The European Dream

by Jeremy Rifkin

  But big-picture players like Monnet, Robert Schumann, German chancellor Konrad Adenauer, and, later, Jacques Delors, the president of the European Commission, saw the Union in far more visionary terms. Their strategy was to move incrementally with technical and economic measures designed to increasingly bring member states together in a seamless, interdependent, commercial web of relationships. Each small step of economic integration would result in a slight, sometimes imperceptible erosion of their national sovereignty. None of the steps alone, they figured, would be enough to arouse the ire of member states and threaten the furtherance of the Union. The upshot of this piecemeal strategy would be that “one day the national governments would awaken to find themselves enmeshed in a ‘spreading web of international activities and agencies,’ from which they would find it almost impossible to extricate themselves.”17

  To a large measure, the strategy paid off. Economic pressures in the post-World War II era propelled European countries toward union. The United States provided the main stimulus. The Bretton Woods Agreement, which also set up the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, was an attempt to create a global commercial market to foster U.S. economic development. Anxious to impose a global set of rules that would encourage free trade, the U.S. established the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1947.

  The U.S. was particularly concerned with the dire straights of war-torn Europe. With the Soviet Union already occupying Central and Eastern Europe, and with powerful Communist political parties in France and Italy, the U.S. worried that much of Europe might fall to the Soviets. To ensure against a Communist takeover, the U.S. embarked on a two-prong program to secure Western Europe in the post-war era. It established the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949, whose mission was to create and deploy an integrated American and European military force that could defend Western Europe from Soviet aggression. The U.S. also launched an economic recovery initiative to resurrect the economies of Western Europe, in the belief that it would be the best means of slowing the advance of Communist political parties in France, Italy, and elsewhere, and lowering the threat of Soviet influence.

  The Marshall Plan, named after its architect, Secretary of State George Marshall, provided more than $25 billion of economic development assistance to Europe in the late 1940s and early 1950s.18 But the funds came with conditions. To continue receiving aid, European nations would need to prepare the ground for “the formation of a single large market within which quantitative restriction on the movements of goods, monetary barriers to the flow of payments and, eventually, all tariffs are permanently swept away.”19

  European countries were also favorably disposed to creating a common market, but for different reasons. Worried that they would be squeezed by the superpowers and risk becoming a satellite to one or the other, they saw the pooling of their economic resources and talents as a way to gain sufficient advantage to claim a measure of economic independence.

  Both parties served to gain from the creation of a European common market. A strong Western European economy would hold off the Communist menace and create a market for U.S. investment abroad. A European common market would give European nations the security and freedom they needed to revive their ailing national economies and assure their continued existence. And underlying these more strategic economic considerations was the belief that by joining together, the nations of Europe might at long last put an end to centuries of warfare among themselves.

  The European Economic Community expanded in the 1970s and 1980s, adding the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Spain, Greece, and Portugal to its ranks. While the economic devastation of World War II provided an impetus to create a European community, the oil shock of 1973 added new urgency to efforts aimed at integration. The global recession that followed on the heels of the spike in oil prices imposed by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) threatened to undermine the carefully designed social welfare regimes put in place in Western European nations. The Thatcher-Reagan economic revolution of the 1980s, with its emphasis on deregulation of government-owned businesses and the further liberalization of global trade, put additional pressure on member nations of the European community. Greater integration was the only viable means for member countries to stay afloat in troubled times.

  The Single European Act (SEA) of 1987 brought the member states a giant step closer to union, while subtly eroding the national sovereignty of the individual countries. Among its many sweeping provisions was the extension of new powers to the European Parliament. For the first time, the parliament was to be consulted before the adoption of new legislation by the European community. The parliament was also given the power of veto on the admittance of new states and on agreements made with states outside the community. Equally important, qualified majority voting was introduced in many areas where unanimous votes of member states were previously required. Finally, the community established the idea of “Exclusive Community Competence,” which prohibited member states from acting alone in a number of critical areas that had previously been the prerogative of national governments, including matters related to economic and monetary union, social cohesion, research and technology development, and environmental policies.20

  The SEA effectively weakened the power exercised by the council, which was made up of the heads of the member states. Why would member governments willingly surrender their sovereignty and cede more power to the Union? Because the SEA was presented as a purely technical treaty designed to further economic and fiscal integration, member states all found something to bolster their vision of the role of the community. The arch-confederalists, who favored economic but not political union, hoped that a more integrated market would strengthen their national economies and shore up their political regimes. Those who supported a more federal political union hoped that closer economic integration would make the individual member states more interdependent and reliant on the Union, eventually drawing more political power away from their respective states and toward Brussels.21

  The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989 forced the community to revise its mission once again. Recall that the Cold War and the division of Europe into two competing blocs after World War II played a key role in the initial formation of the European community. It was to be an economic and political bulwark against Russian aggression. Now that the Cold War was over, Europe had to turn its attention to the prospects of a reunited Germany and an integrated Europe that stretched from the Atlantic seaboard to the Russian border. Again, external events pushed the member states even closer to union.

