A logic which escapes me. Is there anything in the arguments of the Constitution's opponents we've not heard before? I'm not talking about the "Sovereignists" or the Eurosceptics, whose opposition to the Constitution is entirely understandable and legitimate. They are against the "Community method", preferring the intergovernmental method (despite its ten centuries of failure), this is their right and this is what they will campaign for. I'm referring to those who are calling on the rest of us to reject the Constitution out of some apparent desire to inject new impetus into European integration. This is the choice of Laurent Fabius, who has one eye on the French Presidency, and who enjoys a certain amount of support within Community institutions, notably from Pervenche Bérès, who has one of the top jobs in the new European Parliament.
They contend that the Constitution takes too much inspiration from liberal doctrine, and it should be rejected so that it can be changed to bring it more into line with their political positions. Like anyone else, it is clearly their right to defend their ideas and fight for them; but they should do this by convincing the citizens, by trying to gather a majority in their own country first of all, and then in Europe. The Constitution's role is not to determine the content of the economic and social policies to adopt, but to create the institutional architecture and instruments to enable them to manage the Union effectively. Then, it is the nuts and bolts of democracy, national and European elections, which will determine the content of the policies to be implemented, in full respect of the principles of mechanisms enshrined in the Constitution. Sometimes Ms Bérès's logic escapes me. She says, for example, that "for the first time, those who want to go further [towards social Europe] are in the minority in Europe". If this were true (and in my view it is not), how would she be able to demand the inclusion of these "minority" ideas in the Constitution? Another example: among her criticisms of the majority currently in power in her country is its rejection (Nice, December 2000) of the double majority rule- States and population- for majority deliberations of the Council of the EU. It is none other than the Constitution which, with France's support, remedied this shortcoming in Nice by introducing the double majority rule Ms Bérès wanted, but rejecting the Constitution would keep in place the system she so detests!
I shan't hammer this point home, because Mr Fabius's theory has already been rejected, or possibly demolished is a better word, by the Socialist Parties of the other Member States and many leading Socialists individually (see this column of 28 September). To this I would add Pascal Lamy's own stance: "I do not believe that the Constitutional Treaty in any way prevents Europe from becoming more social. Social Europe is a question of political willingness and dynamism, as long as the legal framework presents no obstacles, which is the case". I am not even going to mention the reactions from other political circles.
A change of tactics. The weakness of the Fabius/Bérès position has now been confirmed, I feel, by the change in the opponents' strategy. I refer to the stance taken by Henri Weber, a Socialist group MEP, who turned the justification for the rejection on its head. What he criticises the Constitution for is no longer the absence of indications on Europe's social and economic policy, on the contrary: it is the excess of them. His particular target is the third part of the draft, the longest part, which concerns the politics and functioning of the Union. He feels that this part should not even exist. He points out that neither Jacques Delors nor Valéry Giscard d'Estaing wanted it, that it was the Heads of Government at the Thessaloniki Summit in June 2003 who wanted it, and that it imbues the policies of the Union with a liberal, "even monetarist" sense. Beyond his questionable reconstruction of events, I acknowledge that this critique would be much more justified if it were true and would have much more solid foundations than Laurent Fabius's critique, because the Constitution is not there to set the Union's policies in stone. Quite the reverse: these will be defined and applied in line with the choice the people will make. I said if it were true, because it isn't. First of all, this "enormous Part III, 70% of the overall text"! covers more than just the "Union's concrete policies" to which Mr Weber refers (agriculture and fisheries, transport, energy, monetary and social policy, payments and capital), but many other things too, including the updated institutions, the new common foreign and security policy, reinforced cooperation, etc. Last but not least, it is quite wrong to say that the Constitution lays down the details of common policies and sets the contents in stone. Mr Weber quotes the example of the Stability Pact which, by taking on a "constitutional value" would become untouchable, and which "bans anti-cyclical policies and makes recessions worse".
Mr Weber should know, however, that the revision of how the Stability Pact is applied is underway: the Commission presented guidelines which the Economy/Finances Council and the Eurogroup are looking at. This is not an opinion, it's a fact. The idea that the Constitution would render the interpretation and the application of the Stability Pact unchangeable is quite simply wrong.
