Jean-Claude Juncker is nothing if not wily. Numerous commentators have derided the timorous nature of the White Paper on the future of the EU that the European Commission that he leads presented on 1 March (see EUROPE 11736). Some with humour, like Nicolas who, in his blog “Regards d’un Européen”, concludes: “While Moses descended from Mount Sinai with the ten commandments, we should perhaps not be surprised that from the heights of the Berlaymont – the European Commission building in Brussels – its president, Jean-Claude Juncker, could only descend with five scenarios for the European Union’s future”. And in other cases, not without acrimony and perfidy, for example, when Italian federalist Federica Carminati, in Europe Today bemoaned “the political (in)significance” of this document compared with the one which, under Jacques Delors in 1985, mapped out the path that was to lead to the single market with no internal borders and the Treaty of Maastricht, and thence to the single currency. She is not wrong; the inspiration is hardly the same.
Have, then, the Commission and its president been unable this time to deliver a clear vision of where the EU should be going and the goal to be achieved with the same “resolve and determination” that inspired the Delors Commission? Is this to say that the present College is prepared to accept that Europe “drop back into mediocrity”? No. There you are, times have changed, as two reactions will attest. The first is from Luuk van Middelaar who, in the Belgian daily, Le Soir, suggests that, “in setting out these scenarios, the Commission and its president have tabled the gamut of what is possible”. Yet this Dutch historian and political philosopher, who was Council President Herman Van Rompuy’s main speech writer, previously justified the Commission’s carefulness since the Commission is “not like a government of a national state” and “it is the European Council … which will discuss the direction to be taken for the future of the European Union” (3 March).
It could not be made clearer that times have changed since the Commission embodied the general interest and was the guardian of the treaties: in the minds of some, its role today is simply to serve as the European Council secretariat! The author of the second commentary explicitly confirms this: “From the Commission one would expect to be strong on execution rather than on thinking about the future”. Who could have dared say such a thing? Why, a member of Jean-Claude Juncker’s party! No, you haven’t misread, Prof. Ziga Turk is a member of the academic board of the Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, a foundation of the European People’s Party, and is not afraid to make comments that would have brought opprobrium and perhaps even expulsion if Konrad Adenauer, Walter Hallstein or Helmut Kohl were still around.
But Ziga Turk is not German but Slovenian. Perhaps he is not a real Christian Democrat either, maybe his Slovenian Democratic Party is just conservative, but that was enough to see the doors of the European “party” which had hidden some of its convictions under a bushel in exchange for a mess of electoral potage opened. At any rate, what is certain is that Prof. Turk is a “young” European, a national of one of the countries that joined in the “big bang” enlargement of 2004.
Does Jean-Claude Juncker know him personally? Probably, but that’s of little importance: the former Luxembourg prime minister, one of European circles’ old hands, knows how little today’s European Union has in common with the European Community of Delors’ days. Since the last enlargements, attitudes have radically changed at the top levels, delivering the posthumous victory of the ideas of General de Gaulle, champion of inter-governmentalism, over the “community” ideals of Schuman and Monet. Hence the consecration of the European Council as omnipotent, but impotent, ruler of today’s Union.
The last meeting of heads of state and/or government demonstrated the extent of the resulting damage (see EUROPE 11743). This includes the worry of the Visegrad countries – and more broadly, of the “new” member states – that an “Iron Curtain” will again be raised in Europe on the initiative of the countries that want to integrate a little more. Even though they did not back the crazy position adopted by the Polish delegation, all are of the view that nothing should be done that might eclipse the nation state. That is the real “Iron Curtain” now dividing Europe, the prohibitions of some mixing a poisonous cocktail with the hypocrisies of others.
Knowing this, Jean-Claude Juncker decided only to show his hand when the time is right. With the five scenarios that the Commission submitted on 1 March, he has the ability finally to force “governments, the European Parliament and national parliaments, public opinion and civil society once and for all to shed all ambiguity”. Ambiguity has for too long been the screen behind which our capitals – all capitals, all national executives – have hidden their perpetual desire selfishly to pick and choose what best suits them, even if it is to the detriment of the European project itself or of European citizens.
In short, the White Paper on the future of the EU has been designed to be the fig leaf that shows clearly that the emperor has no clothes because the European Council will have to reveal itself this time, with no national or nationalist prudishness. Jean-Claude Juncker has promised: in the state of the union speech he will deliver in September of this year he will play his cards in light of the capitals’ initial thoughts. His posture will surely be that of the Commander determined to put things back on track. If not, all that will remain will be to resign ourselves and to turn, with no further illusions, to a Council president who, with barely twenty-six backers, not even twenty-seven, is the world’s least well supported political figure.
Michel Theys