WIREDThe EU could transform itself by taking account of the past 20 years of technological innovation, writes Danny O'Brien
IRELAND MAY not be popular in most corners of Brussels right now, but pro-tech grassroots activists in Europe are happy with its Lisbon vote. As a group, they had no strong objections to Jacques Chirac's constitution, nor to the Lisbon Treaty in principle: many of them are supportive of the European programme. But, so far, the EU has been a forum where special-interest lobbyists have sought to introduce, with little oversight, restrictions on how technology can be used and regulations on how perceived tech misuses might be punished.
Tech-friendly grassroots activists in the EU have fought these regulations at Brussels level for years, with some success - notably against software patents, and to prevent the over-criminalisation of copyright infringement. But the fight has taught them a sense that, before Brussels gets more power, it needs to become more accountable to its citizens and less amenable to industrial lobbyists.
As the EU once again goes through an agony of self-examination, perhaps we can ask a slightly stronger question from tech-friendly groups. If they want the EU to support widespread and open networks and computers, what can that technology do for the European project? If the future of the EU was revamped so it was less about following a 1970s bureaucratic blueprint, and actually took advantage of the past 20 years of tech innovation, what might it look like?
The EU is not the only institution wondering about rebooting its vision. Here in the US, "netroots" activists are gathering this week at the Personal Democracy Forum. There, leading Washington think-tanker Micah Sifry annually asks those on the intersection of politics and technology how the US might best merge the two. The forum is not afraid of hubris: this year, it published a book in which tech-friendly thinkers gave their thoughts on rewriting the US constitution.
Given that we don't even have a constitution in the EU, how might we start the same process? The strain of techno-utopianism in US life means the netroots activists certainly don't think small about such fixes to the US political system. What would happen if we applied the same tech-friendly big ideas to the EU?
The first idea that comes to mind is a reform suggested by Brad Templeton (internet pioneer and chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which I work for in the daylight hours). If the US constitution was being written now, he asked, would we really require all members of Congress to travel all the way to Washington?
We live in an age of telecommuting, videoconferencing and instant access to remote data. It's not perfect, and being separated from a real workplace and your peers can be isolating. But in the case of elected officials, that may turn out to be a positive thing. A member of the European Parliament who telecommuted would remain close to their constituencies, not to Brussels. Lobbyists who did not represent local interests would have to travel widely and expensively to develop the intimate contacts with elected figures that plague representative democracy.
MEPs are already somewhat portable, shuffling from Brussels to Strasbourg every session, and frequently returning to sample their home country's politics. They might even prefer to become stay-at-home parliamentarians, protected from influence and secure in the knowledge of their voters' situation.
But dissolving the European Parliament and smearing it across the 27 states might seem like a weakening of its powers, especially when it has to counterbalance other more concentrated institutions. No, the really radical reform would be to decentralise the rest of the Brussels bureaucracy. If the institutions of the EU want more power, and the edges of the EU are afraid to cede it, let those institutions be redistributed to the edges.
There may be inefficiencies in sending each of the commissioners, say, to their own corner of the world, or placing the permanent representatives of countries permanently back in their own countries but, as the Americans note, the aim of government is not always to be efficient - and sometimes we should introduce some friction to get the best, most representative result.
A pie-in-the-sky dream? Probably. Both Brussels the culture and Brussels the city are well established and won't willingly allow themselves to be scattered to the winds.
Perhaps the next best thing we can hope for, if we can't bring EU politicians to us, is to use technology to bring us closer to them. Europe's advocates may complain that a simple Yes/No vote is no match for the complexity of the issues it battles in its heart, but the EU's failing is that it has never opened that heart to a wider Europe.
The inner processes of the EU are incomprehensible to most of its citizens and, while they remain so, the populace is going to stay ignorant of its benefits and sceptical of its intentions. Internet technology - open databases, instant access to officials, transparent operations and clear visualisations of complex processes - offers a chance for Brussels to move closer its voters.
If the EU doesn't take that chance, perhaps we technologists on the edges should take the step on its behalf.
