INTERNATIONAL
How Europe is starting to set global rules
Spring 2008
With its Reform Treaty, the European Union becomes a new animal, more than an organisation but less than a state, says Adam Daniel Rotfeld, a former foreign minister of Poland. He argues that its soft power strategy has helped to make Europe secure and prosperous, but asks how it should develop
The European Union is a success story. Europe’s achievements have to be seen not as a single act or chain of spectacular consecutive EU summits, but as a historical process. Almost 50 years ago, the political scientist Karl Deutsch defined a concept of a pluralistic security community based on the following principles: the sovereignty and legal independence of states; the compatibility of core values derived from common institutions; mutual responsiveness, identity and loyalty; integration to the point that states entertain “dependable expectations of peaceful change” and communication cementing political communities. As it turns out, the EU today reflects these elements of a universal pluralistic security community much more than any other international and multilateral security institution.
A few months ago the College of Europe in Natolin, near Warsaw, Sweden’s foreign minister Carl Bildt rightly said: “Our Europe has never been as free, as prosperous or as secure as it is today. And never really means never – never in its entire history.”
Recognition of this simple fact has to be our point of departure for further deliberation on the adequacy of “soft” security instruments when confronting Europe’s contemporary requirements and risks. Since Europe is now more secure than in its entire history, it seems legitimate to ask: “If so, why have so many Europeans been so disappointed for so many years?” One could perhaps argue that the higher their expectations, the deeper the disappointment. But the reality has been, as we know, that each successive round of EU-level reform has without exception generated tension and frustration.
Former Italian prime minister Lamberto Dini, in his foreword to MEP Andrew Duff’s 1997 book on the Amsterdam treaty, said that “the long night of Amsterdam closed on a note of bitter disappointment”. He went on to explain: “We could have blocked everything in Amsterdam. We refrained from doing so because a pause for reflection would not have sufficed to overcome the stalemate… Better to adopt the disappointed but lucid attitude suggested by Altiero Spinelli after the Single Act – to consolidate what we have obtained and set sail again for the next objective.” Europe’s security and defence culture is much better suited to soft rather than hard security issues.
For the past two decades, institutional reforms have worked better than they are given credit for. The EU has gradually enhanced its decision-making mechanisms by moving more areas to qualified majority voting (QMV), and by streamlining its institutions. New mechanisms have emerged in such areas as a common foreign and security policy (CFSP), and have gradually created space for themselves in the Union’s institutional set-up. Failures have had more to do with inadequate political leadership and the lack of determination to move more decisively towards QMV, as well as the EU’s continuing dilemma over how to close its distance from the citizen. Opportunities for political leadership have been weakened by the complexities of the institutional triangle, and the emphasis on unanimity has slowed decision-making in such key areas as justice and home affairs and taxation. Nor have the citizens always been properly consulted on draft legislation or on the overall objectives of the Union, and member states have had very different track records.
Differentiated integration has come up against an instinct for uniformity and cohesion in the EU. Although the UK retains its opt-out/opt-in reservations Denmark is planning to give up its opt-outs. Constructive abstention over CFSP has not been given the benefit of the doubt. Flexibility and enhanced cooperation were the subject of much attention in the Amsterdam and Nice intergovernmental conferences, but not much has been done to put them into practice. At the same time, some initiatives taken outside the treaty framework have been successful. Almost all the recommendations of the “praline summit” in November 2003 to discuss EU states different views on the Iraq war have been implemented. Provisions of the Prüm convention on cross-border policing are now generally accepted. The idea that some should lead and others follow remains a source of inspiration for the future.
Now we have the Reform Treaty signed in Lisbon. This is the rejected constitutional treaty minus, but the minus isn’t very big. If it walks like a dog and barks like a dog, then it is a dog. The treaty aims to transform the Union into an international organisation and grant it legal personality. In my view, the Union is much more than a classical international organisation; It is a new animal that is more than an organisation and less than a state.
The treaty says that the Union will act only within the limits conferred upon it by member states. The Union has always acted on the basis of conferred competence, and stating that obvious fact more explicitly reflects the continuing unease in some states over the very principle of supranational integration. Such a statement could wrongly give the impression of an identity crisis, were it not for the volume of innovations that were transferred largely unchanged from the constitutional treaty.
The role of national parliaments is enhanced, the subsidiarity mechanism reinforced, and the double majority voting system is being implemented. The title “minister of foreign affairs” in the rejected constitution has been dropped, so the CFSP is still in charge of the “high representative”.
That still leaves the question of how the EU’s common and security policy will shift from rhetoric to action? Karl von Wogau, president of the European Parliament’s sub-committee on defence, has rightly noted: “The main challenge we face is not to rewrite the European security strategy, but to implement what we have already agreed.”
Looking ahead, governance issues are likely to be subject of review as the innovations of the Reform Treaty are tested in practice. The double-hatted high representative of the Union for foreign affairs and security policy could be a model for use elsewhere in the institutional architecture. A more ambitious double-hatting exercise would be one in which the president of the European Council serves at the same time as the president of the Commission. Interaction between the new permanent president of the Council and the member state presidencies is another area where improvements might be needed. The composition of the Commission, where traditionally there is a lot of creativity and fresh thinking, will attract attention. Governance inside the eurozone will also be the subject of further discussions if, as seems likely, it offers a basis for more advanced integration.
Reducing the scope of qualified majority voting will remain a major objective, possibly focusing on financial matters. The procedure for amending a treaty, at present requiring ratification by all member states, will also need to be explored further.
The Union is likely to be spared a new wave of reform in the near future, but from 2010 onwards the pressures will grow for reviewing the existing provisions. New revision treaties could deal with selected issues, and hence be easier to agree on and ratify.
Constructing a new international order based on multilateralism is neither a choice nor an alternative, but a necessity. Henry Kissinger believes that the United States should be aware of its superiority, yet should act as if it were functioning in a world where security depends on numerous other centres of power. “In such a world”, Kissinger has written, “the United States will find partners not only for sharing the psychological burdens of leadership, but also for shaping an international order consistent with freedom and democracy” Such a new centre of power is constituted by the EU.
It was Kissinger who asked the famous question about Europe’s phone number. That was many years ago, but not much has changed since. Under the rejected constitution, there would have been a foreign affairs minister. Javier Solana would probably have got the job, and under the Reform Treaty could still get it, though without the title. Zbigniew Brzezinski, who like Kissinger is a former big wheel in American foreign policy, wants Europeans to overcome their “parochialism”. “A genuine US-EU transatlantic alliance, based on a shared global perspective, must be derived from a similarly shared strategic understanding of the nature of our era, of the central threat that the world faces, and of the role and mission of the west as a whole,” he has said.
But it is an open question whether the values shared by NATO and the EU, along with the concept of soft power, are compatible with the ambitions of the United States. In his book The European Dream, American author Jeremy Rifkin praises Europe for offering “diversity, quality of life … sustainability, universal human rights, the rights of nature, and peace on Earth.” He concluded, “We Americans used to say that the American Dream is worth dying for. The new European Dream is worth living for”.