Look at the state of European politics today and a collage of pandemonium emerges. France has been stuck with a caretaker government for two months following legislative elections which no party won decisively. In Germany the hard right came top in one set of state elections on September 1st; its federal chancellor, Olaf Scholz, seems destined for defeat in a nationwide ballot this time next year. The less said about Hungary and its strongman prime minister, Viktor Orban, the better. Coalitions formed by parties with little in common keep governments with tenuous majorities in power, from Spain to the Netherlands. And then there is Belgium, a country where politicians ritually haggle for a year or more before forming a government (current count: 88 days). Part of the charm of democracy is that it is messy, but Europe has elevated the chaos to high art.
Even amid the voter-induced tumult, in a rainy corner of northern Europe a bit of the continent’s government machine keeps churning. A new roster of 27 European commissioners is currently being assembled in Brussels, with new assignments expected to be doled out in coming days. From migration policy to trade, regulating big tech, bolstering European defence, monitoring national finances, devising green rules and much more besides, few facets of life in the bloc are beyond the scope of the European Union’s executive behemoth. The technocratic approach it favours skirts questions around democratic accountability. But it has been so effective that the leave-it-to-the-experts method of governing has caught on beyond Brussels. When politicians fail to form national governments, outside “experts" are sometimes called upon instead. The temptations of technocracy are like a siren call for those who just want to get things done, voters be damned.
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