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Not only does Citizen Fischer not want his ideas to be mistaken for minister Fischer's ideas. He does not want them to be taken for ideas of the present, and so they fade in temporal indeterminacy to the point of exhaustion. Again, he does not spare repetitions to make his point clear: it is a proposal intended "beyond the next decade and the intergovernmental conference"; "for the long run"; "well beyond the next decade". According to him, "the EU will at some time within the next ten years be confronted with this alternative: will a majority of states take the leap into full integration and agree on a European constitution? Or, if that doesn't happen, will a smaller group of states take this route as an avant-garde, i.e. will a centre of gravitation [Gravitationskern] emerge comprising a few member states which are staunchly committed to the European ideal and are in a position to push ahead with political integration? The question then would simply be: when will be the right time?"
The right time... I have to express my utter confusion at this point. Fischer's ideas concerning timing are indeed both confused and confusing. One thing at least is clear: they are not intended for this intergovernmental conference, which is to be confined to the then three, now four, "urgent" questions in the diplomatic agenda (composition of the Commission, vote weighing in the Council, extension of majority voting, closer cooperation). To be sure, these urgent questions are but temporary patches. Besides the reform of the procedure for establishing closer cooperation, which hovers the Community pillar with fragmentation, they are all quite trite matters in comparison with the deeper constitutional reform that Fischer proposes. It is not quite clear, however, for when is such reform due: in a decade, within a decade, in about a decade, more or less in the next decade...
As I read it, ten years is used here as a rhetorical device to mean "not yet".
Contrariwise, the Eastern enlargement, of particular economic interest for the German economy, should be done "as quickly as possible" ("Die schnellstmögliche Erweiterung"). This quick enlargement, according to Fischer, will bring new problems of which we shall worry now, intellectually that is, but that we shall only tackle later.
The contradiction in this part of the speech is apparent. The institutional problems that justify his preference for a political union of sorts will be pressing from the very moment of the next enlargement, if they are not already so, and according to any logic they should be solved before not after the enlargement. Fischer rightly predicts that the enlargement will bring "erosion or integration". Now, and this is the crux of the matter, are we to integrate further before or after the erosion? It seems to me that citizen Fischer puts the cart (enlargement) before the horses (constitutional deepening). The cart may not move at all or even move backwards - hence the risk of disintegration if the horses are not in the right place at the right time, and strong horses indeed. It would be better, in my view, to integrate politically before the enlargement, now that it is simpler. But perhaps citizen Fischer does not really intend to integrate politically, but only to do something politically, as it is revealed by the means he chooses for such an undertaking.
The Shuman declaration was full of will for the future, but its force depended on its reference to the realities of the day. Fischer's speech loses force in its vague reference to a distant and indeterminate future, avoiding the urgent questions: Is it perhaps already about time? Is now the right time? Is the right time passing?