The End of European Integration: Anti-Europeanism Examined (Routledge UACES Contemporary European Studies)

The End of European Integration

This book provides an innovative examination of the European Union as it departs from its path of integration. Indeed, so far has it departed that it could be described as having entered a new reality. The original reality was that captured in the evocative phrase in its founding agreement, the Treaty of Rome, that it should be an ‘ever-closer union of peoples’. Largely, that was the path followed until the 1990s, but by the early twenty-first century there were signs that it was turning into an ordinary international organisation in which there was little overriding sense of purpose. This book discusses the indications of this development, and explains why it happened only a decade or so after a peak of popular enthusiasm in the early 1990s. The question was whether the EU would become less important for the member states, as seemed to be the case for the British, or whether the German pattern, in which the EU remained important, would prevail. This book concludes that the former is more likely, in part because of problems with the policies of the EU and its conduct, but more specifically because of the current prevailing political culture in Western Europe. Paul Taylor warns that the current problems are underestimated and that there is the risk of casually throwing away the considerable achievements of the integration process. The End of European Integration will be of interest to all those with an interest in European integration, whether for or against. It will also interest students of European studies, European politics, and politics and international relations in general. Paul Taylor is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the London School of Economics, UK. From 2001–04 he was Director of the European Institute at the same institution

UACES Contemporary European Studies Series Edited by Tanja Bo¨rzel, Free University of Berlin, Michelle Cini, University of Bristol and Roger Scully, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, on behalf of the University Association for Contemporary European Studies Editorial Board: Grainne De Bu´rca, European University Institute and Columbia University; Andreas Føllesdal, Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, University of Oslo; Peter Holmes, University of Sussex; Liesbet Hooghe, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; David Phinnemore, Queen’s University Belfast; Mark Pollack, Temple University; Ben Rosamond, University of Warwick; Vivien Ann Schmidt, University of Boston; Jo Shaw, University of Edinburgh; Mike Smith, University of Loughborough and Loukas Tsoukalis, ELIAMEP, University of Athens and European University Institute. The primary objective of the new Contemporary European Studies series is to provide a research outlet for scholars of European Studies from all disciplines. The series publishes important scholarly works and aims to forge for itself an international reputation. 1. The EU and Conflict Resolution Promoting Peace in the Backyard Nathalie Tocci 2. Central Banking Governance in the European Union A Comparative Analysis Lucia Quaglia 3. New Security Issues in Northern Europe The Nordic and Baltic States and the ESDP Edited by Clive Archer 4. The European Union and International Development The Politics of Foreign Aid Maurizio Carbone 5. The End of European Integration Anti-Europeanism Examined Paul Taylor

The End of European Integration Anti-europeanism examined

Paul Taylor

First published 2008 by Routledge 2 Park Square Milton Park Abingdon Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business. This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”

# 2008 Paul Taylor All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data The end of European integration : anti-europeanism examined / Paul Taylor. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. European Union. 2. Central-local government relations–European Union countries. 3. European federation. 4. Europe–Economic integration. 5. European Union countries–Economic conditions. 6. Europe–Politics and government–1989- I. Title. JN30.T388 2007 341.242’2–dc22 2007020939 ISBN 0-203-93568-3 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 10 0-415-43105-0 (hbk) ISBN 10 0-415-43106-9 (pbk) ISBN 10 0-203-93568-3 (ebk) ISBN 13 978-0-415-43105-7 (hbk) ISBN 13 978-0-415-43106-4 (pbk) ISBN 13 978-0-203-93568-2 (ebk)

Contents

List of tables

vi

Introduction

1

1

The waxings and wanings of European integration

8

2

The case against Europe

24

3

The anti-Europeans

50

4

The challenges to EU governance

70

5

Integration theory in the early twenty-first century: a setting for disintegration?

89

6

The EU in foreign policy: capacity in the economic and social organizations of the United Nations

110

7

European values: why bother?

