First and foremost, let us not conceal our pleasure: as Emmanuel Macron’s victory in France makes clear, life – even political life – is a great practical joker. And it may bring intense emotions and rekindled hopes, like those felt outside France when a man strode forward in the dimness of the square courtyard of the Louvre towards his destiny to the sound of the Ode to Joy, the anthem of a Europe “rejected” by the French people in a referendum twelve years earlier (see EUROPE 11783). The ironies of history can be devilishly enjoyable.
That said, let us agree that the most difficult is yet to come. For the moment, it’s a victory but it all remains to be done. It’s only in five years’ time that we’ll know if President Macron has done enough to halt the social angst and identity crises which, in France and elsewhere in Europe, are the manna that feeds the extremists. Less time will be needed to discover whether the new French head of state can shake the European Council up and quieten the “long sobs” which for too long have wounded the heart of the people of Europe with their “languorous and monotonous sound”, to paraphrase French poet Paul Verlaine. Let him be aware that, if he sings the Partisans’ Song – le Chant des partisans – he will not walk alone towards his European destiny.
He may not walk alone but must he necessarily walk in step with all Europeans or, at any rate, their leaders? It’s by no means certain that this is still a realistic, or indeed a desirable, option. In truth, the time would seem rather to have come to take the view that gone are the days of the goal of “ever-closer union” among the 27. Brexit at least showed resoundingly that that antiphon has had its day: Brexit was merely the culmination of a relentless battle fought by London, from the very moment of the UK’s accession in 1973, to strip this principle of its meaning and, by means of opt-outs and other derogations, turn it into no more than an illusion. With the doggedness and efficiency for which they are renowned, UK ministers, diplomats and officials conducted a largely successful guerrilla campaign. The decision carried by a slender majority of UK voters in the referendum of June last year, when seen from this angle, is no more than a spectacular flop.
Brexit, however, is also the trees that can no longer stop us seeing the wood, the forest of reluctance and hesitancy that the principle of ever-closer union among those remaining in the club arouses. If it may be said that London one day entered the inner sanctum of Burgundy drinkers intent on turning it into a tea room, other states said to be members of the Union give the clear impression of behaving as if they were in a supermarket, only filling their trolleys with the things they like.
Quite the opposite of an ever more united Union, they have, with the cowardly consent of their more “orthodox” partners, helped to create “an opaque system of intersecting circles of cooperation”, as the European Parliament noted in adopting the Verhofstadt report on “possible evolutions and adjustments of the current institutional set-up of the EU” in February of this year (see EUROPE 11688). The question today is whether or not we can continue very much longer to accommodate chalk and cheese.
A sense of realism should dictate that the only possible response to that question is in the negative. It should be asked first in the inner sanctums where the destiny of Europe, as it has been constructed since the Schuman Declaration, the anniversary of which was celebrated this week, is played out. How can it be asked? Quite simply by asking the member states, that is to say, the national governments, if they subscribe to the goal set for the European project by Jean Monnet, the former French foreign minister who inspired it: to work towards “a European federation, imperative for the preservation of peace”. The evidence suggests that there are no grounds for thinking that twenty-seven positive answers will be received.
Some will retort that this would be to run the dangerous risk of destroying what has been achieved. It might be replied that, if there is to be destruction, it is the doing of those who have taken from the Schuman Declaration only what is useful to them, that is, the economic and trade benefits of belonging to the club. That would be a mistake. The time has perhaps come today to separate, if not the wheat from the chaff, at any rate the supporters of an ever closer union possibly leading to the federation set as a goal by Schuman and those only wishing to be involved in economic and commercial terms. The time would seem have come, as former Belgian foreign minister Mark Eyskens suggested, to build “a new European architecture” comprising “a re-invigorated European Union and a (renewed) European economic community” (La Libre Belgique, 3 May).
If the time has come to build a genuine federation, enjoying the democratic legitimacy that allows it to reconnect with citizens, alongside a confederation, where would the partner states “which cannot or will not join the Union, but nevertheless want a close relationship with the EU”, as MEPs put it in the above-mentioned Verhofstadt report, come from?
It goes without saying that the United Kingdom would be welcome in this confederation with its lesser degree of shared sovereignty, thereby providing it with an honourable way out of the hornets’ nest into which it was cast by the referendum result. But beyond the United Kingdom, this essentially economic confederation could also be open to countries such as Turkey (thus alleviating the reservations of those within the Union who feel that that country has no place in the current EU), Ukraine (no doubt Putin’s Russia could more easily accept this than full EU membership), and even other, more distant countries of Eastern Europe or on the other side of the Mediterranean.
What would those European countries ready to forge ahead with integration get out of it? First of all, they would be able to act without further hindrance. Secondly and especially, they would still be able to retain influence over their partners in the confederation and position themselves as an ever more central player on the international stage.
Michel Theys