No one here have said anything about the recent unraveling of the stability pact. That felt after a little weird after seeing that US bloggers Daniel Drezner and Atrios, of all people, have both commented on the issue.
(Edward did write about it on Bonobo Land though)
Drezner links to this article from the Economist, which is a must-read, it says just about everything I might have said.
Not long ago, I asked Where’s Publius?
Today’s Frankfurter Allgemenine reports:
The European Convention Talks Back
Appeal to the Intergovernmental Conference
Modeled on the “Federalist Papers”
Call by 63 Parliament Members
Brussels, Nov 13. Four months after the end of the EU Reform Convention, members of the body that was entrusted with working out a draft constitution are attempting to exercise greater influence on the work of the intergovernmental conference (IGC). Herald of probably increasing common efforts is an appeal to the Italian presidency presented on Thursday by 63 parliamentarians from various EU countries and parties. In addition, MEPs reported on Thursday that MPs from member states and MEPs are planning an appeal for retaining as much of the Convention’s draft as possible. The effort is planned for the week preceding December 12-13, dates expected to bring a compromise in the IGC’s work at a summit in Brussels. Part of the push has been undertaken by Convention president Val?ry Giscard d’Estaing and his deputies Jean-Luc Dehaene and Giuliano Amato. It will have the title “The Papers of the European Convention” and take as its model the Federalist Papers of 1788. At that time, the “father or the American constitution,” James Madison wrote essays together with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in an effort to influence the debate over the draft constitution that had been presented in Philadelphia the year before.
Not a bad idea.
I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before, but it was only while talking with a colleague this afternoon, and being asked what I thought about the unwillingness of the candidate countries to reform that it came to me: with all this coming and going on the Pact, what kind of message is being sent to the new members? Obviously if you give the impression that agreements are not to be complied with, you can get reactions you aren’t expecting, and that you don’t like. The Financial Times article you can find below, begins to give an idea of the size of the looming problem, whilst this one informs us that Standard and Poor’s has just downgraded the Polish currency rating because of concerns about deficits and rapidly growing government debt.
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I found this article from Dagens Nyheter (temporary link) very interesting.
“‘If anything, I think we work more effectively now than we did before, even though we’re almost twice as many’ an EU diplomat tells Dagens Nyheter.
‘People stop to think one more time, if what they’re going to say really adds something new or is just a way of [looking good?] in front of their colleagues, says an experienced negotiator.
Since the new arrivals signed the accession treaty in Athens this April they get to participate in the Council of Ministers as observers. They attend all meetings, on all levels. They have access to all documents. They have complete freedom of expression, and may also bring up issues they want to dicuss on their own. In short, they have everything except the right to vote.
The thinking is to give them the possibility to learn what’s on the agenda, and how things are done.
[..]
‘In the beginning it was the same old countries that dominated and the newbies were mostly quiet. But now they’re picking up steam. In questions of importance to them they’re active, and both can and want to influence decisions, even if they can’t be a part in making them.’
The Poles are among those that most often speak up. They’re big, they’re many and they’re hard bargainers. Representatives of the Baltic countries are also fairly active, as well as Hungarians and Czechs.
[..]
With 25 [delegations] around the table, everyone realizes that they can’t be too longwinded. Even if every country only would speak for three minutes there would be an hour and a half of debating. Just to do one item on the agenda.
Negotiations are therefore more to the point. The elaborate flowery language has been cut down, and silence has increasingly come to signal agreement. This is true on all levels, from the working groups to the ambassador’s preparatory meetings to the ministers’ Council meetings.”
(Crap translation by me)
This suggests that people like for instance Chris Bertram were wrong:
“But getting back to enlargement …. My take on this, for what it’s worth, is that it gives the UK everything that lukewarm Europhiles/moderate Eurosceptics have always wanted. EU will now be so large and will vary so much in cultural and economic conditions that a thoroughgoing federalist project is dead in the water. The centre – Brussels and Strasbourg – will be fatally weakened vis-?-vis the component parts of the union because twenty-five (or more) states will find it almost impossible to reach agreement on anything but the most anodyne proposals.”
