Short Stories, Long Odds

I do solemnly swear to update a little later today. In order to make up for lost time, I’ll publish some of the things I’ve been working on!

What follows is my analysis of the European Union’s quest for a constitution.

To the American student of international politics, the EU is an accepted entity. We regularly discuss what implications the actions and treaties of the EU will have on both the geopolitical landscape and the delicate balance of political economy. Alliances in the rest of the world and the EU’s efforts to establish itself as an autonomous superpower have had broad and decisive effect on many nations, especially with the adoption of the Euro as the chief currency in many of the EU’s member nations; the strength and scope of the EU’s effect on the world will increase, barring some sort of geopolitical disaster. A disaster of this kind is not outside the realm of possibility, and the greatest potential disaster facing the EU Constitution is one it cannot avoid hazarding – if the EU Constitution is not ratified by all of the Member States, both the Union and the Euro will face the potential for crippling damage. So we accept the EU as an entity but barely consider the EU as an idea or a potential superpower, competing on an even keel with the United States.

WHY DOES THE EU NEED A CONSTITUTION?

Another rarely discussed aspect of the EU rarely discussed in America is the legitimization of the EU. Some American citizens chuckled to themselves in 2000 at the onset of the wide adoption of the Euro, but very few American citizens have any idea about what the EU actually is or does. The problem isn’t that Americans have the wrong idea, necessarily, but rather that they just don’t think about it at all.

Certainly, sometimes the EU raises American ire. For example, the EU requested that the World Trade Organization impose new taxes on US goods, which brings about articles like the Cato Institute’s diatribe against the European Union “Tax Cartel.” The EU has also made no friends among American business concerns, the DOJ, or the federal government by aggressively asserting itself as a regulatory body in world commerce: in 2004 the EU levied a $613,000,000.00 fine against Microsoft, which both Microsoft and the United States Government protested on the grounds that Microsoft is a United States company. Microsoft was not so quick to point out that they take 30% of their revenues from Europe, choosing instead to state that the EU was fining them for conduct the Department of Justice allowed.

Certainly the EU is a viable force as an economic entity, and it is among the principle players in the new potentiality for a global free market. However, to continue to grow and function as a major economic player, the EU will need to be politically legitimized. The need for such legitimization plays a major role in the EU’s progress towards a Constitution. This legitimization, however, was not the main impetus for a Constitution.

It can be argued (and often is by moderate Europhobes) that the version of the EU created by the Maastricht treaty was a political union borne of economic ambition. In order to facilitate the EU’s goal of solidifying access for Europe’s major business players to the international markets. To a certain extent, the broadening of the EU brings this about by default – the more member nations there are, the more of the world the EU domestic market incorporates. In order to truly achieve an access conduit to the global market, however, the EU needs an embodied unified authority, carrying strong administrative, legal, police, military, and judiciary powers. The vestment of these powers within the EU was in part the point of the Maastricht treaty, and the further pursuit and solidification of these powers necessitated consideration of an EU Constitution.

In the last few decades, it has also become apparent that within the EU, paperwork and bureaucracy was becoming a total mess. The Constitution is often billed as a “tidying up” by many supporting public officials. It will divide and delegate power to different parts of the EU bureaucracy, simplifying and speeding up the decision-making process. This, some opponents argue, will give even more power to the central countries, which would not be an entirely surprising development.

A final consideration in the necessity for a Constitution is one of security. The language of the Constitution outlines “a common foreign and defense policy” which enlists the assets and cooperation of the Member States. Many critics of the Constitution make the case that this common defense policy, and therein the European Defense Agency created by the Constitution, is not only for protection and peacekeeping under the general UN charter or participation in the war on terrorism; rather it is also to support the Euro and the economic concerns of the Union. The document being circulated among the Member States for ratification makes significant strides towards a centralized military force and a cooperative defense policy. It does not, specifically, entail a common defense, at least not until the Union unanimously votes on it.

We have established the main catalysts bringing about the EU Constitution: a need for institutional reform; economic expansion and its management; the pursuit of a common foreign and defense policy. All of these also fall under the auspices of legitimizing the EU as a political force, and eventually, as a superpower assembled as the United States of Europe. The institutional reform required to initiate the European Union as a legitimate political force came in four stages: the Treaty of Nice, the European Convention, the IGC’s progress of 2003 and 2004, and the Treaty of Rome in 2004.

DEVELOPMENTAL HISTORY

The Treaty of Nice, principal among the stages of Constitutional development, called for “a deeper and wider debate about the future of the European Union”. Provisions for an IGC had been made in the Treaty of Amsterdam, and Belgium, France and Italy led the charge to strengthen the institutions of the Union before the first accession negotiations finished. Many previous councils and treaties had included a similar decree, and with literal enlargement looming for the EU the idea that institutional reform had to follow close behind became the general consensus.

