Wake up Europe!
Oct 8th 2009
From The Economist print edition
It is time for the world’s biggest economy to rise from its slumber and play a global role
Reuters
A REFERENDUM in a small island off the European mainland about an incomprehensible document sounds dull. Yet Ireland’s vote on October 2nd in favour of the Lisbon treaty marks a milestone for the European Union. The treaty—which, despite a flurry about the Czechs, now looks certain to be ratified—is likely to be the last big piece of EU institution-building for years to come. It also poses serious questions about the world’s biggest economy. Is Europe evolving inexorably into a federation of states? Could it become an economic trendsetter? Will Europe wake up and take a bigger role in the world? Or are the affairs of man to be decided largely in Washington and Beijing, with the new “G2” occasionally copying in the Brussels bureaucracy on its decisions?
Very few of the answers to these questions can be found in the moderately useless Lisbon treaty. It is a deliberately obscure reworking of the draft EU constitutional treaty rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. This newspaper opposed the constitution because it failed utterly to achieve the goals set by the Laeken European summit in 2001: simplification of the rules, a clearer distribution of power between the centre and national governments, greater transparency, bringing the EU closer to voters. That the Lisbon treaty is being driven through despite having been rejected by three out of a total of six referendums, and with ten governments reneging on promises to hold votes of their own, is deeply shabby.
The lessons of Lisbon
Some Eurosceptics want to fight on, hoping that a Tory victory in Britain could mean a new referendum. Assuming that the Czechs have by then ratified the treaty, that would be dangerous and pointless. Dangerous, because if everybody (including the British) has already signed the treaty, it could soon turn into a debate about Britain leaving the union—a considerably worse result for everybody than living with a slightly duff treaty. Pointless, because there is now a good debate to be had about Europe that liberal voices can and should win.
Many Eurosceptics are so blinded by hatred of Brussels that they have failed to grasp what a huge defeat the Lisbon treaty has been for their opponents. Every other EU treaty for the past 25 years has contained the seeds of the next one, making the process seem inexorable. But there are no such germs in the Lisbon deal and the participants are exhausted by the eight-year effort to push it through. It is not just the British who oppose more institutional deepening. The Irish will not want to repeat their practice of voting No and then Yes to another treaty. Even Germany’s constitutional court has raised a red flag to further EU integration. The union will thus continue as a mainly inter-governmental organisation with supranational attributes, rather than turning into a full federation.
Nor is the content of Lisbon all bad (see article, article). Alongside the unnecessary and intrusive charter of fundamental rights and the mad idea of giving the undeserving European Parliament more powers, Lisbon improves the EU’s voting system, partly sorts out a muddled foreign-policy structure and creates a permanent presidency of the European Council in place of the present six-month, rotating one. The challenge now ought to be to make it all work. And that points to two internal tasks and two external ones.
The internal tasks address Europe’s poor economic performance. The world’s largest economic block will lose ground even faster to China and America if it fails to raise its low productivity growth through liberalising reforms and by reducing the size of the state. Along with this comes a second task: to preserve the single market, by far the EU’s greatest achievement of recent years. The single market and the EU’s competition and state-aid rules are under attack as national governments look for ways to protect jobs. A priority of the European Commission must be to uphold the rules by taking a tough line in such cases as the proposed German bail-out for Opel.
Lift up your heads
The European project has spent too many of its first 50 years looking inwards: building the single market, sorting out institutions, arguing about money, endlessly negotiating treaties. In the next 50 years it should look outwards more. At present Europe is a weak actor on a stage dominated by America and China; India and Brazil are in the wings. Can this change?
It may. The chief obstacle to a common EU foreign policy has never been institutional. It is, rather, that 27 countries have different interests. It is desirable that foreign policy, like taxation, should remain subject to unanimity, for these matters lie at the heart of national sovereignty. But the Lisbon treaty creates two new posts—a new high representative for foreign policy, smashing together two current jobs, and the new council president—that could give the union a more public face, as well as a beefed-up foreign service. This offers a hope of the EU exerting an influence more in keeping with its economic weight, as it has so far done only in trade negotiations.
For this to happen, Europe’s leaders must get two more tasks right. The first is to stick with what has proved to be the EU’s most successful foreign policy by far: its own enlargement. The offer of membership has been the most effective tool for bringing prosperity and peace, first to the Mediterranean countries and then to ex-communist central and eastern Europe. Nowhere matters more to the stability of today’s EU than the region to its east and south-east. If the EU is to flourish, it must keep its doors open.
The second task is to choose substantial people for the two new positions. The foreign job may yet prove more powerful, but the president of the council will set the tone. One could imagine, say, Angela Merkel sitting down as an equal with Presidents Obama and Hu; but she has another job. So the choice is the usual Europygmies or Tony Blair (see article). Britain’s former prime minister has his faults; but he is a figure with clout and a name that is not merely known in Belgium. What is more, he would press for the reforms Europe needs. If Europe does not choose someone of his stature, it will be the first sign it has drifted back to sleep.
Re: Dawn of a new EU - European Conservatives and Reformists Group springs into life
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