L’Europe vue de l’intérieur
The Belgian economist Rudy Aernoudt, who works at the European Commission and lectures at the universities of Ghent and Nancy, but has also navigated between various ministerial cabinets in Belgium, the European Council and the European Economic and Social Committee, provides us with a vision of Europe as seen from inside the institutional bubble. Although he presents himself as a Eurocrat, his unusual career path allows him to distance himself from some of the institutional and political logic that hinders the EU’s ability to reinvent itself. The author, who recommends generally useful and necessary reforms, is nonetheless a prisoner of the European bubble when he defends the sacrosanct pragmatism that prevents Europe from thinking of itself as political.
“Outside Europe, to my mind, there is neither salvation nor future for Wallonia, Flanders, Belgium or Brussels. And nor is there for France, Paris, Brittany, to name but a few. Europe is and will remain the cradle of our culture, our civilisation and our economy. And at the end of my life, I do not wish to see a European decline, as was the case with other civilisations”, writes Aernoudt, who immediately set out his stall by acknowledging that Europe does not function perfectly and that it needs new impetus (our translation throughout).
“Europe is complex. It has also made the mistake of wanting to get involved with practically everything (…). Today, it is estimated that around 80% to 85% of national and regional legislation are nothing but translations – technically known as transpositions – of European rules. Certainly, although European history started with strategic sectors, its influence has progressively extended to all areas of European life. Showing its legislative zeal, Europe has regulated the length of cucumbers, production procedures for cheese, the technique for desalting cod, the orientation of toboggans, etc. Although every one of these rules is based on the noblest intentions and the opinions of all sorts of committees, the overall view is of a patchwork in which the citizen is nowhere to be found”, notes the author, adding: “this legislative logorrhoea is often seen as a hydrocephalus from Brussels, that sticks its nose into everything, in some cases to absurd extents”.
“European affairs are managed by a combination of civil servants – or ‘Eurocrats’ – of people elected politically (within the European Parliament, where they are elected by direct universal suffrage) and political appointments (Commissioners and members of committees)”, the author explains over-simplistically, omitting to mention the important role played by diplomats posted to Brussels and the members of the European Council. He goes on to stress that the “apparatus as a whole, originally ‘lean and mean’, has become a mass of bureaucracy”. Referring to an “army of 50,000 civil servants”, he argues that it is time to do away with this “mastodon split between more than 50 buildings in Brussels and with a presence in most of the countries of the world”. He describes it as a “source of alienation”, arguing that “Eurocrats are in the habit of writing each other notes, holding meetings between themselves, inter-institutionally as they call it. It is a closed shop that cuts itself off from the citizen”. To strip it back a bit, Aernoudt recommends starting by halving the number of Commissioners and putting a rotation system in place between the countries of origin. He also argues in favour of applying the same principle to the Court of Justice and the Court of Auditors. Subsequently, he would also like to halve the staff numbers of the European Parliament, get rid of the Committee of the Regions and the Economic and Social Committee and reduce the number of civil servants by two thirds. “If Europe were to focus on the basics, it would not need a Mexican army made up of 50,000 civil servants. An army, moreover, which is deeply hierarchical, where the generals derive their merit principally from their length of service and political loyalty, if not their sex”, he writes.
“A Eurocracy that is seen as an elite caste that has lost all contact with reality, a legislative talking shop put together in the bubble of the Schuman roundabout area of Brussels and forced upon the citizens, national and regional politicians using Europe as a scapegoat: the perfect ingredients to disregard the interests of the citizens”, Aernoudt observes, adding: “the texts of European institutions are even worse than medical reports. They are stuffed with bureaucratic jargon and, even though they have been translated into every language, they remain incomprehensible to most people. It makes me think of Jean Monnet. His grandson told me that whenever his grandfather received administrative documents, he asked his chauffeur to read them. If the chauffeur did not understand them, they were sent back. We should do the same in Europe”.
