Minder ambtelijk taalgebruik in EU is wenselijk (en)

BRUSSELS - Together with a long-standing attachment to politics by summit, the EU is fond of acronyms. How else can you describe a world inhabited by QMV, Coreper and co-decision, not to mention trialogues, comitology and the Luxembourg compromise?

The triangle of the Schuman rondpoint, Rue Belliard and Place Luxembourg is a technocrat's paradise but might as well be on another planet to ordinary mortals. All bar the most dedicated eurocrats struggle to keep up with the latest jargon.

The sovereign debt crisis has also inspired a string of new ones. The ESM, AGS, EDP, six pack, two pack, and the EFSF being the most prominent in this new age of austerity-speak. Meanwhile, even though the legislation establishing it is still far from being agreed, the EU's nascent banking union has already created the SSM, SRM and the DGS. It can sound like the work of a Lord of the Rings fanatic left alone in a room with a can of alphabet spaghetti.

But there is a serious side to this. The EU's institutions and decision making processes were already open to the charge of being remote and opaque - not surprising for a bloc composed of 500 million people from 27 different countries but still a threat to the democratic legitimacy of the institutions.

Since the start of the eurozone i debt crisis in early 2010, rioting and street protests have become a regular feature of life and public discontent with the political establishment is dangerously high. Fringe political movements, ranging from the True Finns to the Greek Syriza and Italy's Beppe Grillo, have been swept to the verge of government all by promising to defy 'Brussels'. Last month, Mario Monti, possibly the most popular politician in Brussels, was routed by Grillo, with his centre party claiming a meagre 10 percent of the vote. Scarcely two year's ago, Grillo's Five Star Movement amounted to little more than a comedian with a blog.

Anti-austerity protests have even reached the streets of the European quarter. At the start of the EU summit earlier this month protestors occupied DG Ecfin, the fiefdom of Economic Commissioner Olli Rehn i, demanding a 'European spring'.

Most of the public frustration is the product of mass unemployment and declining living standards, together with debt and deficit-fuelled desperation. But it is exacerbated by a sense that political leaders are no longer speaking the same language as their electorates.

For some politicians the penny appears to have dropped. At his pre-summit press conference this month, European Parliament President Martin Schulz i said that eurocrats were "talking a language that nobody understands". On trying to explain the ubiquitous 'six pack', he quipped that "I thought I was talking about a fitness club."

"I see few proposals for straightforward solutions to the real problems faced by ordinary people. Instead, my eye falls on a whole series of lexical aberrations," he said.

"Faced with this empty technocratic jargon, how can we expect anyone to feel that they actual problems and concerns are being addressed?"

A few hours later at the same summit, Herman van Rompuy i agreed that, while important, falling bond spreads and an improving balance of payments mean little to the bloc's unemployed.

The average person in Greece or Spain, fearful of losing their job or pension (if they haven't already lost them), is hardly going to be reassured by a Commission bureaucrat praising their government's attempts to comply with the SGP.

For all the platitudes about 'growth and jobs' that pepper almost every document published by the EU's institutions, both remain non-existent across many European countries. Unemployment is actually expected to increase for a fourth consecutive year in 2013 and little has been done to correct it.

It is also important not to over-egg the capacity of the EU institutions to single-handedly solve the deep-rooted structural causes of the economic and social crisis. Even the most determined and interventionist governments would struggle in the current climate.

Governments cannot create the millions of jobs that Europeans need right now and there is no good in pretending otherwise. As van Rompuy rightly put it, if it really was as simple as a choice between austerity and growth we wouldn't be where we are.

But realism is preferable to empty promises. For example, leaders emerged from the June 2012 summit triumphantly announcing the creation of a 'Growth and Jobs Pact' worth €120 billion. Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt i, heralded the final act of her country's EU presidency as "a light in the dark", which would "give hope to Europeans that we are capable of taking decisions that will create growth."

In reality, the 'pact' involved nothing new aside from an extra €10 billion of capital for the European Investment Bank (EIB) and a pilot scheme for the European Commission to issue project bonds. Welcome? Undoubtedly - as is the recent sign-off on a €6 billion fund for a pan-EU Youth Guarantee scheme. But to claim, as leaders did in summer 2012, that this amounts to a comprehensive 'growth and jobs pact' is disingenuous.

Ultimately, talk is cheap and no substitute for deeds. But when it comes to the words it has to say, the least the occupants of euro-land can do is speak the same language as the people.

Acronyms

Qualified Majority Voting - QMV

Coreper - Committee of Permanent Representatives

Co-decision procedure- The normal legislative procedure requiring approval of MEPs and ministers

Trialogues - Line-by-line scrutiny of EU legislation by a committee of representatives from the European Parliament, Commission and Council of Ministers

AGS - Annual Growth Survey

SGP - Stability and Growth Pact

EDP - Excessive Deficit Procedure

ESM - European Stability Mechanism

EFSF - European Financial Stability Facility

NRP - National Reform Programme

MTO - Medium-term Budgetary Framework

SSM - Single Supervisory Mechanism

SRM - Single Resolution Mechanism

DGS - Deposit Guarantee Scheme