CAN EVERYONE BE KING?

This summer in Europe has been all about the "royals" in that there have been a number of important events in the monarchies of the Old World. Among these were the ascension to the throne of new kings in the Netherlands and Belgium, the wedding of the youngest daughter of the Swedish monarch, Carl XVI Gustav, and, finally, the birth of a son to the British Prince William and his wife Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge.

After 20 years of rule the 79-year old King Albert II of the Belgians signed an act of abdication in favour of his son, Prince Philippe. He explained his intention to abdicate by the fact that his declining years and health no longer allow him to carry out his functions "at the required level".

A little earlier, almost three months ago, there was a change at the head of the royal household in the Netherlands. Queen Beatrix, who had ruled for over 30 years, gave up the throne in favour of her son, Willem-Alexander, Prince Orange. "I am going not because I can no longer rule but because I am convinced that the responsibility for my country should now lie in the hands of the new generation," Beatrix said in her last television address to her people as queen.

Generally speaking, what is now happening in many of the royal households of Europe could be regarded as a change of generations. The inevitability of this process may be judged by the declining years of the monarchs - Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain was 87 recently, King Harald V of Norway was 76, King Juan Carlos of Spain recently celebrated his 75th birthday and Queen Margaret II of Denmark is 73.

It is entirely possible that there will soon be further abdications in Europe in favour of representatives of the younger generation. And the birth of the latest heir to the British throne, who has been named George Alexander Louis by his parents, is as it were a symbol of future and - in certain cases - overdue changes in the lives of the royal households.

The latter event left virtually all the upheavals of the present moment in the shade. The focus of the world's media switched totally on the birth of the British prince, relegating economic crises, wars, terrorist acts and clashes in the world's worst trouble spots to the background. Hundreds of television channels carried a complete chronology of the birth of Elizabeth II's grandson. Vigorous media coverage of the Duchess of Cambridge's time in labour was assured as soon as it was announced that she was pregnant, and the climax was the direct relay from the hospital where Prince William's wife gave birth. The nationwide euphoria only began to dwindle when the crowd of well-wishers espied the happy couple leaving the hospital holding their royal offspring, the new-born Prince of Cambridge.

Meanwhile, all this frenzied attention of the media and the public to the birth of the latest heir to the British throne encouraged many contributors to analyse how the monarchies were adjusting to the demands of modern times. Against the backdrop of the ceremonial events in the lives of some European royal families there again arose the question as to whether Europe really needs the institution of the monarchy.

There is no doubt that this question was provoked to some degree by the ongoing financial-economic crisis in Europe. As Professor Herman Matthijs of Brussels University put it so succinctly, "as problems with the budget increase so there will be questions about monarchies and the amount of money spent on them".

Quite a lot has already been said regarding the fact that the monarchy is costly, and it is time to give it up. A whole heap of facts may be cited confirming the excessive cost of maintaining royal households and also counter-arguments expressed by those who oppose this assertion. The latter point to the fact that the institution of the presidency is no cheaper, especially bearing in mind that elections are repeated every 4-5 years, and that the monarchy brings considerable revenue to these countries from tourism, and so on.

And yet the opinion that the monarchy is expensive is deeply rooted in European society. Besides, it is constantly being fed by reports about the undignified moral image of individual royal personages and their offspring. A convincing example of this is the crisis now being experienced by the Spanish royal household. For many years King Juan Carlos was considered the model of a patriot-monarch who had led Spain out of the gloom of fascism and handed power over to the constitutional government in 1978. Even dyed-in-the-wool anti-monarchists admired him: the communist leader Santiago Carrillo, after the unsuccessful - thanks to Juan Carlos - military coup of 1981, cried: "God save the King!"

However, in recent years the Spanish royal family has seriously disappointed its subjects. Just look at what Juan Carlos' elephant hunt in Africa meant to them! And this at a time when the king himself held the post of honorary president of the Wild Life Fund…No less a crisis of conscience to the Spanish people was caused by the corruption case of the king's son-in-law Inaki Urdangarin, who made a living with his wife, the infanta Cristina, from the charity foundation Noos.

Juan Carlos' critics accuse him of using his influence on business, the key political parties and the media to lead the country to the present state of crisis and that it is because of him that the tyranny of big business and social inequality "reign" in Spain.  The Spanish media is full of the outcries of those who are unhappy that ordinary people have been moaning about a crisis for years while "the king continues to luxuriate in golden palace drawing rooms of the 18th century", or the protests of "certified political experts and art experts" who can't get a job whilst Juan Carlos "rakes millions out of the budget without doing anything, just for the sake of it". The royal household is called "a family of noble loafers", which convincingly confirms the injustice of the fact that leadership of the country by the state is inherited.

Incidentally, emotions of this kind are becoming ever more popular not just in Spain. There is even an anti-monarchy movement which unites republicans in seven countries in Europe. For example, British republicans are calling for the adoption of a new Constitution which will state that any British person may be head of state. They often attend meetings with the slogan "Monarchy is not democracy".

It is hard to argue with the fact that the handing over of the post of head of state by inheritance in principle infringes the right of citizens to choice (even European monarchies operate on the principle "reign but not rule"), and whereas there are people born with absolute privileges in society this cannot be seen as just and fair. At the same time, one has to admit that in conditions where globalization is conducting a mass offensive on states and peoples, trampling on sovereignties and traditional conscience, the monarchy - for all its flaws - remains the guarantor of historical continuity. This is particularly pertinent for Europe, which is rapidly losing its identity and civilized substance, rejecting centuries of moral principles. Not to mention the fact that in a country like Belgium, say, the monarch ensures unity of state, reconciling the interests of the Walloons and the Flemish.

So the argument about the expediency of preserving the monarchies in Europe will continue for at least another decade. And even if royalty, which has long since been perceived by many as a jolly spectacle and an integral part of pomp and splendour, is finally cast overnight onto the scrapheap of history, it will still for a long time remind people of a time when the monarchies were symbols of nations and their greatness.