The author considers that “an Echternach procession (a reference to the procession held every Tuesday of Pentecost in a city in Luxembourg in which participants walk three steps forward and two steps back: Ed) in which an army of Eurocrats justify their existence with an indigestible mountain of legislation coming from the top and being applied to countries and regions as if it were transcendental or divine, is not a sustainable option”. “Likewise, a Europe that drags itself from one crisis to the next cannot last. A Europe, moreover, with no president, but a President of the Commission, a President of the European Council, a rotating President of the Council of the European Union, etc. The question asked by the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger – if I want to talk to Europe, who do I call? - is still relevant. President Erdoğan of Turkey also understood this principle when he obliged two Presidents to ‘play musical chairs’, giving rise to embarrassing images of a President of the European Council”, states Aernoudt. Even so, he is not in favour of any reinforcement of political integration.
“What is clear is that Brexit made the remaining 27 countries more European. The misgivings of the British were often used as an excuse which the other countries hid behind. And this is not only the case with the member states, but also with the Europeans themselves who, in the Eurobarometer surveys, are expressing an increasingly positive opinion of Europe. Brexit may ultimately be the new driving force behind European construction. It would be a great shame to leave a crisis of this kind unexploited. Brexit is the perfect breeding ground for a new Europe, a Europe that does not set out to be the absolute master or a project conducted by bureaucrats, but a Europe of the citizen, in which pragmatism triumphs and dogmatism is banished. It is therefore high time for this new shot in the arm, it is time for a pragmatic Europe”, the author states. This pragmatism, he goes on to stress, should begin by clearly restricting European actions to projects with a genuine European dimension and real added value. Furthermore, harmonisation should never be an objective. Aernoudt is of the opinion that most of the projects of the European Social Fund have no European added value and should therefore be scrapped. He applies the same reasoning to the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund and the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund, adding: “if we take a really close look at all European projects from the point of view of this European dimension, many would disappear and the Eurocrats would be able to focus on the ones with which Europe can really make a difference. That would considerably streamline the army of Eurocrats”.
The author identifies 12 priorities to reform the European Union pragmatically, acknowledging that “other areas could be added and some removed, but always bearing in mind that Europe must be able to make a difference and that citizens should be able to feel this difference in their everyday lives”. These “12 labours of Hercules”, as he calls them, include: (1) Erasmus4all; (2) environmental and climate policy; (3) re-industrialisation; (4) space; (5) entrepreneurship; (6) innovation; (7) the single market; (8) the euro and monetary policy; (9) economic policy; (10) Work4all; (11) social and regional policy; (12) foreign migration policy. Strangely, security and defence are absent from this list, even though the scale of crisis and threats was on the increase even before the war in Ukraine (this work was published before its outbreak) and it is an open secret that the member states of the EU do not individually have the capacity to face them.
Without going into details on these 12 areas, it is worth noting that the author proposes an extension of the Erasmus programme to ensure that “all students spend at least six months in a foreign university or college”. He believes that this would “resolve many inter-cultural problems and would give Europe a true identity”. He also suggests launching equivalent system for young entrepreneurs. On industry, his proposals include relocation aid for businesses that have left Western Europe (France, Belgium, Germany, for instance) due to an excessive salary burden in favour of countries (Bulgaria, Romania) where the wage bill is three times less than Belgium or Germany (€14 per hour as opposed to €42 per hour) and which are now able to compete fairly comfortably with countries such as China and Vietnam. In a similar vein, he also argues that regional policy should be available only to the countries that need it the most: “sub-regions such as Hainaut, Limbourg, Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Groningen, to name but a few, should not be supported by Europe (…). Europe should focus on the poorest countries alone, to allow them to catch up. Countries like Romania and Bulgaria should be the target of a regional policy in a European context. Making sure that it is carried out as efficiently as possible and getting rid of corruption and fraud”.
