Tag Archives: EU Reform

“Becoming EU-sceptic”

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Prolific Euroblogger Julien Frisch – “a convinced European citizen and glad to be a citizen of the European Union” – is approaching his first anniversary of blogging. During that time, his coveraged has been both eclectic and entertaining, informative and interesting. (If you’ve not been reading him anyway, you really should be…)

But now, after a solid year of blogging about the EU from a pro-EU perspective, the sheer incompetence and bloody-mindedness of the political elites that oversee the frequently useless manner in which the EU functions has seemingly forced him to radically shift his opinions:

“I think I am becoming an absolute EU-sceptic…

When I look at all this, I more and more get the impression that the EU has failed to be the project of Europeans.

The EU is the project of power games, mostly between old, worn-out men who try to compare the length of their penises instead of caring for the interests of the continent. In one of these contests, an old Pole now has apparently won the EP presidency over an old Italian guy.

On the one side, the EU is a PR project of technocrats who have no interest in supporting a common European identity and a genuine European democracy, and on the other side, it is the ideal supranational playing field for nationalists who always fight for “the best” of their countries instead of promoting the best for Europe as a whole.

They all lack European ambition, they all lack spirit, and they all don’t have any idea where they want this Union to be in 10 years.

The more I watch them doing this, the less interested I am in what they do. The more I listen to their heartless speeches, their superficial declarations, their diplomatic compromises, the more I am convinced that nothing will change.

I know how he feels.

This is a vital, fundamental problem that the EU seems repeatedly unable to address – it is excruciatingly hard to be enthusiastic about the European Union. No matter how much you try, the more you look into it, the more you see its flaws. The more you look for sensible ideas for its future purpose and reform, the more you see the tsunami of inadequates that tend to gain positions of power in the damn thing rise up and threaten to swamp the whole project in a deluge of tedium, petty squabbles, meaningless jargon and total lack of vision.

This is precisely why I maintain that genuine europhiles are a very rare breed indeed: The EU is simply not loveable. It has the potential to turn into something truly great, and I still maintain that it is more good than bad, but it is deeply flawed – and that flaw stems from the people in charge of the damned thing: a never-ending rota of short-term losers, none of whom have anything personal to gain from looking to the EU’s long-term success, only from securing short-term advantages pursuit of positive PR (usually aimed at their national publics for national electoral reasons, rather than a European public for altruistic reasons).

As I’ve noted many times over the 6 years that I’ve been blogging about the damned thing, the fundamental question that remains unanswered is what is the EU for? The people who run the thing don’t know – nor do they seem to care. Little wonder, then, that those of us – like Julien, like me, like those British eurosceptics who want it to be just a trading bloc – with a clear vision of what we think that the EU should be about… Little wonder that, well, from time to time we all just get so damned pissed off with the whole thing.

The EU represents a good idea, executed with varying degrees of success. As with any hit and miss project, it’s largely a matter of perception whether you think the hits outweigh the misses. But when the people running the thing are so useless – and when it looks increasingly likely that Barroso is likely to return as Commission President despite having singularly failed in every important task with which he was faced during his term in office (passing the Constitution, passing the Lisbon Treaty, negotiating reform of the budget, starting to reform the CAP, etc. etc. etc.), well… Little wonder that what enthusiasm you do have starts to wane.

Nonetheless, I remain optimistic – precisely because of the ongoing stalemate, stagnation and incompetent management that has dogged the EU for the last decade. There’s only so much longer this can carry on before *everyone* gets thoroughly pissed off. And when that happens – finally – we may see some serious reform.

I’d give it another few years, though. Around about the time of the next budget negotiations in 2013, most likely – though possibly sooner if the Lisbon Treaty somehow ends up getting scrapped. (They used to say that a week is a long time in politics – when it comes to the EU, time works differently again, and a year is like a week in any other organisation. It takes a long time for these things to happen. A very long time. Patience… Patience…)

Four points and a question for eurosceptics who believe in the advancing EU superstate

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This little debate seems to be running on and on – and it’s a fun one, so let’s keep at it. Some very good discussion is still raging away in the comments to my Jean Monnet and EU superstate posts, and Ken’s come back with a new post at EU Realist, at which I’ve just left the following.

