[A-List] EU integration struggles: UK role

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Climbing aboard the good ship Europe

As the EU debates its potentially revolutionary draft constitution,
Political Correspondent Alan Crawford discovers that for once, Britain is at
the heart of Europe's progress
The Sunday Herald, 3 November 2002

Europe, Tony Blair taunted the opposition benches in the House of Commons
last week, is something the Tories think is done to Britain against our
wishes. A bit like molestation, perhaps.

As the Prime Minister sought to explain his spat with French President
Jacques Chirac over reform of the common agriculture policy (CAP), onlookers
could have been forgiven for thinking that it's not just the Tory front
bench which shuffles uncomfortably at the mention of things Continental.
Blair's tussle with Chirac, who blustered that the PM had been "very rude"
and that Monsieur le President had "never been spoken to like that before",
would appear to indicate a serious rift at the heart of Europe. After all,
Chirac was miffed at having a deal on CAP reform he had apparently sown up
with his buddy German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder exposed by Blair, who is
demanding a commitment to reduce CAP subsidies as the EU prepares to admit
10 new members by 2004.

Only nothing in Europe is so straightforward.

It may have looked like Tony Blair's fondness for the US administration of
President George W Bush was causing him to ditch entente cordiale in favour
of realpolitik, but in fact it is Chirac who is out of step with the
direction in which Europe is travelling. For once, the UK, its support for
the US notwithstanding, is cautiously climbing onboard the good ship Europe.

The smoke signals were there last week during another, equally fundamental
development taking place in Brussels, this time with the blessing of the UK
government.

The announcement of a draft constitution for Europe amounts to what the
influential European Policy Centre calls "a turning point in the history of
integration". It lays the foundation for a root and branch reform of the EU
to simplify its workings, open it up to public scrutiny and make it
understandable if not quite endear it to the citizens of the 15 member
states it is supposed to serve, all goals of which Tony Blair approves.

The draft constitution is the first tangible result of the Convention on the
Future of Europe, set up to to restructure Europe in advance of the
admission within just over a year of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia,
Slovenia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Cyprus and Malta. That work
would have been undermined had Chirac succeeded in retaining CAP in its
current format, which accounts for some 40 billion euros, or half the entire
EU budget. In the end, Blair ensured CAP reform would go ahead.

The convention, chaired somewhat ironically in the current climate of
Franco-British relations by former French president Valery Giscard
d'Estaing, aims to make Europe more relevant in the recognition that a
Europe of 25 in 2004 cannot be governed in the same unwieldy way formulated
for just six member states in 1957.

"What we are working on," said Professor Sir Neil MacCormick, SNP MEP and
alternate member of the convention, "is a treaty that will make the workings
of the European Union more democratic and effective. It's about putting the
essential matter of Europe in a clearer, sharper, better-defined text that
people will be able to read and understand."

At present, understanding the EU is like navigating the labyrinthine complex
of the European parliament, with its endless corridors and interconnecting
"sky bridges", its banks of lifts and schematic maps. For all its
complexity, the parliament is populated by high-flying polyglots who share
an overall vision of a united Europe based on co-operation not conflict, a
vision which Tony Blair would appear to share.

Paul-Henri Spaak, Altiero Spinelli, Tony Blair? The government's broad
acceptance of the draft constitution keeps alive Blair's hope that his name
will one day feature among those of the architects of the EU which adorn the
parliament buildings.

In particular, Blair and the Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's idea
of a president of the European Council who could provide an answer to Henry
Kissinger's famous question, "Who do I call when I need to speak to Europe?"
is understood to be gaining favour as a means of simplifying the EU in the
eyes of its citizens.

Among the other recommendations included in the draft constitution are a
proposal that European council meetings, at which government ministers of
each member state hammer out deals, are held in public. The draft also
envisages a stronger role for the European parliament and making
appointments to the European Commission more transparent again, all measures
favoured by the UK.

Professor MacCormick, a constitutional expert who is no friend of the Labour
administration, said that the UK government had "taken their courage back
into their two hands" in its dealings with Europe.

"I think they have come round to the view that a constitution is better to
get right rather than hang around and see what transpires."

