Successful charm offensive. The debate on the nature and the future of Europe has started, because, as everybody agrees, Tony Blair's speech before the European Parliament was not the "programme-speech" of a half-yearly Presidency, but a manifesto for a certain view of the EU. And so were, in practice, Mr Blair recognised what Jean-Claude Juncker said when he announced the failure of the recent Summit, which is that this failure had not been caused by differences of opinion on the figures, because these differences had almost been ironed out (see this column in bulletins 8972 and 8974). Tony Blair said that the budgetary debate could not be taken separately from the general debate on the crisis, because the budget was part of the response to the crisis. In his view, therefore, the issue was not about seeking a more or less satisfactory compromise on the figures, but of steering the Union's expenditure towards the new directions that need to be given to Europe. And he described these directions: his speech sketched out his plans for Europe (and for this reason, it will be fully reproduced in our series EUROPE/Documents, in English and French).
Tony Blair's charm offensive was a success. The President of the European Parliament described the speech by the new President of the Council as "music to his ears" and brought together the old and the new Presidents, Mr Juncker and Mr Blair, in a single definition: "two passionate Europeans". According to Italy's main daily newspaper, "half of Europe, and maybe more, is already with Tony Blair: heads of State and government, European Commissioners, members of Parliament". Personally, I would be more conservative in such assessments; but in any case, Tony Blair has the great merit of having launched a debate on the purpose of Europe. Those with long memories will know just how many times this debate has been called for in the past, but in vain. How many times did Jacques Delors stress the need for it! Philippe de Schoutheete devoted the majority of his book "Une Europe pour tous" to it, and found a quotation from Seneca to support the need for it: "Ignoranti quem portum petat nullus ventus suus est", which led to a friendly competition between the readers of this column, trying to translate it whilst keeping the lost secret of Latin concision as much as possible. The author of the book even found a translation by Montaigne. What is Seneca said is that there's no such thing as a favourable wind for anyone who doesn't know what port they've set sail for. Will the debate which has now opened tell us which port we' re making for?
Sincerity and rhetoric. A skilled tactician, Tony Blair opened the debate just as his adversaries were at their weakest (notably France, whose weight in Europe has been materially lessened by its rejection of the Constitution), and as criticisms of the EU's inefficiency in fighting unemployment can be heard on a daily basis. Tactics aside, I believe in Mr Blair's fundamental sincerity. He was right to say that his pro-European speech had not been improvised for the occasion, but that he had previously taken similar positions in the past (which I have reported in this column) and emphasised his social actions at a national level (including within the public services of general interest sector). And how can anybody deny that he decided to hold a national referendum on the Constitution, and that he is personally very much in favour of his country joining the euro zone? That said, a good proportion of his speech was clearly calculated to reassure: the EU must be a union of values and solidarity, I believe in Europe as a political project, I believe in its social and human dimensional, I would never accept it being no more than a market economy, and so on. How could anybody not subscribe to the above? Mr Barroso and Mr Borrell did, as did a few heads of government. Silvio Berlusconi did not stop at describing Mr Blair as a "genuinely charismatic leader", but added a few explicit criticisms of Jacques Chirac, "paladin of a European policy which spends 43% of its resources on agriculture" and which defends poor countries "with words", but in practice, penalises them by its support for subsidies to European agriculture. Is Italy opposed to support for agriculture? We'll soon see, because the Agriculture Council is soon to debate the reform of the sugar market; if the Italian delegation supports lowering the price of European sugar and refuses to "waste" Europe's money on subsidising the producers of sugar beet, we will sit up and take notice. But if, on the contrary, Italy says that the proposed price reduction is excessive and that aid is insufficient, then we will know that Mr Berlusconi's fine words were nothing but misplaced rhetoric.
Beyond superficial or purely formal reactions, tomorrow I would like to try to take a closer look at the reform of the EU as will recommended by the new President of the Council, and at the stances taken by his detractors and of anybody who remains unconvinced of British conversion.
(F.R.)