The Future(s) of Europe

The Future(s) of Europe:

Our Prime Ministers have called on us to discuss the future of Europe. They have solemnly stated that they want a broad debate involving all citizens. As the Laeken Declaration states: “In order for the debate to be broadly based and involve all citizens, a Forum will be opened for organisations representing civil society (the social partners, the business world, non-governmental organisations, academia, etc.).” The next Treaty – we are told – will be elaborated in a more open and transparent way.

This is a complete change of tune, which can be seen as a response to the growing criticism towards the European Union in all Member States. Opinion polls in most Member States show the lack of support for the EU. There have been new “NO” votes in the referenda in Denmark on the euro and the latest “NO” in Ireland on the Nice Treaty.

New tactic or forward strategy?

The Prime Ministers are now rather critical towards their own past. They show understanding towards public feeling and write about people’s expectations: – “They want the European institutions to be less unwieldy and rigid and, above all, more efficient and open. Many also feel that the Union should involve itself more with their particular concerns, instead of intervening, in every detail, in matters by their nature better left to Member States’ and regions’ elected representatives. This is even perceived by some as a threat to their identity. More importantly, however, they feel that deals are all too often cut out of their sight and they want better democratic scrutiny.”

The question is whether the new tones represent a new tactic or a radical change in their forward strategy, involving and serving the peoples of Europe. Will the debate on the future of Europe become representative of public opinion or will the same elite operate the same way in new clothes?

To assist the debate, the Prime Ministers will establish a forum for organisations representing civil society. But will this forum also involve EU critics or will members be handpicked to represent established views? A specific Convention will draft and analyse different possibilities for European integration. Will the Convention actually represent public views as they appear in the opinion polls or will the same people just meet once again?

An intergovernmental conference to decide

Once the Convention has given birth to a new draft Treaty, the Prime Ministers and their representatives will meet and negotiate at an intergovernmental conference including special summits. At this point, will they listen to the views of the participants in the public debates, the forum and the Convention? In the end will they offer us a new European Treaty? Will it be a new, clear and understandable model for democratic governance or will the next Treaty be just as complicated, unreadable and undemocratic as previously?

After five days of intense horse trading in Nice no one was really satisfied with the result. New important proposals, such as appointing Commissioners by qualified majority, were discussed and agreed upon as late as after midnight on the very last night of deliberations. None of the Prime Ministers had a chance to discuss this proposal with their colleagues in their own governments. No government had a chance to bring forth this far-reaching idea in its own national parliament or have a public debate.

In the European Parliament the idea had been raised in the Constitutional Committee but it was immediately turned down by Commissioner Michel Barnier who told his federalist friends that not one single country had even proposed it during the preparatory talks. After a few hours of negotiations in Nice it was suddenly decided that the Commissioners would be appointed in this way.

Votes in the Council were changed des pite all logical arguments. Hungary and the Czech Republic were offered fewer members in the European Parliament than countries with fewer citizens. In a similarly illogical move, France and Germany will be entitled to the same number of votes in the Council even though Germany has 80 million inhabitants and France has only 60 million. As compensation, Germany will get the possibility to claim a special counting of votes based on the size of populations in the Member States.

In the future, “qualified majority” will require a number of Member States representing at least 62% of the population of the EU. Summarised, this means that Germany, considering its size of population, will have an extra say in the ability to block decisions. But it will not have an extra say in the decision making process. The margin for “qualified majority” was raised in a way that no Prime Minister is able to explain to his fellow citizens.

Today, “qualified majority” requires 71.3 % of the votes in the Council. With the Nice Treaty it will gradually be raised to 73.4 %, making it a little more difficult to amend existing laws or agree on new laws. The mess was criticized in the European Parliament. For the first time in history, the European Parliament did not approve a new Treaty draft or recommend the Member States to ratify it.

Contrary to strengthening democracy, as the Prime Ministers wished to do with the Laeken Declaration, the Nice Treaty adds to the democratic deficit. Leading federalists protested against the result from Nice using the same strong words as the Eurosceptics. Both sides criticized the democratic shortcomings in the Treaty and were applauded by the President of the European Council-to be, the Belgian Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt.

At a welcome dinner for the Group Chairs in the European Parliament, Verhofstadt said that the Eurosceptics were “completely right in their analysis, but wrong in their solutions “. Verhofstadt then wrote a Declaration draft that could have been written by any Eurosceptic. But in the Laeken Declaration he added a lot of questions concerning the democratic shortcomings to which his solutions were all from the federalists’ arsenal.

On his tour to the different capitals he was told to limit the criticism and change his questions to be more broad. Still, after a lot of amendments and redrafting, the final Laeken Declaration contains historical self-critique.

Secret call for transparency

The Laeken Declaration calls for transparency. Ironically though, the Declaration draft calling for transparency was kept completely secret before the final adoption. A few journalists had read the draft and quoted a few sentences from it, but no one dared break the promise of keeping the draft secret. High-ranking civil servants who would normally have access to Summit drafts did not get a chance to copy the Laeken draft. Verhofstadt was very efficient in securing secrecy, at the same time as he argued for transparency.

