Time to choose

The “pause for reflection” decreed by the European Council a year ago to analyse the causes and the possible effects of the French and Dutch rejection of the Constitutional Treaty has given rise to timid results. High level conferences, one or two citizens’ forums, publications signed by experts of various nationalities, have tried to understand whether this temporary setback has not subverted the very foundations of the entire process of integration. The summit of 15-16 June will return to the question, and should formulate new and decisive ways of going forward. DECISIONS POSTPONED TO 2007? The meeting of EU heads of state and of government is being held after twelve months of wide-ranging debate that has never taken on the connotations of a “popular discussion”, but has permitted various opportunities to evaluate the reasons for the vote in France and Holland. It has more than once been asserted that the rejection of the Constitution by these countries regarded more the “context” of a Europe that is still too far removed from citizens than the constitutional text itself. The Commission in this phase, after launching Plan D (democracy, dialogue, debate), has also tried to promote the involvement of civil society to clarify the doubts about the integration process. The European Parliament has followed the same path, insisting especially on the need for the “democracy” and “transparency” of the Union. In the run up to the summit in Brussels, a widespread conviction is emerging: that the European Council will extend the pause for reflection and soul- searching in the EU, deferring any decision to the semester when Germany assumes the revolving Presidency and the results of the French Presidential elections are known. So the first concrete decisions on the future of the Constitution will probably be deferred to 2007, while the EU will pursue its path, amid political hesitations and its usual work “in the field”. EU, OBLIGATORY ROAD. The parliamentary session of 31 May fell into the “pause for reflection”. At this session MEPs inaugurated a series of interrogations of European leaders. Belgian premier GUY VERHOFSTADT , author of a recent study called “The United States of Europe”, was the first interlocutor of the Assembly. He told the Parliament that the 1st May 2004, date of enlargement from 15 to 25 member states, represents “a turning point in the history of the continent, which sanctioned the real end of the Second World War”. The Belgian head of government then rejected the objections that the EU “has been expanded too rapidly or that it has reached its natural frontiers and surpassed its ability to absorb new members”. In his view, “the enlargement and promotion of the Union are not antithetical”, nor are “economic Europe and political Europe”. The Union – he said – “must pursue its enlargement; this is the sole guarantee for peace and for socio-economic development, and to ensure that war in the Balkans does not re-explode in the future”. “A GREAT POLITICAL PROJECT”. Verhofstadt admits on the other hand that Europe today is in a state of “disarray”. The Union has “a need for a great project to re-launch” its agenda. This project must be pursued, he said, along various roads. First, the national leaders must “stop attributing to the EU responsibility for their own internal difficulties and claiming for themselves the merits of success”, because this causes “disaffection in citizens”. Second, they need to stop “their more grotesque criticisms”, such as those who pillory the EU’s “Kafkian bureaucracy” or “the high cost of the Community budget”. He pointed out, for example, that “the 24,000 bureaucrats who man the EU institutions represent a far lower number than the municipal employees of any European capital”. Verhofstadt suggests that the action of the EU be reinforced “to give a real response to the hopes of citizens, in such fields as unemployment, business relocation and cross-border crime”. GOING AHEAD WITH THE RATIFICATIONS. On the political level, on the other hand, “so long as Europe does not start moving towards a real federation, in which the rules of unanimity would be abolished or reduced to the minimum, it will be deprived of instruments that permit it to rapidly tackle the new challenges”. Europe could proceed in this direction at differentiated speeds: the Euro zone ought to be the engine driving greater integration (i.e. the “United States of Europe”), creating a second “concentric circle” of countries that decide to progress with greater prudence, and a slower pace, towards unity. As for the Constitution, the Belgian premier recommended that the process of ratification be pursued (so far 15 states have ratified it, while only two have rejected it): in conformity with Declaration 30 annexed to the Treaty, if four fifths of the countries vote “yes”, “new prospects for the Constitution would be opened”. In the Union – concluded Verhofstadt, whose speech gave rise to a lively debate in the assembly – “the time has come to make definitive choices: confederation or federation, intergovernmental or community approach, a directoire of some member states or a reinforced European democracy supported by an active Commission and a Parliament worthy of that name”.