> I have to say I am surprised by your comment, as it assumes that politicians are responsible for their country's perspective on Europe?
They are responsible for the country's actions towards other countries. To make it more clear: I deeply hope that they are not really backed by the population, and that they will either notice that on their own, or that the next elections which show a shift towards "working together" instead of "against each other" in Europe.
We can't solve all issues in Europe if every country optimized only for themselves, ignoring their neighbours.
> the politicians have an obligation to represent their citizens' viewpoints fairly and transparently
Note that there are also European politicians (the European parliament), which are elected as well and serve their citizens' viewpoints as well. Interestingly, those manage to find better solutions, thinking about all Europeans despite representing just a subset of them. Unfortunately, the European parliament has not much power in the overall EU process, which is another real pity.
> It does seem that some EU politicians (read: Merkel) are only discovering this right now.
Our German politicians have (and always had) a disproportionally large influence in Europe. So there was never a need for Germany to distance from Europe. However, this also led to suboptimal solutions in the past, to say the least. But to me, this is not a sign that the "European project" doesn't work. For me, it shows that we aren't consequent enough. The member governments (read: European commission) have too much influence and the European parliament (which is the only instance that equally represents all European citizens) doesn't have enough influence.
In the line of the anarchist saying "if voting changed anything, it would be made illegal", maybe the only reason why the EP has a good number of such broad-minded people is because the institution doesn't have much power.
They are responsible for the country's actions towards other countries. To make it more clear: I deeply hope that they are not really backed by the population, and that they will either notice that on their own, or that the next elections which show a shift towards "working together" instead of "against each other" in Europe.
We can't solve all issues in Europe if every country optimized only for themselves, ignoring their neighbours.
> the politicians have an obligation to represent their citizens' viewpoints fairly and transparently
Note that there are also European politicians (the European parliament), which are elected as well and serve their citizens' viewpoints as well. Interestingly, those manage to find better solutions, thinking about all Europeans despite representing just a subset of them. Unfortunately, the European parliament has not much power in the overall EU process, which is another real pity.
> It does seem that some EU politicians (read: Merkel) are only discovering this right now.
Our German politicians have (and always had) a disproportionally large influence in Europe. So there was never a need for Germany to distance from Europe. However, this also led to suboptimal solutions in the past, to say the least. But to me, this is not a sign that the "European project" doesn't work. For me, it shows that we aren't consequent enough. The member governments (read: European commission) have too much influence and the European parliament (which is the only instance that equally represents all European citizens) doesn't have enough influence.