An encouraging context. In this complicated time for European life, when just difficulties and divergences are highlighted, it might again be opportune to reiterate that they only represent one aspect of the reality. The EU is currently in a phase of remarkable achievement both in intensity and number - including some that have been awaited for years, like the European patent, and others that seemed impossible, like the financial transaction tax. The current fundamental difference of opinion on the 2014-2020 multiannual financial framework has largely been resolved on one crucial point - the European Parliament no longer challenges the overall allocation. The European Council is in the process of defining up to what point it is willing to go with regard to other demands from the Parliament.
Member states' ambitions are not the same. The context that I have just described, which I would say is encouraging, leads, in my opinion, to the fundamental question - will the renewed EU, which is gradually progressing, be able to remain a single whole? I have not hidden that in fact, in my opinion, a two-speed Europe already exists, and at the beginning of the week I mentioned the opinion of the French minister for the economy, Pierre Moscovici, which is very definitely in favour of the autonomy - including institutional - of the eurozone (see EUROPE 10803). Let me go further. Not only do I think that the Europe of the euro must have a high degree of autonomy but I also think that a two-speed Europe (or multi-speed Europe) is the only way allowing true Community integration - for several reasons that are, or should be, well known:
(1) the member states are not all up to respecting the eurozone disciplines or they don't want to enter into them (even if in theory all the member states should belong to them because the Treaty provides that the exemptions are transitional);
(2) some member states reject a higher degree of integration - either because they don't want it (for example, Hungary) or because they are not up to respecting the standards of the current degree of integration (for example, with regard to the Schengen area);
(3) the primary objective of most of the accession countries is to participate in the common policies and to benefit from the funding that results from these policies, and their accession will not go any further.
The Treaty is widely founded on voluntary participation. The Treaty itself - if one looks at it more closely, even without being a lawyer or expert - is clearly built on making the deepening of European construction possible between those member states that want it. It is an instrument allowing European construction to be extended to all areas - including the most sensitive, like foreign policy and defence - while preventing the countries that don't want to participate in a truly integrated Europe from being able to block those that, on the contrary, are determined to build true European unity.
This does not mean passing judgment or putting the good Europeans on one side and the bad on the other - each country has the right to choose but it must accept the consequences of its choice.
A timely reminder. In the context of the freedom of choice, it might perhaps be timely to reiterate that it is impossible for the EU to accept the British principle according to which a member state chooses the aspects of European construction that it prefers. No member state can simply belong to the common market while having the option, for the other aspects of European unity, to act as it wants and to be present in the institutions, with the option of blocking the aspects and areas of Community activity for which unanimity is required. The only way possible is leaving the EU and concluding a free trade agreement with it.
(FR/transl.fl)