The debate has begun. I don't mean the negotiations over the new fundamental European treaty that have entered a decisive phase with the European Parliament expressing its opinion (I reported back on it a couple of days ago). No, this time I am talking about the debate on the EU's role in globalisation and the content of some of the EU's common policies. Nicolas Sarkozy's verve and plain speaking have made these debates inevitable - I tried to outline the main challenges in my column in issue 9437. France's views on various points have been clarified (I will be returning to them) and I had the chance to attend a debate organised by Confrontations Europe which was chaired by Mario Monti and attended by several MEPs (Jo Leinen, Jacques Toubon, Elisa Ferreira, et al) and people like the president of 'Mouvement Européen-France', Sylvie Goulard.
Plain and simple answer. The subject of the debate organised by the Confrontations Europe association under the aegis of its president, Philippe Herzog, and its secretary general, Claude Fischer, was very broad - relaunching the European Union and Philippe Herzog's ideas for a new Single Act to redefine and revitalise common policies once institutional innovations have restored the EU to working order. The term 'Single Act' inevitably refers back to the unified European market because the aim of Jacques Delors' historic first Single Act was to create a single European market (which has been achieved). It is therefore wholly legitimate for me to focus on a domain connected with the single market, namely the 'Community preference'. Does the Community preference still hold water and simply need reviving, as Nicolas Sarkozy argues, or is it an outdated idea to be dropped now against the backdrop of globalisation? Mario Monti's answer to this question stands out through its simplicity, I believe - some uniformity of international rules is required if an open global market is to function properly, but Monti wants the EU to pursue this aim by recommending harmonisation of global trading conditions (goods, services and even capital) rather than using restrictions and protectionist measures.
Indispensable connection. I believe his idea is positive and correct as long as a connection is made between the opening of markets and respecting the rules. Those who fail to respect the rules should not benefit from full opening of borders and therefore the Community preference remains an indispensable tool. Ever since the European common market was created, it has been a constant workshop for experimenting and testing the conditions needed to enable borders and border controls to be scrapped - health and safety measures, public aid schemes, competition rules, penalising counterfeiting and pirating, etc. The EU cannot claim that the whole world shares and applies its rules, but it has to subject abandoning the Community preference to respect for international rules to be set up by common agreement. It is true that international principles exist covering these areas and the social field as well, but the only global body with real power is the WTO. This means that trade restrictions are banned and penalised but vital rules for fair globalisation are ignored and flouted. This is unhealthy because it not only creates an uneven playing field but is also dangerous for heath (fake medicines!), for the environment and for security. The opening of borders must go hand in hand with respect for rules; scrapping 'preferences' must go hand in hand with establishing uniform or equivalent rules.
The measure of a phrase. Can a simple phrase like the above-mentioned quote of Mario Monti's provide a solution to such a complicated issue as the Community preference? Clearly not - but it can bear weight. This can be demonstrated from two events. When Mario Monti was the EU commissioner responsible for the single market in the 1990s, he slammed the imbalance in the EU between the taxation of interest on capital (each member state had become a fiscal paradise for money deposited from other member states in order to attract capital) and the taxation of labour, constantly increasing to compensate for lack of income from elsewhere. We all know what followed and the mushrooming repercussions of this situation. A few years later, this time as competition commissioner, Mario Monti said that services of general interest and their universality were one of the pillars of the European model of society. This simple phrase of his had immense, unfathomable weight in debate surrounding services of general interest. This debate has not yet ended but all the same has led to several principles (to be preserved) being incorporated in the draft Constitutional Treaty.
We hope that his ideas about the Community preference will have a similar impact.
(F.R.)