The negative virtues

Before Ireland’s rejection of the Treaty of Lisbon, a general optimism could be felt about the imminent reform of the EU institutions, to be able to tackle with confidence more important challenges. Thierry Chopin, of the respectable Schumann Foundation, had proposed “that as a political entity” the European Union should identify “a minimum of converging interests and sentiments of belonging to a common home, as well as a willingness to formulate a project for the future”. This formula wonderfully unites magnanimity and modesty. Without this minimum accord, the European Union is doomed to chaos. And yet the impasse revealed by the Irish vote could already be perceived in another observation by Chopin: “Once the European project has been defined, some countries could naturally adopt it, others less so, and others again not at all”. In other words, “the European project” is intrinsically a source of discord and revelatory of the insufficiency of the common sentiment, or even destructive of it.The ratification [of the Lisbon Treaty], that seemed almost inevitable, suddenly appeared a remote prospect. A change of direction had been produced: the European Union had failed to demonstrate its own practical value and its own relevance other than by giving proof of the political will to act together. But the problem is precisely the lack of a uniform political will. Here are two examples taken from current affairs. Can the European Union embody a solid social model in response to the challenge of globalization? It claims to have a “social agenda”. But its members have very different social models. The social regimes that protect citizens from the negative impact of the “free market” don’t form part of the responsibilities of the EU.Another example is that it did not seem that the Union had defensible positions during the negotiations at the failed summit of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The European Commissioner for Trade, Peter Mandelson (who is the one that more wholly resembles a “European minister”), promised a “revolutionary reform” of the systems of support to the agriculture of the Union, but only “in the framework of an accord”: suppression of agricultural customs duties, “complete and definitive” abolition of farm subsidies. But his promise failed to reassure the important segments of European civil society, for which Doha was more a round of negotiations “for liberalization” than “for development”. This approach led Mandelson to enter openly into conflict with President Sarkozy, who defended tooth and nail the existing subsidies of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), affirming they are essentially in the national interests of France.The national interests will not disappear just because we wish them to do so. But now the balance between the “community” perspective and the “intergovernmental” perspective has been upset. If the member states (and not only France) essentially consider the European Union as a means to achieve their own national objectives, it will be they that will progressively damage the European Union. It would perhaps be better at the present time to consider the Union as a potential instrument of cultural conversion, of “metanoia”, whose main virtue would be reparative. For also its internal conflicts reveal that the EU has long been the most effective curb on the absurd nationalisms that tore Europe apart in the twentieth century. British Prime Minister Edward Heath had remarked, with deliciously unconscious irony, that the UK was “a medium power of the top rank”. The European Commissioner Benita Ferreo-Waldner recently cited one of the founding fathers of Europe, Paul-Henri Spaak, who observed with greater wisdom: “Europe is composed of small countries, but some know it and others don’t”.