Elite must let the people get in a word

Is German Chancellor Angela Merkel going the wrong way about rescuing the EU’s constitutional treaty? A new manifesto by the European Citizen Action Service (Ecas), issued in advance of next month’s celebrations in Berlin of the 50th anniversary of the Rome treaty, strongly suggests that she may be.

Merkel’s tactic is to restrict discussion to behind-the-scenes negotiations with member states’ governments. In a series of meetings behind closed doors, their representatives have been invited by the German EU presidency to see whether they can cobble together a slimmed-down document which will preserve the central elements of the 2004 treaty, while excluding material deemed to be unnecessarily controversial.

In particular, an effort is being made to appease voters in France and the Netherlands, who rejected the constitution in 2005, while avoiding provocation of the UK, Czech and Polish governments which are, at best, lukewarm about the whole project. It represents a bold attempt to square a circle and a gamble on Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right candidate, rather than Socialist Ségolène Royal emerging victorious in the French presidential election.

Tony Venables, the director of Ecas, does not mince his words in criticising Merkel’s approach. The Treaty of Rome does not just belong to national governments, he says, but also to the citizens of Europe. There should of course be negotiations between governments, he says, but this is no reason to exclude public debate about the options.

The German presidency has a responsibility, in his view, to encourage national governments to promote wide-ranging public debate in their own countries as to the form and content of a replacement treaty or agreement. Otherwise, he argues, the successive steps which have been taken since the 1992 Maastricht treaty towards a Citizens’ Europe will be betrayed and weight will be given to those who argue that the EU is an elite project, which ignores the views of its citizens.

The manifesto lists ten points which should be highlighted in the Berlin Declaration by the European Council in March. All of them are focused on the need to open up the EU more to citizen participation, to increase transparency in its decision-making and to shift the balance between the economic provisions of the Rome treaty and those - more directly affecting citizens - which have been added in later treaties or which flow from decisions by the European Court of Justice.

The former, Venables argues, are strongly worded and effectively enforced, while the latter tend to be less authoritatively worded, and their application has often been more patchy.

On its merits, there is a great deal to be said for the Ecas approach and it is undoubtedly the case that any treaty which emerged from the process it recommends would be intrinsically a better treaty and one better attuned to public opinion.

It would, however, almost certainly be a more extensive treaty and would therefore run a greater risk of being turned down by one or more member states.

But the more ambitious it turns out to be, the more likely it is that governments will succumb to the fatal temptation to submit it to referenda, an almost certain recipe for failure when as many as 27 states are concerned.

This is something which the German presidency is desperate to avoid. While countries such as Ireland and Denmark may be required by their own constitutions to hold referenda, their hope is that all the others will decide that parliamentary ratification would be sufficient.

The biggest threat is in France, where Royal seems to have fenced herself in already to a public consultation if she wins the election.

The other great danger comes from the UK, whose ill-fated decision to hold a referendum last time stampeded other governments (including France and the Nether-lands) to follow suit.

It will probably be up to Gordon Brown, the likely future UK prime minister, to decide next time round and it is not clear whether he will feel constrained to follow the precedent set (but not acted on) by Jack Straw, then UK foreign minister, and Prime Minister Tony Blair in 2004.

It is likely that some countries will, after all, decide to hold referenda. In which case, it would be better to follow Ecas’s advice and ensure that what-ever provisions the treaty contains have already been subjected to public debate.

• Dick Leonard is author of The Economist Guide to the European Union.

Is German Chancellor Angela Merkel going the wrong way about rescuing the EU’s constitutional treaty? A new manifesto by the European Citizen Action Service (Ecas), issued in advance of next month’s celebrations in Berlin of the 50th anniversary of the Rome treaty, strongly suggests that she may be.