The countries of the euro renounce their budgetary autonomy. The comments on the new budgetary discipline treaty neglected, as far as I'm aware, to stress the extent to which this agreement reduces and limits the sovereignty of the signatory countries in the areas it covers. The rules imposed are strict and detailed, and the responsibility for ensuring that they are observed lies with the European Commission, the judgment of which can be revised only by a very clear majority of the Council. It is true that the EU already limits national autonomy in considerable numbers of fields, starting with the ban on any customs duty or quantitative restriction on products from the other member states; but budgetary policy is still largely a national matter. This is the autonomy that allowed Greece and certain other member states to flout the rules and disciplines of the euro. That is over and done with. As from early next year, each country which intends to remain in the eurozone (or to join it) will have given up its budgetary autonomy; any issues with an impact on this vital domain will be under Community supervision. National sovereignty is gradually being transferred to the European level.
Political union is becoming inevitable. There is nothing radical about the above comments; the political leaders are all aware of what they have signed up to and the texts are available to everyone. But who is giving any clear explanations of their implications? A few attempts have been made by the European Central Bank and by various individual political figures and movements, and all of these have come to a unanimous conclusion - as inevitably as night follows day, the end point is the political unity of Europe, irrespective of what name you give it or the form it takes. The ECB stated this succinctly by a somewhat unusual medium (see this section in EUROPE 10557); the Federalists are trying to lay the foundation stones for a political, or even federal, Europe. But as regards the countries of the euro, the end point seems inevitable - political union.
Two-speed Europe will become a concrete reality. Parliamentary circles are, as you would expect, reflecting on these issues, at the European Parliament and the national parliaments. According to Joseph Daul, president of the largest political group of the EP, the two member states which have not signed the new treaty (the United Kingdom and the Czech Republic) “are isolating themselves from the political integration process of Europe, which proves more and more vital every day.”
Vital for whom? Not for the UK, clearly, because it refuses out of principle to give up certain essential elements of its sovereignty. The time will come when it will be necessary to call on the British to give a clear answer to the question: are you prepared to give up some of your national sovereignty? In fact, they've already answered this question on several occasions, the most recent of these being their explicit refusal to get on board the new treaty. There is every indication that this fundamental attitude will be confirmed, not in the sense that the UK wants to leave the EU, but in that it will continue to reject anything that limits its political autonomy. And it will not be the only one. This means that the issue of two-speed Europe will lose the theoretical or doctrinal nature frequently attributed to it and become unavoidable, even if a number of capitals and a proportion of the European Parliament are pretending to be unaware of this.
The recovery programme is scheduled. One example of anomalies within the European Parliament is represented by the attitude of a section of the Socialist group, whose French members are calling for re-negotiation before the ratification of the new treaty on budget discipline. However, it has been signed by 25 member states and its entry into force will be a done deal once the 12 countries of the eurozone have ratified it, which will happen fairly quickly; it will therefore be in force from early next year. Any countries choosing to reject it will automatically leave the eurozone, because renegotiation will be unacceptable to any other state which has signed it.
But in reality, what the French Socialists are calling for is already being put into place - doubling up the budget discipline treaty with an economic recovery programme (see this section yesterday). It is in this framework that everyone can and must fight their battle, not over the issue of whether a few - necessarily rhetorical - sentences get included in an emergency treaty. The guidelines and instruments to give a shot in the arm to employment and the economy are already, for the most part, under discussion; this is where the fight needs to be, not over the indispensable consolidation of the euro, included in a treaty which cost so much effort, which the European Parliament made such a contribution towards improving, and which will pave the way for political Europe. (FR/transl.fl)