Covid-19 may have hung like a sword of Damocles over the inauguration date of the Conference on the Future of Europe, but there was nothing to stop the institutional trio from making sure that the preparations were all in order. It would have been a pretext to quietly forget about the whole dossier. A pretty poor pretext, as 2020 showed that even a pandemic cannot prevent major decisions from being made on far more complex subjects. There’s something else behind it.
Many governments, if not most of them, had no interest in a public debate on the future of Europe and/or are allergic to the idea of changing primary law. There is certainly no majority in favour of new foundations! And then the Council became overwhelming obsessed with the idea of “avoiding that Federalist Verhofstadt at all costs”. And there we have it: hello, irrationality, glad you could join us.
Federalism is a fairly common and, to be quite honest, fairly mundane political system for the division of competences. Around 40% of the world’s population lives under a federal regime. Of the EU member states, Germany, Austria and Belgium are federations and Spain is not far off. The vast majority of political scientists agreed that the European Union is by no means a federal model. Yet when it came into being, militant pro-federalists, mainly from Italy, played a positive role. Even today, there is still no intellectual shame in being in favour of the EU moving towards a federal system since, whatever happens, the member states will always be an unstoppable force and it is in any case contrary to the basic principles of federalism to seek to erase the federated entities.
We also need to be aware of the word’s connotations in people’s minds. For the United Kingdom, now out of the EU, it used to mean an intolerable Brussels-centric authoritarianism; in the French collective subconscious, federalism harks back to the Girondin movement, which they consider bourgeois, provincial and unpatriotic; for the Polish, a federal Europe brings back memories of the Soviet dictatorship, etc...
Guy Verhofstadt was a member of parliament in his native Belgium, then head of government and, as such, a member of the European Council (1999-2018). Had it not been for the British veto, he could have taken over from Romano Prodi at the head of the European Commission. A member of the European Parliament since 2009, he is someone who leads rather than follows. Not a bad CV for the President of the Conference. Yes, but… he is an intellectual (ye gods!) who has shared his analysis on the way the EU functions and his vision of the future (heaven forfend!) in a series of five books, all on Europe and translated into several languages, and one of which is called: “The United States of Europe” (there’s no getting past that!).
But despite this pedigree, would Verhofstadt really bring unbridled pro-federalist fervency to his role at the helm of the Conference, as someone who knows how the EU works and is well aware that treaty change can only happen by means of an intergovernmental conference, where only the 27 national governments would get a say?
But reason is powerless against imagination and fantasy.
As soon as it became clear that the Conference would not be opening in May in Dubrovnik, Croatia lost all interest in it. On 18 June, the EP adopted a new resolution by a sizeable majority, calling upon the Council to present its position on the format and organisation of the Conference as soon as possible (see EUROPE 12510/10). Quick off the blocks, the ambassadors of the member states to the EU (Coreper) adopted a vague text on 24 June, reiterating the known positions of the Council, but specifying that the Conference would not come under the aegis of article 48 TEU (treaty change), in outright opposition to the stance of the EP and even the Commission. The themes to be discussed by the Conference would mainly be those on the strategic agenda of the leaders dating from June 2019 (see EUROPE 12278/1); communication with the citizens would be conducted via countless events organised by the institutions and member states and via a multilingual digital platform; the organisational structure would, unlike that proposed by the EP, consist of a small secretariat. It would be chaired by an eminent independent individual chosen by common agreement between the three principal institutions (see EUROPE 12513/25).
In her state of the Union speech on 16 September (see EUROPE 12561/9), the President of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said not a word about the Conference, for all her apparent enthusiasm on the subject one year earlier.
As there were practically no results to show for the Croatian Presidency of the Council, one might be forgiven for imagining that that friend of France, Germany, would get the dossier across the finishing line. The German Secretary of State for European Affairs admitted failure in December (see EUROPE 12613/36), the only achievement being a magnificent agreement on the launch venue: Strasbourg. In the Portuguese Presidency’s programme, a 38-page document, a full six lines have been given over to the Conference, concerning which the Presidency ensures that it will “do its utmost” (sic).
At the start of this year, the EP expressed its irritation over the exercise’s having ground to a halt, in an open letter signed by representatives of several political groups (http://bit.ly/2MdXU1I ), accusing the Council and Commission of being afraid of a public debate the conclusions of which they might not like. Where the signatories wanted the Conference to continue for the originally proposed two years, so that its conclusions, with the approval of the leaders, could be in the public domain in time for the European elections of 2024, France announced that it would undertake for the EU reforms to be completed considerably earlier, under the French Presidency of the Council (first half of 2020), in the spring (see EUROPE 12634/4). April 2022, does that ring any bells? My goodness, of course! The Conference on the Future of Europe, instrumentalised for French domestic policy purposes? How could anybody think such a thing?
There’s also the Gordian knot of the governance, or rather of the head. A Parliament-Council leadership was the first configuration to be considered, but just a few days later, the trio option became the favourite (see EUROPE 12640/28), thus bringing on board the Commission, which seemed indifferent to the matter, just as long as the work got underway quickly (see EUROPE 12645/23). The advantage of this formula from the Council’s point of view is that it would put the EU’s largest institution, which is not only the most democratic, but also has the clearest view of what it wants, into a minority. Some things never change: a round of negotiations on the appointments will be held in the near future, but a long way away from the citizens, naturally.
Talking of which, isn’t it about time we knew more about exactly how the three institutions plan to feed citizens’ comments into the debates of the Conference? The Parliament is in favour of citizens’ agoras selected at random, but with quotas to ensure proper representation of the various geographic origins, social categories, genders and age groups. There could also be agoras made up of young people only. On 27 January, the Parliamentary committee on constitutional affairs examined a working document detailing the ‘bottom-up’ procedure to be set in place, going as far as to open it up to non-EU members (see EUROPE 12645/23).
In the meantime, we can continue to search in vain for a joint text by the three institutions, clearly setting out the methodology for the involvement of the citizens and the follow-up of their likely proposals. This overall lack of conception is a sad illustration of the current institutional situation whenever there is call to act decisively with a view to deepening democracy.
So much for new foundations.
Renaud Denuit.