Rudy Aernoudt concludes with a suggestion: “let us further develop our single market, let us better coordinate our economic policy and our monetary policy, let us develop a social policy that is worthy of the name: then, Europe can be reincarnated and become the best place in the world in terms of quality of life for its citizens”. (Olivier Jehin)
Rudy Aernoudt. Translated from the original Flemish by: Michel Charlier. L’Europe vue de l’intérieur – Vers un nouvel élan? Mardaga. ISBN: 978-2-8047-2105-3. 193 pages. €19,90
The European Council in the era of crises
The Dutch journalist Jan Werts has covered every European summit since 1975 and in this book, he traces the history of these meetings of the heads of state or government which, following their very informal origins, progressively took on more and more importance until, in their current form of European Council, they now take place on a virtually monthly basis.
The author reminds us that these meetings began in 1974 by initiative of French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, but the meeting in Dublin of March 1975 was the first one that can be considered truly inaugural. Although the location of the meetings of what would go on to be called summit of heads of state or government alternated between a city of the country holding the rotating Presidency of the Council of Ministers and Brussels until 2004, they are now all held in Brussels. And although they have often provided the opportunity to resolve crises, the European Council has since 2010 been called upon to deal with the repeated crises facing the European Union.
“For the citizens, Europe often exists at a difficult distance from their everyday lives. But everybody knows about the large oval table – the one that is always shown on television – at which their national leader discusses the situation with his or her colleagues at the European Council. The summits of the European Council, particularly in times of crisis, create a European identity that the ordinary citizen can ‘feel’. In this sense, the series of crises of the last decade has brought Europe to life in the eyes of the people. Similarly, of course, Europe has also taken shape as a major concern due to the growth of Eurosceptic political parties with their criticism of the EU’s bureaucracy and centralism, some of it justified”, writes the author, whose book goes on successively to examine the role of the European Council in the chapters on the bail-out of the euro, migration crisis, Brexit, the pandemic, foreign policy and the multi-annual financial framework. He also devotes many pages to the functioning and legal status of the European Council as well as its relations with the other institutions.
Jan Werts considers that the “European Council, one of the most exclusive clubs of the world in terms of joining, is currently the major source of all high-impact decisions made in the European Union”. “It plays a key role as constitutionalist, informal legislator and executive political authority. Its main task, as set out in article 15.1 TEU, is wide and extensive”, the author stresses, adding that “in the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Council was elevated to the rank of chief institution of the EU and that is how it behaves. If we look at the example of the meeting of October 2011, without any legal basis, the leaders created and constituted a new body, the regular meeting of the Euro summit. The EU leaders often do likewise. In times of crisis (there are many of these at the moment), the European Council takes charge of all constitutional leadership and the political executive of the European Union”. Werts also stresses the “strong tendency of national political elites and their administrations to keep control of all essential and controversial dossiers of the EU”, with the result that “it is not the institutions of the EU, but the national leaders who dictate and control the speed of the European integration and cooperation process”.
“The nearly 250 European summits that have been held since 1975 show that in a crisis, the leaders always find a solution at the eleventh hour in the form of measures forming an acceptable compromise. The exceptions have been the migration crisis – the problem that has divided the EU the most – and the crisis of legitimacy in the view of an increasingly critical public opinion, resulting in the worrying Brexit”, argues the author, who considers that in times of one crisis after the next, the way the European Council resolves problems has proven vital to the proper functioning of the EU. He qualifies this comment, however, by pointing out that certain crises, such as that of the euro, were the result of immature decisions (the conception of economic and monetary union) and were therefore effectively self-inflicted crises. Although he acknowledges that the emergence of the European Council has changed the balance of the former institutional triangle, Werts does not take the view that this has really weakened the European Commission, unlike the European Parliament, which continues to be the only institution that is not represented at the meetings of the heads of state or government. (OJ)
Jan Werts. The European Council in the era of crisis. John Harper Publishing. ISBN: 978-1-8280-8984-9. 402 pages. €32,00