Euro-MPs, don't pretend you do not know what is going on. European Commissioners, don't pretend you can't see. The project aimed at avoiding EU dilution, into a vast and soulless trading area without ambition, is here. It well and truly exists. The texts and the positions that we have brought together since the beginning of the year and for the most part made available to readers have, taking it all in all, only had one aim: that of showing that this project exists, of explaining that it is not the work of a handful of visionaries or dreamers but that it has begun to penetrate political circles and Community institutions up to the very highest level. The Commission and the Parliament will, over the next few days, be making their "opinions" known on the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), and hence on the institutional reform that will come prior to Union enlargement. These opinions ignore the new projects which are taking shape and keep to the problem prepared by the Helsinki Summit. They will be neither good nor bad - but quite simply insignificant.
The texts and the three commentaries that we have devoted to them - to which must be added the Le Monde interview of Jacques Delors, warning those who had not yet noticed anything - bring us to the following conclusions by way of a summary.
EU enlargement is inevitable and indispensable. This first aspect has been somewhat neglected, and unfortunately several superficial commentators have not given it the importance that it holds in Jacques Delors' reasoning, to the point of hinting that he would criticise the Community institutions for what they are doing along these lines. But it is the contrary which is true: the construction of Europe as Delors sees it is based on the affirmation that enlargement is not only a duty, in order to reunite Europe after the artificial divisions that have torn it apart, but also a question of marking the honour of this stage along the long road towards the united Europe. The title of his lecture at the Aspen Institute (of which the interview in Le Monde is in some ways a summary for the layman) is explicit: "United Europe: our historical mission". And the text compromises a long peroration in defence of the culture of Eastern European countries and of their right to certain differences: they are open to the "European dream" but "they too want to be among the actors (…) they also have a building block to add to the construction of the common edifice". Also, in the interview with Le Monde, he said: "the genes of European history are to be found just as much in Budapest, Warsaw or Prague as in Paris, London or Rome".
One has quite artificially invented divergence on this subject between Jacques Delors and Romano Prodi. The current president of the Commission is, regarding the need and the significance of enlargement, along the same lines as yesterday's president. And there can be no criticism of Delors regarding EU efforts towards enlargement, but exclusively for his lack of reflection on the consequences and future objectives.
The 30-member EU cannot have yesterday's ambitions. This is an obvious fact to which the Institutions have long turned a blind eye, and which, today, most of those in responsible positions try to slide over. "Contrary to the affirmations of the European Council, I do not think that the Europe of 27 and of 30 tomorrow and then of 32 may have aims that are as ambitious as those set by the Maastricht Treaty", said Delors. The current Council Presidency does not say any different, and we have already showed in this heading that some heads of government are aware of this. This awareness will no doubt gain ground, because the contradiction between the increasing number of applicants and the difficulties of true integration (already perceptible among the Fifteen in the many deadlocks or reticence encountered by the EU) will become clearer and clearer.
Open avant-garde or left off ambitions? The dilemma resulting from the above statements of fact is harrowing in that it will cause division between the current members of the Union. The evolution taking shape does not displease some Member States, who have always been hostile to the "delegation of powers" to the common institutions or distrustful about progress being made towards the security and defence Europe. Others, while in favour of integration, hope to avoid such division, or feel that the time has not yet come for it. Others still consider the solution could be less traumatic than that
of the "two Europes", through improved "enhanced cooperation". And then, there are those who do not believe in agreements and have taken a step forward. In their view, Europe needs not only a broad Confederation but also a restricted Federation of nation States which hope to safeguard and achieve the ambitions of the founding fathers of Europe.
This formula does not simply represent the audacious vision of one person. Our bulletin summarised, as soon as we heard of it, the proposal of MEP Paavo Väyrynen (Finnish, Vice-President of the Liberal Group), who had already put forward a Confederation/Federation proposal (1). Early December, Karl Lamers and Wolfgang Schauble had affirmed, in a text published in several European newspapers, that the reforms foreseen by the Helsinki mandate "would not even be enough to meet the challenges facing the EU today" and specified: "what we called a sound core, and what Jacques Delors calls open avant-garde (…) is indispensable". They went on to ask: "How is it possible that this situation is so badly understood? It is the whole project of European unity which is at stake".
Delors' vision still makes people afraid, even among those who support integration, as the very recent declaration of the chair of the European Parliament's constitutional committee, Giorgio Napolitano, points out: "It is a solution that threatens the European united institutional fabric" (2). It even makes certain governments afraid, as noted by Portuguese under-Secretary of state for European Affairs Francisco Seixas da Costa, who, at the end of the first part of his capital tour (as future president of the pre-ministerial sessions of the IGC), noted: "as I see it, the will to reform the Union in depth no longer exists. There is a general lack of ambition". He went on to ask whether the Presidency has the possibility to force the hand of a majority of countries which do not want ambitious reform (3).
And yet, if we do not seize the opportunity of the IGC, which is to begin in three weeks' time, it will then be practically impossible to carry out indepth reform after enlargement.
The Confederation is not a "discount Europe". Two conditions are indispensable for the "two circle" project to be valid. The first is that the broad Confederation should not be a kind of discount Europe, but a major and significant achievement, likely to live up to the expectations and demands of the countries outside the Federation. It would, says Jacques Delors, represent "a very great historical success", a "realistic scheme that could found peace, mutual understanding between peoples, the adjustment of economies to the great changes taking place (…) on humanely sound bases. It is a question of uniting different peoples in the respect of nation States, of having the advantages of free trade and of cooperation, of supporting the efforts of each and everyone through the added value brought by common policies".
The Federation must be open to all. The second condition is that the Federation must be open to all the Member States of the Confederation. It is not a matter of creating a closed club. The only determining factors will be political determination and economic capacity. Political determination does not simply mean a sort of vague aspiration, or rhetorical wish, but rather the definitive reconciliation with one's neighbours and the radical burial of all past hatred, rivalry and bitterness, while, at the same time, making powers available to the delegations, and the sharing of sovereignty within the common institutions. Which does not mean a loss of national identity ("what I remember of history is that nation States must remain", Delors dixit). And economic capacity cannot be without the taking on board and compliance with acquis communautaire as a whole.
The content of this new construction has of course still to be negotiated. Jacques Delors has given the main contours, and has anticipated (not in the interview with Le Monde but in the Aspen Institue lecture) a fundamental element: the European avant-garde "should have insitutions which are proper to it", while the "renewed institutions of the Treaty of Rome would be able to manage things as a whole".
This project raises so many problems, upsets so many habits and will cause so much reticence, objections and even opposition, that it can only take on concrete substance if its supporters demonstrate two things: a) that it is indispensable in order to avoid dilution of the European Union and to continue along the road to a united Europe; b) that it in no way represents a sort of refusal aimed at giving applicant countries superficial satisfaction while distancing them from what is essential, but, on the contrary, it is in their favour, if not indispensable for them. This will be the subject of our heading next week.
Ferdinando Riccardi
(1) See EUROPE of 18 January, p.7. (2) Interview with "La Stampa" of 20 January. (3) Interveiw with "Libération" of 12 January.