Between stupidity and downright dishonesty. Are they plain ignorant or plain dishonest? I am referring to the people (especially in the media but also at the European Parliament) who slam the European Union and its institutions' handling of the halting of air transport because of the clouds of volcanic dust floating in European airspace. The EU does not have any powers in this domain - the member states have kept this responsibility for themselves; all decisions to close airspace therefore have to be taken by national air traffic control authorities. The European Commission did what it could and called for coordination and cooperation. The Spanish transport minister, as chair of the Council, organised a videoconference with his counterparts and they were able to make a number of moves even so (see issue 10122). Moreover, and more importantly, the Commission took advantage of the opportunity to announce that it will be publishing measures before the end of the year to counter the current fragmentation of air traffic control. Plans are already progressing apace, ranging from integrating air traffic control body Eurocontrol into EU structures to setting up a special EU body along the lines of the FAA in the United States (see issue 10123).
This is where the dishonesty comes in. Many of the critics who claim the EU has been sitting on its hands are the very same critics who oppose any expansion of EU powers and any expansion of the powers of the European institutions. They reject integration with one hand while criticising lack of integration on the other!
Burgeoning compromise or continued controversy? The controversial new European diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service is continuing to rouse emotion. The presidents of the European Parliament's three biggest political parties see a “'danger of the European Union moving backwards”, with the intergovernmental method returning with a vengeance to the detriment of the Community method. They say MEPs are determined to oppose this with all the means open to them under EP-Council codecision (see issue 10123). The Council of Ministers is keeping quiet but is seeking solutions taking account of the fact that the new diplomatic corps will have plenty of purely EU issues to deal with, along with issues that are the responsibility of the member states. French European affairs minister Pierre Lellouche did not mention the EP but criticised “months of largely pointless debate about who controls what and who appoints whom”, despite the fact that EU instruments are urgently needed to prepare the EU's position on the world's big issues.
In any negotiations, when everyone knows that a compromise has to be reached, then it is often at the end of the talks that the going gets tough with everyone scrabbling around to win as many concessions as possible. One only hopes that both Lellouche's words and the joint press release issued by the EPP, the Socialists and the Liberals might suggest that the end stage of the negotiations on the diplomatic corps are in sight and it can be sent up on schedule, taking account of the issues I explained in my earlier columns (issues 10122 and 10122), without attempting of course to have full clarity on every aspect of the revolutionary (and, for the moment, slightly ambiguous) new body introduced by the Lisbon Treaty to deal with EU foreign affairs.
Mindsets marching on. A few ideas we have outlined in this column seem to be gaining ground. The idea that the Doha Round can only succeed if it scales back its ambitions and makes do with what has been achieved thus far has been voiced by the EU trade commissioner, Karel De Gucht, who says it is simply not possible to hold any further negotiations on trade in agriculture. Pascal Lamy, the World Trade Organisation director general, immediately disagreed, noting that net farm exporting countries are unhappy with the lack of progress on areas of interest to themselves, but the EU does have some weight to throw around here.
A second example is the fact that the crucial importance of the second section of the 25 March 2010 statement of eurozone heads of state is now widely recognised. Earlier, only the first part of the statement (on aid for Greece) was commented upon but these days attention, comments and announcements have focussed on the idea of kick-starting economic governance of the eurozone (not ignoring Greece, of course). This governance idea is now being analysed and the operational details spelled out. Economists have all of a sudden discovered the notion of economic governance of the eurozone and are now brainstorming and trotting out ideas, merrily competing with fellow economists on the matter. We must now await the European Commission's ideas (to be published next month) and the work of the taskforce headed by Herman Van Rompuy, membership of which is being contested.
Jacques Delors must be smiling wryly at this sudden discovery of the need to balance out the two legs of Economic and Monetary Union, something he himself has been calling for for donkeys' years…
(F.R./transl.fl)