Confused calendar. Time is marching on and problems mount. Instead of becoming clearer, the European calendar is becoming more complicated. The European elections overlapping with the end of the Commission's mandate and the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty has created a number of legal complexities and political concerns that are not going away. The project starting point was clear enough and included the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty at the beginning of this year. This would have facilitated the application, without having to wait, of the rules of this treaty on the revised composition of the Parliament and European Commission, as well as two other fundamental institutional innovations: a permanent presidency of the European Council, and a Commission vice president who is at the same time the high representative for foreign policy and president of the “External Relations” Council.
This plan has exploded and every day we see additional complications. Ireland will not be voting again until the end of the year and the presidents of two other member states, Poland and the Czech Republic, affirm that they will await Ireland's final decision before ratifying the Lisbon Treaty. Parliamentary ratification in itself has already been attained in Poland but it is being increasingly delayed in the Czech Republic where certain parliamentary groups are multiplying the conditions for obtaining the “yes” vote. Prague will not be voting before March, uncertainty grows and the Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU subsequently finds itself in a weaker position. At the same time, the leader of the British Conservative party has announced that if he becomes prime minister before the Lisbon Treaty comes into force, he will call for a referendum in the United Kingdom (even though the treaty had already obtained parliamentary ratification) and will urge the electorate to vote against.
Application difficulties. Although the Lisbon Treaty has been definitively ratified everywhere and it applies from the beginning of next year, difficulties related to the new Parliament and European Commission persist. The elections will, of course, be organised according to the rules of the Treaty of Nice, which is currently in force and which sets the number of MEPs at 736 as opposed to the 751 stipulated in the Lisbon Treaty. In order to avoid new elections when the latter enters into force, the European Council decided last December to modify the composition of the EP during its mandate and introduce the additional MEPs. The difference, however, between Nice and Lisbon, apart from the number of additional MEPs, is the reduction in the number of MEPs from Germany, which goes from 99 to 96. Reducing the number of seats is not as easy as increasing it! This is why the summit decided that Germany would keep its 99 seats until 2014. We don't know whether the additional number of MEPs will be elected at a different time or in June and then put “in reserve”.
This all regards Parliament but the new Commission is just as complicated. Its current mandate expires on 1 November. According to the most recent decisions taken by the European Council on the application of the Lisbon Treaty (we know that on this point, it is not being rigid), the new Commission will consist of a national from every member state. But if the new treaty is not in force, it will still be necessary to apply the Treaty of Nice, which stipulates that the number of commissioners is less than the number of member states. Therefore, at least one country will have to give up a commissioner of its own nationality. Easy to say but difficult to apply!
Even more so, given that the president of the future Commission should be appointed immediately after the elections, in June therefore, and the commissioners a few weeks later, so that the new Commission is formed in time to be up and running at the beginning of November. This implies that the new Commission will be formed before there is any clarification about its composition and how it functions, which could prove totally absurd. It would, in any case, be impossible to appoint the new Commission president on the basis of the European election result, which is, in principle, how it is supposed to be done.
This is why a possibility of extending the mandate of the current Commission was envisaged, while waiting for the fate of the Lisbon Treaty to be decided. What kind of extension? Should this be done by simply making the current Commission take charge of current affairs for two months (precedents do exist) or by amending the very period of its mandate? In this second hypothesis, the Commission would continue to exercise its entire remit. It is an aspect that requires clarification;
Public opinion would be against. The complications mentioned above indicate that the EU is now confronting something one pundit describes as “institutional entanglement”. This needs to be unravelled but let's not imagine the public getting particularly passionate about the issue.
European elections revolving around such complications would be the best way of undermining European construction and justifying the affirmation that the EU is reproducing and expanding the shortcomings contained in national politics. Is there a need to underline to what point such an impression could be damaging to Europe's image?
The ambiguities and uncertainties described must be clarified and the Community institutions have to actively tackle them. The European Parliament's institutional affairs committee is in fact dealing with the matter and is not hesitating when it comes to confrontation with certain Council Presidency positions. Those who are interested in the debates on this issue can read about it in our newsletters, (e.g. EUROPE 9824 of 23 January, which provides an account of the discussions between the Czech vice prime minister, Alexandr Vodra, on one side and the rapporteur on the institutional implications of the Lisbon Treaty, Jean-Luc Dehaene, and the president of the parliamentary constitutional affairs committee, Jo Leinen, on the other.) The electoral campaign, however, must have other ambitions and objectives!
Differences of political positions are logical and even to be welcomed as part of the basic principle of any democracy: political forces fight for their vision of society and it is up to the people to decide. United Europe, however, was built on different goals: the end of conflict, reconciliation, the defence of common values, pooling of resources, solidarity and the safeguard of civilisations and traditions. In the election campaign which is cranking into gear, Eurosceptics and the enemies of European construction are organising and are not hiding the fact that they are aiming to gain a majority at the European Parliament. They are not expected to succeed because public support for European construction is growing again, but pro-European forces have to avoid any mistakes that could leave the idea of Europe paying a high price.
Mistakes to avoid. The most damaging error would be for the political forces that, in principle, support European construction, to forget or neglect what a united Europe means, what it has obtained and what it is developing, for the simple reason that the results do not totally correspond in either scale or direction, to the original objectives. Obviously, no-one is entirely satisfied. Jacques Delors acknowledged that the Europe in gestation is not the one he dreamt of, but this did not prevent him from robustly appealing for the Constitutional Treaty to begin with and the Lisbon Treaty afterwards. He pointed out that in the past there was an inter-European war every 20 years and that invasions of weaker countries were the norm, as were destruction and famine. A critical spirit and the search for improvements must be permanent but without abandoning everything that has been gained and which the whole world envies. A top ranking European figure, speaking at an informal function, indicated that certain positions taken by pro-European personalities “sometimes do more damage than open rejection of European unity”. In his opinion, the first duty in the next election campaign must be to send out a positive message about Europe.
Candidates that understand. There are actually candidates whose aims are sincere and who embody this concept. I recently attended an almost pre-electoral confrontation between Daniel Cohn-Bendit, the longstanding MEP and Sylvie Goulard, a new candidate. Just as a number of speakers were creating a mood that was sliding towards populist Euro-scepticism, the two candidates both responded by underling to what extent European construction is in itself positive and indispensable to peace, freedom, democracy and social progress. Their positions did not coincide on the way forward but differences should not allow what is essential to be forgotten. A brief interview with Graham Watson, the president of the Liberal group, gave me the same impression: he rejects the idea that the route via Strasbourg or Brussels is simply preparation for subsequent political activity at a national level. He intends, on the contrary, to devote his present and future political activity to assisting European construction, and has posed his candidacy for the presidency of the European Parliament in an effort to break the EPP/Socialist monopoly and expand the range of possibilities and political impact of the EP. Without going into a discussion about how a spell in Brussels can positively benefit political figures who then go back into national politics with a better grasp and knowledge of the situation in Europe, it is significant that the pro-European orientation is gaining strength within the British political class (other examples at the EP are Andrew Duff and Richard Corbett).
I am not going to go over the aspect of the election campaign I mentioned in this column yesterday: the appointment of their candidate for the Commission presidency by the political groups, is, in my opinion, a plausible fallacy, democratic in appearance but in actual fact, inappropriate.
(F.R./transl.rh)