Awaiting the second round. Matters European do not seem to have played any significant role in the first round of presidential election in France. Yet they are crucial for the future not only for the EU as a whole but also for France itself. Maybe they will come in for greater discussion in the second phase which is just beginning and which will see at least one head-to-head televised debate between the two protagonists.
In the meantime, I shall try to remind you of some elements of what is at stake for Europe.
Two parallel objectives. This week, the European Commission will present its draft EU budget for 2013, the last within the framework of the current financial perspectives. The next will form part of the 2014-2020 perspectives to which general attention has now turned. The 2013 budget, then, closes a cycle; the review of the most costly common policies (inter alia, agriculture and regional policy) will not influence it. The forecasts in EUROPE 10598 suggest that, in those areas where there is a degree of wriggle room, the Commission will focus 2013 credits on European action for growth and employment, such as infrastructure, youth training, education, research and science. And it has announced that it will assess possible waste in each of its directorates general and will block badly used credits and put this money into a pot to be used to fund alternative projects.
This confirms that economic recovery is the EU's priority objective, along with the progressive elimination of national budgetary deficits. In Brussels, these two are not conflicting policies but twin objectives, each essential - the first mainly down to national authorities and the second resulting from European initiatives.
A legally pointless treaty? In this context of twin objectives, the usefulness of renegotiating the treaty on budgetary discipline - renegotiation that has been urged by some political forces - has to be questioned. It is true that, as some leading figures have said, this treaty is not absolutely essential. According to Notre Europe President Antonio Vitorino, “the added value in terms of Community law is limited, even unclear”. He suggests that the value of the treaty is rather as a political instrument which, with everything being inter-governmental, “has the useful effect of enhancing the powers of parliaments and the Commission”.
Former European Investment Bank (EIB) President Philippe Maystadt, too, is of the view that this treaty adds nothing to the existing legislative arsenal and in no way improves governance of the eurozone. He says that all it does is elevate to treaty status standards and procedures which already substantially exist, and which are in their proper place in more easily adaptable legislation. He adds, however, that, politically, it should be ratified. The reason for this is that Ms Merkel has made it a condition for putting in place a permanent mechanism to come to the aid of states in financial difficulty, and Mr Draghi, President of the European Central Bank (ECB), has made it a condition for the ECB to continue to take non-conventional measures. We are, then, according to Maystadt, in the realm of politicking.
… but is it politically imperative? So what is to be done? I would note that: (a) MEPs have been actively involved in drafting the treaty and have won what they wanted on a number of points; (b) the first ratifications have already taken place and, as soon as 12 states have ratified it, the treaty will automatically come into force. However, at Community level, the French Socialists in the EP are maintaining their demands which, like the draft report by Pervenche Berès, exceed points of principle, for example, calling for a reference to policies which promote sustainable development and job creation as a prerequisite for the effective reduction of public deficits. According to Ms Berès, the revised treaty should also contain, among other things, a commitment to issue euro-bonds and to allow the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) access to the liquid assets of the ECB (see EUROPE 10599).
Demands such as these would appear difficult for Germany, and other member states, to accept and, anyway, they will involve long negotiations when the new treaty may, in the meantime, have come into effect without France's involvement! Such a fissure would, in my opinion, be difficult to justify at a time when the two-pronged approach of budgetary discipline and economic recovery has been accepted by most political forces, the European Parliament first and foremost!
Two hypotheses. Confronted with these uncertainties and differences, two hypotheses are possible.
In the first, we are faced with disagreements which will have a significant effect on the future of the euro and on the development of Community economic policies, with unforeseen consequences.
In the second, the arguments should essentially be placed within the framework of the electoral campaign in France and more or less similar vicissitudes to come in other member states. In this case, agreement and solutions will be possible when the time comes. The EU may, then, develop in ways it is impossible to predict.
The possibility of moving in a direction that brings deeper European integration, through the “two-speed” approach”, clearly remains valid.
(FR/transl.rt)