Three categories for a clearer view of things. During the summer that has just come to a close, something happened in the debate on the future Europe. Some ideas move on, others are clarified, and still others appear to disappear all their own. We could even try to establish a scheme of the three categories of essential positions:
- First category: those who do not want any radical change in the way the EU works while looking forward to the prospect of future enlargements. A diluted Europe in an altogether broader whole, without the ambition of moving forward to a higher level of integration, corresponds to their aspirations of those in this category and to their conception of how things should be. This is the tendency that one could call "British" (although there are also political forces in the United Kingdom who do not share this view), and which seems to be a majority trend in some continental countries, such as Denmark.
- Second category, those who believe it is necessary to fix new objectives for indepth review of the institutional mechanisms and functioning (over and beyond the reforms already negotiated in the IGC in progress), and consider that this is possible for the enlarged Union, even though it may reach 30 members or more. The new EU could, they believe, maintain high ambitions without it being necessary to create a "vanguard" within it. This is above all the position of the European Commission for Institutional Reform Michel Barnier (for whom the vanguard will become necessary only if institutional reform fails) and the chairman of the relevant parliamentary committee, Giorgio Napolitano, who believes it is essential to safeguard the Union's institutional unity.
- Third category, those who consider it impossible for a 30-member Union to keep the ambitions and dynamism needed to follow the road toward integration. The result would be the need to create a vanguard, at least for a certain period, a group of countries determined to progress and able to organise themselves effectively. Is there any need to say that this is the thesis supported by Jacques Delors, Giscard d'Estaing and Helmut Schmidt, and that it has been taken up, with some ambiguity, by several Heads of Government?
Jacques Delors specifies and clarifies his conception of Europe. It is not by chance that we gave our readers, last week, the possibility of looking at all the texts in which Jacques Delors specified, during the summer, his vision of the Federation of Nation States that should form the vanguard of the future Europe (see our bulletin of 15 September, pp.14/15/16). There are many elements of confirmation: the system envisaged is open and provisional, the aim being to avoid Europe being blocked while it waits for everyone to share the new ambitions. The vanguard should have a minimum number of institutions of its own, in order, above all, to respect the Parliament/Council/Commission balance according to the "Community method", without sliding into the intergovernmental method. We believe, however, that four aspects should be underlined, as they meet certain superficial criticism and point perhaps to a certain evolution in the author's thought. The first is the concern expressed by Jacques Delors to foresee "strong and immediate" gestures to reassure the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. All too often these countries are discouraged and their public loses motivation by the announcement of fantasy dates that must then be continually postponed, as it is not in two or three years that they will be able to apply all of the acquis communautaire, which is so difficult and complicated even for the Fifteen. The second aspect is the explicit reticence of the former Commission president towards a European Constitution, which could lead to a "government of judges" to the detriment of the role of politics.
The third fundamental aspect is the emphasis that Delors places more and more clearly on the safeguarding of the national element in its federation, and therefore on the limits of the competences to be attributed to it - not only must national cultures be maintained but Community competence must not be extended to "all issues linked to the cohesion of a nation" such as education and social regimes. Even a real "common foreign policy" does not, at the present stage, seem either possible or desirable to him.
The fourth aspect concerns "enhanced cooperation" the current conception of which conceals the risk of degeneration in the direction of an à-la-carte Europe in which each member chooses the sector where it is willing to advance and to take part in greater integration. According to Delors' vision of things, enhanced cooperation (that Italy proposes calling "strengthened integration" in order to clarify the significance) must appear, in a more flexible and improved form, in the Treaty that will result from the Summit in Nice in order to prefigure the Federation of Nation States to then be negotiated. They must open the door to the vanguard.
The same words but different realities. The above analysis involves the risk: that the same words could cover different realities and objectives. The terms of European Constitution are in themselves ambiguous. Personalities of good faith give them a function that is almost magical as if they opened up the doors to the future Europe, and some political authorities take advantage of them by using them to obtain, at little cost, a certificate of "good Europeans" open to the future: a text in the place of realities. The notion of "enhanced cooperation" and that of vanguard (or pioneer group or centre of gravity) appear to bring together a large number of observers and commentators around uniform concepts, although this is far from being the case. To those noting the uniqueness of the terminology on this subject between himself and several heads of government, Jacques Delors recently replied: "The alliance is purely fortuitous. The only point which we have in common are the words enhanced cooperation. But the vanguard is not the same thing. It is essentially a way not to make the countries of Central and Eastern Europe wait while continuing to make Europe move forward".
The truth is that the texts of the heads of government and of several foreign ministers, even those who are considered as being at the origin of the resumed debate on the future of Europe, conceal a considerable number of ambiguous possibilities. Joschka Fischer's federal conception is not specific. With his president "elected by the peoples", with his European government and its Constitution, his is a general orientation that leave all possibilities open. The "pioneer group" under Jacques Chirac seems to hint at a return to the intergovernmental method between participant countries, with its secretariat which would not be the Commission In Italy, the situation is not as transparent as it would appear, as the attitude of the foreign ministers does not entirely correspond to what the prime minister has to say. In Farnesina, the Dini/Cavalchini/Fagiolo triad draws a clear line from Rome to Brussels, directed (like that from Belgium and a few others) towards the solutions that are most conform to the ambitions of European integration. Prime Minister Giuliano Amato spoke of a "political core" in Europe, presenting it as the pragmatic equivalent of the Delors vanguard, but opening the door unconditionally to the United Kingdom (in order not to create an "old style core") and excluding the transfer of powers: only the transfer of "functions" is allowed, with sovereignty remaining in the national capitals. Tommaso Padoa Schioppa, from the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, replied: "the United Kingdom has never been excluded. It has excluded itself. It is wrong to think that the Union should move at the same speed as the United Kingdom. With such a rule, we would be at zero point". We have given only a very succinct but perhaps significant look at the Italian debate this summer on the aims of Europe, triggered off by a resounding article by Commissioner Mario Monti.
Heads of Government now aware of their role. Given, also, the reticence shown by Mr Aznar (although recently Spain seems to have considerably relaxed its position with the conference on institutional reform) and the traditional positions of the United Kingdom, Sweden and Denmark (largely determined by the press and by public opinion, which seem to evolve less quickly that part of the political class), the heads of government give the impression they are progressively consolidating a conception of Europe with themselves at the centre and involving reduction of the powers of the European Commission and the European Parliament. Of course, the priority role of the heads of government, within the Erupean Council, is no longer under discussion, and this is logical because of their democratic legitimacy, their comprehensible ambition to exercise at European level powers corresponding to their national powers and also to their visibility (see on this subject the results of the Paris seminar on Council reform, in EUROPE of 6 September, pp.5/6). But this evolution must not compromise the balance of the institutional triangle between Parliament, Council and Commission, which are at the basis of the Community method. The new generations, even at the highest levels, do not give to this balance the significance and the importance that it deserves and do not appear sufficiently sensitive to the deterioration that a return to intergovernmental cooperation would mean for Europe, a cooperation that resulted in there always being a war somewhere or other in the Continent, between the Union countries. There are no doubt reasons for such incomprehension, but one should not give up fighting it as the risk of aberrations are always present.
Ferdinando Riccardi