  The Maastricht Treaty of 1992 transformed the European Economic Community into the European Union. The sweeping provisions of the treaty made clear, once and for all, that the Union was to be far more than a common economic market. The newly constituted European Union was to be built upon three pillars.22 Member nations agreed to the introduction of a single EU-wide currency—the euro—by January 1, 1999. Member states agreed to extend intergovernmental cooperation to include a Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Finally, the members agreed to establish regulations governing Justice and Home Affairs ( JHA), including the granting of common rights to all European citizens, furthering police cooperation among the states, and harmonizing immigration and asylum policies across the Union.23 The states also agreed to broaden EU membership and began entertaining applications from Central, Eastern, and Mediterranean European states. (Austria, Sweden, and Finland joined the Union in 1995, and ten Central, Southern, and Eastern European countries—the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovenia, and Slovakia—officially joined in May 2004.)24

  The treaty created new bodies. The Committee of the Regions gave the regions of Europe an official voice, for the first time, in European community affairs. Recognition of the regions served to further weaken nation-state sovereignty. Now, 222 regions from Catalonia to Lombardy were to
be officially represented in Brussels, giving them direct access to one another, the member states, and the EU governing machinery, without having to be represented exclusively by their nation-states.25 The Cohesion Fund was established to assist states whose economic development lagged behind the rest of the Union’s members.

  The Maastricht agreement also introduced the concept of Europe-wide citizenship and gave the European Parliament additional powers.26

  The Maastricht Treaty was clarified and strengthened with the passage of the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997. This treaty reinforced the Union’s commitment to human rights and required applicant countries to uphold the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights as conditions for acceptance into the community. The Amsterdam agreement gave the EU the legislative power to act against discrimination based on sex, race, religion, ethnic background, disabilities, or age, anywhere within the Union. The Union was also given the power to act on employment issues affecting its member states. The Union was even granted some power to enact broad standards governing public health policy, although the organization and delivery of health care remained the responsibility of the member states.27

  At a follow-up conference in Nice in December 2000, Union members agreed on further reforms of the council—narrowing the range of issues on which individual member states could impose their veto power. Votes of the big countries on the council were tripled in weight, while those in the smaller nations were merely doubled. Passage of council proposals would henceforth require 73.29 percent of the weighted votes, a two-thirds majority among the member states and a majority of 62 percent of the Union’s total population.28

  At Nice, as at earlier summits, both those who championed a more federal union and those who preferred to retain as much power as possible at the state level could argue, with some justification, that their interests were partially met. At every juncture of the Union’s existence, the public perception has been one of maintaining a delicate balancing act that would retain nation-state sovereignty while further empowering the community. Whether the individual countries really believe this to be the case is doubtful. It is true that each step forward to a closer union of the peoples of Europe has been met with a half-step back to preserve nation-state powers. Still, the cumulative effect has been a slow, irreversible trek toward the vision first laid out by the Union’s early architect, Jean Monnet.

  Lest there be any doubt on this score, the EU’s draft constitution, which is currently being considered for ratification by its member states, makes clear that a new transnational political institution is being born that, in its every particular, is designed to function like a state. It is possible that a number of member nations might vote against ratification of the constitution, forcing a crisis and a re-evaluation of a Europe-wide governing body. Although, if public opinion polls are in any way a bellwether, the constitution is likely to be ratified by the member states. According to a Eurobarometer poll conducted in February 2004, a sizable 77 percent of the people in the member states support an EU Constitution. Opposition to the EU Constitution is only 15 percent overall, while somewhat higher in Austria, Sweden, Denmark, and the U.K. Still, even in these countries, opposition is still low, ranging from 23 percent to 30 percent of the population. Equally important, 62 percent of those polled said they favored national concessions to ensure that the constitution is adopted, and in only one country, Slovenia, did a majority say they would rather not make concessions. 29

  But even if the new constitution were to be rejected, the Union itself is already so far along toward integration that no one really believes it will ever dissolve back into separate nation-state governments, each going it alone in the global era. Rather, most political observers believe that if this particular constitution runs into serious trouble, the member states will merely resurrect its various particulars in other treaties and directives until the substance of the covenant becomes binding on the community.

  The adoption of the European Union Constitution gives the EU the legal stature of a country, despite the fact that this new governing institution has no claim on territory—the traditional hallmark of statehood. While its provisions allow it to regulate activity within the territories of its members, including activity that affects property rights and relations, it’s worth emphasizing that the EU is not, in itself, a territory-bound government. It is, rather, the first transnational government in history whose regulatory powers supercede the territorial powers of the members that make it up. This fact alone marks a new chapter in the nature of governance. The EU’s very legitimacy lies not in the control of territory or the ability to tax its citizens or mobilize police or the military force to exact obedience but, rather, in a code of conduct, conditioned by universal human rights and operationalized through statutes, regulations, and directives and, most important, by a continuous process of engagement, discourse, and negotiation with multiple players operating at the local, regional, national, transnational, and global levels.

