Opinion - Editorials

A demonstration of statesmanship

The hand-wringing, recrimination, and high-drama at the European Union (EU) Council summit last week do not detract from the importance of the deal brokered by European leaders to end the institutional paralysis that gripped the union since the French and Dutch rejection of the constitution in the 2005 referenda. The decision to abandon the grand idea of a constitution and go for a more modest Reform Treaty, to be finalised by an Inter-Governmental Conference by December 2 007, is a demonstration of exemplary statesmanship, political sagacity, and pragmatism. The 18 states that had already ratified the now aborted charter have played no small a part in this process of renegotiation. The pan-European vision passionately espoused by the six founding states in the mid-1940s and the 1950s was embedded in a deep yearning for lasting peace, political stability, and economic prosperity among their peoples after the bloody wars of earlier decades. In the same way, the proposed framework of the new Treaty for the union of 27 states is grounded, if less euphorically, in the realities of the 21st century.

The demands emanating from a resurgent nationalism in prominent EU countries in the face of globalisation and the expectations of new member-states are the challenges the EU has been facing since the 2004 enlargement. Their imprints are writ large in last week’s debates on the Reform Treaty. The Dutch have demanded that national parliaments should have more powers to block EU legislation, and the French got the assurance that the term ‘undistorted competition’ will be deleted from the core objectives of common policy. The Poles have of course secured a delayed start to the more democratic voting system based on a country’s population. In the sphere of external affairs, the proposal for a common Foreign Minister has been withdrawn to emphasise that the EU is not a sovereign state. The idea now is to continue with the EU High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Lastly, the term “Community,” which denotes common features, is to be dropped from the very title of the 1957 Treaty of Rome. The preference is for the less-loaded expression “Union.” It would be disingenuous to brush aside the underlying import, symbolic or otherwise, of these calls for change. The next big task facing the EU leaders is to have the nuts and bolts of the new Treaty fixed and to have the same ratified by the 2009 deadline, ahead of elections to the European Parliament.

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