(Other eurosceptic types who see the EU as heading towards a superstate: I’d be genuinely intrigued to hear your take to my sincere question – in bold – in the final paragraph. I just don’t get it, and truly want to understand your reasoning on this one – it’s just about the only eurosceptic anti-EU argument that I’ve never understood, even when I was a eurosceptic myself…)

Anyway, on with the argument…

1) I’m not accusing you of being a nutty conspiracy theorist at all (though there are a few of those knocking around the anti-EU camp, you can’t deny it…) – I just genuinely don’t understand how you can think that the EU is still heading down the superstate route after the repeated failures of the last decade.

2) Just because a few hardcore europhiles like Verhofstadt seem to want a superstate, and just because a few people identify some of the recent treaties as being stepping-stones on that path, doesn’t mean that this is what is happening. I could also find a number of quotes from other sources arguing exactly the opposite (quite a few hardcore pro-EU types have referred to the Lisbon Treaty as a step backwards, with a number of europhile superstatists bemoaning the lack of progress and entrenchment of national power, among other complaints).

3) You [Ken] quote the preamble to the Lisbon Treaty as an example of how we’re heading to a superstate. You do realise that the Lisbon Treaty hasn’t come into force yet, right? And not just because of the Irish referendum result – there’s also the challenge in the German constitutional court. Lisbon itself is a prime example of the lack of progress of those EU types in favour of a superstate – it’s the (in my view) failed bodged compromise rehash of the failed and unpopular Constitution, which was itself necessary thanks to the failure of the bodged compromise that was the Treaty of Nice – Lisbon is still trying to fix the same problems that Nice was attempting to solve when its descussions kicked off in the late 1990s. That’s a good ten years or more of stalemate. Hardly the stuff of an advancing superstate, surely?

4) There’s also the question of interpretation of terminology. You seem to see “federal” as being the same as “superstate” (a common assumption among British eurosceptics in particular). “Federal”, however, can mean any number of things; key to the idea, however, is the *lack* of overwhelming central control – precisely the opposite of the superstate bogeyman. You also identify “integration” and “co-operation” with being steps on a path to such a superstate – as I’ve said, I accept that that is a possibility, but I see it as being highly unlikely. Even if Lisbon DOES come into force, national vetoes will remain in pretty much every substantive area – as long as less enthusiastic countries like Britain, Denmark, the Czech Republic (and increasing numbers of eastern European member states) remain part of the EU, their vetoes ensure that a superstate remains an impossibility, no matter how many europhile superstatists there may be in other member states.

So come on: rather than pick a few quotes from individuals with limited influence while (seemingly deliberately) misinterpreting what I’m actually arguing, please just answer me this one, simple question – how can you look at the failure of every attempted EU treaty since the late 1990s and say that we’re marching down the path towards a superstate? I simply don’t get it. There has been no significant progress in European integration (that I can see) since Maastricht – and that was 17 years ago.

The EU vs the national interest

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The Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent Bruno Waterfield has made an interesting contribution to a pamphlet by the Manifesto Club, No Means No! Essays on the Eve of the European Council Meeting.

Ignore the populist eurosceptic rhetoric of the title, there’s actually a lot of interest here. (Seriously, sensible eurosceptic chaps – I know you’ve got to try and attract attention and so some sensationalism is necessary to liven up what is a very dull subject, but if you’re going to win over undecideds rather than just preach to the converted, a little more subtlety is necessary. If it wasn’t for the fact that Waterfield asked nicely and sometimes joins in the comment-box discussions here, I probably wouldn’t have bothered reading past the title, and would have missed a lot of good stuff.)

The basic argument is as follows:

The EU has evolved, not as a federal super-state that crushes nations underfoot, but as an expanding set of structures and practices that have allowed Europe’s political elites to conduct increasing areas of policy without reference to the public…

The EU has never been about abolishing national interests, but always about managing them in a manner convenient for Europe’s political classes, in a public-free zone, with consensus arrived at through bureaucratic procedures derived from the secretive world of diplomacy…

The lack of accountability and the expediency of EU politics means that in many areas, including foreign policy, the EU’s inter-elite bureaucratic requirements have overridden principles of internationalism, democratic rights or justice. EU decision-making is essentially value free. Consensus comes first, meaning that principles can be traded off against the expediency of making deals, or ‘effectiveness’.