135

8

A new European project: defence, social policy and the Budget

147

9

Conclusions

167

Notes Index

171 183

List of tables

2.1 2.2 2.3

2.4

2.5 2.6

4.1 4.2

Percentage of respondents agreeing that their country’s membership of the common market is a good thing National responses on support for EU membership: percentage saying membership was ‘a good thing’ Changes in numbers of those saying membership was ‘a good thing’ between Eurobarometer September 2004 and September 2005 Percentage who think membership ‘a good thing’ and percentage who think country has benefited, 1990–91 and 2004–05 Perception of benefits from being a member of the European Union Percentage of ‘very positive’ or ‘fairly positive’ answers to: ‘Does the EU conjure up for you a very positive, fairly positive, neutral, fairly negative or very negative image?’ Direct investment inflows and taxation Leading EU direct investment positions (in US$bn)

25 26

28

30 32

33 72 73

to Eloise

Introduction

European integration has achieved a great deal. In many ways it has been a triumph. But there are dangers in underestimating the present difficulties. In external relations the achievement is still modest; as will be seen, in internal arrangements the difficulties in the way of further integration are increasing. In this context, Mark Leonard’s prediction that ‘Europe will run the 21st century’ must be seen as overoptimistic, even by europhiles.1 That the European Union (EU) has had great influence around the world, and has such skills in mitigating crises in its work with the United Nations (UN), is remarkable. But in overstating what has been done, internally and externally, there is the risk that it will not be realised that in the early twenty-first century the European project needed to be rescued. A hard, realistic look at the risks facing European integration is needed, and that is the purpose of this book.

Europe fading In a speech in Bangalore on 17 January 2007, British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown looked at the current role of the major international organisations. He said that the UN, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank must all be ‘reshaped for the needs of our time’. He wanted the UN to become more effective in peacekeeping, and to this end it should be ‘modernised and reformed’. The IMF should be re-equipped so that it could forecast coming monetary crises in member countries and the global economic system. The World Bank should deal more with energy security and environmental issues. And NATO should acquire a ‘new modern and expanded role’ with regard to peacekeeping. What was striking was that the role of the EU in all this was not mentioned in the speech. The proposals were made from the perspective of a Britain divorced from its own context in Europe, with no impression at all of how the EU could contribute to the development of international organisations. It was an important comment on the state of the EU in the early

2

The End of European Integration

twenty-first century that it could be ignored in a key speech about the future of major international organisations by a future British Prime Minister. In contrast, in its preliminary review of German foreign policy in 2005, the new German grand coalition government of Angela Merkel laid great stress on Germany’s place in the EU. The question was whether the EU would become less important for the member states, as seemed to be the case for the British, or whether the German pattern would prevail. This book concludes that the former is more likely.

Falling away from integration The EU had departed from the path of integration by the first decade of the new millennium. Indeed, it had departed so far that it could be described as having entered a new reality. The original reality was that captured in the evocative phrase in its founding agreement, the Treaty of Rome, that it should be an ‘ever-closer union of peoples’. Largely, that was the path followed until the 1990s. The new reality was inadvertently captured in a comment by European Commissioner Peter Mandelson, when he denied that it was becoming an organisation like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,2 in other words, an ordinary international organisation of states only loosely committed to each other. Paradoxically, the denial indicated the truth of what was being denied. There had been several waxings and wanings in the history of European integration. Integration had waned in the late 1960s, after the 1965 crisis, and again in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But, as shown in Chapter 1, the falling away from integration in the early twenty-first century was more profound than it had been in earlier fallings away. In Britain, the percentage of those who thought the EU was a good thing had fallen from 58 per cent to 29 per cent between 1991 and 2004, while the decline in the traditional motor of integration, France and Germany, had fallen from 75 per cent to 43 per cent, and from 79 per cent to 45 per cent, respectively (see Chapter 2, page p. 26). The causes of declining support were related to public beliefs, often inaccurate, about the problems with European policies and the powers of the Brussels institutions. Such beliefs were deliberately cultivated by the anti-Europeans through the media. They were helped by the enlargement of membership of the Union, and by the real problems that went along with that, such as those caused by increased mobility of workers. The arrival of numbers of asylum seekers from North Africa and beyond was seen by many as the fault of the EU, although it was not a Brussels responsibility. The anti-Europeans had, however, been able to exploit the context in order to sell strong, and often wrong, versions of European policies and arrangements. Chapter 2 deals with these issues. Attention was focused particularly on the failings of the Common Agricultural Policy, European corruption and the excessive cost

