Friday

29th Mar 2024

Opinion

Who will lead Europe in 2006?

Surprisingly the outcome of the 2005 British Presidency of the European Union resembles the unfortunate French Presidency of 2000.

Both culminated in winter summits that agreed painful late-night deals after considerable tetchy discussion and compromise; deals, which nevertheless were of fundamental importance to the future of Europe.

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Both agreements - in the French case the Treaty of Nice, paving the way for European enlargement, and now the future European budget - were deemed by the participants, even at the time, to be unsatisfactory.

So much so indeed that provision for a fundamental review was written into the text in the hope that things might be better ordered in the future.

Nice led via the Laeken Declaration, to the European Convention and the Constitutional Treaty. What we shall call the review of European Expenditures, written into the budget deal, has not yet been determined.

The European Commission, which is to undertake the exercise, will no doubt come up with an excellent analysis in three or so years time, though whether this will then fare better than its constitutional counterpart is moot. It will all depend on the political motivation.

Began in blaze of glory

Both French and British presidencies began in a blaze of glory. In the French case towns and cities were bedecked with bunting, there were fireworks and celebrations and informative public service broadcasts to explain Europe's quaint machinery of government to a bemused citizenry. France paraded 'la vie française,' but the beautiful image, the peacock promises, never quite materialised.

Mind you, the British presidency - or rather the British prime minister - also made if anything even more resonant peacock promises.

He came before the European Parliament on the eve of his presidency term as though he had by some species of temporal metamorphosis become Henry V before Agincourt, rallying the elected troops with sentiments of revolutionary tone. We could almost hear Shakespeare's words as he banged out the message of reform.

Let he that hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart,

His passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse.

At the end of the presidency term these grand British ambitions have too been shredded. Even in his own words, the Blair European legacy amounts to no more than the agreement to begin accession negotiations with Turkey and Croatia; 'a whole series of changes in the directives of the European Union;' and, of course, the late-night, last minute, budget, whose safe delivery was assisted in good measure by the midwifery of the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

Despite the grand words about the future direction of the European Union in which Mr Blair wrapped himself at the beginning, there isn't much evidence of reform in what he has delivered. Why was the question of agricultural reform, for instance, not addressed during the Presidency; why were budgetary proposals not tabled earlier?

Some comprehensive strategy that sketched out a post 2013 picture might have helped progress towards the settlement for 2007. And if the budget had been settled last June - which it is now clear it could have been - just what, of real substance, would this latest summit have been about?

Lacking in lustre

The business of leadership is not just about making clarion calls: it is about building a movement for change and sustaining that movement. In those terms, and given Mr Blair's expressed designs, the British Presidency has been spectacularly lacking in lustre.

The budget shenanigans have simultaneously succeeded in losing Britain friends and influence abroad while the surrender of even a small part of the rebate has enraged the eurosceptics back home.

The one potentially visionary step - the informal Hampton Court Summit - was progressively diluted in substance and curtailed in time to the extent that it became more of a ceremonial occasion than an engine for change.

But though it is easy to criticise the lack of British leadership, we must ask, in fairness, whether Europe actually wants to be led at the present time at all? We may have a Europe of the 25, but it is a Europe of 25 troubled and fractious countries, uncertain as to their future direction on almost all fronts.

In the absence of a clear, rational and coherent European perspective, member states are therefore dancing on the European stage to the tunes played by their electorates back home. Some look forward, others back; some embrace grand solutions, others the minimalist option.

The major issues, the constitution, the economy, sustainable development, migration, foreign and security policy and now budgetary reform are themselves becoming, by proxy, a new set of European battlefields where the canons of self-interest meet the cavalry of progress.

Once it was the Commission's job to forge a coherent European direction for the equitable benefit of all. But since about the turn of the century - and de facto - that responsibility has been almost entirely usurped or, if you prefer, repatriated to the member states.

And a right hash they are making of it, you might argue, particularly given the movie-go-round of the rotating presidency. If a new European law is needed then it should be one that prohibits settling budgets - or anything else - at three in the morning.

Europe needs leadership

Yet what Europe does need, clearly, is leadership. Leadership that is capable of forging a transnational consensus and commanding respect among the electorates of member states.

This can't be other than political: the notion that somehow if we 'listen' to 'citizens' we shall miraculously find them saying the same (or at least not incompatible) things is clearly preposterous.

As is the idea, seemingly prevalent in some quarters of the Commission, that the good souls of Europe have locked away inside them some 'vision' of a European future, which politicians at the national level have missed.

For a moment in the blissful dawn of the Tony Blair's European Parliament speech it did seem as though he really might succeed in providing this necessary political leadership. Clearly that was not to be.

But without such a coherent vision, whether it comes from a member state politician or from a European Parliamentarian, the European project risks falling victim to the vacuum that is its empty centre.

It would then simply and slowly disintegrate, with smaller budgets and reduced powers, into the type of Organisation of European States advocated by the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus, and others. If this is the democratic will, so be it, but Europe deserves better than for this to happen by default.

We can only hope that cometh the hour, cometh the man - or indeed woman - someone who will not only advocate reform but deliver it as well. Who indeed will succeed in drawing this sword from the stone? That is the real question for 2006.

Nadolig Llawen, as we say in these parts, a Blwydden Hapus Dda.

The author is editor of EuropaWorld

Disclaimer

The views expressed in this opinion piece are the author's, not those of EUobserver.

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