The Treaty of Nice had four stated objectives in preparing the European Union for enlargement. It was charged with revision and streamlining of previous treaties in the specific area of size and composition of the Commission; the weighting scheme for votes on the Council; an extension for qualified majority voting; and, probably of the most importance to bureaucratic efficiency, enhanced cooperation between the institutions of the European Union. Also borne of this treaty were an official statement on a common foreign and security policy and a move towards judicial cooperation in criminal matters between Member States. The most sweeping changes are located in the Protocols annexed to the Treaties, which handle the logistics of enlargement in the Parliament, Council and Commission as well as address administrative cooperation between Member States concerning free movement and immigration.

Several changes were instigated by the Treaty of Nice on the road to institutional reform, but the actual effect of the Constitution was not grand in scope. The methods and approach of several institutions of the Union were altered but Nice did not achieve institutional balance. The most important developmental aspect of Nice in regards to the EU Constitution may have been the fact that certain aspects of institutional reform were not solved and the need for further debate on institutional issues was obviated. The Treaty of Athens (2003) brought Nice inline with some specific considerations brought about by the semantics of accession, and from 1 May 2004 the foundation of the Union is “the EU and EC Treaties as last amended by the Treaty of Nice and the Treaty of Athens.

The second developmental stage, the Council of the European Union, was produced in large part by the Laeken Declaration. In December 2001 the European Council called for a convention rather than treaty revisions; the convention would be attended by experts and government representatives beyond the usual litany of heads of state, and would primarily be charged with addressing institutional reform. The directives laid out for the convention were aligned in four parts: to seek a better division and definition of competencies; to simplify the EU’s instruments of governance; to imbue the EU with democratic legitimacy and institutional transparency, as well as an analysis of institutional efficiency in national parliaments, decision-making, and institutional function in an enlarged Union; and of course the initial movement towards a European Constitution, including a streamlining of the Treaties, the inclusion of the Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the adoption of a Constitutional text. The Laeken Declaration also ensured that at least some progress would be made by not requiring unanimity or even a general consensus, allowing for either a set of differing options or qualified recommendations.

The Convention lasted for a year and half, meeting for the first time on 28 February 2002. The work done by the Commission proved more fruitful than initially imagined – rather than a set of suggestions or recommendations, a full draft Constitution was presented in July 2003. This draft simplified and consolidated the previously existing Treaties, providing an aggregate suitable as a revised founding text.

The Convention was also unique in its scope and transparency. A website was launched to allow European citizens to participate directly in the formative process, and conferences took place in Member States, bringing the debate about European citizenship and what it implicitly means to level of national debate. The inclusion of observers from several EU committees, a number of NGO’s, and the rather novel idea of participatory Youth Commissions insured that levels of participation and diversity were high and that no one, ideally, would be left out of the process.

Upon deliverance of the “Draft Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe” to the Italian Presidency, the Constitution entered the negotiation phase within an IGC that opened for business in October 2003. By concentrating on the most important aspects of the Constitutional text – that is, institutional reform – the IGC avoided any necessitation for rehashing the whole works. The negotiations continued past the Presidential transfer to Ireland in December 2003. It did not take much longer for a political agreement to be reached, and after a remarkably short period of time, a final political agreement was reach in June 2004. The Treaty of Rome in October 2004 finalized the proposal for wholesale institutional reform and the adoption of a European Constitution, and the process entered the ratification phase, its current stage of development.

The European Union has thus made the progress from an economic/trade organization as it originated in the 1950’s to a political ordering of nations. No longer simply a logistical body for tariff management, the EU is on the verge of joining the United States as a political super power. The economic impact of the Euro is apparent, as a simple strength comparison between the Euro and the dollar evinces. The political impact of a United States of Europe cannot be known until the Constitution is ratified, and this is where both the EU and Euro may run into problems.

PROS & CONS

In order for the EU Constitution to be adopted it must be ratified by all 25 EU Member States. The road to ratification runs through the public referendums in ten Member States (Ireland, Belgium, Portugal, Luxembourg, Spain, France, the UK, the Netherlands, Poland, and the Czech Republic) and several of those votes are by no means guaranteed, although Spain recently ratified by way of referendum with a somewhat Spartan voter turnout. The rest of the Member States will ratify by way of parliament, and Lithuania, Hungary, and Slovenia have already done so.

This ratification process and its requirements are a quantifiable nightmare for proponents of Europe’s transmogrification into a superstate. Many Member States, both small and large, have serious concerns that a unified Europe will lead to the marginalization of their needs and their sovereignty. In this camp are Denmark, Sweden, Italy, the UK and Estonia. Other countries, including Ireland and Austria, have voiced valid concerns about the ability of a Member State to maintain its neutrality under the auspices of a common defense.