…the EU is not a system of representation or a public authority. It is a set of institutions and relationships organised for the convenience for national state bureaucracies

As such, Waterfield’s essay goes to the heart of this ongoing dispute about both the “democratic deficit” and future direction of the EU that’s a perennial favourite among those of us who like to blather on about the thing, and ends up effectively a short overview of the more secretive aspects of EU decision-making – and a very useful one at that. I do urge you to go have a look, while below the fold I’ll blather on at length.

Continue reading →

The EU after the credit crisis

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Journalists seem to be contacting me almost daily at the moment. Below the fold are my full answers to the following questions from the UK Correspondent of Brazil’s biggest newspaper O Global about the EU’s response to the current financial woes. All largely off the top of my head…

1) Has the financial crisis exposed the EU’s institucional limitations in your opinion?
2) How tempting it will be for eurosceptics to pounce on the keep the pound motto in terms of the so-called sovereignity?
3) In a year where the Lisbon treaty collapsed, is there a need for a lot of soul searching within the EU?
4) What can be done in regards of more integration within states?

If any of my fellow Eurobloggers and/or readers fancy having a bash at answering some or all of these, I’d be intrigued to see the results. The short version of my approach?

This recession is going to be the major test of the idea of the Euro – if it fails that test, it won’t just be the UK that gets cold feet.

Continue reading →

A bit of weekend reading

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A few bits and bobs that have caught my eye over the last week or so:

Robert Amsterdam on Donald Rumsfeld’s legacy to Europe:

he was the original master artist of disaggregation – a man who saw and skillfully exploited the very fissures of the contemporary European Union which today threaten its purpose and continued existence as an alliance of nations… And this week, the Rumsfeldian conception of “old and new Europe” is making a comeback in the debate over how to handle Moscow’s threat to put missiles in Kaliningrad”

It’s not just over Russian missiles – old vs. new Europe seems to be an emerging theme in the ongoing confusion over how to tackle the growing economic storm, according to Eurozine:

Even if a common set of regulations and measures were to be reached, differences would be manifest between member states, and above all between West and East: unemployment, inflation, budgetary deficits would affect each country differently. The problem is that a recession would have more severe consequences in the fragile and unpredictable eastern European countries, including at the political level.

Also on the economy, Obsolete is (as ever) really rather good on the bizarre collapse of the Tory poll lead during the current crisis:

The man who promised an end to Tory boom and bust has succeeded in abolishing boom, while the prospects for the bust look increasingly ominous. The economy which he boasted was among the best placed to deal with the global downturn is in actual fact one of the worst placed to deal with it, according to the IMF and the European Union. Unrelenting, the Labour party believes that the solution is to borrow more to fund the tax cuts to stimulate the economy. As Larry Elliot has pointed out, this is a direct contradiction of what Gordon Brown formerly believed. At the weekend the same man attended a conference which he claimed would back up his solution to the downturn; it did nothing of the sort, and predictably only agreed to more or less meet again. Gordon Brown, by rights, ought to be finished.

Elsewhere, Jon Worth asks do you think Barroso is rubbish? With more in a similar vein from Jean Quatremer:

Si, jusqu’à présent, les voix critiques étaient rares, elles commencent à se faire entendre, ce qui montre que la campagne pour le renouvellement de la Commission a bel et bien commencé.

Complementing Quatremer’s overview, the Financial Times’s (new look) Brussels Blog asks

why are political parties of the left in such poor shape across much of Europe? It’s the worst financial crisis since the early 1930s, the worst economic recession since the early 1990s, if not the 1970s – and where is the left?

And finally, a very promising signal from the European Parliament:

MEPs today overwhelmingly backed calls to strengthen the EU’s anti-fraud unit OLAF to enable it to tackle fraud more effectively…

[report author Ingeborg Grässle MEP] said that the Parliament’s zeal to strengthen OLAF and how it worked was not shared by the member states. “The Council [of Ministers] doesn’t want to strengthen OLAF,” she said… She said the Council did not want awkward discussions about the fight against fraud.

Once again, one of the EU’s biggest problems and PR disasters can be blamed nice and neatly on the reluctance of the Council of Ministers – on the governments of the member states – to press ahead with reforms to increase both efficiency and transparency.

A distinct lack of transparency

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Following the progress made on Common Agricultural Policy reform the other day (and it was progress, even if not as much as many would have liked), there remains much confusion. As CAP Health Check asks, who voted for what?

