|
|
The three main points on the agenda for the Intergovernmental Conference, for instance, appear technical: but seen properly from a strategic perspective they have an anything but secondary impact on the way the Union can function in coming years. The composition of the Community executive, the weight in decisions of each country and the areas where there has to be a move from unanimous to qualified-majority voting are the key features for defining the balance between democracy and efficiency, representativeness and effectiveness, in the "enlarged" EU. It is however clear that if tackled in negotiations confined to these points only they risk exacerbating the differences that already prevented agreement at Amsterdam, and increasing the mutual mistrust among the partners. If instead set within a perspective with greater scope, they might point a way out of the difficulties that afflict, inter alia, even the fifteen-member Union. In other words, new democratic rules are essential in order to make today's institutions, and still more tomorrow's, work. The countries wanting enlargement must be aware that there will not be any without some renunciation in terms of formal attributes of power by each and all, be it a second Commissioner, some seats at Strasbourg, "weighted" votes on Council or policies subject to the veto. For their part the countries wishing to enter the Union, who are today watching the institutional negotiations with great mistrust, have to realize that without more flexible decisional and administrative structures they will not be joining so early, or might derive less benefit from joining. All this is undoubtedly true for the strictly Community aspect of integration, in other words for the Single Market, monetary union and the common policies managed by the Commission.
And the countries wanting real "deepening"? It is here at this delicate juncture that the visions of some and the immediate imperatives of others will join - or clash. It is beyond doubt that the six Community founding Members have the right and the duty to relaunch the debate and the initiative on the Union's "political objective". And it is beyond doubt that in the past Europe has had, and how, a sort of "vanguard", or "engine", namely the Franco-German or rather Paris-Bonn axis, round and alongside which Italy and the Benelux countries have played an important socializing and mediating part. Subsequently other countries - starting with Spain and Portugal - joined this "leadership" group for integration, even if the start of monetary union temporarily created tensions within it.
Today, though, the position looks different. The relaunch of the Franco-German entente under way, without or against which integration cannot advance, is beyond all doubt desirable and I would even say essential; at the same time the present Union, and still more the future one, needs a "centre of gravity" (something more than an axis, but also more than a "hard core") that is broader and better organized. It must be broader in both composition and scope, and better organized as a system: for the Schengen agreements and the creation of the common space in justice and home affairs, and especially the strengthening of common foreign and security policy (CFSP), have considerably "enlarged" the Union's areas of activity and ambitions for intervention. But the countries most interested in cooperating and integrating into these new policies (including the new defence dimension) are not always and necessarily the same, even though there are, for instance, many similarities among Euro, Schengen and WEU/NATO Members. The chief difference, though not the only one, concerns Britain, which, on Blair's initiative, has for over a year headed the European effort to arrive at an autonomous European crisis-management capacity, in military terms too - yet is outside the Euro and outside Schengen.
One of the EU's great questions today is, rightly, "Quo vadis, Britannia?": for without Britain the possible "centre of gravity" might perhaps be more compact, but it would also be weaker politically, financially and militarily, and poorer culturally. Moreover, the "centre of gravity" we have mentioned would, in order to be credible and effective, have to be basically homogeneous and relatively uniform, in other words, bring together more or less the same countries in all the main policies.