EUROPE: Democracy is neither an American monopoly for export, nor a British privilege. It is an Athenian invention and is well described by Pericles in 430 BC, in his epitaph speech delivered at the Keramikos cemetery in honor of the first dead in the Peloponnesian war.

The original concept of democracy was based on the direct vote of all eligible (adult males) Athenian citizens who gathered at Pnyka, a hill next to the Acropolis of Athens and voted for each and every issue of common concern.

If Europe were a direct democracy of the aforementioned type (which is not impossible to structure in the age of e-government), citizens would not be over-taxed, over-regulated or over-watched. Indeed it is these three ‘overs’ that have gradually frustrated our societies, developing a potential danger for incidents of unpredictable and uncontrolled social unrest.

Indeed, in a Europe of direct democracy, the administrations at national and EU level, would be reduced in size, and in the direct service of the citizens.

Furthermore, government/state services would be tailored to the real needs of societies and citizens, and operate effectively and efficiently. Citizens able to vote directly, would be voting for their interests and not for the interests of the financial speculators supporting their elected representatives.

This, however, practically cannot be currently done (except perhaps for the Swiss model).

If the mainstream parties leading and ruling Europe don’t start to clean up their houses, the current trends could evolve into an entirely new beast.

The distance between a capital-D-Democracy and a pseudo democratic parliamentary dictatorship is not great.

We have come to live in a world where representative democracy means representation of stakeholders yielding the biggest influence.

This is not how representative democracy was imagined.

Indeed political leaders are meant to represent their citizens, not their sponsors or even friends.

However, it is incredible, how incredulous any modern attempts at fighting against corruption, coercion, or capital persuasion is. Indeed the fresh “breeze of democracy” blows from the extremes of Left and Right.

While the extremes may be on the rise in the last few years, their populist rhetoric has so far proven to consist of nothing more than words.

Naturally, while on a European level parties advocating the rights of the people from between the centre-left to centre-right on the political spectrum, would most of the time vote along the lines of the EPP or PES, ALDE or even ECR, any new breed of EU political party/ies should remain out of the established clientelistic system that currently reigns.

Where we ask, can we find a mainstream party to fight for the rights of the mainstream?

Because if the mainstream parties leading and ruling Europe don’t start to clean up their houses, the current trends could evolve into an entirely new beast.

Be prepared to either be consumed by the political extremes, or, preferably, be cast aside by new, transparent, entities that embody the values of direct democracy.

The reality of being a small country on the edge of Europe, with no land bridge to the Continent, is that without tax competition Ireland is not an attractive place to locate a European headquarters. It seems to have occurred to nobody in power in a major European economy that instead of effectively banning the Irish policy, it would be simpler to simply replicate it. After all, if Ireland can do it, so, surely, can the Germans. With added efficiency.

It is an unusual and troubling development that the response to the most spectacularly successful corporate-tax regime in Europe has been to seek its demise. Indeed, what Europe needs more than anything is increased competition and economic vibrancy. The high-tax model that has dominated European political and economic thought since World War II is sailing into choppy waters. With a pensions crisis looming, an economy that gastropods would call sluggish and few, if any, obvious solutions, the answer is not to harmonize further. It is to encourage innovation.

The EU may have a case about Apple and Ireland as it relates to transparency, and certainly, any special deals and state aid in that case should be as widely reviled and denounced as any of the bank bailouts of recent years. To pretend, however, that this investigation is about a single case is as naive as to believe that the EU ever intended to ratify its guarantees to Ireland in 2009. The probe into Dublin’s deal with Apple is about the desire of European politicians to break faith with competition in the name of envy and greed. Ireland’s capitulation to that pressure this week is one more milestone on the road to permanent European stagnation.