Introduction

3

of European administration, and over-regulation. As will be seen, many of these accusations were unfounded. For instance, the official figures suggest that the Commission was more efficient in terms of administrative costs than the British Government. Chapter 3 argues that political culture in the main states helped to undermine the public’s willingness to support any cause such as that of European integration. This was, in part, a reflection of political cycles and the rise and fall of particular governments, but also of a more worrying long-term disillusionment with politics. Politicians in Britain, France and Germany were trusted even less in the early twenty-first century than before, and any policy advocated by them was likely to be taken with a pinch of salt. In Britain, this was usually attributed to the mistakes made over the involvement with the USA in Iraq, but the disillusionment with politicians was more general. The lack of confidence in the Brussels institutions was, in part, an extension of the public’s lack of confidence in national governments. The failure to deal with high levels of unemployment in France and Germany was blamed as much on Brussels as on Berlin and Paris. The anti-European lobbies were happy to capitalise on this. The British New Labour government, which came to office in 1997, rightly calculated that the British were unlikely to support adopting the Euro or the European Constitution, and declined to submit these matters to a national referendum. This was as much to do with the government’s sense of the nation’s discontent as it was a judgement of the merits of the proposals. The ending of the Cold War, and the enlargement to include states from Central and Eastern Europe, caused particular problems for the old motor of integration, France and Germany. Their retreat was a major cause of the falling away. Germany after unification had become a central European power, and in some ways a satisfied power. Germany was now more free to make demands on the EU and to scale down its commitments, as membership was no longer a part of the German self-definition. In contrast, France was not a satisfied power. The changed geostrategic context strengthened the anti-French coalitions. France had less influence in Germany and was likely to be outvoted by the Anglo-Saxons and the new members in the EU institutions; the French language and culture were no longer pre-eminent in the EU. France needed reassurance that the EU social model, still a major concern, was not under threat, and saw no prospect of a Europe led by France as had been promised by President Mitterrand in the 1980s. The new members tended to be Atlanticist. As Russia re-emerged, they were likely to prefer an American guarantee to a less impressive one from the Europeans. They were not happy with the social democratic model. The ending of the Cold War meant that the USA had less need for Europe, and was more likely to be unhappy with attempts to create a stronger European military capacity.

4

The End of European Integration

Perspectives on Europe Scholarly writing about the EU after the 1990s reflected the move from the original to the new reality. This case is argued in Chapter 5. An underlying assumption of the academic writing about relations between member states was that integration was not necessarily about the ever-closer union. It was no longer assumed that integration was something real and continuing, which could be either denied or implicitly accepted. European theorists were, in the main, no longer concerned with the progress or retreat of integration. They tended be more concerned with testing political theories of general applicability in the European context. There was a drift of sentiment, which affected academics as well as governments. It was in part as a reflection of this that governments increasingly accepted the placing of explicit limits on the rhetoric of integration, although some of the original Six were brought to this reluctantly in the face of British pressure. There was to be no Federal Europe and no economic and social union. They also introduced new formal limitations on the practice of integration. National governments were given more discretion to interpret community objectives to suit local conditions, as with the principle of subsidiarity or the method known as the open method of coordination (OMC). It was felt necessary to assert explicitly that states would retain their ultimate responsibility, which should always have been clear, and in the proposed constitution it was stated for the first time that states could leave if they chose. By the first decade of the twenty-first century, it was safe to assume that the original reality of an ‘ever closer union of peoples’ was in question. A new reality had been entered. The new formula of integration was profoundly flawed. It acknowledged that differentiation was the key to coexistence in the EU. The habit had appeared of arguing for the value of difference in order to preserve unity, but it was unclear whether this was a realistic way to achieve integration, or simply the only way to agree. The key question, though, was where the line was to be drawn between diversity and uniformity, and the current difficulty was that there was no principle according to which the line could be drawn. There was no principle for deciding what should go to Brussels and what should not, except the perspective of pro- or anti-Europeanism. Even though it was proposed that more and more institutions should have their say, including national parliaments, subsidiarity was difficult to apply in practice as there were often no objective criteria for deciding on the most effective level of action. The OMC went further by giving states a licence to act in areas where there was a case for expanding EU competence. The ‘ownership’ principles of the 2002 growth and employment programme, following the 2000 Lisbon Strategy to promote European business, was an application of the OMC. These were flawed formulae which could only result in the dilution of the acquis, difficulties with conditionality, and the

