Charlemagne. The great debate begins

Arguments over the EU constitution remain largely national

LATE last year European Union ministers sat down in Brussels to draft a common declaration about the new European constitution. Since all 25 EU countries are meant to ratify this document over the next two years - and as many as ten will hold a referendum on it - it seemed a useful idea to set out succinctly what the constitution does and doesn't do. Useful: but, sadly, also impossible. The British suggested that it should be made clear that the constitution's Charter of Fundamental Rights would not limit the rights of managers to sack workers. But the Belgians and the French objected; as far as they are concerned the charter will do exactly that. All right, said the British and others: how about making clear that the constitution puts paid to the idea of a common EU tax? Not at all, said the Belgians and other federalists, for whom the creation of such a tax remains a cherished ideal. Eventually, the ministers abandoned the whole idea of a common declaration. Each country will be left to explain the constitution to its own citizens as it sees fit.

It was a revealing incident. For although the constitution is meant to express and promote European unity, national political cultures around the EU remain very different. Take Spain, which will be the first country to hold a vote on the constitution, on February 20th. (Three countries - Hungary, Lithuania and Slovenia - have already ratified it through parliamentary votes.) The Spanish are cheerfully and uncomplicatedly pro-European. They associate the EU with the end of Francoist isolation and the arrival of lashings of cash from Brussels. So although in one recent poll 88% of Spaniards said they knew nothing or “very little” about the constitution, 56% also pronounced themselves in favour of it. The Spanish government has been trying to popularise the text by handing it out at football matches. The contestants on the Spanish version of “Big Brother”, a reality-TV programme, were even forced to explain bits of the constitution to each other. (Some see the sections on “delegated European regulations and framework laws” as a little too sensational for a mass audience.) Such exercises reflect the Spanish government's real fear: not that the constitution will be defeated, but that the turnout will be embarrassingly low.

Yet the messages that Spanish politicians are using to sell the constitution would be completely alien in more Eurosceptic countries like Britain. Josép Borrell, a Spaniard who is president of the European Parliament, proclaims that “this constitution marks a shift from a primarily economic Europe to a political Europe.” This kind of statement is regarded as feel-good rhetoric in countries with strong Europhile traditions. Similarly, Jean-Luc Dehaene, a Belgian who was a vice-president of the convention that drafted the constitution, boasted recently to a Brussels audience that the constitution represented “a great step forward for the EU to become a true political union.” Were Mr Dehaene to try to say this in Britain, he would surely be bound and gagged by emissaries from Tony Blair's government. For this is precisely the message that Mr Blair is trying to stomp on. He believes that his government can win a referendum only by convincing Britons that, as Mr Blair put it in a speech last November, the constitution is “an expression of Europe as a union of nation-states...the rejection of Europe as a federal superstate.”

Disagreements of this nature are just one way in which the EU's constitutional debate will vary across Europe. National preoccupations also mean that different countries will fasten on different aspects of the constitution. Spain is far more concerned by the threat that Basque nationalists may try to break away from the Spanish state than by the debate over the EU constitution. But the two issues have become linked, because the Spanish government is trying to argue that article five of the constitution would mean that the EU would refuse to recognise an independent Basque state. It seems unlikely that any other country will pay such close attention to the constitution's provisions on “the territorial integrity of the state”.

Talking Turkey

A few months after the Spanish referendum, it will be the turn of France and the Netherlands to vote. In these two countries an issue is set to dominate the debate that has barely featured in Spain, despite its Islamic past: the prospect of Turkish membership of the EU. The extent of Muslim immigration into France and the Netherlands is deeply controversial. In both countries opponents of the constitution will seek to link the prospect of Turkish EU membership - and with it the prospect that Turks may gain an automatic right to settle elsewhere in Europe - to approval of the constitution. Those arguing for a yes vote will fire back (correctly) that Turkish membership of the EU has, strictly speaking, nothing to do with the constitutional treaty. But they are already resigned to the intermingling of the Turkish and constitutional debates.

Other countries will air other interests and obsessions. In Britain, opponents of the constitution will make much of the idea that the Charter of Fundamental Rights will give even greater scope for foreign judges to overrule British laws. In most of the rest of Europe, the idea of such a charter seems wholly unobjectionable. The British, by contrast, are relatively happy with moves towards closer defence co-operation, which may be deeply controversial in traditionally neutral Ireland.

In each EU country, in short, national governments will carefully tailor their messages to their domestic audiences. And that may be the only hope of getting the constitution approved in all 25 countries. European federalists sometimes bemoan the fact that Europe's babble of different languages makes it very hard to build a common identity and to stage pan-European debates. But, when it comes to getting the EU constitution ratified, it may prove to be a distinct advantage that Europeans do not share a common language.

Commentary feature says that arguments over the EU constitution remain largely national, with each Member State focusing on different aspects to support and other aspects to downplay.

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