With the recent announcement about the abdication of Spanish king Juan Carlos I in favor of his son Crown Prince Felipe, the reoccurring debate about monarchies in Europe was stirred up again. The main question for all countries with a royal family is: Monarchy or Republic? In other words: to royal or not to royal?
Currently, there are twelve sovereign monarchies in Europe, namely: the Principality of Andorra, the Kingdom of Belgium, the Kingdom of Denmark, the Principality of Liechtenstein, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, the Principality of Monaco, the Kingdom of the Netherlands, the Kingdom of Norway, the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of Sweden, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the State of the Vatican City. Most of these monarchies are constitutional monarchies, meaning that the monarch does not influence the politics of the state, with the exception of Liechtenstein where the prince still has a large influence on politics and Vatican City.
For ten of the monarchies, the head of state (monarch) inherits his or her office and usually keeps it for life or until they abdicate. Two of them have an elected head of the state, namely Vatican City (the Pope) and Andorra (joint heads of state formed by the elected President of France and the Bishop of Urgell, appointed by the Pope). Although there currently is no major campaign going on to abolish the monarchy, most of the states do have a significant minority of republicans (a good example being the political organization Republic in the United Kingdom) lobbying for a state without royal family.
One of the most important arguments against monarchies is the fact that they can add up quite a bit in the costs. Republic stated before that the average annual cost of the British monarchy is around 202,4 million pound and isn’t set an annual budget like other public bodies are. However, most of the queens, kings, princes and princesses are also doing work for their living, like Queen Elizabeth II of Britain who still maintains a busy schedule of state ceremonies despite being in her late eighties already. Next to this, 43% of citizens in UK doesn’t think the 36,1 million pound a year the royal family receives is a good value for their money (against 40% who didn’t think so and 17% who didn’t know).
Royal heads of state represent a nation’s history and continuity, while rising above politics in a way the Republican heads of state can’t achieve. Although monarchies tend to come with a lot of scandals, politicians still tend to rank below royals in popularity polls. In fact, 53% of citizens in the UK think that their country would be worse off if they didn’t have a Royal family, whereas only 14% thinks it would be better off. 66% considers their country to be better off as a Monarchy, while 17% would rather be Republic.
Although there are many con arguments to be named, it seems that the monarchy is still considered a valuable tradition more than anything else. A good example of this is the Netherlands, where the royal family rose in popularity after the abdication of (now Princess) Beatrix in favor of her son Willem-Alexander. In 2013, the year of the abdication, 85% voted in favor of their country staying a monarchy and 80% even said they trusted in the lead of Willem-Alexander as a King. However, the majority of the citizens also voted in favor of giving less power to the Royal family.
Having a monarchy turns out to have both benefits and drawbacks, but which of these weighs heavier is dependent on personal opinions in the end.
Written by Svenja van der Tol, AEGEE-Nijmegen