And that I was right.
And hey, seems I was right about this too. DN writes: “How the countries line up depends more on the issue and where one can get support than old bonds and allegniances.”
Update: Slightly edited.
“When the proposed Constitution issued from the Constitutional Convention at Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, Alexander Hamilton foresaw that opposition to it would be great, and though he thought the document would probably be adopted he couldn’t be sure. Three members of the Convention, all of them prominent, had refused to sign it, and others, including Hamilton’s two fellow delegates from New York, had left before the end of its deliberations. Indeed, the form in which the Constitution was approved gave it the appearance of unanimity: the delegates subscribed to it in the name of their states. This covered over defections and absences; for example, Hamilton alone signed for New York, and at least one delegate would have been unwilling to subscribe in his own name.”
So begins my edition of The Federalist, the collection of 85 essays written by Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay under the name Publius. (The authors went on to become the new nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury, fourth President and first Chief Justice, respectively.) The essays were written at a speed that would put many bloggers to shame and distributed by the most advanced technology of the time. They address the toughest criticisms leveled at the proposed Constitution, from the charges that a unitary government would trample citizens’ rights and well-established prerogatives to the supremacy of federal law to the separation and blending of powers.
The title of the final essay sums up the argument: “Not perfect but good. Should adopt and seek to amend.”
Europe has had its Convention, and Europe’s governments are now having their Conference. Soon, there will be referenda, with high stakes and uncertain outcomes.
Where’s Publius?
My Bulgarian ‘assistant’ still won’t let me forget Chirac’s last faux pas: that the biggest favour the candidate countries could do for themselves was to stay quiet. It looks like we’re going down the same road one more time. I really don’t think it is possible to effectively ‘buy’ opinions. I mean in the short term it may work as a tactic, but long term this will lead to more, not less, resentment and tension. I already feel that the Swedish euro vote was more a political statement than an economic one. The Netherlands are getting louder and louder in their denunciation of stability pact ‘flexibility’, and now the aid-recipients are effectively being told to put up and shut up. This is not a very auspicious start for a new constitution, nor does it offer a very encouraging insight into how it might work.
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A shameless plug:
The Center for Applied Policy Research, a think tank attached to the University of Munich does good work on the nuts and bolts of a large number of EU issues. In particular, their Bertelsmann Group for Policy Research will be covering the IGC as thoroughly as it covered the Convention and the previous summits. Their analyses – usually also available in English – get into the inner workings of the machinery and tell who will benefit from, for example, adapting different forms of qualified majority voting in post-enlargement Unions of 25, 27 or more. Their staff advises the German government fairly regularly, so if you want to see where the main stream of German debate on EU is flowing, this is a good place to look.
Plus, they’re outside the Brussels beltway, and indeed outside the occasionally fevered atmosphere in most national capitals. The distance tends to lend a cool, analytical slant to their writing on the EU.
If you happen to read German, their main page follows key developments on constitutional reform, defense policy and enlargement closely. The summary of the convention, Mutige Einschnitte und verzagte Kompromisse – das institutionelle Reformpaket des EU-Konvents, is a good example.
(Full disclosure: Some years back, I worked full time for the Center’s Research Group on the Global Future, and I continue to write, edit and translate for them. Take a look, and form your own opinion.)
Well, I didn’t generate too much controversy yesterday, so let’s see if this one is a runner. Prodi is going to have a face to face meeting with members of the European Parliament to try and explain how the Eurostat mess was allowed to happen. According to the FT story Prodi is ‘attempting to fight off calls for his resignation’. Apparently he will explain that Commission members first learnt of the problem on reading about it last May in the press. So what do we say, is this a resigning issue? Should Prodi go? Would Solbes going be ‘settling scores’ on the SG pact differences? Well, this may be the sort of thing that brings the EU administration into ridicule, but at least we are able to ask the question.
