A year which will be positive. The year that is just beginning will be difficult but generally positive for Europe. How come this statement when European pessimism is still dominant and fashionable? Because the EU last year laid the basis for recovery and created instruments to overcome the loopholes and difficulties which made the previous years so arduous. The way is laid. It doesn't please everyone, especially those groups who have to renounce, at least in part, the privileges of the past that were unfair and abusive - privileges that often still remain. Yet instruments for recovery now exist or are being worked upon. The path is still difficult, but it has been drawn. What has been accomplished or at least prepared is very vast and we are going to start reaping the fruits of it.
Yet my intention is not to play at being a prophet. My objective is to review the situations and factual data on which the outlook for the year that has just begun is founded.
The “two speeds” are a reality in the bag. The principle of the two-speed Europe will be consolidated in several areas this year. It is not a recent invention but a principle explicitly written into the Lisbon Treaty. This treaty is largely based on an indication of developments in which the member states that want to do so participate - in both the economic arena and in the political one. The principle of differentiated development has not been invented for the euro - it is crucial for preventing overall European construction from being condemned to respecting the pace of the most reticent countries.
The eurozone represents the most visible and striking example. Participation in the single currency is not subordinated exclusively to the ability to respect the rules for it. It involves the political resolve of largely pooling the management of the economy and all that depends on it. Last year's adventures made it increasingly evident that the euro presupposes an explicitly accepted conception of the limits of national autonomy, especially with regard to budgetary issues (not about the choices and criteria for spending, but with regard to the balance and control of deficits). As we are well aware, the eurozone has its own institutions, and this has an effect on the functioning of the EU. As François Hollande said - each country has the right not to join the eurozone, but “why should it then come to tell us how this zone must be managed?”
This problem is particularly pertinent for the European Parliament - is it logical that the MEPs representing countries that do not belong to the euro, and that do not plan on being on becoming a member of it in the future, should have a right to vote on the management of this zone? The president of the European Parliament reacted strongly to this question - even the Troika (Commission, ECB, IMF) should, in his opinion, give account of its action to the Parliament as a whole.
Institutional clarification is one of the delicate problems to be resolved this year.
The 2014-2020 financial framework. Most Community activity is not, however, submitted to the two-speed principle. All member states are part of the borderless single market and, in particular, they participate in common policies, in which they are the key players - the cohesion policy, agricultural policy, fisheries policy, transport policy, and more. The functioning and effectiveness of these policies depends largely on how much finance they are given - finance which has already been fixed for 2013. In the end, everything will depend on the financial framework for 2014-2020 - the definition of which represents one of the most controversial dossiers that has to be defined this year.
The divergences with regard to the overall amount to be given have been much dramatised. The bitterness of the negotiations is understandable - as soon as it comes to money, each tries to obtain the maximum. Yet the figures under discussion in fact only represent a minimal percentage of the national budgets, and investigations and analyses have proved that EU finance is often badly used in the member states receiving it. The elimination of wastage and abuse would allow justified and really effective spending to be kept. The controversy around maintaining certain European financing sometimes has the flavour of a dubious defence of hidden abuse. The member states spend 90% of the EU budget - it is not money destined for Brussels and its surroundings, but for European citizens.
This is why, in my opinion, the most arduous aspect to negotiate this year is not that of expenditure, but of revenue - in other words, the way in which the EU budget will be financed. By the creation of own resources? By abolishing the British rebate? By other sensitive elements? Everything is open.
The United Kingdom - in or out? The allusion to the British budget rebate leads straight to another question mark. At the end of the year, will the United Kingdom still be a member state? This is the only dossier that has moved over the Christmas period, with the statements of Jacques Delors, Herman Van Rompuy and Guy Vershofstadt, who all think that the current situation can no longer be endured.
Mr Delors has been radical - the British attitude is in his opinion incompatible even with the notion of European construction. The UK is interested in what is economically useful to it, nothing more, like India or China. Delors believes we could propose a form of partnership to the UK - a free trade agreement and participation in a common economic area. Mr Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, told English daily newspaper The Guardian that if the member states had the option of choosing to participate in the Community policies that interest them and withdrawing from the others, there would be not more single market and the EU would lose its foundation. Guy Verhofstadt MEP picked up the same concept (“An à la carte Europe can't work”), adding that the UK could obtain a system on the lines of the Norwegian model, without participating in the Community institutions, nor in the development of legislation.
The situation therefore seems clear. The problem is that London's position cannot be clarified this year because its prime minister, David Cameron, has announced a referendum on British participation in the EU… in 2015! And he has envisaged a multi-speed EU - around the hard core of the eurozone, the member states that do not belong to the eurozone would instead choose common policies in which they want to participate. The referendum on the independence of Scotland should take place in 2014 (October has been mentioned), after which an autonomous Scotland would give its opinion on its participation in the EU. To this is added that fact that the authorities in Barcelona are calling for a similar procedure with regard to the autonomy of Catalonia! Whatever the developments may be, they will go on well after 2013.
The obvious conclusion is that the English issue will not be regulated in 2013 but it will lead to quite a number of complications that will have to be regulated provisionally by compromises that will be arduous to define.
Turkey becomes further away and other candidates are waiting. The British issue leads us to a glance at the composition of the EU - will there be anything new? Putting the case of Croatia to one side, whose certain accession will have the finishing details put to it in the months to come (even if a few points continue to need regulation), no other significant developments are planned for this year.
It is true that theoretically an accession negotiation is under way with Turkey, but it is fictional - no one on either side believes in it. On the EU side, a few member states have never hidden their opposition, with France in the lead, and no government or political force takes it seriously. Mr Van Rompuy has spoken of negotiations that are pretty much blocked, recommending structured and intensive contact with a view to a positive agenda for the future. In the meantime, the Turkish authorities are accelerating and strengthening what one commentator has defined as “Islamisation with an unveiled face”, incompatible with EU accession. The Turkish Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk said a few months ago that “the dream of Turkey in Europe has vanished”, and while reproaching Europe for its attitude that Pamuk considers “narrow-minded and closed”, he noted that Istanbul has become a “centre of attraction for immigration from Asia and Africa”, calling for concentration on a formula allowing close EU-Turkey cooperation.
It remains to be seen how the fiction of accession can be exited, especially on the trade level. Turkish products in principle benefit from free access to the European market, but Ankara does not participate in defining the EU's trade policy. In practice, it must apply what has been decided in Brussels. What is more besides, divergences and conflicts are becoming more and more numerous - the Turkish army continues to occupy the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, which only exists for Ankara; the fishing waters affair is becoming more serious; visa-free access for Turkish citizens onto EU territory is still rejected, and so on.
Everything is still to be discussed. The only firm point is that Turkey will never be an EU member state.
As to the numerous candidate countries whose European nature is indisputable, the outlook is favourable, but … in the long term. The day will come when Serbia and other countries from the region will be part of the EU, especially when the two-speed Europe has become a reality that is admitted and acknowledged. Yet this is not for 2013 either, and these developments thus go beyond the object of this commentary.
To be continued tomorrow. Tomorrow this column will discuss other aspects that the EU awaits in 2013, including in particular - the revision of two common policies; the dispute on the single seat of the European Parliament; and next month's vote in Italy. (FR/transl.fl)