Introduction

5

licensing of difference. In other words, the new methodology of European governance was a dilution of integration. Academic writing on diverse subjects beyond European integration added to the doubts about Europe. Chapter 4 deals with the impact of neoliberal economics theory, which held that the free market should be allowed to work with no government intervention. Hence neoliberals argued that the welfare-oriented and regulated European economies were inherently flawed, and neoliberals in Britain – often the same people as the anti-Europeans – concluded that an unreformed Europe should be kept at a distance. Integration should be limited because it was associated, in this view, with a pernicious social economic model. A more engaged set of neoliberals frightened continental European advocates of social democracy with their advice to adopt more Anglo-American ways. Europe should be integrated not in a single market, but in a free market. Welfare spending should be reduced to a minimum, and the weight of economic regulation by the state should be lifted from business. There was certainly a case for reforming the welfare systems, liberalising European economies, and making the labour force more flexible. But there was also a strong case for keeping and adapting the European social welfare model, rather than abolishing it. It was a matter of finding the right balance between civilised welfare systems and business efficiency. The view that the European model of social democracy had failed was not borne out by the data or by actual developments. Indeed, there were economic and social grounds for concluding that it could be superior to the Anglo-American one, as practised in the USA and approximated in the UK. A flexible workforce, with high levels of skill and training, could not be obtained on the cheap, and the common good was better served when capital and labour worked closely together and welfare spending was adequate. The dominant political forces in the original core states clung to the view that there were social conditions, such as adequate health provision and pensions, and the lack of excessive differences in income, that were necessary in a civilised state. But the EU was now more divided than it had been on this issue. The new members were not committed to social democracy, and saw economic benefit in protecting their regime of lower welfare costs. In the core social democratic states, sensible adjustment of tax and spending was made more problematic because of its association in the public mind with an extreme neoliberal agenda, which suggested that to lose something was to lose everything. These issues played an important role in the French Presidential elections in May 2007, with the Socialist candidate, Se´gole`ne Royal, defending traditional social democracy, and the right-wing candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy, advocating measured reform. In the early twenty-first century waning, there was no latent agenda for integration that could stimulate new integration. We were dealing with the tail-end of an older agenda, which had begun with the decision to complete

6

The End of European Integration

the single market in the mid-1980s and continued through to the Lisbon agenda, which advocated further liberalisation. The Constitution was also an ending, in that it attempted to sum up what had been achieved, rather than proposing a new beginning. In many ways, it confirmed in its wording the ending of the integration project; it contained important new proposals for making foreign policy, but little to strengthen a sense of common destiny in international society. But none of this had any appeal for the wider public. The pro-European lobbies could not gain purchase on any more exciting agenda.

Europe in the World The governments of Europe hesitated about enhancing their collective capacity to act in international relations. There had been real progress towards the development of a rapid reaction force, and in the command and planning infrastructure for its support. But the foreign policy arrangements were likely to be unworkable without a sense of common interests, and the military capacity of the Europeans remained weak and often inappropriate to modern conditions. Accordingly, the governments found it impossible to impose themselves in the UN Security Council and other international organisations. (This case is argued in Chapter 6, and is taken further in Chapter 8.) They simply did not engage with any strategy for strengthening the EU as a balancer of the USA, Russia and China in the various managing councils of the world’s organisations: not hostile, but not obsequious either, prepared to oppose if necessary and to define and pursue their own interests. Enlargement, as well as the ending of the Cold War, increased the difficulty in members’ agreeing about the relationship with the USA. This failure was bound to prove increasingly costly in the future, if the experience of the Iraq war was any guide. European Union involvement in the specialised agencies of the UN and the Bretton Woods institutions revealed similar aspects of the EU’s international enfeeblement. The members, acting together, could easily control the major global economic and social agencies. But they didn’t – their capacity to impose themselves in these frameworks remained undeveloped. Was there anything about Europe that the EU could usefully defend, and that could form the basis of an enhanced sense of common destiny? Some commentators, especially in Britain, argued that American values should trump those attributed to Europe, meaning by that the Continent. This dilution of European-ness was likely to go further after enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe. However, the idea that European values and those of the USA were essentially the same needs to be critically examined, which is the purpose of Chapter 7. It seems to this writer that the dominant American values and the dominant European values had subtly but definitely moved apart since the presidency of Ronald Reagan. The ideas of

