08/10/2012 Political Affairs and Democracy
Strasbourg, 08.10.2012 - “Democracy cannot do without dynamic and prosperous markets. But economic crises pave the way for the enemies of democracy,” explained the President of the PACE today at the opening of the World Forum on Democracy plenary session on the subject “Do markets need democracy and vice-versa?”.
He continued: “Yet democracy is hard to reconcile with unregulated markets. The example of the money markets provides proof, if proof were needed, of their inability to self-regulate. (…) Such regulation is difficult in an economy which is globalised but in which the political power largely remains at the national level.”
“How can we transfer sovereignty to a supranational level without giving citizens the feeling that democracy is being weakened? One means might be to reinforce the role played by the national parliaments while at the same time increasing the responsibilities of the supranational levels. In short, we need more democracy at all levels.”
“In the short and medium term, economies can in fact be developed without democracy. However, this purported ‘model’ is unsustainable in the long term because it is accompanied by huge areas of ineffectiveness: scant consideration of environmental issues, mass corruption and a correlative deficit in terms of the rule of law. There can be no rule of law if a bribe is enough to circumvent the regulations. Non-existence of the rule of law is a tremendous obstacle to economic development. Furthermore, it makes it more difficult to manage the contradictions between very high growth and huge resultant inequalities. (…) It is therefore vital and, in fact, valuable to reconcile the markets with democracy,” said the PACE President in conclusion.