Charlemagne: Why is this happening?

Date: 11/10/03

Claims that the new constitution is designed to cope with European Union expansion are false

JOURNALISTS arriving at Rome's Palazzo dello Sport to cover the opening of the European Union's constitutional conference on October 4th were greeted by fine examples of 1930s art and architecture. Outside the building stood a statue of an athlete giving a fascist salute. Next to it a stone frieze of heroes included the balding, barrel-chested figure of Benito Mussolini, Italy's dictator at the time the hall was built. Any European heads of government who found these surroundings a mite unsettling will doubtless have been reassured by the opening address from Silvio Berlusconi, the balding, barrel-chested prime minister of today's Italy. Mr Berlusconi told his fellow leaders that “this is the conference of European will, the will of Europe to be Europe.” Keen to ensure a triumphant outcome, he urged the conference to come up with a “quality agreement”.

But why is it necessary for the EU to adopt a constitution at all? Mr Berlusconi was vague about this, stressing only the need for Europe to “rediscover its ancient leadership role.” Pressed for more precise reasons, most of the assembled heads of government pointed out that in May 2004 their club will expand from 15 to 25 members, when ten new countries, most of them ex-communist ones from central and eastern Europe, join. “Enlargement and the constitution are two sides of the same coin,” declared Gerhard Schröder, Germany's chancellor. Jack Straw, Britain's foreign secretary, insisted that a constitution was needed “in order to make enlargement work better.”

Superficially this sounds plausible. But look more closely at the big new ideas in the draft text on the table and it becomes apparent that they have very little to do with enlargement. Why does an increase in the number of countries in the Union require the creation of a European foreign minister? Or the adoption of a legally binding Charter of Fundamental Rights? Or an expansion of EU powers into the field of criminal law? Moreover, all the legal and institutional arrangements needed to cope with enlargement were, in fact, settled by the Treaty of Nice, which was agreed less than three years ago. EU heads of government then declared proudly that Nice “opens the way for enlargement” and “completes the institutional changes necessary for the accession of new member states.” They went on to agree that another inter-governmental conference (IGC) was needed, but only to consider four issues: “a more precise delimitation of powers” between the EU and its members; the status of the Charter of Fundamental Rights; simplification of the EU treaties; and “the role of national parliaments in the European architecture.”

Yet somehow the European Union has moved from this short list of four leftovers to a full-blown constitution. How has this happened? The answer is that the drive to write a European constitution is indeed connected to enlargement, but in a quite different way. European federalists have long feared that enlargement might utterly destroy their dream of an EU that evolves into a political union, with a genuine economic government and a unified foreign policy, particularly since many central Europeans are suspected of harbouring an outmoded attachment to national sovereignty. Alarmed by this, federalists launched a successful drive to turn a limited discussion of the Nice leftovers into a full-scale effort to write a constitution.

That is why the 2001 Laeken summit set up a convention on the future of Europe to precede the IGC. The (correct) assumption was that this would generate the momentum to write a constitution. An accelerated timetable was also pushed through. At Nice it had been agreed that the IGC would take place in 2004. That date was brought forward to 2003, largely so that the work on the constitution could be completed before the newcomers joined the Union.

Consistent with this, at the constitutional convention, every effort was made to limit the influence of the newcomers. Their representatives were present on the convention floor, but not on the 12-person presidium that did the crucial work of drafting the text - although the presidium was eventually shamed into adding an “invitee” from mighty Slovenia to its numbers. It is no coincidence that some of Europe's most prominent federalists, such as Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, and Guy Verhofstadt, Belgium's prime minister, are now pushing hardest for the convention's draft constitution to be adopted swiftly and without alteration.

Federalist failure

Lest this analysis seem overly conspiratorial, it should be conceded that in many key respects the federalist effort has fallen short. Such crucial goals as the drive for taxation and foreign policy to be decided by majority vote have not made it into the draft constitution. It has also proved harder than had been hoped to shut pesky central Europeans out of the process. Although, legally speaking, they have no right to vote on the new constitution, since it will be finalised before they formally join the Union next May, political reality gives each of them what amounts to a veto, since all their parliaments will have to ratify the new constitution. Indeed, the Poles (in alliance with the Spaniards) are already giving their EU partners a big headache by bluntly refusing to accept provisions in the constitution that would dilute the voting strength they won at Nice.

Whatever the intellectual merits of their position, it is entirely understandable that the Poles are in no mood to roll over and accept a constitution that has been drawn up with such scant regard for their views. If European leaders were really serious about adapting the EU to enlargement, it would surely have made more sense to let the new members into the EU, give the present system a few years to operate and then decide what needs to be fixed. Ramming through a series of pre-cooked ideas, based on a federalist agenda that has barely altered since the 1950s, is an odd way to go about things.

Commentary feature. Claims that the new constitution is designed to cope with European Union enlargement expansion are false. It is more to do with 'federalists' within the existing Member States trying to get a new agreement before the new Member States join in 2004.

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