Introduction

7

liberal America had been eclipsed. There were now identifiable, distinctive European values and practices that were superior to those that had regrettably become dominant in politically attentive America, and that should be defended. It was necessary to consider the prospects for developing a new agenda for European integration that would facilitate the defence of European values. The danger was that the Europeans would now casually throw away all that had been achieved over the past 40 years. The EU’s arrangements were a unique way of managing a system of sovereign states, the like of which had not been seen before. It was important to stress its sui generis character, rather than see it as a conglomeration of generally observable political arrangements. Integration involved the adjustment of national sovereignty to new circumstances, but not its abandonment. Central institutions, and the European legal system, had been strengthened without weakening the states. Membership in the European project had always been sought in order to restore the nation states of Europe rather than to transcend them. It was necessary to understand this to see that further integration need not lead to the creation of an overweening superstate. Unfortunately, too much public comment reflected a lack of understanding of what had been achieved, and anti-Europeans had sold a range of misjudgements about where further integration would lead. There was a strong case for a new normative theory of positive European integration. The case for this is argued in Chapter 5, and continued in Chapter 8. It should be reasserted that European integration was about defending European values, not about facilitating differentiated engagement of member states with the outside world. It was about overcoming difference and establishing solidarity and a sense of common destiny. It should not be about accepting difference in order to survive. This would imply a plea for the rescue of something of great importance for the future development of global international relations as well as for Europe. There had been a significant achievement, there were still future opportunities, but there was now the real danger that it would all be thrown away. This book considers the problems now facing the EU. It measures the achievements and evaluates the problems with some of its policies. It also considers the kinds of new initiatives that are needed in any new European Project. The author identifies the possible routes forward, building firmly on what has been achieved, although seeking to demolish some of the road blocks deliberately set up by anti-Europeans. Although the conditions of success are necessarily elusive, it is at least progress that a way forward can be envisaged.

1

The waxings and wanings of European integration

Pushing integration forward In the history of the integration process in Europe, there have been several waxings and wanings of enthusiasm. This account focuses on the waxing phases that led up to the intergovernmental conferences at The Hague in 1969, the 1985 Single European Act, and the 1991 Maastricht Treaty.1 On each of these occasions, major decisions to go forward were taken. The question addressed here is why the process of integration restarted, rather than why a particular bargain was struck at the intergovernmental conference. Why did a new head of steam develop on at least two occasions after a period of slowing down and uncertainty – a pattern of inactivity often summarised in the French word lourdeur;2 why, in other words, was there a re-energising of the integration process among the member states? This creates a point of comparison that makes it easier to judge whether there was anything special about the period of hesitation in the early twenty-first century, compared with earlier times, that affected the chances that integration could restart yet again. Were there grounds for thinking that the patient was facing debilitation and inevitable decline, or was a healthy recovery on the cards? The first period of lourdeur began with the 1965 crisis and continued through the years up to the Meeting of the Heads of State or Government at The Hague in 1969, which marked a recovery. At The Hague, decisions were taken to look afresh at the question of enlargement to include Britain; to give the European Community, as it was then called, its own budget; and to consider a move towards a monetary union. The second was the long lourdeur from 1973 to 1983, which began with the failure of the proposals for moving towards economic and monetary union of 1973–4. (The word lourdeur was first applied to the progress, or lack of it, in the European Community in the late 1970s.) It escaped only when the integration process regained momentum in the early 1980s in the lead-up to the Single European Act, negotiated in December 1985, which set out a plan for completing the single market. The third period of lourdeur started with the falling away