Common Agricultural Policy budgetThe same (invaluable) blog has all kinds of details on the fall-out from the deal – a deal in which, once again, France appears to have acted the petulant child and, from pure selfishness, scuppered reforms that the EU sorely needs. Because it wouldn’t be fair for France to get any less than 20% of the single largest chunk of the EU budget, would it?

And so, once again, a much-needed serious overhaul of one of the fundamental aspects of the modern EU is put off for a few more years. Instead we get yet another compromise that pleases no one. Just as with the last attempt to reform the CAP back in 2003. Just as with the Constitution. Just as with the Treaty of Nice.

Am I a cynic to think that the reason the big decisions keep being put off by a few years every time (the next attempt to reform the CAP will come in 2013) is that our dear politicians are aware of their short terms of office, and are hoping that come the next round of negotiations it’ll be somebody else’s problem?

Thatcher, Bruges and future Tory EU policy

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Still catching up, but it would be churlish not to mention the 20th anniversary of Margaret Thatcher’s celebrated (in some circles) Bruges speech, which passed the other day with the usual guff from withdrawalists. The BBC’s Nick Robinson has a fun piece on the anniversary celebrations and the Tories’ Europe problem which is well worth reading, considering the fact that they’re likely to be in power at some point within the next couple of years.

David CameronBecause the Tories under David Cameron still have no EU policy. I’ve been hunting for one for a while now (March 2008, July 2006), and they still seem no closer to working out what they even think of the thing. (It’s not just the Tories, of course – Labour are just as bad…)

The thing is, Thatcher’s near-infamous Bruges speech remains a great starting point for the Tories to set out their position on Britain’s involvement with the rest of Europe. An odd thing for someone who labels himself loosely pro-EU to say? Not really…

The speech is well worth reading in full – because it’s now become this near-mythical anti-EU manifesto for British withdrawalists (notably anti-EU “think tank” the Bruges Group, named after the speech – a think tank not afraid to associate itself with some of the more hysterical anti-EU crowd).

With such a massive reputation to fight through, it’s very easy to make assumptions about what Thatcher actually said. Listen to the anti-EU lot and you’d think that the speech was a blistering attack on the very idea of a common European future, delivered in the kind of foaming-at-the-mouth style that anyone who’s been knocking around EU-related internet forums has come to associate with British euroscepticism. (Seriously, British anti-EU types – you’re embarrassing me here… I want to feel proud of being British, and you’re making us all look like arseholes – same as those drunken tits on the Costa del Sol. Whatever happened to the old British virtues of decency, restraint and politeness?)

Yet it actually contains much that is positive towards a European Union, and fully supports continued British engagement at the heart of the process. It’s just that it doesn’t support the direction the current EU has been heading for the last 30-odd years towards greater centralisation and uniformity. Pretty much all of Thatcher’s suggestions back then are still being made to this day – and not just by eurosceptics.

Sadly, though, Thatcher’s Bruges speech is more referred to than read – and thanks to its current associations with flag-waving anti-EU nutters it is mostly ignored. Yet its overall vision for Europe remains a sound alternative to the current model, while in the details are identified many of the key problems with the current set-up, none of which have really changed in two decades. It’s got its problems, certainly – I don’t advocate everything that Maggie said by any means – but as a starting point for creating an alternative vision for the European Union, it remains both simple (if occasionally overly simplistic) and compelling. Check out the Wordle-generated word cloud of the speech (with only Europe, Community, European, Britain, British and removed – the five most commonly-used words, and in that order) – there may be a slight tilt towards an economic vision of European co-operation, but she covers a lot of ground:

Thatcher's Bruges speech word cloud

Most satisfying, though, is that it provides a healthy supply of quotes defending and advocating Britain’s close involvement with the rest of Europe (even to the point of advocating greater use of a European single currency) which can be thrown at any British eurosceptics that happen by…

“We British are as much heirs to the legacy of European culture as any other nation. Our links to the rest of Europe, the continent of Europe, have been the dominant factor in our history…

Too often, the history of Europe is described as a series of interminable wars and quarrels. Yet from our perspective today surely what strikes us most is our common experience… It is the record of nearly two thousand years of British involvement in Europe, cooperation with Europe and contribution to Europe, contribution which today is as valid and as strong as ever…

Britain does not dream of some cosy, isolated existence on the fringes of the European Community. Our destiny is in Europe, as part of the Community.”

