Paris, 23/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - In a study on "The Belgian Presidency 2001" published by Notre Europe, the study and research group chaired by Jacques Delors, Lieven De Winter, from the Catholic University of Louvain and the Catholic University of Brussels, and Huri Tursan, from the Free University of Brussels, assert that the programme of the Belgian Presidency of the EU Council for this semester is more ambitious than that of most recent Presidencies, while it's first fifteen priorities may be considered as forming a business as usual programme achievable with reasonable risks. With regards to the more ambitious aim, and also the more dangerous, concerning the future of Europe, the authors write that, with this debate, the Belgian government could well have trapped itself, but that it could also contribute towards framing the debate for the future Presidencies until 2004. This form of debate may open Pandora's box and free an increasing number of Eurosceptic voices, they recognise, while feeling that, while Belgium normally has allies that share its federalist views, the French and German elections in 2002 mean that the time is most probably not ripe for a coherent declaration to emerge from Laeken. At the same time, they feel that the Belgian government does not run the risk of promoting a strongly integrationist programme, given the consensus that prevails within the political and socio-economic elite and the opening of its public opinion (even if they note, by analysing the positions of the main political partners, that the Socialists protests against the fact that Guy Verhofstadt supports the idea of "Kompetenzeabgrenzung", considering this as a barrier to greater European integration.
Lieve De Winter and Huri Tursan, when raising the Belgian historic integrationist stance, note that it is easier for Belgium to put aside its national interests, as there are very few problems over which it has specific interests (except the seat of the European Parliament and the expansion of Brussels as a European capital). This means that it is "relatively easy" for it to "act in a disinterested manner in the common interest. In Belgium, the parties often place the interests of their own region before Belgian interests, and the principal of subsidiarity is applied radically, towards the top and towards the bottom, leaving a void in the intermediary level, also underline the authors. Moreover, while indicating that the Belgian elite considers a "supranational federal Europe" to be a way of preserving to a certain extent the interests of the small countries against the hegemony of the large, they recall that Belgium is attached to intergovernmental principals: one European Commissioner per country and a six monthly rotation of the Presidency and that it considers it unacceptable to restrict the use of minority languages in the Union institutions.
As for the art of mediation and the compromise recognised in Belgium, the authors reveal in particular that, on the internal level, efficiency, economies of scale, democratic control and responsibility are often sacrificed to achieve a consensus, and that the trend to build consensus is one of the main reasons for an impressive public debt (as the consensus has sometimes been acquire through subsidies and an autonomy of organisation and spending given to the opposite camp). Among the other elements characterising the "Belgian system", the authors cite: - the fact that, given the wide ranging pro-European consensus existing among the elite, Belgian diplomats and civil servants engaged in decision-making in the Council and the Presidency enjoy substantial freedom of action, are rarely linked by their political superiors through precise and detailed instructions, and have a general support when the results are positive; - the fact that the Ministers are strictly monitored by their colleagues, particularly by the Deputy Prime Ministers, who have a full cabinet in order to guarantee that each Minister remains within the boundaries of the agreement which set the detail of the political attributions made by each, agreement which includes a specific chapter on European policy.
In the preface, Jacques Delors also underlines certain characteristics of this "small" country used to great Presidencies: a quasi institutional identification towards the European building process, a difficult experience in building a "cooperative federalism (…), an unquestionable know-how in the art of compromise and soft governance. According to the former President of the European Commission, we may thus hope that, thanks to the Belgian Presidency, the EU 15 will return clarity and meaning to the European building process.
(Notre Europe, 44, rue Notre-Dame des Victoires, 75002 Paris. E-mail: notreeurope@notre-europe,asso.fr, Internet: http: //http://www.notre-europe.asso.fr ).