The Waxings and Wanings

9

after the high point of Maastricht in 1991, where the steps towards setting up the Euro were agreed, and continued into the early twenty-first century. So in the history of the EU it is possible to detect three points of falling away after a period of optimism, and two recoveries. It remains to be seen whether the third will also be turned round. An examination of the earlier recoveries reveals a number of positive, supportive elements. These explain why, even after periods of hesitation, there was a further taking up of the integration process. There have been a number of occasions when practical programmes suggested themselves, and were supported by a wider range of specific arguments, yet nothing happened. For example, the case for proceeding to economic and monetary union in the 1970s was a very strong one, but in conventional terms the will was missing, and the opportunity was missed. The political will and energy to make the jump to a single currency, which would have been a logical response in Europe to the turbulence in the international monetary system in the period 1971–3, was simply not available.3 But in the first two periods of lourdeur, even when the political will to go further was weak, there remained a number of underlying pressures that could sustain recovery. It was possible to discover a grand project and to talk up the need to act so that it could be achieved. In the early twenty-first century was there a greater, or lesser, deficit of political will? The earlier recoveries were helped greatly by a favourable disposition of power. There were key alliances: Willy Brandt, German Chancellor from 1969–73, dominated at The Hague and was able to persuade French President Georges Pompidou to agree a new agenda on widening, deepening and completing the European arrangements. In the Paris meeting in December 1974, French President Giscard d’Estaing took the lead in pushing Europe forward, although very much on his terms. And in the 1980s, French President Franc¸ois Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl agreed that Europe needed further strengthening, and worked effectively together in the diplomacy leading to the conclusion of the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty. In the latter progress, Commission President Jacques Delors also played a leading role. These alliances underpinned the dominant grouping of countries from Western Europe. Within that grouping, the French and Germans were key – acting together, they could invariably outflank the potential opponents of the ever-closer union of peoples, including the British.4 It was not until the British joined in 1973 that the power structure within the system of Western European states became a significant factor in moving the EU forward. The six original member states had shown a high degree of capacity for consensus development on the basis of shared goals, rather than power disposition. This was true even when security was the issue; West Germany had happily supported the French proposal in 1950 to create a European Coal and Steel Community to secure the peace between them. They had not even bothered to work out an explicit agreement on the

10

The End of European Integration

need to achieve an equal distribution of the benefits from integration, simply assuming that they would be reasonably evenly spread, and that to the extent this did not happen now, there would be benign adjustment in the future. The belief that the Germans would benefit from the common market in industrial goods, and the French would benefit from a common market in food, was fundamental. But the precise advantage to each was not calculated – nor could it be. The calculation of relative or absolute gains did not dominate European negotiations until the British insisted on their fair return, normally referred to as juste retour, in the 1970s. This idea required each member state to consider explicitly the balance of what it contributed and received. When the British began this argument, they were accused by the French of not understanding the way the European Community worked: they were noncommunautaire.5 As with the later notion of subsidiarity, discussed below, such developments may pass unnoticed at the time but in retrospect may be seen as indicating turning points in the development of the EU. It is true that the West German government insisted in 1973 that it was no longer prepared to be the paymaster of Europe, but it was the British who reasserted most clearly the old principle of calculation on the basis of the interests of the dominant national states. Germany remained in 2006 the biggest per capita contributor and, despite being increasingly unhappy about this, agreed in the financial arrangements negotiated in 2005 to continue in this role until at least 2013.6 The French and Germans played the power card increasingly frequently against the British when integration restarted in the 1980s. They simply threatened to go ahead to a deeper Europe, whether Britain agreed or not: Britain was caught in a diplomatic trap, forced to choose between a more powerful and integrated Europe without them, or to make whatever concessions were necessary in order to stay with the convoy. Britain, and other cautious states, simply could not take the risk of being marginalised.7 So a condition of emergence from the second lourdeur was the power structure of Europe, and the insight on the part of President Mitterrand, in particular, that it could be deployed against states such as Britain, that did not want to extend supranationalism and, indeed, preferred to return to a form of intergovernmental governance. For some years, the British were hostile to the close relationship between France and Germany, which had been one of the key underpinnings of peace in Europe since the aftermath of the Second World War. It was almost as if they would prefer ancient animosities to reappear, even at the risk of new security problems in Western Europe. They resented the two continental powers sticking together to thwart British efforts to head off integration. Mitterrand and Kohl used an ancient strategy of power politics against Britain in order to promote a modern form of international cooperation. The British reacted against the holding of any meetings between France and West Germany to which they were not invited.