Some nations are riddled with doubt concerning the economic implications. The Netherlands is the largest per-capita contributor to the EU budget and several officials have expressed their feeling that the country is getting a raw deal. And let’s not forget Poland, which feels as if it got a bad deal when it joined the EU, particularly in terms of agriculture.

Poland is also concerned about German domination of the EU, has concerns about the new vote-weighting scheme as opposed to the method established by the Treaty of Nice. While a broad majority of the French support the Constitution, many have serious, deep reservations about Turkey’s admission to the EU, so much so that Chirac has had to separate France’s ratification and the national position on Turkey’s membership into two separate votes.

The two most dangerous stumbling blocks to total ratification seem to be Sweden and Denmark. Sweden has the lowest level of popular support for the Constitution among any Member State , and its rejection of the Euro will most likely make things more difficult for Britain to join the Eurozone. Denmark’s referendum will be legally binding, and it rejected the Maastricht Treaty initially, only adopting it after winning concessions. Member States with strong socio-religious climates like Ireland are also very concerned about social issues like abortion. And possibly the most troubling of all, in several Member States the majority of respondents to Eurobarometer’s survey knew very little or nothing about the content of the Constitution or had no opinion.

That is not to say that there are no Member States excited about a United States of Europe or that the Constitution will meet dangerous opposition at every vote. Portugal’s recent election of a socialist majority bodes very well for the Constitution in that nation. Belgium’s proximity to EU dealings has created an informed populace and a 70% favorable opinion . It is no surprise that Germans are overwhelmingly Pro-European, and the leadership of several countries have achieved bipartisan (and in some cases, tri-partisan) support for the new Constitution. Among European citizens who were familiar with the overall text and functionality of the Constitution, the approval rating jumped to 82%.

Reasons for positive opinion of the text and the Constitution itself seemed institutionally based, which may also end up causing problems for the Constitution’s ratification. Certainly, a need for institutional reform to better handle the enlargement of the EU, a strengthening of the European national identity, or even the strengthening of the European Union over the United States are at least viable and in some cases valid reasons to be excited about the prospect of a unified Europe. However, if as a citizen of a Member State you’re already opposed to the very idea of the EU or your country’s membership therein, none of these reasons are available to you as qualified advantages and, in fact, act as perceived disadvantages by default.

WHAT IT ALL MEANS

The latest iteration of the EU initiated by the Treaty of Athens and the proposed, reformed, Constitutional version of the EU represent a major shift in its development if for no other reasons than process considerations. The EU has historically been a burgeoning mess institutions that had little ability to even know what the others were doing. The desire to centralize – or dare I say it, to moderately federalize – the European government has engaged a struggle to greatly increase the efficiency of the EU’s institutions. It has also started a process of political empowerment for the European Union that would be much easier to accomplish if only they weren’t so democratic about everything. The EU’s economy is, of course, based on the strength of the Euro, and it is my opinion that the success of the Constitution and the Euro are inextricably bound. A currency cannot last forever without a military to support it, and the Constitutional EU would provide for a common defense and thus provide that support. The rejection of the Euro by Sweden and the UK’s reticent attitude towards surrendering the Pound may lead to serious problems the EU if perceived on a generational scale. Denmark, and to a more serious extent, Sweden set a precedent of rejecting the EU in part which means that the Constitution is not politically unassailable.

There’s an old adage that says “you cannot cease to be what you really are,” and the EU, no matter how politically empowered or legitimized it becomes, will always be an economic league of sorts. This is, after all, what government boils down to in the geopolitical free-market economy of the 21st century. It is essential to the success of a unified Europe for the Euro to be universally adopted, and the EU’s inability to bring Sweden and the UK into the Eurozone may end up costing it the current version of the Constitution and the work of fifteen years.

End Notes

1 Veronique de Rugy, “European Tax Cartel is bad for US Economy” - http://www.cato.org/dailys/01-10-02.html

2 Dan Ackman, “The EU’s Fine State of Affairs,” Forbes - http://www.forbes.com/2004/03/23/cx_da_0323topnews.html

3 Final Act, Conference of the Representatives of the Governments of the Member States (IGC), 14 February 2000 - http://europa.eu.int/eur-lex/en/treaties/dat/C_2001080EN.007001.html

4 Europa, “Treaty of Nice: A Comprehensive Guide” - http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/nice_treaty/introduction_en.htm

5 Ibid.

6 Europa, “Outcome of the European Convention” - http://europa.eu.int/scadplus/european_convention/introduction_en.htm

7 BBC News. “EU Constitution: Where Member States stand” - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3954327.stm

8 Eurobarometer. “The Future Constitutional Treaty, First Results” - http://europa.eu.int/comm/public_opinion/archives/ebs/ebs214_en_first.pdf

9 Ibid.