An understandable success, but... The acclaim won in the hemicycle of the European Parliament and among political commentators by the speech made by Tony Blair, just as his country was taking up the Presidency of the Council the EU, is understandable. Who could protest against such laudable concepts as reinforcing the EU's economic competitiveness, reducing unemployment, bringing common policies up to date, or stepping up research efforts? Particularly as at the same time, the British Prime Minister expressed his support for a Europe with political ambitions and which pursues its social objectives. It is true that within the Socialist groups, the ALDE and the EPP-ED, a number of MEPs immediately spoke out against the excessively vague nature of the speech. Just to quote a few at random, Jan Kulakowski of Poland said that Tony Blair had indicated "no concrete means of getting out of the budgetary and constitutional crisis". In the view of the French MEP Jean-Louis Bourlanges, his speech "gave no answers on Turkey, the budget or the Constitution". The Belgian Philippe Busquin raised the question: "what about how the work is to be organised? He didn't, in fact, tell us anything". I could go on, from Jacques Toubon (who feels that the British Prime Minister did no more than provide further proof of his oratory skills) to Jean-Luc Dehaene (who has the very healthy habit of mistrusting general ideas, always looking for the meat in the sandwich) and various members from the new Member States. But in general, the speech he made in Brussels on 23 June was received like the heralding of new life for a stagnating Europe.
Gordon Brown's frank talk … Then, the analysis of the texts and the reactions in several capitals poured cold water on all this enthusiasm. What Tony Blair left unclear was filled in by people such as his heir apparent, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. I am working from the summary of his speech to the economic and monetary committee of the European Parliament on 12 July, which was summarised by the association "Confrontations Europe" for its members: "according to Gordon Brown, globalisation makes the vision of the founding fathers of a dynamic of integration to create a European economic identity null and void (...). He feels that if, in the first phase of European construction, it was possible to concentrate on internal rules on the protection of our market, today there is no protection left and we need to adapt". With this in mind, the British Chancellor feels that a clear commitment should be made "towards more open commercial relations with the rest of the world, by dint of ambitious proposals for the WTO conference in Hong Kong, reinforced dialogue with China, India and the rest of Asia and putting the transatlantic relationship on the highest footing possible". The social dimension must be included in this strategy: it cannot be argued that the European social model of today is "fair" or "efficient" when there are 20 million people without jobs, over half of them having been unemployed for more than a year. Gordon Brown recognises that social standards must remain high and that we cannot "run our race towards competitiveness on low salaries", but that many things need to be changed and that " we must go towards creating new jobs rather than protecting jobs which are no longer viable". As for the Community budget, the Chancellor trotted out that well-known slogan once more, that "we must stop spending 40% of the Community budget on agriculture, which represents just 4% of the European product and 2% of its employment".
… and Peter Mandelson's. A few days later, the British nationality European Commissioner Peter Mandelson recommended a Commission action programme involving- alongside the logical incentives in favour of the new research programme- the following initiatives: "a radical reform of the State aid regime; the revision of the REACH directive; taking forward the revised 'services' directive; setting out a modern industrial policy, which must not be seen as a return to past interventionism; re-prioritising the Structural Funds away from the old-fashioned infrastructure projects" (Commission press release of 20 July).
These texts give us something of a taste of the British view of the Europe of tomorrow, above and beyond the simple affirmation of the need for reforms. That reforms are urgently needed was not discovered two months ago in London; the EU has already done its best in this field with its Lisbon strategy, and to a greater or lesser extent, it is the national implementation of this which is lacking in a good many of the Member States. Some of the conceptions and the details discussed by Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson caused a certain amount of confusion, or even downright negative reactions, in a few of the capitals. I will take stock of these in the next few days. (F.R.)