Applicant countries and the Convention on the Future of Europe

Applicant countries and the Convention on the Future of Europe

As the debate in The Convention on the Future of Europe approaches its climax, Oana Lungescu suggests that the candidate countries increasingly stress the importance of strengthening the Community institutions and decision-making system.

The Convention provides an intriguing insight into the future of Europe not only because of its mandate to deliver a draft constitutional treaty for the EU, but also because it brings together for the first time parliamentarians and officials from both existing and future Member States. Seven months into this unique experiment, people on both sides agree it has been smoother than expected. The Convention’s Vice-Chairman Jean-Luc Dehaene (who, as former Belgian prime minister, knows a thing or two about reconciling different cultures and interests) believes that what he calls the alchemy of the Convention is working.

It is quite remarkable, says one seasoned observer, to hear the Turkish representative talking about the importance of the community method. If you close your eyes, adds a senior member of the Convention, it is very hard to say if the person speaking comes from an existing EU member or from an applicant country.

But for the newcomers to the European stage, it has been a steep learning curve. Alojz Peterle, the Slovenian MP designated by his colleagues as their representative to the Praesidium, sees the Convention not only as a political, but also as an educational project. For over a year, he says, we can compare how our colleagues from the Member States are dealing with all these important issues and how we see them. He feels welcome, even though his position, achieved after weeks of hard lobbying from the applicants, is only as an invitee, not a full member of the Praesidium.

No application country bloc

If, at the outset, many in the EU feared that the applicant countries would act as a bloc and perhaps put the brake on future reforms, those fears have been dispelled. If there are any differences, they are on particular issues, rather than between applicants and Member States. The Slovak government’s representative, Jan Figl, says that political groupings have proved the most influential, even though there have been encounters between the four applicants in the Visegrad group (Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland) and the three EU founding members in the Benelux group (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg). Informal contacts are also ongoing to forge a common view on the skeleton constitutional treaty that chairman Valery Giscard d’Estaing will propose at the end of October and on the role of the applicants in the future Intergovernmental Conference.

Alojz Peterle believes that the east Europeans may even bring a greater willingness for reforms than their western colleagues. In the last ten years, he argues, all we have been doing is reforms. Paradoxically, lack of EU experience may also prove to be an advantage. Eastern Europeans find it much easier to conceive of doing away with the traditional three pillar structure of the EU, as will be proposed in the skeleton constitutional treaty, simply because they have never worked within it.

For the same reason, applicant countries may prove more flexible and more willing to change their mind as the Convention proceeds. Until now, the main focus of their European policy has been the accession negotiations and the preparations for membership. This prevented most applicant countries from adopting clear positions on the issues at stake, such as the final constitutional and political character of the EU or the election of a President of the Council. Not only because of a lack of European experts, but also because the applicants tried to avoid antagonising either the European Commission or any of the Member States. As the negotiations mov e into the endgame, the applicant countries are gradually moving away from the mere slogans about transparency and democracy and making more detailed contributions to the Convention debate.

Protecting the Commission

Their attitude towards the European Commission, their main sparring partner in the negotiations, has also evolved. It comes as no surprise that the majority of applicants, which are small and medium-sized countries, see a strengthening of the Commission as a guarantee of their own interests in the EU. For us, says one Convention member, the Commission is the symbol of the EU. All of them believe it is essential for each EU country to retain the right to designate a Commissioner, at least in the medium term, in order to make Europe more accessible and accountable to eastern European publics.

The position of the biggest applicant, Poland, has also shifted. Although the Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller wrote a joint article last year with his British counterpart Tony Blair, endorsing a stronger European Council, the Poles now appear less favourable to the intergovernmental method. With the same population as Spain, Poland may hold ambitions to be eventually ranked with the “big countries” in the EU. But, as a poor newcomer, it accepts its limitations. I believe we will behave like a small state, says a Polish source.

But Poland, like all countries in central and eastern Europe, remains ambivalent towards any transfer of sovereignty. With painful memories of foreign domination and, for some like Slovenia and the Baltic states, recent experiences of nationhood, the applicants are more comfortable with a constitutional treaty than they would have been with a constitution. A European constitution so soon after independence would be difficult to ratify, says one delegate. We could not accept something like a federal state in the foreseeable future, says another.

The inclusion of the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the future treaty is widely endorsed by the applicant countries. They believe it will convince their publics that the EU is not only about money and the economy, but also about values and human rights. With most of them either in NATO or hoping to join soon, the applicants also demand greater involvement in ESDP, while stressing that it should not undermine transatlantic relations. They are also keen for the EU to develop clearer mechanisms of engagement with its neighbours. In a written contribution in March, Danuta Huebner, Poland’s secretary of state for European integration and its governmental delegate to the Convention, says that, after enlargement, the EU will need to face directly the question of its geographic limits. She suggests a confederation model could be offered to Ukraine, Moldova and the Balkan countries. Perhaps, she says, the commonly promoted idea of “enhanced cooperation” adequately reflects future relations of the enlarged EU and its European neighbours.

It is through ideas such as these that the applicant countries are trying to prove that they can engage as fully equal partners on the European stage. But, in purely statistical terms, their contributions to the Convention are much fewer than that of EU delegates and few, beyond Mrs Huebner and Mr Peterle, have made a mark. In some recent working group discussions, for instance on CFSP, not one delegate from an applicant country took the floor. The alchemy of the Convention may be working, but it is a slow process.

Oana Lungescu is European Regional Correspondent for the BBC World Service.

For more analyses, visit the

EPC website.