I'm not going to go into detail on all the Union's policies, because the texts are there for anyone to look at. I will simply quote Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a German MEP who is not known for being one of Frits Bolkestein's disciples, who wrote: "I repudiate the bad faith which leads people to ignore the fact that the new Treaty [he doesn't even call it the Constitution] brings in entirely things which are entirely new to the history of the EU: it envisages sustainable development, fair world trade, a social dimension for the market economy which should tend towards full employment and social progress, the fight against social exclusion, services of general interest, conflict prevention as an essential factor in foreign policy, and the right of petition which confers a tangible means of action upon the citizens, which they can use to work towards creating a minimum European subsistence revenue, abolish nuclear power, obtain voting rights for extra-Community citizens". Obviously, none of these achievements are contained within the Constitution, but the door has been left open for them, if people so wish.
Mr Weber's recipe. Mr Weber's opinion is that we can do all of these desirable things and more if we reject the Constitution, even with the Treaty of Nice (which will remain in force until 2009). How so? As Mr Weber explains it, the recipe for the updated Fabius doctrine is basically made up of two points. The five years we will have to live with the Treaty of Nice: a) "is more than enough to promote reforms using the intergovernmental method"; b) "is more than enough to launch reinforced cooperation and common policies in the fields of industrial policy, research, security, between the countries which want to".
However: a) the inefficiency of the intergovernmental method needs no further demonstration. We have had some ten centuries of it at least, during which a war between European countries has broken out every twenty years on average. I thought that the objective of going back to this, by abandoning the Community method, was the sole preserve of the Sovereignists. If this objective is now shared by current Socialists…; b) the new structure for reinforced cooperation, which makes it easier and more effective, is one of the significant steps forward introduced by the Constitution, which also adds the very important "structured cooperation" in the field of defence. As it exists under the Treaty of Amsterdam, the reinforced cooperation instrument has never been used, because the provisions governing it are so highly complex and impenetrable. The Constitution is indispensable for this instrument to come into play.
An unrealistic angle. The above considerations should be added to by a few comments on the totally unrealistic element of the process to re-launch and re-negotiate a better Constitution which pre-supposes a favourable angle in the rejection of this draft. This is how Pervenche Bérès sees it happening: "Once the French have said no, the committed Europeans, the ones we hope to go forward with, will have to roll their sleeves up. They will be able to do so on the basis of the impetus the French no will create, to rebuild the European project around its strength, which is its social model, which allowing greater Europe to function on some other basis than the poor Treaty of Nice". I'm not going to contradict these fair words, because I know Pervenche Bérès's sincerity. I will just give you a few sentences from the former ambassador to France of another Community country. This is what Paul Merts of Luxembourg wrote to Le Monde, which was published a few days ago: "The effect the self-proclaimed committed Europeans are hoping for in rejecting the Constitution is that of a constructive crisis leading to better texts. They are preparing to oppose twenty-four other countries, twenty-four Socialist parties, the European Trade Union Confederation… and then expect everyone to rush towards them to start new negotiations. Seriously, who do they take themselves for? Unfortunately, we can live with the Nice Treaty. There is no reason to assume that there will be unanimous agreement on moving on to renegotiation altogether. For fear of signing up to twenty-five years under the Constitution, we risk another twenty-five years of the Treaty of Nice, which any European of sense admits is worse. France can and must play an essential role, but it is not the centre of the world, nor even of Europe, and it must not expect that others will automatically follow its lead".
Obviously, it is possible that one or other of the 25 Member States will reject the Constitution. If this happens, the ones which approved it will take new initiatives (see the opinion of Etienne Davignon in this column of 13 October). But if the first of the founding countries, France, rejected the Constitution, this would have a different significance altogether, and the effect of burying the Community project. This is why I have tried to demonstrate that Laurent Fabius is wide of the mark and the extent to which it would be better for a republican coalition to get behind the Constitution in France, similar to the one that opposed Mr Le Pen.
(F.R.)