Nostalgia for the Constitutional Treaty and desire to relaunch discussions about it are a positive move (see my column in issues 9102 and 9104), but we should not be over-optimistic. Opinions differ about the path to be taken and it will not be easy to reconcile them.
Too many options open at the European Parliament? The first institution to spot the problems of how to reach a clear and uniform view was the European Parliament. Its two rapporteurs on the matter, Andrew Duff and Johannes Voggenhuber, prepared a procedure for re-examining and renegotiating the Constitution (involving all political groups and civil society) with a view to agreeing on a revised draft to be submitted to a European referendum. The EP's Constitutional Committee disagreed, preferring to leave several other options open, specifying that the best thing would be to stick with the current text. The Committee also feels that it would not be a good idea to separate off and bring into force different parts of the current draft independently, or to consider at this point setting up 'pioneer' groups of states or 'reinforced cooperation' because the constitutional treaty has not yet been ratified. But the Constitutional Committee's document, although the main one, is not the only one - several other EP committees have also expressed their views, like the Foreign Affairs Committee (which sees the option of renegotiating the current draft as unfeasible, preferring Member States to continue with the process of ratifying the current draft) and the Legal Committee (which opposes any watering down of the current draft and says it would not be feasible to only implement the institutional section). Other parliamentary documents submitted to the plenary include the opinions of the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions, which is a good initiative because the opinion of civil society and regional authorities are important in current circumstances, but this does further complicate the task of the plenary. The plenary will express its views next week. The risk is that rather than indicating a clear path, the outcome will avoid some options in order to keep everyone happy.
France and Germany disagree. Member States' views are just as divergent. The new German government has made a clear political choice - ratification must continue in the Member States which have not yet expressed their views. Then, in the first half of 2007 (when Germany chairs the Council), Angela Merkel will draw conclusions and act accordingly. Preliminary indications suggest she may suggest a 'social protocol' is added to the constitutional treaty to facilitate the process of getting France to agree to the treaty in a second referendum. Suggestions of this ilk reflect desire in Germany to avoid holding a general debate on the text so it can be preserved intact.
France quite naturally takes the opposite view because its politicians believe it is politically impossible to get people to vote in a second referendum on a text they have already rejected. But at the same time, France is trying to regain the initiative to counteract the conviction of some Member States that the French no vote in the referendum on the constitution greatly weakened the country's position in Europe, putting it on the margins to an extent. This is why after first firmly rejecting the idea of a social protocol, President Chirac mooted a series of ideas and initiatives on Tuesday to respond to people's concerns and restore confidence in Europe, while remaining vague on the issue of how to get out of the institutional impasse. It appears that France has considered suggesting the EU implements a number of measures from the constitutional treaty (where legally possible). Germany responded so negatively to this (fearing that introducing parts of the constitution would lead to other bits being dropped) that France dropped the issue. At the same time, however, President Chirac has suggested a series of possible measures under existing treaties (see issue 9106) like a European Energy Policy, supporting the Austrian Presidency's economic and social initiatives to make tangible progress in the EU, and also 'necessary decisions' to improve the functioning of the institutions that could be taken by the June 2006 European Council. Jacques Chirac mooted the idea of pioneer groups again (possibly under a different name), directly mentioning the 'natural vocation' of eurozone countries to deepen their political, economic, fiscal and social integration (an argument rejected of course by the United Kingdom and central and East European countries).
It is clear then that despite Berlin and Paris' reaffirmed political will to work hand in hand, their starting positions are pretty far apart (for objective rather than ideological reasons).
The two souls of Austria. The current Presidency may find it tough to contribute anything genuinely new to get the ball rolling again on the constitution, despite Vienna's many fine words because negotiations only start in May and the European Commission's 'impulse' is not expected until June, towards the end of the Austrian Presidency. Austria has chosen the direction of 'changing the context' in which two Member States rejected the treaty, rather than tackling the actual text of the treaty. Chancellor Wolfgang Schussel is talking jobs, economic recovery and energy rather than institutional reform. He has raised general questions like the nature of the EU in the future (the economic and social model, citizen security, the EU's borders and the limits of enlargement, sharing of powers between the EU and Member States, etc), to put the institutional functioning of the constitution, if introduced, in an broader context.
While the Austrian Chancellor and foreign minister Ursula Plassnik are moving in the same direction (important because the Chancellor chairs the two big Summits during the Austrian Presidency's six months in office, and the foreign minister chairs the Foreign Affairs and General Affairs Council), but Vice-Chancellor Hubert Gorbach is taking a different tack. Gorbach says the constitutional treaty has to be 'substantially modified and rewritten', even adding that this should take the form of reducing EU powers, boosting subsidiarity and re-nationalising various policies currently managed by the EU, like the Common Agricultural Policy. His aim is to create a 'Europe of the Regions' in which EU powers are reduced. Metamorphosis of coalition governments (see issue 9105 on Schussel and Gorbach's differences in approach). The Austrian Chancellor and Vice-Chancellor do agree on one thing, however, namely the need to avoid creating new divisions in the EU (seeming therefore to reject the idea of 'reinforced cooperation' or a 'hard core' of states, an idea seen as indispensable by other Member States - Belgian prime minister Guy Verhofstadt's comments can be added to Jacques Chirac's statements).
To conclude, the Austrian Presidency may achieve positive results on several economic and social issues and provide courageous contributions to debate in other areas, but will not make any significant changes to the constitutional issue.
Three directions. Without going into any more detail on the views of various countries on how the constitutional debate should proceed, three broad directions are discernible:
a group of Member States believing that the current draft is not dead, should not be dropped and the ratification process will have to proceed at some point. Once the process has been completed, the situation can be examined to decide how to bring the constitution into force, possible with statements and special arrangements annexed to it. These Member States believe a new constitutional treaty would take too long to negotiate and would not be better than the current draft - and could even be a step backwards.
a group of Member States believing it is politically impossible to ask people to approve a draft text needing unanimous voting to come into force that has already been rejected by two Member States. These states say the process would inevitably fail and worsen people's lack of interest, so the treaty is dead. This is probably the general view of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Denmark and several new Member States. Some governments are quite happy to see the project disappear because they feel it went too far in areas like 'structured cooperation' on defence and the introducing of qualified majority voting for approving multi-annual Financial Perspectives.
other Member States have not yet made their position clear, preferring to wait until the end of the reflection process before stating their views. The European Parliament's views will clearly have an influence here.
Like I said at the beginning, nostalgia for the constitutional treaty should not make one over-optimistic, but I would conclude that neither should the differences outlined above should not kill off all hope of a positive outcome. The reflection period would not be needed if the outcome was already clear with no disagreement possible. I believe it is a positive sign that Michel Barnier has been given responsibility for reflecting on a specific subject (see issue 9106) because Barnier is a convinced European with a desire and a passion to unite Europe.
(F.R.)