Can Europe Afford Its Monarchs?
LONDON (
) -- As Great Britain marked Queen Elizabeth II's 60th year on the throne this month and prepares for a grand Diamond Jubilee celebration in London this summer, an austerity-minded Europe ponders its ability to afford just about anything -- including its monarchs.
As the European Union faces a sovereign debt crisis, bailouts of various governments and the potential collapse of its euro currency, there's been plenty of belt tightening throughout the continent. Despite these financial constraints, a dozen European countries still support monarchies. That includes eight nations -- Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the U.K. -- as well as the effective monarchy of Vatican City and the principalities of Andorra, Lichtenstein and Monaco.
As Great Britain marked Queen Elizabeth II's 60th year on the throne and prepares for a grand Diamond Jubilee celebration, an austerity-minded Europe ponders whether it can afford its monarchs. |
So the quick fix is to kick everyone out of the palaces, fire the help and sell off the crown jewels, right? Not really. In Denmark, Queen Margarethe II draws about 80% support. Between 70% and 80% of the Dutch are just fine with keeping Queen Beatrix on the throne for roughly $52 million a year (not counting security and palace maintenance), according to Belgian political scientist Herman Matthijs, while 80% of Norweigians are just wild about King Harald V.
Part of the popularity stems from heritage and national price, but European monarchy experts also see monarchs as goodwill ambassadors in increasingly diverse nations. While countries give up some of their national identities to the European Union, change personality with the arrival of more immigrants and deal with an increasingly global society, a monarch can inspire national unity and welcome newcomers as citizens.
Beatrix used royal speeches to cool rising anti-Islamic sentiment in the Netherlands and call for tolerance. Carl XVI Gustaf, Sweden's king, for example, has used the monarchy to integrate immigrants by suggesting that "new Swedish citizens ... have come here from countries all over the world ... under these circumstances it is precisely the strength of the monarchy that the king can be an impartial and uniting symbol."
In Great Britain, meanwhile, a poll in
The Guardian
last year found that not only do 67% of Britons think the monarchy is still relevant, but 60% thinks it improves Britain's image around the world. A full 63% say Britain would be worse off without the monarchy.
Some British scholars even see the Queen as a protector of civil liberties and public freedom. Two years ago Eamonn Butler, director of London think tank the Adam Smith Institute, criticized Queen Elizabeth for being too deferential to the prime minister considering a constitution that allows her to check the executive's power. "The only solution is to make our current constitution work," Butler wrote. "It certainly means having a monarch who is prepared to intervene on behalf of the people."
Continued importance doesn't make monarchies less expensive. The $11.4 million a year Luxembourg spends on its Grand Ducal Family is considered a bargain in European terms. In Lichtenstein, where Prince Alois Philip Maria still holds sway over the nation's political affairs, the fact that the prince takes no money from subjects and actually pays government costs out of his own fortune is an anomaly among European monarchies. It's also certainly not the case in some struggling countries.
In Spain, where national identity is held together through a patchwork of autonomous regions, King Juan Carlos is a uniting force. As much as 75% of Spaniards rank the Spanish monarchy above any other public institution in the country, according to Juan Diez Nicolas, a sociologist whose research firm,
ASEP/JDS
, conducts yearly opinion polls on the Spanish monarchy. The 73-year-old Juan Carlos, though given an extremely conservative education and hailing from a conservative background, has worked with politicians from across the ideological spectrum. He is is widely respected across Spain for overseeing the country's tense transition to democracy after Francisco Franco's nearly four-decade dictatorship.
Yet even he and his family weren't spared by austerity measures implemented by Spain as it faced a deficit 11.2% above GDP -- or well above the 3% threshold set by the European Union -- and 20% unemployment. As Spain's cutbacks trimmed the deficit to 9.2% in 2010 and between 6% and 8% last year, it also trimmed the royal family's income from $11.7 million in 2010 to $11 million last year for personal expenses, staffing and official events. Juan Carlos suggested the cuts himself and, in response to a spending scandal involving his son-in-law, divulged late last year that he is paid roughly $385,000 a year and taxed at 40%.
Even before the cutbacks, the Spanish royal family's earnings were pocket change compared with those of Britain's Windsors. Openly anti-monarchy U.K. Political organization Republic went over the monarchy's books and found that the royal family cost Britain upward of $291 million a year. The official cost to the public was estimated around $66 million three years ago, but that didn't include lost taxes on royal-owned lands or the cost of royal security, transportation and other perks.
In 2010, however, it was decided that funding for the royal family would be capped at $47.5 million a year through 2013. The British people are throwing in another $1.6 million this year for a Diamond Jubilee celebration in June featuring a flotilla of thousands of boats down the Thames and thousands of fiery jubilee beacons lit throughout the United Kingdom. Once the party's over, the royal family's take will be cut by 14%.
It was also decided that instead of Parliament just handing the Queen roughly $12.5 million a year in her annual Civil List payment and covering other costs with grants-in-aid, it will give the royal family a sovereign grant that is 15% of the income generated by its $11.6 billion Crown Estate property portfolio. Last year, those properties brought in $366 million in surplus revenue for Parliament, which would translate to $54.9 million for the royals were the system in place. Unlike the standing agreement, however, that number would fluctuate with the performance of the economy and the properties.
It was a compromise that still made clear the importance of the royal family to a country that faced its share of financial troubles and unrest last year, but also turned out in droves to see a royal wedding. Neil Blain, an expert on modern monarchies at the University of Stirling in Britain, told the Council on Foreign Relations several years ago that the queen's scepter, crown and public presence are often seen as irreplaceable to those she governs and worth the price of their upkeep -- despite
what the Sex Pistols had to say about it
during her Silver Jubilee in 1977. The queen, he said, "attests, however mythically, to the country's political stability and enduring historical foundations."
"The English do not wish to see the queen on a bicycle because from where people stand here she looks just right in a
Rolls-Royce
Phantom or better still, a horse-drawn carriage."
-- Written by Jason Notte in Boston.
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Jason Notte is a reporter for TheStreet. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post, Esquire.com, Time Out New York, the Boston Herald, the Boston Phoenix, the Metro newspaper and the Colorado Springs Independent. He previously served as the political and global affairs editor for Metro U.S., layout editor for Boston Now, assistant news editor for the Herald News of West Paterson, N.J., editor of Go Out! Magazine in Hoboken, N.J., and copy editor and lifestyle editor at the Jersey Journal in Jersey City, N.J.