What are the chances of David Cameron ever making a speech containing that kind of rhetoric? The old Tory squabbles over the EU that dominated the 1990s may well have subsided, but the party leadership are still worried that they’re bubbling away under the surface. The recent campaign for a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty showed how powerful anti-EU populism can be. Though the campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, it did demonstrate one thing – euroscepticism remains a danger to the Conservative party. Perhaps its biggest danger.

These people will be in charge of the EU’s second largest economy – and yet even they don’t know what they are going to do once they come to power.

(On a related note, Richard Corbett may be a decidedly pro-EU Labour MEP writing in the left-wing Guardian, so just about as biased as they come on this topic, but his recent look at current Tory attitudes towards the EU is essential reading.)

Mandelson and EU openness

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Yes, I’ve gone quiet again of late. Sorry. Illness and work have conspired to make me feel like poo.

Still, an interesting tidbit from the whole “did Peter Mandelson get up to anything dodgy with Russian oligarchs?” thing that’s been knocking around for the last week or so, from the invaluable Unspeak:

So as to head off any suggestion of impropriety, the Telegraph has been asking the EU for the records of all Mandelson’s meetings with Deripaska while the former was trade commissioner. The EU’s response is not exactly helpful…

It all comes down to the definition of what is a “document” according to EU regulation 1049/2001. Exciting, eh? Nonetheless, it’s well worth reading the whole thing. This kind of obfuscation and obstructionism isn’t unique to the EU, of course – but by god, Brussels doesn’t do these things by half…

(This sort of thing, you’ll be unsurprised to learn, is the reason that the EU receives so little press coverage – working out precisely what its rules and regulations are is one of the most tedious things imaginable, and even if you do happen to have a journalist or blogger determined enough to manage to track it down before the news cycle has moved on, you’re then stuck with all kinds of petty squabbles over terminology. It’s fairly surprising that any EU news ever gets out, in fact…)

In any case, this all follows rather neatly from recent responses from GrahnLaw, Julien Frisch and Re: Europa to a Statewatch paper suggesting methods to achieve “greater openness, transparency and democracy in the EU” (WARNING – PDF). Worth a look – because I doubt there’s an EU-watcher out there who wouldn’t wish for more of all three.

My plea to the European Union thoughout my five and a half years of trying to blog about it remains the same as it ever was: Please, please stop being so boring and incomprehensible. Pretty please?

Belgium as role-model for the EU

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An interesting discussion’s kicked off in the comments to that history of Belgium piece, looking at how the current Belgian crisis could prove a very useful case study and model for future EU reform. It kicks of with this from SD (a Belgian, as it happens), with the (always thoughtful) Peter Davidson neatly summarising and expanding on the concept.

Well worth a read – more so than the original post in fact…

Habermas and the EU

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Nanne highlights a piece by the man who must surely now be Europe’s last great public intellectual, Jurgen Habermas (let’s face it, most of the rest are dead now… Not that Habermas wouldn’t deserve a place in the top five or ten of the last 40 years anyway, but still – where’s the next generation, eh?).

Thankfully it’s in English – and Habermas is always worth a read when he’s being topical, because he’s got an uncanny knack for spotting trends and problems that others miss, as well as being able to say things bluntly that would label lesser-known figures as raving eurosceptics. He is, however, more often than not spot-on, as this piece written back in 2001 (amply predicting all the problems the EU has faced in the years following the Treaty of Nice) and this from last year (on the challenges for the EU at 50) both amply demonstrate.

At any rate, Habermas is at once scathing and constructive in his criticism:

After the failure of the proposed European constitution in 2005, the Lisbon Treaty represented a bureaucratically negotiated compromise to be pushed through behind the backs of the citizenry. With this most recent tour de force, European governments have callously demonstrated that they alone are shaping Europe’s future…

The failed referendums are a signal that the elitist mode of European unification is, thanks to its own success, reaching its limits. These limits can only be surmounted if the pro-European elites stop excusing themselves from the principle of representation and shed their fears of contact with the electorate…

Naturally, the fundamental conflict over direction derives its explosive force from deeper-seated, historically-rooted differences. There are not grounds for criticism of any particular country. But in the wake of the Irish signal, we should expect two things from our governments. They must admit that they are at their wits’ end. And they cannot continue to suppress their crippling dissent. In the end, they are left with no choice but to allow the peoples to decide for themselves…

With luck and commitment, a two-speed Europe could emerge from such a vote

All quite familiar stuff, perhaps (much of his suggestions covered here over the last few years) – but it’s not what’s said so much as who’s saying it. Habermas may not always be right (indeed, he’s long been a vehement supporter of a common European foreign policy, something I still reckon to be unworkable for the forseeable future), but he is consistent and, most importantly, considered.

