Finally! Two days before the informal London Summit, it wouldn't be rash to affirm that, after a slow and laborious start, deliberation on the future of Europe has begun. At the official level, the first institutions to make a move have been the most appropriate: the European Commission (which at the end of last week took some interesting initiatives), and the European Parliament, which is preparing a report and is very divided. Added to these are initiatives taken by various governments - I note in particular the intervention of Guy Verhofstadt - and deliberations going on within different political groups.
So many positions have been taken: wise or hare-brained, courageous or timid. I have singled out some of the remarks, giving priority to the Council and to the Commission.
The silence of the Council Presidency. After his flamboyant speech of June 23 last year before the European Parliament, Tony Blair has been silent. He will speak again this Wednesday in Strasbourg, but the tone was already evident in his letter of convocation to the informal London Summit (reproduced in our bulletin 9053. For him, it is time for “strategic debates”; concrete questions such as “financial perspectives” will be addressed in December. All evidence points to the fact that the British prime minister has hoped that the success of his speech last June would lead to decisive progress at the European level for his ideas concerning the acceleration of globalisation, reform of the European Social Model and revision of the political budget of the EU (abandoning, or nearly, the politics of cohesion, to be replaced by a simple system of financial transfers to the less-developed Member States, together with a rapid and radical reduction in agricultural subsidies). On the necessity of reform, Mr. Blair has been generally followed. This has not been the case for the two other subjects. Support for organic policy cohesion and for maintaining agricultural activity in Europe has been broad and significant, so much so that British propositions on European spending have regressed rather than advanced. If a compromise is reached between now and the end of the year, it risks being less favorable to these propositions than the last Juncker compromise (that Tony Blair rejected).
The European Commission has taken back the initiative. The two documents addressed at the Summit perhaps represent a turning point for the Barroso Commission; a step toward the reappropriation of authority and role that should be theirs within the institutional equilibrium of the Union. I shall not expound on the first document, the one relating to the necessity for Member States to reform and modernise their economic and social models. There are many interesting details and valuable observations in this text, but the key to results is in the hands of national authorities. The budgetary document is otherwise concrete. It indicates a method of using the credits of the politics of cohesion through relaunching innovation and research. It proposes to create a “Globalisation Adjustment Fund” to lessen the shock of reconstruction and de-localisation. It declares that the allocation of agricultural spending should go untouched until 2013, with a slight sliding of credit destined as direct aid to rural development and the programme: Natura 2000”. And it suggests a meeting in 2009 to reexamine the structure of the European budget, in view of reorganising not only the spending section, but also the receipt section.
I am awaiting several negative or ironic reactions to the praise I have just given to the Commission, as it is fashionable to go in the opposing direction. But I see no reason that I should cloak my positive impression in reservations. This is the result of documents (one must read them) and their immediate diffusion (transparency!), but also of Mr. Barroso's own attitude, first before the parliamentarians, and then the press: sure of himself and firm in the affirmation of the competence and autonomy of the Commission (it is he who will introduce the debate on globalisation in London, and he has produced a budgetary document, knowing that Tony Blair does not wish to talk finances on this occasion). Verbally, he has decided on a budgetary allotment surpassing the level of the last Juncker compromise; he has qualified as “veritable theft” the disrespect shown by third world countries toward the intellectual property and protected appellations of EU products and he has affirmed that conditions are ripe for a “European approach” to the question of energy. Also interesting are his remarks on respecting national social and fiscal models, and on maintaining “old” political communes, two aspects which I propose to come back to.
Tomorrow, I will conclude this quick general survey on the London Summit with some thoughts on the attitudes of the European Parliament and the governments which have made their opinions known.
(F.R.)