  The New EU Constitution

  Under the proposed constitution, which includes a Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Union will be able to sign treaties in its own right, binding its member nations. It might ultimately be granted a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations—replacing the United Kingdom and France. It will have a president elected by the European Council who will serve for up to five years and be responsible for setting the EU’s agenda. Currently, the EU presidency rotates every six months, and the office is held, in turn, by each of the presidents of the member nations.

  The EU will also have a single foreign minister responsible for conducting foreign and defense policies. The constitution calls for a single foreign and security policy, and member states are called upon to “unreservedly support the Union’s foreign and security policy in a spirit of loyalty and mutual solidarity.”30 However, member states are given an escape clause. They can either abstain from voting or vote no, which would allow them to block a foreign policy proposal from even being taken up by the council.31 In addition, while the European Union is charged with the task of creating a rapid-reaction strike force, national governments will still retain control over their own armed forces. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the former French president who oversaw the constitutional drafting process, said he believed that it would take twenty years before the Union had a unified and integrated foreign policy and spoke with a single voice in the international arena.32

  The national governments will retain control over taxes. While the EU budget currently exceeds 100 billion euros a year, the member states have steadfastly refused, until now, to grant it the right to raise taxes independently of the states—making it dependent on the members for its budget.33

  The member states will also still retain control over decisions of whom they grant citizenship, although, as mentioned earlier, any citizen of a member state will have the right to take up residency in another member state, and work, and vote in local and European parliamentary elections, and even run for office in either venue. Moreover, under the new constitution, broad policies designed to harmonize immigration along with refugee and asylum issues will be decided by majority vote. Under the old rules, any country could exercise a veto.34

  The constitution also grants the Union the right to establish at least minimum rules concerning judicial procedures dealing with the rights of the accused, the rights of victims, and the admissibility of evidence in court proceedings. EU changes in criminal law would require only a majority vote.

  Those favoring a stronger EU hoped that any future changes in the constitution itself would be made by a majority of the states, if four-fifths of the states agreed. They lost, however, to the confederalists who were successful in imposing a unanimous agreement provision for any proposed constitutional changes.35

  The EU Constitution is being sold as a kind of grand compromise, with something for everybody. For countries like the U.K. and France, who believe that the EU should exist as an extension of but not a substit
ution for the nation-state, the constitution provides some relief. The new rules strengthen the voting power of big countries in the Council of Ministers. 36 Under the new provisions, the council can pass legislation when half of the members, representing 60 percent of the EU population, vote for it. This gives the bigger nations—Germany, U.K., France, and Italy—more potential power to steer the legislative agenda. On the other hand, the Council of Ministers’ power is somewhat diminished because of the new powers ceded to the commission.

  For the smaller nations, who would like to see a more federal union, the constitution strengthens the European Commission. The commission has a monopoly over the right to propose new legislation, which is tantamount to veto power over prospective legislation that might be taken up by the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament. The commission’s president, who will be elected by the European Parliament, will enjoy greater executive and enforcement powers.

  The parliament will also get new budgetary and law-making powers. Most EU legislation voted by the Council of Ministers will be subject to parliamentary approval.

  My first impression in reading over the European Constitution was that large chunks of it would never be acceptable to the majority of the American people, were it to be submitted for ratification in the U.S. Although there are passages throughout that would no doubt resonate with many Americans—including sentiments cribbed largely from our own Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution—there are other ideas and notions in the 265-page document that are so alien to the contemporary American psyche that they might be considered with suspicion or even thought of as somewhat bizarre.

  To begin with, there is not a single reference to God and only a veiled reference to Europe’s “religious inheritance.” God is missing. Strange, in a continent where great cathedrals grace the central plazas of most cities, and small churches and chapels appear around every corner. Still, most of the ancient sanctuaries are visited primarily by tourists nowadays. One would be hard-pressed to see more than a scattering of local people at a Sunday morning mass. As mentioned in the opening chapter, for the most part, Europeans—especially the post-war generations—have left God behind. Europe is arguably the most secular region in the world. That’s not to say that there wasn’t a heated debate over the absence of God in the document. Pope John Paul II and the Vatican lobbied publicly for “a clear reference to God and the Christian faith” in the preamble.37 Others argued that not to mention Christianity, when it played a pivotal role in the history of Europe, was unforgivable. Most, however, agreed with Anna Palacio, Spain’s former foreign minister, and a member of the drafting convention, who argued that “the only banner that we have is secularism.”38 A French diplomat put it even more bluntly: “We don’t like God.”39