[Comment] A fatal blow for liberty
ROLAND VAUBEL
11.02.2005 @ 09:34 CET
EUOBSERVER / DEBATE - The proposed EU Constitutional Treaty means more state intervention and less freedom.
By centralising government, it gives politicians more power over the citizens.
As many scholars, from Immanuel Kant to Eric Jones, have pointed out, the secret of Europe’s success over the last 500 years has been its decentralised nature – the absence of an empire.
Competition among the rulers gave the citizens some choice and protected their freedom. I believe that the proposed EU constitution serves the interest of politicians and the EU Commission but it is a fatal blow to liberty.
Five key changes
The draft constitution contains five critical changes.
First, the European Union institutions would receive more competence in several fields including economic and social policy. No competences will be handed back to the member countries even though the European Council originally contemplated this possibility.
Second, the general empowering clause of Article I-18 would be extended from "the operation of the common market" to all "objectives set by the Constitution" including all sorts of economic regulation.
The European institutions would be empowered to legislate in all these fields even if the parliaments of the member countries have not conferred the necessary powers on the union. Nor could the parliaments do anything against such union regulations.
Constitutional amendments require a unanimous proposal from the intergovernmental conference.
The parliaments may try to defend their competencies at the European Court of Justice but the Court shares the vested interest of the other European institutions in centralising power at the union level.
Finally and irreversibly, the parliaments of the member countries would lose control over the distribution of competencies between the union and its members. The constitution marks the end of their sovereignty in the union.
The strategy of raising rivals’ costs
Third, the upper decision making quorum in the Council would be lowered from 72.3 per cent of the country votes to 65 per cent of the population weights.
While this may be welcome in some less important policy fields, it would have disastrous consequences in others – notably with regard to those labour market regulations which at present may be introduced by qualified majority decisions.
Even more than before, a majority of highly regulated Member States could impose their regulations on the less regulated Member States.
In the economic literature, this is called "the strategy of raising rivals’ costs". As competition from the less regulated Member States is suppressed, the more regulated Member States would raise their level of regulation even further. And they would again impose this higher level on the minority.
This is well known from the history of existing federal states including Germany and the U.S.
The dynamics of this process would undermine the international competitiveness of the European economy. The decision making quorum must not be lowered in the field of regulation. The Constitution if adopted would not strengthen but weaken the countries of the European Union.
Fourth, many other decisions which at present require unanimity could be taken by qualified majority, for example, in the field of "industrial policy", "services of general interest", the management of the structural funds and the regulation of the European Central Bank. Once more, joint regulation is more restrictive regulation.
Finally, the proposed constitution includes the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights which at present is not binding. The charter establishes many legal claims to government regulation such as a right to "fair and just working conditions" or "protection against unjustified dismissal".
Article II-111, it is true, states that the Charter "does not extend the field of application of Union law beyond the powers of the Union or establish any new power or task for the Union, or modify powers and tasks defined in the other Parts of the Constitution".
However, since the European institutions are obliged to "respect these rights" and "promote the application thereof", the charter necessarily modifies, and in many ways increases, their powers.
For these reasons, I and the European Constitutional Group, of which I am a member, believe that this constitutional proposal ought to be rejected.
Roland Vaubel is professor of political economy at the University of Mannheim, Germany. He has been a member of the Academic Advisory Council to the Federal Ministry of Economics since 1993.
