Each week, European current events a-plenty, whether great or small, deserve some reflection. Here is our (incomplete) harvesting from last week.
Consistency of Community action: a solution takes shape. The Community authorities have for some years now been studying the road that should be followed in order to make Community action more coherent, that is, in order to coordinate the deliberations of the different Council formations, given that the General Affairs Council does not manage to play this role effectively. And so we have analyses and formulae patiently and sometimes cleverly drawn up which are swept away by a solution that is becoming increasingly obvious: it is the heads of government that plan to take on this responsibility. For some time now their role has been increasingly determinant not only in foreign policy. It suffices to recall Agenda 2000 (it was the Summit which defined reform of common agricultural policy and budgetary arbitration). With the preparation of the extraordinary session of Lisbon, the European Council went one step further: the heads of government no longer intervene only at the end of the road for the essential choices and decisive arbitration, but, in practice, they guide the work of preparation, first of all by the Presidency and also by other increasingly specific interventions (individual or with two taking part). We think here of Mr Aznar's three stage plan, or the very recent letter from Tony Blair and Massimo D'Alema. No less than six specialised Councils took part in preparatory work, but with simple "contributions" addressed to the European Council- and the General Affairs Council renounced the role of coordination which was his before … to establish the order of work and the programme of the two workshops on Thursday and Friday.
Foreign Ministers abdicate, and the EP welcomes this development. There is nothing astonishing in this development, as the General Affairs Council as a guide for Community action has burnt itself out, losing all control over the deliberations of specialised Councils. The Ecofin Council did not even keep it informed of what it was preparing. The Foreign Ministers were totally unable to introduce a minimum of consistency in Community action. It is enough to cite the distressing inability to coordinate the promises made to third countries with the requirements of European agriculture to note to what extent their loss of power and prestige at European level is deserved. Furthermore, the institutional role of the European Council is now included in the Treaty, and the democratic legitimacy of the heads of government cannot be contested, as well as their determination to hold the reins of European construction. It would, at the end of the day, be unjustified and above all ineffective to try to oppose this evolution. The European Parliament has, moreover, welcomed one essential aspect of this - that of Europe's economic policy - in its resolution on the Lisbon Summit. The EPP, Socialist and Liberal groups have, by common accord, asked that each year in June the Summit should define the "European policy guidelines for growth and employment" and that, in general, it should take on the "Union's economic government" with the support of the EP and the Commission. The various Councils should make "contributions" that the heads of government would then include in a "coherent global position on growth, employment and social cohesion in Europe". This much is clear.
But where is the danger? Certainly not in the fact that the heads of government are involved more directly and almost on a daily basis in European affairs. The danger lies in the weakening and the gradual decline of the Community method and the slide towards intergovernmental cooperation. The Council/Commission/Parliament "institutional triangle" must work so that the common interest is taken into consideration and for the balance between national interests to be respected. Failing this, deliberations will be dominated by the strongest personalities and those with convictions (which, from their point of view, are certainties). It was not difficult to note that, in the preparation of Lisbon, this role was played by José Maria Aznar and Tony Blair and that the others, for the time being, are simply following. Neither the Spanish nor the British Prime Minister nurture any particular enthusiasm for the "Community method". They tend rather to prefer intergovernmental collaboration. This is a known fact, and we cannot be deceived by the symptoms. For example, the British were opposed to the presence of the European Commission in the meetings of the Interim Military Committee, which is, however, a Council body. Not even the solution of a sign denoting the purely theoretical existence of a Commission delegation was accepted. It is with renunciations of this kind that the collapse begins.
For now, the negative effects are not obvious, as there is an agreement of substance between the heads of government on immediate priorities and essential guidelines. But the Austrian affair shows that there can be hitches, and that it is therefore indispensable to have supranational norms and institutions which work, in order to ensure the machine works properly. Intergovernmental cooperation has always existed. It has never prevented a war every twenty years or so between Europeans. Given my age, if there had been no "Community method" introduced in the fifties, I would already be at my third war. After half a century of peace, those of my generation would not like to pass on the threat of war every twenty years to our children and grandchildren.
Someone says the truth about enlargement negotiations. The haze, the vagueness and what is "not said" too often continue to dominate ideas surrounding the new EU enlargements. The leaders of applicant countries are sometimes bitter, sometimes disappointed. They had dreamed of their countries entering amid fervour and fraternity, and now have the impression that they have slid into tough and sometimes unpleasant discussion, forgetting the idealistic and historic motivations only to be bogged down in regulatory and financial matters.
In a recent meeting in Poland, Hungarian President Arpad Goencz said: "In just ten years, we have lost all our illusions about being waited for with wide open arms". And the Polish President Aleksander Kwaniewski said: "without being too pessimistic, we have to admit that the enthusiasm has died down". We could continue the list of quotes, but, to be perfectly honest, the accusations in this connection, seem to us unfair and out of place. The EU cannot negotiate in any other way if it does not want to remain at the stage of rhetoric and demagoguery. The applicant countries are asking to take part in the single market without borders in an unrestricted manner, and in common policies, and Community mechanisms and financing. So, this is what negotiators have to discuss. Accession is only possible if the new Member States comply with the same rules and obligations as those imposed on the current Member States.
Eneko Landaburu, Director General for Enlargement at the European Commission, should be applauded for his frankness in saying what the political officials sometimes wrap up in a fog of opaque declarations. "I am not ready to sign for enlargement that would result in weakening the EU's rules of the game. We cannot give things away for nothing. We can only be more stringent." We refer readers to the text of his interview (EUROPE of 15 March, p.11). It appears obvious to us that the countries which, for the past half a century, have been building a united Europe cannot, just out of kindness, alter its bases or compromise the way it works. There is a solution which would have allowed momentum and speed to be combined with the safeguarding of acquis communautaire - that which François Mitterrand and Jacques Delors had tried to launch immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall: the offer of a broad immediate Confederation, open to all countries of Central and Eastern Europe and meeting essential political conditions, which would have lived up to their fundamental expectations without in any way meaning the creation of a "second class Europe". This offer was not followed up. And now, the time has come for major initiatives.
So negotiations will continue, as Mr Landaburu said, with the endorsement of the European Commissioners responsible for the different sectors (see the recent stances of Ms Wallström and Mr Fischler). For the three or four applicant countries able to come into line with the Community body of law within a reasonable time, there are so many delays, frustrations and disappointments in sight for the others!
Who caused the ecological disaster in the Danube region. Some recent observations, in this same heading, on the main causes of pollution in the Danube did not please everyone. We inform those who are sceptical that UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) diffused on the Internet its report "The Kosovo Conflict: consequences for the neviornment" (http://www.grid.unep.ch/btf ). The result is that the bombing of Serbia produced an ecological disaster which involves the Danube area well beyond the areas hit. The destruction of the Pancevo and Novi Sad refineries, the Kragujevac factories and the chemical installations of Bor dispersed tonnes of toxic waste, mercury, dioxin, ammoniac and cyanide into the countryside. UNEP identified four areas of the Danube where the risk for inhabitants is high, where the farming land, the air and the water are seriously polluted. Acid rainfalls have been noted as far as the Danube delta region.
Does this mean that action should not have been taken against Milosevic? Not at all. But another method should have been chosen, without leaving the initiative and the responsibility entirely in the hands of an American general whose only concern was to "win the war" (we can see, today, what the results of this kind of "victory" are). We can only hope that the European security and defence policy will come about very soon allowing Europe to decide what should be done at its own frontiers.
Ferdinando Riccardi