THE
FUTURE OF THE EU
Hello,
last week we heard a lot about specific EU-related subjects so today I would
like to tell about where the European Union is and where it is going. We will
address some important challenges Europe is
facing. The biggest failing of the EU has long been
the large divide between the Union and the
mass of its citizens. When French and Dutch voters voted against the
constitution in 2005, nobody could pretend that they were objecting merely to
specific provisions in the text. It seems much more likely that they were
expressing a general feeling of resentment towards the European project and its
remoteness. For many people, Brussels
indeed is very far away. This feeling is more obvious in some countries than in
others, but it seems to be strong everywhere. The traditional response by
governments has been to ignore such resentment, saying that Europe
was always an elite project and so it should remain. As long as political
leaders understood and pursued the case for European integration, that should
be enough. But ignoring the people's views is no longer tenable. Politicians
these days have to be more responsive to voters. Unfortunately, many leaders in
Europe spend more time attacking the Brussels
institutions for interference than preaching the European dream. The media have
also become more critical of the EU. And the spread of
referendums means that the people in member states must now be repeatedly persuaded
that Europe is something positive. Well, but
European citizens are not in love with the EU, and new Treaties or, god forbid,
even Constitutional Treaties are unlikely to change this. So what can be done
to make Europe more attractive and popular?
The
first strategy is to concentrate on showing European citizens that the Union works. President Barroso
is keen on this idea. In the economic field, this means persisting with the
Lisbon Agenda for further reform and liberalisation
across Europe. In addition, energy and the
environment as well as foreign policy are also the areas where the Union acting
together can do more than nation states alone. However, delivering results does
not always mean doing more at the European level. Quite the opposite, some
think it would be much better to reduce the number of new regulations and
directives, to carry out a cost-benefit analysis before implementing new
regulations and then put into force only the ones that are actually needed.
2) The
second idea for making the EU more popular with its
citizens is to deal with what is known as its ‘democratic deficit’. Eurosceptics are very critical of the European
institutions' lack of transparency and accountability, their corruption and
their remoteness from the citizens. But actually, in comparison with most
national governments the Brussels
machinery is highly transparent. Corruption certainly exists, as it does
everywhere. As for accountability, the Commission answers not only to national
governments, through the council, but to the parliament as well. In truth, the
democratic deficit is to be found more at the national than European level.
People CAN influence what is going on in Brussels
through national institutions, but they are not well enough aware of this. After
all, the Council of Ministers, which takes the most important decisions is made
up of national governments, which are of course elected by the citizens. The
citizens also directly elect the members of the European parliament, even
though, regretfully, they rarely know who they are.
3) The third idea for re-firing European citizens'
enthusiasm for the club is to give them a new dream, what some have called a
narrative, a big story. After World War II the original narrative for the
project was about peace and prosperity. But peace is now taken for granted,
except perhaps in the Balkans; and many voters feel that the EU
is either not helping or is actively hindering the economy. So what might a new
big story for the EU be?
Concern
for the environment might furnish something. A second idea would be a more
active foreign policy. But what is needed most is more inspired leadership by
European heads of government and state and charismatic politicians who are able
to present to the voters the practical value of their EU. Nevertheless,
those who don’t like Europe anyhow might not
be interested in dreams, visions or big stories at all. As Germany's
Helmut Schmidt once put it, “if you have visions, you should see a doctor.”
Such folk might prefer a different reassurance: that the EU
will be a group of diversity not uniformity, and that not everybody on the European
train needs to go at the same speed. In practice, this means that some
countries opt for projects of closer integration that others prefer to avoid. In
fact this is already happening. All members must participate in the single
market, with its four freedoms of movement – of goods, services, labour and capital. Most countries are also members of NATO, but some are not. In addition, only 13 of the present
27 are in the euro area, and 12 are, together with 3 non-member states, in the Schengen passport-free travel zone. If countries and
citizens have a possibility to opt-out of a system, they might no longer fear
that a super-state is being built in Brussels.
A
multi-speed Europe could, in principle, be a
way of solving several different problems at once. For example, the argument
over the constitutional treaty has shown once again that some EU members want more integration than others. A multi-speed Europe
clearly brings potential dangers. The EU can work only
if all its members sign up to its rules, known as the acquis communautaire. It will not be possible for
members to opt out of the single market and competition rules, for example. Yet
it should be possible to find ways round these problems, using the European
Commission and, if needed, the European Court of Justice as arbiters. The goal
should be not to create categories of first- and second-class membership, as
some fear, nor to divide the union. The aim should be to accommodate diverse
views on how far and how fast to go — but all should be done within a broad
common framework set by the single market and the EU
institutions.
In
2005, after the French and Dutch rejections, the commission published a paper called
plan D, which outlined various ways of bringing the EU closer to its citizens. A better name for what Europe really needs might be plan 4D, which
stands for democracy, delivery, dreams and diversity. And you know, dear colleagues,
you should care what is happening with the EU, because if the EU train crashes,
we, interpreters, whether we pass the exam or not, are all doomed.