Philippe Moreau-Defarges is right, of course, that no sinister secret Plan B exists to introduce the measures contained in the Lisbon treaty should it fail legally to enter into force. Innovations not in conformity with prevailing treaties cannot be introduced, so the innovations Moreau-Defarges discusses and then rightly dismisses are actually straw men: no ‘Big Three’, let alone “an EU diplomatic body that developed into Europe’s only bearer of foreign policy” could get away with running an EU foreign policy based on member state sovereignty and consensus.
Moreau-Defarges is right to bring out the EU’s success as an international trade and aid actor, as also its enlargement process in promoting stability, democracy and prosperity in Europe, even if the early stages of most enlargement processes showed a reluctant and gradual recognition of historic inevitability rather than strategic vision, just as is now the case with Ukraine. And he correctly distinguishes between these policy areas and foreign policy in the narrow Eurospeak sense, which distinguishes between “external relations” (Community competence, basically trade and aid) and “foreign policy” (exclusively member state competence, unanimity, managed by the Presidency). But it is a pity he takes so long to get there that little space is left for what after all is the core foreign policy issue for the EU: how far, and how, should the 27 member states have a more joined-up foreign policy better harnessed to the Commission’s external relations instruments?
The Lisbon treaty is only a partial answer because other factors are as important (political will, acceptance that some member states are more equal than others, shades perhaps of Philippe Moreau-Defarges’ big three); and also because the Lisbon arrangements, while removing important frictions in existing arrangements, would create other potentially debilitating ones.
The Lisbon treaty’s great advantage is that 27 member state governments have signed it. There is no Plan B because nobody wants to promote failure by envisaging it. But there is nothing underhand about thinking about the consequences of a permanent Irish No. Eurosceptic attempts to characterise such thinking as anti-democratic are populist bullying and should be rejected with contempt.
The underlying situation will not go away, whatever the fate of Lisbon:
- Polls show a large majority of European citizens wanting more effective common foreign and defence policies.
- There is a real need for these policies. It would be an evasion of responsibility to continue to rely on muddling through, as in the early negotiations with Iran (which took place outside an EU framework), or over Georgia in August.
- There are things that could be done even without a new treaty, not surreptitiously but by acting to improve efficacy in existing arrangements.
The European Commission’s 125 overseas delegations should be available to the EU’s High Representative. Javier Solana could easily attend Commission meetings with a voice but no vote. And more empowerment of the High Representative by the Presidency and the Council has certainly not reached its limits. Some of this would require only agreement between the High Representative and Commission, the last would require a conscious Council decision. It would probably take a politically binding decision by the European Council to compel such improvements.
The loss of the Lisbon treaty would be a shame, but not the end of history. Life itself requires the EU to get its act together, if necessary within existing treaty provisions pending eventual new ones. There are really useful things that could be done. And there is nothing anti-democratic or malign in identifying them and thinking of ways of introducing them. It is the kind of Plan B that we ought to have while still working at the passage of Lisbon, rather than denying that any such thing as a Plan B could possibly exist.