The Waxings and Wanings

11

Apart from the power disposition they formed, the elites from the periods of recovery also had a personal investment in the success of the integration project. The publics that formed the permissive consensus were also moved by this fear of returning to a European civil war. They were of the generation that had strong memories of the Second World War, and a strong recollection of the reasons why the founding fathers of the EU thought integration was a good thing. They had a high degree of political motivation. The pattern of extension of the membership of the EU was from a core grouping of states whose populations had more-or-less similar sets of political, social and religious values. The founding governments had been dominated by the Christian Democratic parties, but their successors, even from the left, found it possible to work within their legacy in Europe. President Mitterrand, a Socialist, when he tried to escape into more socialist policies, had found himself pushed back into the EU ideological consensus by the judgement of the market in the early 1980s that this was unacceptable. Between the first and second enlargements, the British and Irish were the main exceptions. All the member states apart from them – even the Danes – were committed to the social market, which was probably the key social economic invention of post-war Western Europe. This value consensus formed the inspirational ideological setting of the first two escapes from lourdeur. Each recovery was involved with an identifiable and focused agenda for the extension of cooperation. There was a keen sense, in each case, of carrying the process forward from a previous achievement. Linked with this was the idea, a version of spill-over, that there had been a considerable investment in what had been done, which would be lost unless further steps were taken. In the terms of regime theory, there were sunk costs in setting up the regime of the EU that should not be thrown away. Hence the deepening, widening and completing agenda of the Meeting of the Heads of State or Government at The Hague in 1969; the 1985 single market programme to complete the common market, which was agreed in the Single European Act; and the European Monetary Union agreed at Maastricht in 1991, which was intended to ease the workings of the single market. There were also the intangibles: a sense of the need to move with the sweep of history, or to meet the expectations of the more informed and interested public. This was expressed in a feeling that abandoning the historical achievement of the European project would be an unbearable profligacy. It could not be permitted that this monument to the recovery of European values and solidarity after the catastrophe of the World Wars could simply be pulled down. It was psychologically impossible for most Europeans that this achievement could simply be abandoned – such a course would risk a return to old, disgraceful ways. For these various reasons, it was possible for European governments to recover from periods of immobilisme on two occasions and to restart the integration process. These reasons reach for an explanation of the recovery

12

The End of European Integration

of the political will to go forward. In the third lourdeur, however, a number of unfavourable factors could be identified by comparison with the positive factors in the earlier periods. It was these factors that made the threat to the future of European integration in the early twenty-first century altogether more serious than in earlier periods.

The deployment of opposition The history of the EU can be viewed as a struggle between those who took a cautious approach to integration and those who had higher ambitions. From the period of the negotiations about the Treaty of Rome until the accession of the UK in 1973, there was an internal process of reconciliation between France and West Germany about the kind of new Europe that was needed. De Gaulle had preferred a Europe of States to a federal Europe, but he also wanted a reconciliation with West Germany, which he obtained in January 1963 when he agreed a Treaty of Friendship with West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.8 This was to be the framework of FrancoGerman cooperation from that date onwards. In hindsight, the crisis of 1965 about supranationalism and the new agricultural policy emerges as a stage in the emergence of a more communitaire Europe. The settlements in early 1966 set up the framework of the Common Agricultural Policy and the principle of voting by consensus, which was to last until the early twenty-first century. Although it seemed damaging at the time, de Gaulle succeeded in affecting the style of common governance and did not in practice challenge its principle. Later French leaders in the Gaullist tradition, from Pompidou to Chirac, found it possible to live with the transfer of competences to the Brussels institutions. Strong hostility to the integration project was much further to the right, or left, of the political spectrum in France than in Britain.9 Gaullists found it possible to live with Europe, in part because they understood that the Union was a manifestation of their essential identity. For the British, however, hostility to the organisation of Europe was essentially an expression of being anti-European. Unlike the French or Germans, they were prepared to deny this identity. In that early period, the struggle about whether or not a supranational Europe was to emerge was primarily between an outsider, Britain, and the core social democratic states of Western Europe. The insiders often claimed that Britain was as much of a problem outside the European Community as within it. After the British joined in 1973, that struggle became an internal one, with Britain never failing to seize an opportunity to stop integration and to challenge the values and assumptions on which it rested, even the reconciliation between France and Germany. There were moments of opportunity. One of the first was the British initiative in the 1970s to balance its contributions to, and returns from, the Community, as mentioned above. Later was the doctrine of subsidiarity, which the British seized on as a way of slowing down integration, although it had been introduced by the

