Perverse pleasure. There is a secret voluptuous pleasure, a slightly perverse intellectual pleasure, in announcing European Union "setbacks". There is no other way of explaining certain comments that followed the vote by the Danish people rejecting their country's membership of the euro for now. There has been talk of a slap in the face for Europe, a humiliating defeat for the single currency, a brake to European integration…
Of course, none of this is true. The economic and financial repercussions for Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) are minimal or nonexistent. The Danes are wise enough to know that the actual weight of their country is not so great that the euro group will be affected by the absence of their currency. Council President Pierre Moscovici and the European Commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, Pedro Solbes, had already said the previous day: if Denmark joins us, so much the better, if not, it's not serious.
The Danish monetary authorities will learn over the radio what they have done. We believe that the Danish Government was very convincing in its efforts aimed at getting the citizens the agree to join the euro. Had other factors not intervened, economic logic should have led the Danes to vote "yes" en mass. Their monetary autonomy is nonexistent anyway: the kroner is pegged to the euro, and whatever decisions are taken by the European Central Bank, the Danish monetary authorities must (and want to) follow. The difference is that, forming part of the single currency, they would have participated in the decision-taking process and could have had their reasons heard within the euro Ministerial Group and within the ECB. This way, they will hear the news over the radio or through the e-mail. Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen declared that he would obviously continue to defend his country's interests but that "it will be difficult". Asked about any negative repercussions, Commission President Romano Prodi said that there may be some "for Denmark".
There was fear for Danish society. What then are the "other factors" that came into play? We need not look far, as the opponents of the euro set them out explicitly during the campaign: according to them, the single currency would be a driving force towards a Federal Europe, saying "yes" to the euro would have meant forever agreeing to more Europe. The fear especially related to seeing the "Danish social system" collapse. Prime Minister Poul Nyrop Rasmussen, moreover, recognized this: among his people "there was fear for Danish society". It is up to the Community Institutions to prove that such fear is unwarranted. If this is still so strongly felt in Denmark, and elsewhere perhaps, this means that efforts made have not been adequate to prove that Europe in no way aims to unify or harmonize modes of life or culture, and that it respects the differences of each. For our part, we believe that the European Commission should go further down that road, and admit, for example, that free movement of goods does not necessarily mean the abolition of exemptions that enable Denmark and other northern countries to finance the social system that their people have chosen, and combat alcoholism and tobacco addiction.
Beyond the arguments put forward in the campaign leading up to the referendum (some did not hesitate using false claims, like the statement attributed to Mr. Duisenberg on the ECB's intention of putting pressure n Denmark to get it to alter its pension scheme; a barefaced lie), Europe has to note with serenity the fact that the Danish people do not for now want to go further in European integration. Many elements, beginning with the reaction of the British tabloid press to Thursday's outcome, indicate that it is likewise in the United Kingdom and Sweden. This reinforces our opinion on the need for Europe to move towards the creation of a vanguard enabling those countries so wishing to move towards integration amongst themselves. And not in the somewhat equivocal form of sectoral and variable geometry of "enhanced cooperation" (some countries in favour of one type of cooperation, others of another), but in a structured manner that Jacques Delors has toyed with and fleshed out these past few months. While waiting for those not yet ready to participate, and which will do so one day. Failing that, the vanguard will nevertheless emerge, but outside the EU's Institutions, mechanisms and structures. And that would be a definitive waste.
Ferdinando Riccardi