History teacher’s sense of deja vu

Date: 12/06/1997

FOR Dutch MEP Piet Dankert, there is a certain air of familiarity about the current negotiations on the Union's constitutional future.

As Dutch minister for European affairs, he was at the very heart of the talks which gave birth to the Maastricht Treaty on European Union in December 1991. Then, as now, a number of central questions remained unanswered until the very last minute.

But as EU leaders prepare to update and overhaul the original model next week, Dankert insists that it would be wrong to draw too many parallels between the two Intergovernmental Conferences.

“The circumstances of the two IGCs are very different. Monetary union negotiations were nearly finished a fortnight before. There were some slight little problems still to be solved, but the centrepiece of Maastricht had been very well prepared,” he explains.

The Socialist MEP concedes that as far as political union is concerned “things then looked a little bit like they do now”. But, if anything, the outlook on the eve of next week's Amsterdam summit is even more unclear than it was in 1991.

“Then, there were far fewer difficulties left just before Maastricht than is the case now. We were stuck with only a few items, to some of which you could see where a solution could be found. It was not too difficult,” he adds.

“Now we are in a situation where nearly nothing has been solved. All the major items are still open and there is far less of a Franco-German tandem than there was at that time.”

Watching from the sidelines this time around, Dankert is critical of the slow pace and lack of ambition which has so far marked this IGC. The 63-year-old MEP believes that, measured against the yardstick of a Union with over 20 members, the negotiations have so far failed to face up to the challenges of enlargement.

“If you look at areas of agreement and areas where progress has been achieved on qualified majority voting as a basic condition of enlargement, then the results leave a lot to be desired. If you look at the likely outcome, then they have not been enough for enlargement,” he maintains.

When asked whether the European Parliament should be campaigning for more powers from the IGC, Dankert replies that it should first make better use of those it already has.

For a former president of the Parliament, he is remarkably critical about the institution. His basic complaint is that with 626 members - and with the possibility of its numbers climbing to 700 - there are simply too many MEPs.

Dankert points to the tendency of the major political groups to accumulate power and, because of their very size, to the uneven distribution of power within their ranks.

“When you get the big nationalities with the big shares in those groups, they organise themselves to have a stronger grip on power. It is inevitable, because how can you manage political debate in a group of 215 members and come to a conclusion? It does not work,” he says.

If Dankert could wave a magic wand, he would reduce the Parliament's membership to around 450. He dismisses any suggestion that this would weaken the link between Euro MPs and voters.

UK members, with their constituency system, are no closer to voters than Dutch MEPs elected by a national proportional representation system, he insists.

“If the institution is seen as efficient and politically effective, that would be more helpful to the European Parliament than if you had a situation where everyone would see his or her electorate from time to time,” he argues.

Dankert says the Parliament's very size means that diligent MEPs are obliged to spend much of their time in Brussels because of the almost daily activities which take place there between the monthly plenary sessions in Strasbourg. “If you really follow the agenda, you are hardly ever in your own country and that is also a sad situation,” he says.

The institution's standing in the public eye is not helped by the fact that the area where it wields greatest legislative power - the internal market - is highly technical.

“It is very useful in strengthening our relations with lobby groups, but it does not go beyond that into public opinion or give the Parliament a basis in society,” he concedes.

To make that breakthrough and to ensure the institution's political survival by winning public support, Dankert believes that MEPs should make greater use of devices such as the recent ad hoc inquiries into transit fraud and 'mad cow' disease.

But the Parliament's tasks are made more difficult by two parallel trends which many are convinced undermine the institution's influence.

The first is the strong tendency of member states to exclude MEPs almost completely from many sensitive home and justice affairs issues - areas of direct interest to citizens - by keeping these firmly in intergovernmental hands. “That is a very dangerous development and also leads to the total exclusion of national parliaments,” warns the veteran Dutch MEP.

At the same time, the European Parliament is finding that its budgetary influence - one of its few very real powers - is being whittled away. This trend is one that Dankert particularly regrets. He has long taken a keen interest in EU expenditure and masterminded the Parliament's first rejection of the budget in December 1979 as part of its campaign to trim the Common Agricultural Policy.

MEPs have indeed managed to cut farm expenditure, but ironically have seen their ability to shape the budget reduced because a further 30&percent; of spending now goes on regional and social policies and is thus outside their control.

Over the years, Dankert has seen a change in his countrymen's opinion of the Union as earlier uncritical support has become more hesistant. Unlike many, he does not put this down to purely financial reservations prompted by the fact that the Netherlands is now one of the biggest per capita net payers into the EU budget.

“The change of mood has nothing to do with the financial situation, but with the continuous process of enlargement. With the Union growing so wide, it is difficult to extend the feeling of solidarity beyond certain borders,” he maintains.

Despite this phenomenon and the political strains it places on existing members, Dankert is among those who firmly believe that the Union should enlarge and should eventually include Turkey.

Many disagree with him, but Dankert advances one overwhelming argument.

“There is this basic problem that if you talk of European security, Turkey is an indispensable element of it. What you require in south east Europe is a stable and democratic Turkey to help keep Iranian, Iraqi and other influences far away from the Balkans. Turkey is a European country and an essential element in our future society and we have to organise it one way or other,” he says.

But he acknowledges that it will be a long process as the Union encourages bodies such as employer organisations and trade unions which support democratic change.

“These are the forces who want to see the existing situation whereby Turkey is a democracy under a military guarantee turned into a state of the people. It would be premature to discuss Turkish membership now in the sense that it will not happen in the next 15, 20 or even 30 years,” he predicts.

Preparing the way to achieve that goal is a task which Dankert will hand over to the next generation of politicians. The former history teacher, who has been involved in European and international politics for over 30 years, will step down from the EU scene when his present parliamentary mandate ends in two years' time.