Who, after all, are mere gadfly politicians – in office for but a few years and rarely the sharpest tools in the box – to ignore the advice of one of the foremost political theorists of the late 20th century, one who has been studying this very problem for decades? With his specialism the study of communication, pragmatic compromise and understanding – precisely the things the EU is supposed to promote between nations – Habermas should be one of the first ports of call for ideas on how to proceed… After all, what is the EU if not an attempt to spread universal pragmatics across an entire continent?

But such is the nature of these things. Increasingly politicians get into office unarmed with a knowledge of history and philosophy that was once thought vital for offices of state. Little wonder we’re in such trouble…

(On which note, perhaps it’s time for me to start that series of posts on little-known and forgotten aspects, incidents and people of European history that I’ve been meaning to do for a while now?)

More ways forward: John Vincour

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Still trawling through post-Lisbon reactions and catching up with the various pieces of differing, trying to absorb as many suggestions as possible.

Via Certain Ideas of Europe I find John Vincour’s interesting take in the IHT, which makes some very good points – not least in agreeing with my ongoing contention that securing a reliable supply of energy to the continent should be acknowledged as one of the EU’s biggest concerns. He’s against my pet favourite solution of a multi-speed Europe – but for an eminently sensible reason, and with a possibly workable alternative proposal.

One of the best articles I’ve seen so far, and well worth reading in full.

Spotted elsewhere

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Catching up on various blogs (and as part of my drive to post more frequently here, even if they are shorter pieces), a couple of interesting pieces from Cicero’s Songs – seemingly one of the few left(ish) liberal British political bloggers to have noticed the Irish Lisbon Treaty referendum result (perhaps because left(ish) liberal British political bloggers rarely seem to notice the EU – a bit of an elephant in the room, than…). In any case, both posts are well worth a read, whether you agree with them or not:

Where does the EU go from here?
“To my mind, the problem remains one of identity and legitimacy. The European Union has failed to justify, or even explain, its purpose… The EU used to define its purpose as creating ‘an ever closer union’ – in other words it had an open-ended commitment to increasing its role and the scope of its activities. The time has come for the EU to do the reverse and set the limits of its activities.”

Outvoting democracy
“As a Liberal commentary this blog believes that setting the limits to state power is a fundamental basis of freedom. The EU has been trying to change tack from ‘ever closer union’ towards more limited policy goals for some time. However the compromises embedded in the Constitutional treaty and the Lisbon treaty are simply too many and too complicated. The idea of comprehensive reform must be shelved- we can not bring either the majority of the states or the majority of the population to agreement at this point- and it is dangerous to try.

“The EU can only reconnect with the citizen if it can demonstrate that it serves a valuable purpose. Instead of the high-falutin’ words of Giscard d’Estaing’s Federalism, we should return to the practical usefulness of Functionalism.”

EU problems and priorities

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A few more post-Irish Referendum thoughts – because the EU really, really needs to know what it is that it should be doing if it’s to work out what is the best way forward from its ongoing Constitutional/Lisbon Treaty navel-gazing. More suggestions for priorities gratefully received in the comments.

Two starting assumptions for this list:

1) Institutional reform remains necessary (largely thanks to the short-sightedness of the earlier treaties: it is, after all, entirely possible to have rules for a club of 6 or 15 that also work for a club of 27 – it’s just that the people drawing up those rules made them inflexible), but it’s not essential for the EU to continue to function

2) Neither the Lisbon Treaty nor the Constitution really dealt with what I see as the EU’s two biggest problems (the Common Agricultural Project and the dominance of Russia in the continent’s energy supply) anyway

So, on with a few vague thoughts on the main problems and priorities, in approximate order of importance: Continue reading →

EU reform: Impossible, a superstate, or multi-tier?

