Who is to govern Europe?

Who is to govern Europe?

Looking at the current debate on institutional reform, Philippe de Schoutheete calls for imaginative solutions to meet the growing need for a “government” of the Union.

The European Union is not a State and, contrary to the myth put about by the Eurosceptics, nor is it set to become one. That said, it is quite clearly a political entity, a partial and fragmentary one admittedly, but with its own identity, originality and personality. And any entity, even a football club or a religious community, needs to be governed. In its own particular context it needs basic rules and the basic authority to enforce those rules. This is also true of the European Union.

The Community, as it was originally called, had only limited need for governance. Initially, its task was to create, and then maintain, a market: a common market, which became a single market. It also had to formulate a number of policies, to be administered essentially by the Member States: agriculture, fisheries, industry, research, cohesion etc. You do not need a strong executive for this, but rather an apparatus to lay down and enforce legal rules. The Community has been, and still is, governed very largely by legal rules: it took 300 Directives to create the single market. This explains the importance of law, and thus of the Court of Justice, in Community life. It also explains the often criticised tendency to over-regulate.

The highly original institutional apparatus conceived by Jean Monnet met the original Community’s needs well. Legal rules are established by an “institutional triangle”: the Commission (independent body) proposes, the Council (intergovernmental body) decides, the Parliament (democratic body), originally advisory, now has co-decision power. And the Court is there to enforce the rules, and the pre-eminence of European law. This is what is called the “Community method”, and the structure used to apply it is referred to as “supranational”. Let us note, however (and this is relevant to the future), that in actual fact it is mixed: supranational as regards the role of the Commission and the Parliament, intergovernmental by virtue of the decisive weight of the Council.

Twenty-five years ago people realised that the Community method, geared as it was towards establishing legal rules, was less well suited to policy-making. In 1970, under the banner of “political cooperation”, the Member States embarked on their first experiments in foreign policy. In 1975 people started speaking of a “European Union”. At the same time, and not by coincidence, the European Council was set up, that regular meeting of Heads of Government one task of which is, precisely, to guide this political dimension and ensure overall consistency. Once again, though we tend to forget it, the inspiration for this came from Monnet. Back in 1973 he advocated meetings of Heads of Government, which he saw as “the provisional government of Europe”. The European Council, which has become the mainstay of policy-making, is generally perceived as purely intergovernmental. Let us note again, however, that it too is to some extent mixed: it includes the President of the Commission. And without the European Council there would have been no single market and no monetary union.

What conclusions can we draw from this brief review? As the construction of Europe gradually shifts away from its initial focus, i.e. the market and the economy, towards the supreme areas of the currency, justice, foreign policy and (soon) defence, the need for “government” is becoming more critical. And enlargement will only make it more so: the more of us there are, the greater the need for authority.

In the very particular case of the currency, the Maastricht Treaty came up with a solution: monetary policy is entrusted to an independent central bank. But solutions are still required for the others. Thi s is the key issue for the Convention on the future of Europe. Opinion polls and political declarations agree on one point: there needs to be more Europe in foreign policy and public security. That means there needs to be more government. But what sort, and by whom? In the Convention’s initial debates, and in the extraordinary and welcome proliferation of documents of every sort surrounding those debates, we find two opposing views. For some, the Community method simply needs to be extended to the new areas, with the Commission becoming the government of Europe. For others, power should revert to the Member States, with government being exercised through the European Council, possibly enhanced by a permanent president.

The main lesson to be drawn from the history of the construction of Europe is that the structure which has gradually been built up is hybrid and ambiguous. There is no more ambiguous treaty than the Treaty of Maastricht: federalist in respect of the currency, intergovernmental by virtue of its “pillar” structure. The democratic legitimacy of the whole is itself hybrid, based in part on direct election to the Parliament and in part on the legitimacy of the governments represented in the Council. What history tells us is that, in the area which concerns us, the only forms of government which stand a reasonable chance of being accepted, and of managing to govern, are mixed forms, part supranational and part intergovernmental. Striking the right balance in politics is always awkward and usually entails conflict, but we must hope that the “conventionals” manage to set aside ideological debate and apply themselves with imagination and creativity to seeking those new political forms Monnet so favoured.

Philippe de Schoutheete, former Permanent Representative of Belgium, is special advisor in the European Commission.

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