The Myth of a European “Leadership Crisis”

In this EPC article, Andrew Moravcsik argues that the EU has reached a functional degree of political maturity but it lacks a “grand project” around which the integrationist project could be rallied.

The Myth of a European “Leadership Crisis”

When politicians fail to promulgate a policy we favour, it is always tempting to blame the lack of “political leadership.” The problem, we thereby imply, is nothing fundamental—not the absence of a compelling public purpose, not weak support from interest groups and citizens, not the lack of practical advantages. We convince ourselves instead that all that is needed is a strong leader with the proper ideals at heart and the courage and skill to act. Such leaders, we repeatedly hope against hope, will mobilize the mass public, sway recalcitrants, enact our preferred policies, and thereby serve the public interest.

Behind the Myth

This stress on leadership is particularly persistent in the European Union (EU)—and especially in Brussels. This is so for two reasons.

First, many believe a particular myth about the European past, namely that the EU’s past success was made possible only by a series of gifted political leaders who served as presidents of the Commission—among them Jean Monnet, Walter Hallstein, Roy Jenkins, and Jacques Delors. In his contribution to Challenge Europe, Thomas Jansen echoes this widespread belief when he speaks of the “exceptional aptitude for analysis and synthesis” and “the talent for effective political rhetoric and communication” of these leaders. Many believe, as he does, that only the EU Commission can state the “general interest,” and therefore we all should defer to it. If a vanguard of visionaries were truly decisive in the past, they will sure be decisive today.

Second, a vocal minority of Europeans still view continuous movement toward “ever closer union” as an unquestioned ideal goal. Such enthusiasts (who include, at least until recently, most scholars, commentators and practitioners of EU politics) tend reflexively to favour deeper European integration, often with little regard to whether it has a strong practical justification in any specific case. Prolonged lack of progress toward a united Europe presumptively reflects—as Jansen maintains—a lack of ideological commitment on the part of elites and publics, miscalculations and short-term self-interest on the part of national politicians, or the lack of centralized political institutions in Brussels… anything, that is, except the absence of functional benefits to European citizens. Those who profess such idealistic beliefs tend to label as a missed opportunity any failed effort to make a major advance toward integration—such as the disappointing Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice, or conservative and cautious constitution currently under consideration. Others adhere to the so-called “bicycle theory”, whereby if European integration stops moving forward, the project will collapse like a rider on a stationary bicycle. In this view, the EU is motivated—even if not all make this goal implicit and some even deny it—by the ideal of continuous movement toward a united European superstate.

These twin premises—idealistic faith in continuous European integration and the decisive importance of political leadership in Brussels in bringing it about—has long lain at the core of the “European movement.” They inspired many Europeans after World War II to support the integration project, and it remains very prevalent in the political culture of a few staunchly federalist nations, such as Germany and Belgium.

Debunking the Myth: Historical facts

Despite the laudable goals of such European idealists, close inspection of the historical record reveals neither the decisive role for supranational leadership nor the decisive role of idealists. With the assistance of formerly confidential documents released dec ades after the fact, as well as more recent scholarly analyses, historians have all but debunked this account of European integration. Historian Alan Milward has gone so far as to dismiss this popularly received history of European visionary idealists as “a hagiography of European saints.” Whereas the Commission is of course an effective agenda-setter in the EU’s everyday legislative process—where governments already enjoy a sufficient consensus to delegate it formal powers of proposal—it has almost never exercised decisive leadership in major treaty-amending reforms.

In this matter Europeans too easily forget the historical truth—or perhaps they were never told it publicly. They forget that Monnet’s tenure as head of the High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community in the early 1950s became so unpopular that national governments created a significantly weaker “Commission” in the European Economic Community (EEC). They forget that Monnet strongly opposed the creation of the EEC in 1955-1957, which he viewed as too neo-liberal to be of any political interest, and even secretly begged Konrad Adenauer to kill it in favour of moribund atomic and transport cooperation. They forget that Hallstein and his agricultural commissioner, Sicco Mansholt, crusaded against the overgenerous and costly CAP that emerged, but backed down on nearly every point in the face of pressure from national agriculture ministries, not to mention mass demonstrations and death threats from farmers. Europeans forget the 1970s, when Chancellor Helmut Schmidt and President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing swept aside Commission president Roy Jenkins and brilliantly launched the European Monetary System (EMS) on their own and largely in secret.

The only bright spot in this dismal history of Commission leadership was Jacques Delors’ intervention in the mid-1980s to promote Commission plans for the Single European Act—truly a decisive act of “political entrepreneurship” by the Commission president. Yet, even Delors had to hide his crushing disappointment just a few years later when he turned to monetary integration. German and French executives (and central bankers) shoved Delors aside, and replaced the “French-style” monetary union he had proposed with its near opposite: a “hard-money” EMU fashioned by the German Bundesbank in its own image. For Delors, this eliminated the entire point of monetary union, though he was too professional to complain about it in public.

European Integration: a series of functional projects

Historians now agree that the real constraint on European integration—historically and, ever more so today—has almost never been the courage, cleverness or commitment of Europhile leaders, whether national or supranational. Instead the critical factor has been and remains the level of support from national governments and their constituents for further integration. Most analysts now concur that this support is based, above all, on the expectation of functional benefits from the EU. As public opinion polls repeatedly confirm, where Europeans see no clear and concrete benefit from the EU—above all, an economic benefit, though national security concerns play a role as well—their support erodes. Europe is, above all, a functional project.

