‘Flexibility’ must be rigidly defined

Date: 09/01/1997

A FAVOURITE ploy used by politicians anxious to declare their broad support for an idea which they do not really like but feel they cannot reject outright is to warn that 'the devil is in the detail'.

It is a much-loved cliché which is likely to be heard with increasing frequency as the Intergovernmental Conference on EU reform approaches its climax and negotiators get down to the hard bargaining involved in turning broad-brush proposals into specific treaty articles.

This is likely to be the case even in those relatively uncontroversial areas where a broad consensus has already been reached.

But it will be especially prevalent in discussions on the most sensitive issues facing the IGC, as has already been demonstrated by this week's exchanges on the concept of 'flexibility' seen as crucial to ensure that those who wish to move further and faster down the road towards closer European integration are not held up by those who want to take only a few cautious steps (or none at all).

For flexibility is a word which means different things to different people, depending on their point of view.

That was made abundantly clear this week, with British Premier John Major voicing support for the idea as a way of preventing the UK from being forced to accept what its government regards as unpalatable advances in the drive towards a closer union, while the Commission warned that it must not lead to the creation of a Europe à la carte in which member states are free to pick and choose which policies they like and ignore those which they do not.

The debate is reminiscent of that which surrounded the word 'subsidiarity' during the 1991 Maastricht Treaty negotiations.

Subsidiarity was taken to mean action taken at the best possible level by the pro-Europeans and at the lowest possible level by the Eurosceptics a crucial difference of interpretation which was not resolved at the time of the Maastricht negotiations and has thus been a source of repeated conflicts ever since over how it should be applied on a case-by-case basis.

The UK has often used it to argue that there is no need for EU legislation in a particular field at all, while others have cited it as the primary justification for Union-wide action in precisely the same area. EU leaders should beware of making the same mistake again.

Agreeing on a common and clear definition of what flexibility really means will not be easy, but it is essential given the warnings of those who fear that too much or indeed too little of it could eventually tear the Union apart.