A useful contribution. This is a dream, but I'm sharing it anyway: if all the French read the new book by Gilles Savary, the campaign for or against the Constitution would be pretty much cleared up. Because we are seeing increasingly that concerns about the SGIs (services of general interest), which, in Eurospeak, means what the French call “public services”, are at the heart of the debate. There are so many ramifications spreading out around this central point, as the word “services” leads to the Bolkestein directive, the social significance of SGIs leads to the general issue of the Constitution's social content, and, most of all, this subject is surrounded by such a pack of lies feeding into false arguments (the Constitution would ban abortion, divorce, secularity, etc), that it wouldn't be enough to clarify it in order to re-establish the veracity of the debate; but it would be a good start.
Two fundamental principles of the SGIs were established at the beginning of the twentieth century: universal services and péréquation tarifaire. By definition, the railways, the electricity grid and the telephone cover the whole of the national territory, and this bears no relation to the sacrosanct “cost pricing” determined by real costs. In the absence of the two aforementioned principles, the networks for water, trains, electricity, telephone, etc, would be restricted to financially viable and heavily populated areas, and postage stamps or the kilowatt-hour would not have a standard price. Before universal suffrage, before the socialist parties came into being, a long time before women could vote everywhere, our ancestors “felt” that the honour and pride of the modern State lay in making essential services available to all citizens and that immediate profitability could not be the only criterion to observe.
Years of debates. It wasn't until 1993 that Europe, after several attempts which threw the disparities into sharp relief, started seeking compromises between the usefulness and the efficiency of the services in question on the one hand, and general interest on the other. The difficulties were enormous. Taking stock of the situation in 1993, Jacques Delors spoke of “cultural differences”: for some, public service was an essential pillar of the organisation of the State, almost part of its “national identity”; others felt that the very terms “public services” were unambiguous, people understood “public assistance”, so much so that it was necessary to call them SGIs (services of general interest) and SGEIs (services of general economic interest, the ones that are not free, such as healthcare and education) so that everyone in all the Member States would know what was being discussed. It took several years before it became possible to discuss the matter- Jacques Delors again (our translation): “far from the quarrels and the tensions of former times” and start to “put general interest at the very heart of the problems of our times”.
Ten years of discussions then paved the way for a common notion of SGIs and standard criteria to apply to them, with the involvement of all: the European Commission (with Books of various colours, Green or White depending on the specific case, with Karel Van Miert's total commitment and Mario Monti as the first Commissioner for competition to recognise that SGIs were “one of the pillars of the European model of society”), the European Parliament (in recent years, the actions of Philippe Herzog has been decisive) and the Court of Justice, some of whose rulings legally established the mechanism for the Member States to grant aid to SGIs to allow them to carry out their mission, covering the cost of the universal service with public money), the Member States, the regional and local authorities and a growing number of unions and other organisations. Then the Constitution came along, which recognises SGIs as such, formally studies the possibility of giving them a specific code and enshrines for good the option for the Member States to finance the execution of their missions directly.
The cheats. This is an historical turning point, and if the Constitution is approved, it will be definitive. But this is where the lies of the opponents of the Constitution get nasty, at least in France. On television, I saw with my own eyes a young person putting on airs, trying to be charmingly plausible, reading out article III-166 of the European Constitution, shamelessly missing bits out: “Undertakings entrusted with the operation of services of general economic interest shall be subject to the provisions of the Constitution, in particular to the rules on competition.” But he forgot to read out the rest of the sentence which, after a comma, goes on to state that SGEIs are subject to the rules on competition “insofar as the application of such provisions does not obstruct the performance, in law or in fact, of the particular tasks assigned to them”. This latter part turns the meaning of article 166 completely on its head, because it means that the competition rules are not applicable to all things relating to SGEI missions, particularly universal services. What is even more frustrating is that the cheat in question, Olivier Besancenot completely forgot about article III-122, which states:
“With regard to the place occupied by services of general interest (…) and to the role they play in the promotion of social and territorial cohesion, the Union and the Member States (…) shall take care that such services operate on the basis of principles and conditions, in particular economic and financial conditions, which enable them to fulfil their missions. European laws shall establish these principles and set these conditions without prejudice to the competence of Member States (…) to provide, to commission and to fund such services”. And nobody in the room dared to shove the microphone into his face (metaphorically speaking, of course), and point out that he was lying in his teeth. These are the people who caused Jacques Delors's heartfelt plea to the citizens: “They are lying to you!” (in the latest edition of the Nouvel Observateur).
The comments of professors Priollaud and Siritzky on article III-122 is simple and unequivocal: “this provision means that carrying out a public service mission can have precedence over the application of European rules, including rules on the internal market and competition”.
Against the abuses. I have strayed slightly from the topic of Gilles Savary's book about SGIs which manages to keep away from lies and deceit. The Socialist MEP went into some depth on the reasons for the uneasiness of the French about efforts made in Brussels to bring competition elements into the field of SGEIs, with plenty of precautions (non-economic services, such as education and health, are automatically ruled out). These efforts were justified by the fact that certain public monopolies were occasionally benefiting from their position to: a) not pay enough attention to the prices and quality of the services they offered, b) use their financial muscle in illegal operations, in a minority of cases: funding political parties, operations abroad with no relation to their mission, etc. A few years ago in Italy, the inefficiency of various public services was almost legendary, which was bad not only for individual users but for the national economy as a whole, which had to shoulder an excessive charge for electrical energy and telecommunications, which would have been priced out of the market given international competition. France also experienced a few misadventures of considerable proportions. The difference between the situations in each Member State caused a misunderstanding throughout the Union which has not yet been entirely cleared up and which, Mr Savary states, will have substantial fallout for two reasons (our translation): “It locks France and the French in a conservation and euroscepticl state of tension just as Europe provides the opportunity to safeguard and regulate a continental model of society against the deregulatory effects of ultra-liberal globalisation; it takes away from Europe all the universality, efficiency and fairness France and its public service doctrine have managed to forge, and a century of the theoretical construction of concrete experience and particularly fruitful public services”.
His book is an attempt to sketch out- by explaining the reality of the situation rather than the whims that distort it- how we can overcome the quid pro quo shocks and design a fair and operational system. He stresses that the quality of public services and infrastructure is the main competitive asset of the European continent, and adds: “Far from being a peculiarly French concern, none of the 25 Member States of the Union is indifferent to this state of affairs or inclined to sell of the quality of public health or education services, or care of the elderly or of small children (…). Successive waves of enlargement have provided upward leverage of convergence rather than the lowest common denominator”, referring to the spectacular progress made by Spain, Ireland, Portugal and Greece. If France lost a couple of rail lines, or a number of rural post offices, then this was down to autonomous decisions which had nothing to do with Europe; the EU lays down the frameworks, the contents of the policies remains in national hands. European laws are defines- and this will be more the case if the Constitution enters into force- by transparent procedures in which the European Parliament will have more and more of a say. “The reports of the political forces within the European Assembly are absolutely decisive”, which basically means that the contents of European rules, in this field and others, will depend on the citizens' voting in the European and national elections.
These comments I have made do not cover the whole of the book, but I do hope that they will inspire anyone interested in the issue to go out and read it. In any case, France is not isolated, far from it, in its support for SGIs. Philippe Herzog wrote in “Les Echos” of 25 April: “The decentralised German Dasein Vorsorgen are just as valid as our centralised modal of public services incarnated in the State. Great Britain has made massive investments in improving the quality of essential public services”. The issue of SGIs is a European battle which can only be won together, and the Constitution provides the weapons with which to do this. (F.R.)