Transparency is always important – in the future – but just not right now! “No taboos in the preparation.” Verhofstadt said exactly this. His colleagues, the Prime Ministers, have at least agreed on a completely new method for drafting new treaties. This was the aim of the Belgian presidency and Verhofstadt succeeded almost 100 %. Until now, all negotiations about new treaties have taken place as secret horse-trading between civil servants and ministers. Meeting documents and minutes have been kept secret, even for most Parliaments.

Next time the process will take place in the open. Every item is up for discussion. – There are “no taboos”, said the president in office, Guy Verhofstadt, when he published the revolutionary decision with the two key words Convention and Constitution. The Summit took place in the Royal Palace in the Brussels suburb, Laeken on December 14th and 15th 2001.

A federa list dream from America

The idea of a Convention is a federalist dream which reminds one of the founding of the American model. Back in 1787 leading personalities met in a Convention in Philadelphia to draft a Federal Constitution for the United States of America. In Europe leading politicians are now talking about a Federation or a Federation of Nation States. For a long time the United Kingdom and other hesitant countries opposed the use of federalist keywords such as Convention and Constitution. It turned out that both words were finally included in the Laeken Declaration.

The Declaration has a headline:”Towards a Constitution for the European Citizens” and it summons the Convention to start its work in Brussels on the 1st of March 2002 under the Spanish Presidency. The work in the Convention will not be left to the Spanish and the following Danish and Greek Presidencies. At the Summit in Laeken three experienced statesmen were appointed to lead the negotiations. The former French President Giscard d`Estaing will preside and have the former Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene and the former Italian Prime Minister Giuliano Amato as his two Vice Chairs.

The bureau of the Convention will include 12 members. The three chairs will be followed by two representatives from the European Parliament, two from the National Parliaments, two Commissioners and three representatives from the relevant EU Presidency. The Convention, itself, will consist of 16 members from the European Parliament, two members from each of the National Parliaments, one member from the 15 governments and a similar composition from the 13 applicant countries each sending a government representative and two from their National Parliaments.

With three observers from the Economic and Social Committee, six observers from the Committee of the Regions and the Ombudsman, there will be 105 representatives and 10 observers who will take part in the Convention. According to the Laeken Declaration, Substitute Members will only have the right to participate when the primary members are absent.

Formally, the representatives from the applicant countries cannot “hinder a consensus among Member States ” but since there are no planned votes, they will, in practice, become equals in the negotiations on the next Treaty or Constitution. In the final intergovernmental Conference the applicant countries can only take part if they have already signed agreements on enlargement.

Enlargement and European elections in 2004

The discussion about the next Treaty or Constitution will take place parallel with the planned enlargement of the EU with 10 new members and with the next European elections in 2004. Surprisingly, the 13 applicant countries include Turkey which will also take part in the Convention, drafting different options for the organization of an enlarged European Union.

The Prime Ministers want to please Turkey because they need Turkey’s support to be able to borrow NATO assets for the EU Rapid Reaction Force and they also need Turkish understanding of the enlargement of the EU with the divided Cyprus excluding Turkey itself.

The Belgian Presidency bought full advertisement pages in 32 leading European newspapers to announce what they called the Laeken Declaration. The well-advertised document from the Summit in Laeken is formally called ” The future of Europe”. It raises 64 concrete questions about the future construction and suggests, between the lines, a lot of federalist answers.

Most of the Laeken authors have one specific model for European co-operation in their minds. They want to build a federalist state. The title of this article is ” The futures of Europe” to underline that there might be alternatives. We have a choice. The two different visions could be named A democratic EU and A Europe of democracies. The two models can be seen as ideal types, which c an be modified and even combined in a final European compromise.

We cannot continue making treaties which make the lawmaking so complicated that it is impossible to explain how they are made to citizens – and even to MPs and ministers. We cannot continue changing the basic treaties in an ongoing process. We cannot continue battling over the future of Europe while people are starving from hunger and the globe is threatened by environmental destruction.

By 2004, an historical decision will have to be made on how we unify and organize the whole of Europe.

Who should take the final decision?

The peoples of Europe have the right – and duty – to decide how we build Europe and reform the enlarged EU. Can we build a European super power without creating a super state, as the British Prime Minister Tony Blair argues? How can we organise the division of powers between the EU and the Member States if the EU is not to become the ever-expanding super state the 15 Prime Ministers rightly warn against in the Laeken Declaration?

Can today’s secret law making by civil servants and ministers be reformed into a European Parliamentary Democracy as proposed by the European federalists? Can the European Parliament become an institution that represents the Europeans to their satisfaction? Would it help if the European Parliament had the right to elect the President of the Commission following a competition between genuine European parties in common European constituencies? Do YOU prefer an alternative vision with a more slim and free Europe governed by the different national democracies as proposed by the Euro Realists? Why not leave it to the peoples of Europe to decide between the two different models in a referendum?

Democracy was born in Europe. Generations fought for that simple idea. Millions of Europeans have lost their lives in the fight for democracy. Why then give it up? Why not give democracy a chance – also in the way we determine our future? Why not leave the final say to the electorates? Let the peoples decide. It is what democracy is about.

Jens-Peter Bondeis an MEP and a member of the Group for a Europe of Democracies and Diversities in the European Parliament  

For more in-depth analysis, see The European Policy Centre’s website:

The Future(s) of Europe.