The debate will be in English.

Tickets: FREE, tickets available at the venue on the day from 18:00 culturgest.bilheteira@cgd.pt

In 1953 Bertolt Brecht wrote bitterly of the repression of popular discontent in East Germany, suggesting the easiest solution might be ‘to dissolve the people and elect another’. In today’s Europe, he might wonder if the EU’s favoured solution was simply to ignore the people entirely. After all, the crisis has now swept away elected governments in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Holland, Slovakia and Slovenia. All across Europe, parties contesting election have been put under immense pressure to agree in advance to EU austerity measures. The German-led fiskalpakt treaty has broken, notably, with the tradition of requiring a unanimous vote to become law. One German academic has described the making of policy during the crisis by informal groups of bankers, civil servants and politicians as resembling a ‘permanent coup d’etat’.

The phrase ‘there is no alternative to prudent fiscal policy’ is heard across Europe. But it can be argued, if there is no alternative, then there is no democracy. Voting risks becoming no more than a symbolic rubber-stamping of policies that economists and technocrats have decided are necessary. Greece, Ireland and Portugal have all negotiated bailout deals with Troika officials over the heads of their voters. As Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, puts it: ‘We need both the gin and the tonic. We need the blend of political judgement and technocratic expertise.’ In other words, we know best?

Arguably there was a problem with democracy in Europe before the current crisis – seen in the public’s growing apathy and disengagement from politics. Some commentators now fear a populist reaction against austerity, and see it in the growing electoral success of extremist parties of both left and right in Greece, Holland, France and other countries. Are we witnessing a re-emergence of the very politics of the ‘street’, of the nation, that the supranational bodies of the EU were set up to contain? Is politics more broadly – the struggle between alternative visions of the good life – something that just gets in the way of economists who might be able to remedy things if only they were given carte blanche? Will a populist national reaction bring down the border-free Europe and the single market? Or is hostility to national sovereignty a form of hostility to sovereign democracy? Might allowing competing alternatives to be aired through elections throw up the solutions we all need? Is it still possible to trust the ordinary ‘man next door’ to vote on issues of such vital importance?