COLUMNISTS If you want to understand what is happening to the European Union’s constitution, the EU flag is a good place to start. It is generally agreed that when European leaders meet at a summit in Brussels next week, they will agree to delete references to the flag in the constitution.
So the 12 yellow stars on a blue background will be hauled down from flag-posts all over Brussels? Not at all. Everybody knows the flags will keep flying. The words in the constitution will change. But the substance will remain the same.
Next week’s summit will aim to rescue the constitution from the dustbin of history, into which it was deposited by the French and Dutch who voted to reject the document in referendums in 2005. These defeats were a debacle for the EU. The constitution contains important changes – including a new voting system, a charter of fundamental rights, a move to make EU criminal law by majority vote and the creation of new posts such as a European foreign minister and a permanent president of the Council of Ministers.
But more than that, the constitution is a symbol. After decades in which the EU has gradually accrued more powers – without going out of its way to draw attention to the fact – the creation of a real constitution was a coming-out party for those who believe in a European political union. Rather than disguising the true aim of the “project”, European federalists were proudly proclaiming it – and seeking popular endorsement. So the rejection of the constitution was a crushing blow.
The federalist response – pushed by the Germans who will be in the chair at next week’s meeting – is to repackage the constitution and to try to push it through regardless. The name constitution will be dropped. Instead, the document will be called a treaty and will be stripped of the symbols of statehood – like the flag and the EU anthem. But very little of the legal substance will change.
The aim is to make the constitution seem dull and technical – and so to allow governments to push it through parliaments without any unpredictable referendums. Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, has made it clear that this is exactly what he intends to do. And if the French road-block can be circumvented, the constitution really will be motoring again.
The Germans are strikingly frank about their aims and methods. To meet British objections that the Charter of Fundamental Rights – currently part two of the constitution – makes the EU look too much like a state-in-the-making, they propose to put the charter into a protocol to the main treaty and then to refer to it in a single article in the treaty itself. When I put it to a senior German diplomat that this was a purely symbolic change, which would do nothing to alter the legal power of the charter, he readily agreed.
Is this all as disgraceful and undemocratic as it sounds? The defenders of the German approach point out that 18 of the 27 EU countries have ratified the constitution (although only two did so through referendums). They argue that the changes in the constitution are fixes that are largely technical, but nonetheless essential to make the EU work – and that failing to solve the constitutional mess would throw the Union into a deep crisis. Finally, they say that referendums are a bad idea (“the devil’s instrument”, says one senior EU official) because voters rarely understand the issues and often use their ballots to cast a protest vote against their national government.
These arguments are ingenious – but unconvincing. If the French and Dutch had voted in favour of the constitution, there is no doubt that their verdict would have been hailed as a historic endorsement of political union in Europe. It is only a “No” vote that was taken as a sign of deep confusion.
European federalists may have been thrown into a crisis by the French and Dutch referendums – but the continent as a whole seems strikingly unperturbed. The European economy is growing faster than for some time. Even the EU’s institutions have not been noticeably more dysfunctional, since the French and Dutch blocked the changes that are said to be essential to make the Union work.
For the fact is that the EU does not need a charter of fundamental rights or a foreign minister to work properly. It does not even really need a new voting system – although the new proposal is more logical and democratic than the old one. These are highly political decisions, which voters have every right to express an opinion on.
The repackaging exercise that will be attempted in Brussels next week validates every eurosceptic prediction of how the EU would react to a popular rebuff. The sceptics have always argued that the Union is elitist and undemocratic. By disregarding the voters and pushing on regardless, the EU will make their point for them. Such a course of action will merely deepen the crisis of legitimacy that the EU constitution was originally advertised as solving.
Of course, success at the summit is not guaranteed. The Poles are the likeliest spoilers. Their slogan for the summit – “the square root or death” – neatly combines obscurity, absurdity and vehemence, capturing the spirit of the modern EU. The Polish proposal is that when countries vote on European laws, their voting power should be a square root of their population – a plan that would sharply reduce Germany’s power relative to Poland. Almost nobody else wants the baffling square root system, but the Poles have the power to block any agreement. “The Poles really could bring the whole thing crashing down,” says a senior British diplomat, unable to disguise the note of hope in his voice. A failure would suit the British who fear having to put the reheated constitution in front of their voters in a referendum.
At next week’s EU summit such attitudes will be derided as cowardly and dishonest. The awkward squad of Poland, Britain and the Czech Republic will be accused of putting the Union in danger. But the real long-term threat will be posed by those who insist that the EU must press ahead with “ever closer union”, while blithely disregarding the increasingly obvious disenchantment of ordinary Europeans.
