Representing Europeans takes a fresh and
quizzical look at the problems facing the European Union. Bringing decades of
experience to bear on the deep, structural problems currently facing the EU,
Richard Rose spells out why it can no longer carry on with integration by
stealth. Extraordinary challenges — such as saving the Eurozone and maintaining
the free movement of peoples — now impose high-profile economic and political
costs. These create huge political strains which EU institutions struggle to
cope with. Rose shows the ways in which Europe's institutions do and do not
represent its citizens, sometimes equally and sometimes unequally. This
threatens worse crises of EU authority because people retain the power as
national citizens to protest against their government making commitments in
Brussels that they do not accept. The book's pragmatic approach rejects the
assumption that more European integration is the solution for all of Europes
problems. Likewise, it rejects UK withdrawal from the European Union because
Britain cannot stop the world and get off. Instead, it suggests a pragmatic
approach that asks about proposals emanating from Brussels: What problem does it
address? How will this policy work? What are its visible costs and benefits?
Instead of 'one size fits all' policies being imposed on 27 diverse countries,
Rose recommends that enhanced European cooperation should be based on coalitions
of the willing. Moreover, the active use of pan-European referendums on major
reforms can test popular commitment to EU treaties that permanently advance
European integration. Both European federalists and diehard Eurosceptics will
alternately agree and disagree with the argument of this book. But they cannot
ignore the challenge it raises to pay more attention to the concerns of the half
a billion Europeans whom they claim to represent.