He added that Peter Hain, the UK government representative on the
Convention, had done a good job of putting the government's "cautious"
message in positive terms.

"I think he's managed to increasingly catch the feel of the meeting and make
it clear that they're on side, that they're in Europe and not carping from
the sidelines."

But what to call this new entity? The EU has had many names since it grew
out of an agreement on coal and steel production locking the governments of
France and Germany into a mutually beneficial trade deal while tying up the
means of waging war to a shared common market, then a European Community and
after the Maastricht Treaty of 1992, a European Union.

Giscard D'Estaing favours United Europe but also mooted the United States of
Europe. Peter Hain said the European Union was a perfectly successful
"brandname".

"The United Sates of Europe implies a superstate, United Europe looks to me
like a football team," he added.

D'Estaing has even suggested a slogan for the Union: "Liberty, justice,
solidarity", echoing the cry of the French revolution: "Liberte, Egalite,
Fraternite".

For all the headline-grabbing attention, the drafting of a constitution for
Europe is not about names or slogans. The real meat to be added to the
skeleton lies in the proposals for dual citizenship, a common foreign and
defence policy, the ability of states to secede from the Union and the
allied right of states which are willing and which fulfil certain criteria
to join up and the establishing of a "Congress of the Peoples", giving
national parliaments a role in Europe by bringing together national and
European MPs on a periodic basis.

However contentious the issue, on each matter for discussion the UK is fully
engaged and fighting its corner, while the French are holding back, leading
the EU's French trade commissioner, Pascal Lamy, to observe that "the
British are leading the dance".

With so much pro-European fervour - admittedly hidden beneath a veil of
occasional righteous indignation - Kenneth Clarke, the former Tory
Chancellor, who is to launch the pro-euro Tory European Network in Scotland
this week, told the Sunday Herald that the debate over a draft constitution
for Europe would inevitably "merge together" with Britain's entry to the
euro .

"In this country we are anti-federalist and I use federalist in its British
sense but we do believe that if we want to be an influential nation state
then we've got to work in harmony with the other states in Europe on key
things, such as trade, the economy, farm policy and the fight against
organised crime," he said.

"I acknowledge that the present method of taking decisions inside Europe
doesn't work very well with 15 members, therefore I think it's a good idea
that we sort out what the relationship between the member states is going to
be before we bring in the 10 extra members. That means it all has to be
sorted out by 2004 and I think it's rather a good thing if that runs
together with the debate in this country about the single currency because
it puts the whole thing in the broadest perspective."

Just as there is growing consensus for the constitution, if approved by
heads of state next summer, to be put to a simultaneous referendum across
the Union, so Clarke believes there is a 50-50 chance of a referendum on the
euro being held in October next year. A double-headed referendum next autumn
on closer European integration looks more likely by the day.

With friends like Clarke, the role of Conservative eurosceptics meanwhile
looks ever more forlorn, as the European Parliament delegation to the
convention, the Social Democrat group and the Liberal grouping have all
welcomed the draft constitution.

Giscard d'Estaing, addressing the European press corps, conceded that
differing views had been expressed on his draft.

"But broadly speaking the principle of this structure has been approved to a
large extent. People feel things are moving and people feel the road map is
the right one," he said.

After Giscard had got up and left with his entourage, former UK Europe
minister David Heathcoat-Amory, Conservative MP and delegate to the
convention, announced an alternative draft.

Sitting alongside veteran Danish sceptic Jens-Peter Bonde, Heathcoat-Amory
proclaimed: "Ours is not a constitution, ours is a treaty between free and
self-governing states of Europe. Instead of a technocratic Europe endowed
with a pseudo-democratic federal structure, we offer a Europe of
democracies."

Then it was the turn of his colleague, the French MEP William Abitbol, who
began his speech in French. But the headphones remained silent; the
translators had all left. All the journalists had departed too.

When the European constitution is completed next summer and sets off toward
adoption, the UK will be onboard taking its turn at the helm. Chirac, with
his attempts to protect CAP payments for French farmers, can only try to
delay its departure. For those remaining eurosceptics, however, the boat has
already left them floundering far behind in its wake.