This is a slightly revised version of an early Europundit entry that I thought deserved a second life.
What will enlargement mean?
There has been a lot of talk lately [back in May at least] about what the long-term consequences of enlargement will be, and also about the rift that the Iraq war has caused in Europe. Some people, especially Americans have been saying there’s a risk of crisis, and that the Union will become divided and dysfunctional. There’s one in my estimate strong indication that they’re wrong: Look at the Convention. Divisions have not at all been on the lines of “old” or “new” Europeans, but between small and big states and between intergovernmentalists and supranationalists. The actors have taken positions out of what they think is right, and what they perceive is in their interest. And that’s how things will continue to be.
The Common Foreign and Security Policy have been weakened, but no one has ever imagined nations would take common positions on every issue. I think the Convention also demonstrates there’s a lot of agreement, and a strong will to work together and move forward. Integration and reform has been continued at a rapidly accelerated pace. If the issues of division of power between institutions, between the nations, and the future shape of the EU aren?t causing paralysis, why would fishing disputes or whatever?
There’ll probably be friction between France and the Central Europeans, but what people have missed is that the group of eight’s letter was not the only cause of divisions, but mostly something that brought divisions to the surface. In my opinion, it’s not so much because of any particular irreconcilable differences; rather it’s part of a long-term trend. Starting about five years ago nations stopped deciding almost everything by unanimity. This has to do with the growing number of members and with the increase of decisions taken on the EU level. Indeed, it’s also because national sensitivities have decreased, and issues aren’t looked at only from the national perspective or as national horse-trading, so therefore acceptance has grown of majority voting. Also, the group of eight’s letter was a reaction to French-German hegemonic tendencies, but remember the reaction was because the French-German engine had been revived after being dead 1997-2002. Changing alliances aren’t an impediment to progress or “ever closer union.”
So what we will see is these trends continuing, and being reinforced by, enlargement and further integration. More open divisions, and factionalism, but not so much divisions between any set camps, rather division on an issue-for-issue basis, and not so much one nor two power centers, though France-Germany still will be a power center in many instances. And, I don’t think it will put any brakes on integration.
Ever Closer Still
The last six or eight years saw these trends starting, and at the same time integration has not just continued, but at an accelerating pace. These were also the years of the Commission losing power and initiative to the Council (the national governments.) Integration is not driven by ideology or by some long-term federalist strategy. Rather, it’s the product of a thousand smaller decisions. Rather, it’s driven by “historical forces”, by a situation where every further step makes sense, by a self-reinforcing logic, and because there are no significant factors acting to slow or stop integration.
By the evidence of the Convention, plus my general knowledge of the Candidate countries, I don?t see enlargement seriously working against these trends, though if the constitution will be a drastic step, it may cause a temporary breathing pause. I don’t see anything else seriously slowing the process either in the foreseeable future. (Granted, in these matters, that’s hardly longer than a decade as I see it.)
That begs the question when will it stop? I don’t think this gradualist, often not noticed by the public, process can’t possibly continue to the point where suddenly we find ourselves citizens of a federal state. At some point something’s gots to give. When and how that will happen, I have no idea. Everything about the EU’s development is so gloriously uncertain and unprecedented, which is why it’s so fascinating.
(Actually, things are already changing, integration is no longer mostly by stealth or couched in bureaucratic terms, and there is a debate about what the final goal is.)
I started out sounding like I defended the EU from its detractors and now I sound almost like a eurosceptic. I should note that one explanation for the success of “Ever closer union” is that it simply makes sense, because of increasing interdependence et cetera. But the problem is, no one bothered involving the public, or at least didn’t succeed.
Latvia has voted to join the EU. The yes side received approximately 68% of the vote on a 70% turnout.