It is no surprise, then, that the EU has been propelled forward by the convergence of Member State governments around a series of functional projects that followed closely from their respective national interests. National leaders like Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer, Edward Heath, Helmut Schmidt, and François Mitterrand required little assistance from Brussels in learning to be leaders. When they chose to act, not because the Commission persuaded them to do so, but because they themselves had come to the conclusion that further integration—steps such as the creation of the customs union, the Common Agricultural Policy, the European Monetary system the single market, monetary union, and now enlargement—helped realize material “national interests” in the most economically interdependent region of the world. Given such strong interests and experienced leaders, pressure from Brussels authorities—as is so often so with technocratic leadership—was generally redundant, often futile, and occasionally quite misguided. Leaders do not create favourable conditions for integration; favourable conditions create leaders. Or, as Monnet himself advised, leaders should “always choose the path of least resistance.”

The roots of European realities

Yet is there a promising “path of least resistance” today? This question—and the functional view underlying it—casts a very different light on the current “crisis” of the EU than does the “hagiographic” view. The critical barrier to deepening the EU today is neither a lack of will or leadership in Brussels, nor an narrow-minded unwillingness of national leaders to heed such leadership. Of course the idealists are quite correct—here Jansen takes the same line — to suggest that the EU labours under severe institutional constraints. The EU is a system of tight institutional checks and balances, rather than a classic European parliamentary democracy. The Commission has been weakened in recent years, and Member States are less willing to turn new policies like social policy over to the traditional “Community method.” Member States do seek to retain nearly full sovereignty in areas like defence, education and nearly everything having to do with “taxing and spending.” France and Germany, but also many other countries, are less enthusiastic about integration than they once were.

But the critical question is: Why is this so? Is it simply a result of mistakes, weakness of will, transient popular misconceptions, and lackadaisical leadership, as hagiographers maintain?

Not so. The current stasis of the EU is not an unintentional outcome; it is the result of deliberate choices by national leaders, backed by national elites and publics. What is most striking about the Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice, and the ongoing constitutional discussions, is the lack of any substantive justification for institutional deepening akin to that provided in decades past by the single market or single currency. Absent a clear substantive purpose, the EU flounders. In sum, the critical barrier to deeper integration today is the lack of a concrete “grand project” to motivate politicians to lead and citizens to follow.

Searching for the “grand project”

And no such “grand project” is on the horizon. The division of labour between the EU and national governments is roughly what Europeans, when polled, say they want. (Defence, we shall see in a moment, is the exception that proves the rule.) There are few promising avenues to pursue. Further enlargement does not require, and may well undermine, institutional deepening. Further internal market liberalization and a common policy toward immigration and justice move forward without deep institutional reform. European social policy is more show than substance. (While attractive perhaps to Habermasian philosophers, democratisation and social policy lack concrete advantages commensurate with the political costs.) In any case, governments have strictly capped the European fiscal resources, thereby excluding meaningful social welfare policy and most other salient political issues from the EU agenda. Strategic use of European trade and aid policies could (and, in my view, should) be expanded, if the member governments so choose, but this could occur with minor changes to current flexible constitutional arrangements.

To day European idealists, and even a significant portion of public opinion, grasp at a common European defence as the only possible road forward. Yet this just demonstrates how unpromising the scope for further integration is. The notion of forming a common European army to gain American respect, as the issue is normally framed by the French and others, creates more disunity than unity in Europe—and would be unlikely to influence US policy for the better, even if it were realized. Indeed, it is ironic that so many Europeans believe that a military build-up is the road to global influence, given the very sensible criticisms that Europeans—even in Donald Rumsfeld’s “New Europe”— almost unanimously directed at the US for its “over-militarisation” of global issues.

Entering a phase of diminishing returns

Rather than criticizing European leaders, it is time to recognize that European integration is entering a period of diminishing returns. For the foreseeable future, the current level of institutional and substantive cooperation is likely to persist, with only incremental moves toward deepening and widening. This is not a pessimistic, let alone “Eurosceptic” conclusion. It is instead a profession of a sort of sober Euro-optimism. In most mature constitutional systems, the nature of the constitutional order need no longer be debated; it comes instead to be taken for granted. Europe has reached this point of maturity. Europeans have the constitutional order they want and need. They have no reason to fear any longer, as Americans did during the first few decades of the American republic in the early 19th century, that without continuous movement forward under idealistic leaders, Europe will “fall off the bicycle.” Instead, it is perched on a “tricycle”, which will not fall ever even if it stops for a while. After a half century of success, European unification has now reached the point of no return.  

In this context, the proposed constitution should be recognized for what it is: an essentially conservative, consolidating, document that marks the end, not the beginning, of an era of radical constitutional innovation. Europeans have debated their constitution in three successive intergovernmental conferences, and this is the result. For the moment, what we see is what we get.

Rather than lamenting lost opportunities and the lack of leadership, both illusory, European leaders would do best to husband their political and fiscal capital for the important pragmatic and incremental tasks that lie before them. These include further enlargement, perhaps to include Turkey; reform of the CAP, which has such a devastating impact on the poorest 1/3 of the world’s population; sparking greater economic global competitiveness for Europe; and providing a more credible civilian alternative to US militarisation of global disputes—all tasks quite feasible under existing constitutional arrangements and without extraordinary acts of leadership by the Commission. The real barriers are at home. A belief—perhaps, indeed, a slightly idealistic belief—that such concrete and pragmatic steps are possible is the most meaningful faith in the European project one could possibly have.

This article is a contribution to Challenge Europe, the EPC’s public policy journal.

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