As the time for decisions approaches, the positions on the constitutional (or institutional) relaunch of the EU are becoming more radical. This is, perhaps, a natural development: in any negotiation, as deadlines loom, each party tries its best to defend the position it started from. If this is the case, it is a mistake, because the negotiations we are facing are not the kind where each participant does whatever they can to force the maximum number of concessions; we should be looking for a joint way out of the crisis. Otherwise the task facing the German presidency will be impossible, more or less…
In an attempt to simplify matters (in a necessarily approximate way), we can look at three groups of countries plus France, which is a unique case because it cannot yet take a position. The three groups are:
1. The “Madrid group”, i.e. the member states which could be defined as the “friends of the Constitutional Treaty” and which met at the end of January in Madrid. They believe that the content of the draft on the table should be preserved; that extra elements could be added, but that nothing substantial should be removed from it (apart from the term “Constitution”, which does not correspond to reality). They point out that the countries which have ratified the draft are a net majority: 18 already have, 2 intend to and 2 are prepared to do so, but will only invite their populations to vote on it if its chances of entering into force are cleared.
The majority of the European Parliament is expressly in accordance with this orientation.
2. The sceptics, that is the member states which consider the current draft to be dead. They are not against any advancement in European construction, but neither do they have any particularly ambitious ideologies or objectives for integration. In this category are the UK, Poland and the Czech Republic, along with the Netherlands on some matters (and possibly Hungary?). There are differences from one country to the next and in each of them there are minority political powers which favour the standpoint of the first group.
3. The ambitious ones: this is the Verhofstadt orientation, in favour of a United States of Europe, inclined to envisage the creation of two categories of member states: those who accept and those who refuse. According to the Belgian prime minister “in the best case scenario, it would be the countries in the eurozone” which would fall into the first category, with objectives such as a European socio-political policy, a single foreign policy and a joint army. No member state has taken any formal initiatives in this direction; such initiatives could arise if efforts to advance together fail.
France, a separate case. France is searching for a way to get involved in the debate while still accepting the negative outcome of its national referendum. Faced with the variety of different formulae currently sprouting up (which this column has covered in part), three prestigious institutions - the European Policy Centre, Confrontations Europe and the Fondation pour l'innovation politique - held a seminar on Tuesday in Brussels in which various different French political groups made their opinions known. The result was a very French debate which was perfectly interesting but does not enable us to form any ideas of what the French position would be in the European debate.
The Left envisages a draft indicating common objectives (on climate, demographic challenges, responses to globalisation), which could be submitted for another national referendum. But how could they convince the 18 member states which have ratified the current text to start over from the beginning? And how long would more negotiations take?
The Centre-Right favours an “Institutional Treaty” which, it believes, would respect the “Merkel timetable” (entry into force in 2009), ruling out the need for another referendum and postponing the negotiations on European policy until a later date. Despite the efforts of Alain Lamassoure to prove that the Institutional Treaty would have substantial content, other political groups continue to call it a mini-treaty, which would not be enough for the first group mentioned earlier in this column.
The president of Confrontations Europe, Philippe Herzog, suggests that the two operations advance in parallel and remain separate: the institutional reform on one hand, and a new “Single European Act” on the other, which would define joint policies, with a timetable and binding instruments, along the lines of Jacques Delors' Single European Act which permitted the creation of a large market without borders.
In fact, France will not be able to make its feelings known before the election of the new president of the Republic at the beginning of June. By that time Angela Merkel will only have a few days left to complete her draft “roadmap” for submission to the European Council in mid-June. (FR)