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Richard North at eurosceptic blog par excellence EU Referendum draws my attention to this piece in the Times by William Rees-Mogg, which contains the line:

Most Eurosceptics want Europe to be reformed, not destroyed

This is something of which I remain firmly convinced – but not our man North:

Oh dear! After all these years, and all the failed attempts at seeking “reform”, has it not yet dawned on the man that the EU is incapable of reform[?]

Ignoring the fact that this ignores Rees-Mogg’s actual contention (he doesn’t profess to be in favour of reform himself, merely that a majority favour reform over withdrawal – an unfortunate reality for the withdrawalists of EU Referendum), a question:

How can hardcore anti-EU types maintain that reform is impossible yet simultaneously believe that the EU is heading towards a superstate – which would, in itself, be an immense reform?

North points to an old article in which he explains his logic for rejecting the possibility of EU reform. Yet his “proof” is to refer to an old Milton Friedman article looking at the United States’ Food and Drug Administration, in which Friedman claimed the institution’s very set-up prevented change. Even were this not itself a somewhat dubious contention, backed up more by assertion than by evidence, a monolithic US government agency being compared to a multi-part, multi-country international organisation hardly strikes me as overly fair.

You see the way I reckon it, yes, with current attitudes from the various member states, radical reform is unlikely – just have a gander at the failed compromises that are the Treaty of Nice and Lisbon Treaty, both unsatisfactory to all parties but the best they could manage.

There are several different trains of thought among EU member states as to what the EU should actually be – and whenever efforts to reform come up, as they do on average once a decade, reconciling all these different desires has indeed proved impossible.

But as all major reforms – even after the expansion of qualified majority voting that the Lisbon Treaty brings – still require unanimity, this makes the appearance of an EU superstate all but impossible as long as less integrationist countries remain members (and it’s not just Britain that isn’t keen on ever-closer union).

“OK”, you might think. “So you admit EU reform’s impossible?”

No. Because I reckon the current situation is going to change. How much longer are the likes of France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg – the core of the original EEC, and still more or less the most enthusiastic member states – going to put up with the frustration of their plans being thwarted? How much longer are those countries who aren’t keen on merging their economies much further going to put up with the perennial drives for greater integration from euroenthusiasts?

We’ve already had countless rhetoric-heavy spats over various aspects of EU reform – not just between Britain and Brussels (as with Thatcher’s battle for the rebate), but between numerous other less fervently federalist member states and the expansionists.

Sooner or later, these clashes are bound to result in an official suggestion of a two-speed or multi-speed Europe – maintaining the union while allowing everyone more or less to go their separate ways.

The idea of a multi-speed Europe is not a new one, and is increasingly gaining ground. Over the last few years, it is a concept that I’ve seen crop up time and again, from House of Lords debates to The Economist, former French president Jaques Chirac to former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, former Commission president Romano Prodi to the EU’s own website.

As Prodi said in an interview last year:

it is good if you can go forward together, but you cannot go at the speed of the last wagon.

We already have a two-speed Europe. Euro and Schengen are examples of this and they are very important projects. Moreover, a two-speed Europe does not mean that countries that are in the second group cannot move to the first. Two-speed Europe sometimes means more choices.

So, while anti-EU claims that the EU is heading towards a superstate seem to be backed up purely by decades-old (mis)quotes from the likes of Jean Monet (and the occasional modern superstatist aberration like Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker), my hopes that genuine EU reform may be on the cards seem to have rather more to support them.

So then, how can this whole “the EU can’t be reformed” thing – the mantra of all withdrawalists – be justified? The Lisbon Treaty itself is an acknowledgement that the current system is not up to scratch – and an acknowledgement that getting a satisfactory compromise is increasingly difficult (being as it is an unsatisfactory attempt to rectify the previous unsatisfactory compromise that was the Treaty of Nice).

Especially since the failure of the constitution there is an increasing consensus throughout the EU – both among the populations of the member states and increasingly among the EU machine itself – that some serious, radical changes are needed, beyond the mere stop-gap measures that the constitution (and Lisbon Treaty) aimed for.

Introducing a new, multi-tier, multi-speed system (on top of the existing two-tier Eurozone and non-Eurozone countries) is the most obvious – and, most importantly, easiest – way to give everyone what they want. I see no reason why it won’t eventually happen – the only question is how long is it going to take?