Sir,

The need for an institutional overhaul of the EU was never entirely new, it just became more visible and pressing on the eve of the Union’s “big bang” enlargement in 2004. And the current situation in the EU is not critical, despite Philippe de Schoutheete’s views to the contrary. For all its faults, the EU proves to operate rather successfully even if one has to acknowledge that over the years it has become more and more technocratic, and therefore inaccessible to the European public at large. The EU is widely perceived as lacking in transparency and in efficiency. Attempts in recent years by European leaders to take steps to improve matters culminated in the ambitious project of the constitutional treaty.

 

The citizens want a better functioning Europe, and a majority, say the Eurobarometer surveys, still support the concept of the constitutional treaty. So how was it possible that so many people failed to grasp the point that the constitution is aimed at meeting their concerns?

 

Perhaps their thinking is totally irrational. In spite of government information campaigns, many citizens still have little information about EU matters. And then there is the whole question of whether referendums are appropriate when complex legal texts are at issue. As Luxembourg’s Prime Minister Jean Claude Juncker put it: “If Helmut Kohl had held a consultation exercise, we would never have had the euro. So who is the better democrat; the one who puts himself in his people’s hands, or the one who has the courage to take risks?”

 

What, then, is the way forward? Many hold Europe to blame for the negative impact  on their lives of globalisation. That suggests our priority should be to raise public confidence in the European project and demonstrate that the EU is able to react adequately to the changing world we live in.

 

The more immediate question, though, is what will happen in the medium-term? Sooner or later the EU will return to the issues of the constitutional treaty, as clearly there is no better alternative. Fresh negotiations between the EU’s 27 member states about a new fundamental document would only spawn a tornado of antagonistic demands and proposals, without any prospect of a deal. Some people today champion cherry-picking elements of the existing treaty, but as cherry-picking is just a gradual implementation of the constitutional treaty, why not implement the whole treaty at once?

 

In all this, we must be careful not to forget the external dimension. Further EU enlargement is still an open question, so the EU’s institutional framework has to be adjusted so it can function properly in a 27+ format. Today’s institutional stalemate can all too easily give the impression that the EU is unwilling to enlarge further, and that perception could have severely negative effects on eastern Europe and especially in the Balkan states.