Pleasing the public. Charles Grant, director of the Centre for European Reform (London) is considered to be a “Europhile”, in other words, a friend of European construction. He's carried out an exercise: outlining the kind of profile of the European Union's future up to 2027 that would win the support of public opinion. How so? The developments which would win popular support are as follows: bringing the number of European civil servants down from 28,000 to 8,000; transforming the Commission's Directorates General into independent agencies accountable to the European Parliament; reducing the Community budget by getting rid of agricultural spending (which would be transferred to member states); transforming the institutions by way of the direct election of European commissioners and the election by the European Parliament of the Commission president and European foreign affairs minister (whom Grant has already nominated, Carl Bildt); international deployment of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of thousands of judges, police officers and European civilian personnel; continued enlargement with the accession of Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and the states of the former Yugoslavia and agreeing to Turkey joining the European Union (this will not be achieved quietly: Spain could block the negotiations with Belarus, Moldavia and Ukraine in a protest against the rejection of Morocco and Serbia could oppose Kosovo and Albania joining). In the meantime, the United Kingdom will have asked to join the eurozone. This is a very “British” programme, which would get rid of almost all of the European administration, expand the EU to over 40 member states, get rid of the Common Agricultural Policy, and allocate Europe with an active role in order to smooth out conflicts and help people in difficulty without actually explaining how this is going to be done and what policies would be used.
This vision is obviously not official but it is, however, instructive to compare the fiction presented by London as pro-European, to the project resulting from the orientations put forward by Nicolas Sarkozy (which goes beyond convergence with Tony Blair on abandoning the draft Constitutional Treaty).
Sarkozy project goes in different direction. In looking at what the new French president said himself, as well as the additional explanations of his main advisors on European affairs - Michel Barnier and Alain Lamassoure - we end up with a profile of the Union based on the following orientations:
developing a political Europe that seeks to be an autonomous actor on the world scene;
providing the EU with its own identity from an economic and commercial point of view. The concept of “Community preference” has to be revitalised not only in a protectionist sense but also for demanding reciprocity from all third countries, as well as respect for the rules. The European identity also rules out unfair competition between member states in the different fields mentioned, especially tax;
beginning the construction of eurozone economic governance immediately, which has to be strengthened in order to set up a balanced dialogue between the Eurogroup and the European Central Bank (ECB) that can help to create balanced economic and monetary demands;
negotiating the future of the Common Agricultural Policy, so that revision of the CAP takes into account the different demands linked to maintaining agricultural activity in Europe;
suspending enlargement of the Union until institutional reforms have been made. Negotiations with Turkey should not be interrupted but continued in search of a new kind of relationship that is also valid for other countries (Sarkozy mentioned the idea of a Euro-Mediterranean Union);
opening up the dossier on raising the moral standards of finance capitalism, which should be tackled at a European level.
creating instruments that allow those that want to, to move forward more rapidly. All new projects would be located in the Community framework but member states would be allowed to take part in it if they wish, and institutional mechanisms and decision making methods would be the same for everyone;
providing the EU with the resources to take action via the planned institutional reforms that will eventually be carried out.
Nicolas Sarkozy's vision (which contains some of the ideas and orientations launched or adhered to by several member states), as well as that of the British (also shared by other member states) are so far removed from each other that it will be impossible for them to coincide. Fortunately, none of the parties is seeking to impose its own points of view. All of them say that they are open to discussion and undoubtedly have in mind, if necessary, the hypothesis of “strengthened cooperation” or in more generic terms, “differentiation”. (FR)