Laeken revisited…and the constitution
Willy Brandt once observed that politicians come into politics to resolve a given set of problems, and once resolved, they cannot move on.
So the EU, for all its success in helping to achieve peace and stability, has indeed also failed to move on. As David Cameron said, in a speech at the Movement for European Reform launch in Brussels, it “needs to change if it is to be fit for the challenges of the new century, not stuck haggling over the debris of the last.”
There are indeed huge challenges such as the economic problems and opportunities of globalisation; the environmental impact of climate change and the issue of world poverty.
All of this is true. However there remains the question of the actual architecture of the EU, in the face of the revived and revised constitution.
Let us step back a bit. The Laeken Declaration, signed in 2001, in response to the expansion of the EU, pointed out that the EU was at a crossroads, and actually asked many of the right questions on how best to proceed.
It sought to highlight the so-called democratic deficit, calling for European institutions to be brought closer to its citizens by their becoming more democratic, more transparent and more efficient. It called for the clarification and simplification of the division of competences between the EU and its Member States. It asked how to ensure that a redefined division of competences does not lead to a creeping expansion of the competence of the Union or to encroachment upon the exclusive areas of competence of Member States. It called for a simplification of the EU’s legislative instruments, and the restoration of tasks to member states.
The creation of a constitution was not a clearly expressed instruction. However, under the strong personality of the chairman, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the Convention on the Future of Europe was driven on to draw up a constitution which effectively undermined the basic premises of the Laeken Declaration.
Since then nothing has been done on the declaration’s commitments to reassess the distribution of powers between the member states and the EU.
As we saw again yesterday, the Blair government has never laid out a clear vision of how the EU should work, or defined the structure of the EU in the spirit of Laeken. Yet again, it has been carried along in the slipstream of others, and then tried with mixed success to reverse the momentum. It has been a huge failure of leadership. Unless and until we find a structure which will give the people of Europe some sense of ownership and control, dissatisfaction with the EU will continue to grow.
The constitutional agreements agreed at the weekend do not remotely begin to address this.