder then to have a Europe that works. If you have four or five countries, especially a founding member, a big country like Italy, which are opposed to the European consensus, that's the problem.

[00:06:49.080] - Marilisa Anastasopoulou

And in general, another concern relevant to that is that her general ideology doesn't align well with the European values, like abortion rights, minority rights, what happens with immigrants. So there is another concern that comes to the core of democracy and the liberal values. That OK, she has a more moderate, more modest face right now. She puts up this face and maybe she will follow it. But what if, at the end of the day, the whole tendency goes into governments that do the job, manage the public finance, but then again, when it comes to liberal values, they're totally against, as we saw in the US now with abortion rights.

[00:07:37.390] - Steven Erlanger

Your point is very well taken. I think her concentration will be on domestic issues, particularly immigration. There's a kind of deep, rather quiet, but anti Islamist view there. I think you're right about questions about gender rights and so on. And these will be watched very carefully. What Europeans say to me, they know two things about Italy: one is prime ministers don't have very much power and two, the governments don't last very long. So we'll see people are wary, they're worried. But let's see what actually happens. I think it's best because if you start pushing too soon, as Ursula von der Leyen did of, threatening that Europe has tools to use, you may drive her and her party and her allies into a position that Europe doesn't want. That she may not necessarily normally go to.

[00:08:49.630] - Marilisa Anastasopoulou

But it has to do with the more it's not the idea that pushing her and putting her in the corner...Of course you're right. But it's a more general concern that, as you said in the beginning, because of the COVID crisis and now because of the prices going up with the war in Ukraine, we have the west aligned together, NATO, EU, the US supporting the sovereignty of Ukraine. But this will result also unfortunately into having very high prices, people reacting, like with the Yellow Vests.  So at end of the day, this will create a spiral effect, let's put like that, into the whole system. That's another worry for democracy.

[00:09:32.980] - Steven Erlanger

That's a worry. It could happen. It could not happen. I mean, we'll have to see. We thought populism was down, particularly with COVID people trusted the state. Suddenly the central state was providing vaccines and it was providing subsidies. And now populism is on the rise again. It goes up and down. We'll have to see what happens. But populism represents grievance. And that's my argument. You have to listen to grievance. But you're also right that there is a rule of law problem inside the European Union. It preexists Meloni, it preexists democrats. It's not just Hungary and Poland. You have a real East West divide inside the European Union, which is made worse by the Ukraine war. You see the divisions more between the countries bordering Russia who were once occupied by the Soviet Union and the rest of Europe. They just have a very different view of the war and the stakes and they have a different view of the European Union, which I think not enough Europeans accept. They want the European Union more of nations because they only got their sovereignty back in 90. They mistrust this shared sovereignty. They don't want it to go too far.

[00:11:02.740] - Steven Erlanger

So I think these issues will come up because Meloni will be on their side and she represents, as we said, probably the third largest economy and a great big member.

[00:11:17.590] - Marilisa Anastasopoulou

I would like to go to another issue that we have a problem. I would say in Western countries the population is aging and at the same time, young people tend to vote to turn up much less than older people. They are active. They are active citizens. They're interested in several things but they're not interested into traditional politics. And at the same time, governments, which is logical, take into account the majority of the voters, that is making the decisions for elder people and at the end of the day, young people are left outside of it. If we fast forward a couple of years from today this could mean that the way we see democracy and liberal democracy, the traditional liberal democracy is a bit off for the people that they are 20 years old and 15 years old. What will happen?

[00:12:18.120] - Steven Erlanger

Well, I'm not a prophet, but there have always been young people angry at old people and they've always been young people who think old people are in the way and are taking all of the goods. But what's changed to me is the internet and social media. It's created a new kind of connection, good and bad but it has created a different kind of younger generation. Maybe one more impatient, one less willing sometimes to go outside their bubble very critical, which is great and we'll see what happens. And they're also very obsessed by, rightly, cost of living right now, as we talked about GDP, rent, energy, but also by the climate. And they see the climate as an existential problem for them. They think their elders are killing them or destroying the world and they're frightened that the world will end and they're looking for governments to respond. And this is part of their dissent, I would say. And they ask the question are autocratic governments better able to cope with these issues than democratic governments which take a lot of nurturing and a lot of compromise and a lot of discussion. So these, I think, are issues to me and one can disagree.

[00:13:49.060] - Steven Erlanger

But what to me is markedly different about this generation is they've lost faith in the old form of government. They may believe in the values, individual rights, gender equality, rule of law but they don't believe their governments are providing the goods. And they are, I think, very much attracted by the efficiency of other forms of government. And we'll see what happens.

[00:14:23.960] - Marilisa Anastasopoulou

I heard one of the panels, a young lady in Ines Saltiel, saying that maybe we should instead of having older politicians mentoring the youth, the youth to mentor older politicians it sounds like idealistic, but let's be pragmatic. What can be done? I mean, I see the children. They're not interested in what the governments are saying. I mean, that's a real problem that we have it today. It's not a problem of tomorrow per se.

[00:14:51.630] - Steven Erlanger

Well, I think it is a problem, and partly it's about the media, to be honest. I mean, I come from a mainstream media. We've pretty much done a transition to the digital 24/7 world but people aren't reading newspapers in the same way. Television seems generally worse and worse, to be honest, in terms of a real understanding of the world and what drives the world. And so what worries me is something actually, Henry Kissinger once said, other people have said it, there's a lot of knowledge in the world, there's a lot of internet knowledge. You can Google anything. But knowledge isn't wisdom. Wisdom requires something else, and age sometimes helps. So I think people are always right to be angry. I was an angry protester against the Vietnam War. I mean, they're right to be angry about injustice and inequality, about male entitlement, if you like, about racism. These are all things that democracies need to work on, but I hope they engage in the process, otherwise these things will not change.

[00:16:15.900] - Marilisa Anastasopoulou

So democracy is not changing, but it needs some fine tuning, let's put it like that.

[00:16:20.520] - Steven Erlanger

It does. And it also has to worry about democracy fatigue, because democracy is hard work and it takes empathy, it takes listening, and ideally, it takes governments that actually are willing to tell the truth to their people rather than spin themselves into circles of propaganda and lies. So there's a lot of work to be done. But I still believe with Churchill that democracy, of all the possible ways to govern oneself, makes lots of mistakes, but in the end, it answers best people's aspirations for a good and equal life.

[00:17:07.390] - Marilisa Anastasopoulou

Which is certainly what we believe here in Greece, both because of our ancient past, but also because of what we've been through the last couple of years, and we stuck to democracy 100%. Thank you so much for being here with us today. I hope I will have the pleasure to have you in another talk in the future.

[00:17:25.990] - Steven Erlanger

Thank you so much.

[00:17:27.160] - Marilisa Anastasopoulou

Thank you.