Two European Union governments have now been toppled in coups

As Eurocrats are imposed on Greece and Italy, DANIEL HANNAN say's he'd rather be governed by the first 100 people in the phone book than unelected professors

Two European Union governments have now been toppled in coups – bloodless and genteel coups, but coups nonetheless. In Greece and in Italy, elected prime ministers have been overthrown by Eurocrats.


Greece is now run by a former vice-president of the European Central Bank, Lucas Papademos; Italy by a former European Commissioner, Mario Monti. Neither man has ever submitted himself to the ballot box. Both head what are called ‘national governments’ – though they have been put together solely to implement programmes that their nations reject.
In Greece, all the parties have been brought into the coalition, thus spreading the ministerial perks and goodies (austerity programmes are evidently for classroom assistants and street-sweepers, not for MPs). In Italy, by contrast, Mario Monti has appointed a cabinet that doesn’t contain a single elected politician.

Technocrat: Mario Monti has taken office as the Italian PM - noticeably the European flag is displayed prominently behind him

It’s true these regime changes were carried out within the letter of the constitution, in the sense that most MPs have given their support to the new administrations. Then again, dictatorships often begin this way. Napoleon, Hitler, Mugabe –  all went through the motions of having their rule formally endorsed by their legislatures.
Not that Greece and Italy are tyrannies, obviously. Still, it can’t be repeated too often: the new Brussels-backed regimes have only one purpose – to push through policies that would be thrown out at a general election.
In both cases, the crime of the ousted leader was to lean too closely to public opinion. George Papandreou, the hapless Greek premier, committed an unforgivable sin in the eyes of  Brussels when he proposed a referendum on the loans-for-austerity package. Never mind that he was an enthusiastic Europhile who planned to campaign for a ‘Yes’ vote, the mere fact of consulting the electorate was intolerable to Eurocrats. Four days later, he was out.

 

Silvio Berlusconi, too, made the mistake of getting on the wrong side of the Brussels machine. He let it be known he didn’t much care whether Italy stayed in the euro. If EU leaders wanted to keep their precious currency, he suggested, let them pay for it.
‘Since the euro was launched,’ he told his countrymen, ‘most Italians have become poorer.’ Four days later, he was out, too.
His replacement makes no secret of siding with Brussels against his own people. ‘We don’t see Europe’s instructions as an imposition,’ declared  Mr Monti in his first speech as a life senator. ‘There is no “them” and “us”. We are Europe.’

Incoming: Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi speaks with his succesor Mario Monti - but is he the answer to the country's problems?

Why do Italians put up with it? A few of Berlusconi’s supporters are seething and several Leftist groups are contesting the legitimacy of the new government. Yet a surprisingly large chunk of the Italian electorate is relaxed about the loss of multi-party democracy. How can a people who threw off  dictatorship within living memory be so blasé?
What you have to understand, Daniel,’ an Italian senator and former MEP tells me, ‘is that we are all taught from childhood that, while Italy is the best country in the world, with the finest cuisine, the greatest art, the most beautiful music, we are also brought up to believe it should never be run by Italian politicians. That’s why we’re happy to let the EU take charge.
‘You English think of Eurocrats as lazy and corrupt, you think of them as Italians. But we imagine them turning up to work on time and refusing bribes, we think of them as English.’
I didn’t like to correct his flattering view of the British Civil Service. Contempt for democracy is by no means confined to Italians. Listen to how British voters speak of their politicians: ‘They’re in it for themselves,’ ‘They’ll say anything to get elected.’ The easiest way to get applause from a BBC audience is to say: ‘This is too important to be a political football – get the politicians out of the picture and let the professionals get on.’
Yet such sentiments have been the justification for every dictatorship in history.

All change: Berlusconi's departure as Italian PM has left many of his countrymen worried about their future

It’s understandable that people are drawn to the idea of the disinterested expert. The trouble is, no such person exists. We all have our prejudices and assumptions, the ‘expert’ more than anyone, if by expert we mean someone who has spent his entire career in one field.
It’s no coincidence that technocracies from Cuba to North Korea have larger public sectors and more sclerotic economies than democracies. The purpose of representative government is to remind state employees they work for the rest of us.
Yet the entire Italian government is now made up of officials who disdain the ballot box: academics, diplomats, civil servants. Why should we expect them to reform the institutions from which they have sprung?
And why should we let them get away with calling themselves experts? These are the people whose policies caused the mess in the first place.
They supported increases in spending at national and EU level; they determined that the survival of the euro mattered more than the prosperity of its constituent nations; they overlooked the membership  criteria to allow Italy and Greece to join with twice the permitted debt level. Mr Papademos, indeed, was the head of the Greek Central Bank at the time.
Nor are these errors of judgment distant history. Only seven weeks ago, Mr Monti made a truly eye-popping statement: ‘What we’re witnessing today is the great success of the euro and the most concrete demonstration of that success is Greece, which is being obliged to take  on the culture of stability with which it’s transforming itself.’
Such men working as private- sector analysts would have been fired long ago. But, by virtue of not bothering to get elected, they are considered ‘experts’ – however often they get things wrong and however little they learn from their mistakes.
In 1963, the great American writer Bill Buckley declared:  ‘I should sooner live in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the 2,000 faculty members of Harvard University.’ Half a century on, who can doubt that he was right?
Brussels has never been keen on democracy. It vests supreme power in an unelected Commission and swats aside referendums if they produce inconvenient results. For many Euro-integrationists, the whole purpose of the project is to act as an antidote to public opinion. As Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso put it: ‘Governments are not always right. Decisions taken by the most democratic institutions in the world are very often wrong.’

Long road: Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos has it all to do as he battles to try restore Greece's reputation in Europe

The 27 EU members have kept the outward attributes of democracy, but in reality more than half their laws come from Brussels and, if they’re in the euro, economic policy is set in Frankfurt. As the crisis bites, even the forms and trappings of democracy are being discarded. Apparatchiks in Brussels deal directly with apparatchiks in the 27 capitals. On Friday, we learnt that the Irish budget was sent to Germany for approval before it was announced in Dublin.
Only now, perhaps, do we see the extent to which the EU, as well as being undemocratic in its own structures, requires member nations to give up their internal democracy, too. You can have the euro, or you can have representative government. You can’t have both.