A neat turn of phrase in an interesting article over at The Australian about the European Parliament's simulation game Citzalia:
"Just when you thought the European Union could not get more disconnected from reality, it gets more virtual. Soon, citizen-avatars will be able to experience "democracy in action" in virtual reality: let us hope they find it as disappointing as reality itself.
After the failure of its online TV Europarl, the parliament is preparing Citzalia, an educational "platform" described as a "3D world that captures the essence of the European Parliament".
Through role-play and social networking, citizen-avatars will walk the powerless corridors of the EU's talking shop (in the real world, power remains with the mandarins of the commission) and even interact with the avatars of actual members of the European Parliament.
Presumably their hope - at E275,000 ($387,550) - is to shed some light on the terribly important role of the EU legislature: that might be a bad idea. With record low participation in last year's elections (43 per cent), maybe people realised their vote was pointless and they could not vote for their preferred candidate anyway (one votes for a party list).
The thought of citizen-avatars trying to figure out the "co-decision" legislative process is dizzying. Good luck to them with the arcane consultations between the commission, the council and the parliament, and the culture of deals behind the proverbial closed doors.
Under the Lisbon Treaty, a new consultation process with the 27 national legislatures (the Barroso initiative) should add to the bureaucratic fun.
Exposing the boring, poorly attended and entirely managed non-debates in the parliament would indeed be in the interest of transparency. Not to mention the outrageous full relocation 12 times a year between Strasbourg and Brussels (annual cost E200 million).
Too much realism might confuse citizen-avatars. But the unelected and unaccountable (its accounts have not passed audit for many, many years) commission is the main creator of the laws that we must obey (about 85 per cent of all new British legislation comes from the EU).
The truth is the MEPs are confined to rubber-stamping, with the right to throw occasional delaying tantrums to earn their credentials as the guardians of EU democracy - or, rather, as the fig-leaves of this unique post-democracy.
One real nod towards democracy was the Lisbon Treaty's Citizens' Initiative (Article 11) enabling citizens to propose legislation. But it is hopelessly bogged down in red tape and controversy, strangled to the point of meaninglessness.
Forget the citizen-avatar. The real movers and shakers are the lobbyists - many of whom get EU grants to lobby the EU: cosy. As the International Policy Network study The Friends of the EU exposed in March, green advocacy groups are subsidised to lobby for more funds and to provide research. This is a self-serving circle of bureaucrats and lobbyists, not democracy in any sense citizens can recognise.
As our votes do not matter (a referendum can be run again for the right answer, as in Ireland, or merely avoided, as in Britain, and MEPs are pointless), we can make up for it with a tiny virtual thrill of involvement in a fantasy world inspired by a real nightmare: we can get online and spend every minute complaining about the democratic deficit - then we can at least pretend our voices makes a difference."
Good stuff.
