Today, Thursday 9 May, is Europe Day. A wonderful opportunity for every village to celebrate the Robert Schuman Declaration inaugurating the ESCS, Franco-German reconciliation, the benefits of the Community method, the new freedoms created by the treaties, European programmes, EU citizenship, the euro, the reunification firstly of Germany and then of the continent, the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to the EU and many more things besides.
It is also the date chosen by the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, and the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU to hold a meeting of the heads of state or government. Not in Brussels, the seat of the European Council ever since the Treaty of Nice, but in a city located in Romania. The meeting will therefore be “informal” even though the agenda is one of great political importance: the strategic priorities of the EU for the next five years. The charming city of Sibiu, one of the principal cities of Transylvania, has been chosen, no doubt by the host of the day, the President of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, as he was born there and served as its mayor, as a member of the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania.
Sibiu was founded in the 12th century by German settlers and was not majority Romanian until around 1930. Its amply robust fortifications (four compounds!) were enough to fend off Ottoman warriors. It has a magnificent heritage and was European Capital of Culture in 2007. Several religions (all Judeo-Christian) live peacefully together, side by side. It has an international airport. The American magazine Forbes ranked it in eighth position of the most idyllic places in Europe. As venues go, this one is hard to beat!
The 27 heads of state or government and the President of the Commission will hold their working session in the afternoon. After the press conference and a reception, an open-air concert will round off proceedings.
The EU’s strategic programme for 2019-2024 is officially the key subject on the agenda. A similar five-year programme was adopted in June 2014, based around five priority areas: (1) employment, growth and competitiveness; (2) resources for the citizens to realise their aspirations and ensure their own protection; (3) energy and climate; (4) freedom, security and justice; (5) the EU as a leading world player. It has not been announced whether an ex post evaluation has been carried out.
This time, the priorities will be reworked and their hierarchy changed, to respond to the citizens’ aspirations.
The Commission has made its contribution: an 82-page document, well-argued and backed up by statistics and graphics, which was published on 30 April (see EUROPE 12245/7). It sets out five ambitions: Europe must be (1) a protector; (2) competitive; (3) fair; (4) sustainable; (5) influential. Particular emphasis has been laid on communication.
The blueprints of the Presidency of the European Council, which were put to the member states on 2 May (see EUROPE 12247/1), are based around four priorities: (1) protecting the citizens and the freedoms; (2) developing our economy: the model of the future; (3) building a greener, fairer and more inclusive future; (4) promoting the interests and values of the EU in the world. Each of these headings is subdivided into four chapters, which between them cover all of the EU’s actions. Once it has been discussed and fine-tuned, the document is expected to be formally approved by the European Council in June.
Those attending the meeting in Sibiu are likely to hold an exchange of views – again informal – on the distribution of senior positions to be filled after the European elections.
What they will undoubtedly do is adopt the ‘Declaration of Sibiu’. Our daily bulletin has already provided a few details from the draft text, which runs to a page and a half with wide line spacing. The tone is very formal: “We, the Leaders of the European Union, have gathered in Sibiu to discuss and look ahead to our common future”. The signatories start with a reference to the forthcoming renewals of the European Parliament. They could have added an appeal to the citizens to go out and vote, with a turnout rate looking likely to be no better than in 2014 (see EUROPE 12246/3) and optional voting in the vast majority of member states.
Then, a list of ten clear intentions, with great focus on the unity of the EU, the protection of the citizens, the principle of fairness, considerations of the future generations, etc. Do these Ten Commandments take their inspiration, no doubt at a subconscious level, from Mosaic Law? We can’t be sure whether it’s a collective oath or internal rules of procedure …
At the European Council of Bratislava (16 September 2016), which was also informal, there was also much emphasis on taking back control of the situation after the shock of the British referendum, drawing up a roadmap around three condensed priorities this time: migration, internal and external security, the economy. The expectations this created were such that our bulletin ran an article entitled: ‘Member states give themselves six months to restore meaning to the European project’ (see EUROPE 11626/1). Since then, we haven’t seen much of either the promised restored meaning or any action of the mutual respect to which the leaders formally committed.
We should learn from the lessons of History. There is a formula that would allow us to relaunch the Union properly. It has already proved its worth. It consists of bringing together the following a major public-interest objective that everybody can get behind; (2) a deadline for this objective to be achieved, giving it its full effectiveness; (3) a binding legal framework; (4) an official timetable, setting out the stages of the work; (5) technical preparations and collective involvement to accompany the process – and therefore an appropriate communication strategy.
This “recipe” was first used in the Treaty of Rome for the abolition of customs barriers and bringing about the common agricultural policy; it was refined for the first elections to the European Parliament by universal suffrage (1979); it was honed to perfection and learned off by heart by the time it was used to complete the single market (1993) and then implement the euro (2002). It succeeded every time. None of the various ‘strategies’ that have been agreed, neither the ten-year ones (Lisbon, EUROPE 2020) nor the five-year ones, have produced any vaguely comparable results.
Due to a lack of courage and imagination, the recipe for success was abandoned after the failure of the constitutional treaty. Lisbon was a catch-up exercise, but it brought no innovations. There are therefore two separate major phases in the history of the European Council: the first, which combined proactivity, vision and planning; the second was made up of reactivity, wilful blindness and improvisation. The members of the European Council from the new member states are not getting too worked up about it, as they have only ever experienced the second phase; and so, for that matter, have the more recent leaders from the West.
Catch-all strategies do not speak to the masses. They just allow the European Council to pretend that it has a far-reaching, wide-ranging vision. Sibiu, like Bratislava, will be an illustration of this.
Renaud Denuit