The Prime Minister knows what he wants. The draft "Laeken Declaration" has arrived and the Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt is in the process of personally presenting it to all the EU heads of state during his lightning tour of Community capitals - London yesterday, Helsinki tomorrow, cleverly alternating between large and small countries. His counterparts have only recently been informed about the draft, the Belgian Prime Minister's office explaining that it could not be published too early because otherwise they would have had the opportunity to rewrite it rather than us…
This little sentence demonstrates Guy Verhofstadt's desire to mark the Summit that will be launching institutional reform with his imprint. He wants the Laeken Declaration to not only target authorities and European affairs experts but also public opinion where possible. This is why his draft text includes a prologue on the current state of the Union and its failings and has been drafted in what aims to be a highly comprehensible style. The Belgian Prime Minister holds by his ideas, but has also taken into consideration the qualified remarks that have been made to him. The draft was penned by a team after meetings between diplomats, lawyers and other wise experts, not to mention the five personalities that Mr Verhofstadt himself wanted to surround him during the preparatory work (Messrs Delors, Amato, Dehaene, Geremek and Miliband).
A prologue corrected (well) by Tony Blair. The first outcome of the consultation can be seen in the prologue. The initial preliminary draft paid tribute to fashion by making the usual (and generally unjust because excessive) criticisms of the European project, forgetting to remind the Europeans of today of what they owe to Europe. These excesses have been corrected. I have written so often about the painful and often ridiculous biais in opinions on Europe (where the pathetic mistakes of some little official are put on the same level as eliminating war in Europe for good) that I do not want to add a single word of my own, especially at a time when a correct assessment has come from the other side of the Channel. Last week, Tony Blair summed up the benefits of a united Europe: "It worked in making friends out of old enemies… to make war "not merely unthinkable but materially impossible". It worked by making them richer. It worked by making them a force to be reckoned with in the world". He said it was a "tragedy" that the United Kingdom had "failed to appreciate the emerging reality of European integration".
Still more ambition is possible. The current prologue to the Laeken Declaration is "positive" (I borrow the term from a Belgian newspaper) while noting that a gulf has formed between citizens and the European institutions which he sees as heavy, rigid and lacking in transparency. Citizens believe the EU does not deal enough with their concerns and gets involved in matters that would be better dealt with by Member States or the regions. Mr Verhofstadt then says what has to be done to improve it, but abandoning the use of secret diplomatic conferences separated off from citizens and using the Convention method bringing together Community institutions, national and European parliaments and Member States, constantly listening to the different voices of civil society. The decision to create the Convention is the third part of the document (which remains open to various basic choices). The second part outlines the objectives from the starting point of the four sections from the Nice Declaration: a) defining the powers of the Union and its Member States; b) the status of the Charter of Fundamental Rights (the first part of European Constitution?); c) simplifying the Treaties; d) the role of national parliaments. But the Nice text quoted the above points "inter alia", so more can be added and Mr Verhofstadt is counting on his European tour to deliver a number of suggestions about raising the "level of ambition". He would no doubt be delighted to be asked, for example, to add to the objectives under defining powers, making police and judicial co-operation a Community matter (it is currently the third intergovernmental pillar of the Treaty of the EU). The discussions last week at the General Affairs Council enabled the chair, Louis Michel, to comment that various Member States were asking for several other points to be added to the short Nice list, like the strengthened external dimension of the EU; the effectiveness of the decision-making process; or how the European Parliament is elected.
We will of course need to come back to this draft and how it develops in the run-up to 14 December. (F.R.)