The Waxings and Wanings

13

Germans as a way of protecting the interests of the German federal states.10 These two episodes were key changing points in the emergence of the EU. The first marked the end of the sense that common benefits were equally available to all countries, and that the accounts of gains and losses between states should not be counted, which was the essence of the Community method and a key indicator of an increasing sense of community. The second was setting in place a procedure that was likely to put a brake on further integration. The wording in the 1991 Treaty of Maastricht, where subsidiarity was introduced, stated that responsibility for a task should be transferred to the European level only if the task could not be carried out, for ‘reasons of scale or effect’, at the national level. Again, although the British did not think of the idea, it was the British who pushed it, first by getting the principle accepted at Maastricht, and then by giving the right to certify that it had been properly observed in new legislation to the Council of Ministers. In the proposed European Constitution, the power to stop further accretions of competence to the Community, on the basis of the argument that they could be done effectively at the national level, was to be entrenched and hardened. It was to be handed to national parliaments, where it might be expected there would be more frequent opposition to such transfers.11 If there could now only be concrete achievements that met the principle of subsidiarity, there were likely to be very few major practical achievements to come. In the history of the EU, it was hard to find any significant proposal that could not be challenged by hostile commentators on the grounds that it undermined national sovereignty or was against the principle of subsidiarity. The problem was that subsidiarity would, in practice, became a political principle, rather than a functional one, and asking the question explicitly of whether something could be done better at the European level would be an invitation to answer ‘No!’ One reason for this was that nonspecialists, including members of national parliaments, would find it pretty much impossible to work out in advance whether a proposed scheme could be better carried out in a devolved way through the states, or in a more coordinated way through a system of common governance. Governments had often acted in ways that contradicted subsidiarity in earlier periods. Sometimes they chose to stress the political goals of integration ahead of economic ones, implying the possibility that, although there were economic inefficiencies in integration, these were acceptable on the grounds that strengthening the collectivity was worth paying for. German leaders consistently agreed to pay more than their share, despite the occasional complaint, because of the perception that a more united Europe was a preferable geostrategic context. Political integration could also be seen as worthwhile, in that it made it more likely that there would be a balance in the distribution of benefits between members in the long term, and that together they could exercise greater influence on outsiders.

14

The End of European Integration

The government of Edward Heath had itself followed this strategy when Britain joined in 1973. The agreement between the government and the European Community in 1971 accepted that there would be a net payment by Britain of around £300 million per annum because of the way the Common Agricultural Policy worked. This, it was argued, was a kind of entrance fee that was worth paying because of the benefits that would arise for British industry when it had access to the common market.12 Anti-Europeans never forgave the government of Edward Heath for making this deal – especially as British industry failed to capitalise on its opportunities for several decades. The anti-Europeans also complained about the political implications of the deal: that it committed Britain to a measure of political as well as economic integration. They claimed, wrongly, that this had been concealed from them. The British government had welcomed the doctrine of subsidiarity in the 1990s precisely because it would fundamentally alter the future direction of evolution of the institutions of Europe. It did not merely cut off the federalist option; it also helped cut off any prospect for changing the working context of the nation state, keeping them in their traditional form. There were many in Britain in the early 1990s who supposed that the acceptance of subsidiarity would lead to the repatriation of a large number of competences that had been transferred to Brussels. This indicates that the doctrine was seen by anti-Europeans more as a political strategy than as a rational, cost-effective allocation of responsibilities. The so-called open method of coordination (OMC) was a further retreat from integration, in that it accepted the idea of no-go areas for the community, even if there was a good case for community involvement.13 There was a finessing of the method by recommending compatibility with Community arrangements of local adaptations. But inevitably the method gave much greater discretion, and much laxer community oversight, than was the case with Directives of the Council of Ministers. The OMC was a natural development from subsidiarity in that it confirmed the self-restraint of the Community even when there was a good case for doing things together. The OMC was identified at the Lisbon Summit in March 2000, but arguably had emerged in the practice of the EU after the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s. It allowed norms, standards and practices to be agreed at Union level and applied locally in ways that national governments preferred. But the degree of compliance was monitored by the Commission, which could ‘name and shame’ poor performers. ‘It attempts the best of all worlds: combining decentralisation of policy formulation and decisionmaking with re-integration at the EU level’.14 It operated in areas where the Commission lacked formal competence, and where the states were reluctant to accept any loss of sovereignty or formal extension of the role of the Commission. It was an alternative to the further expansion of the competence of the Commission. Hence, although it might help to limit the range of diversity of practice, it might also permit the maintenance of difference.

The Waxings and Wanings

15

Commentators were divided about whether it was a good or a bad thing. This writer sees it as a symptom of failure. It was an arrangement that reflected the increasing difficulty of taking Community action into more sensitive areas of the state, such as employment policy, health or immigration. It also reflected an increasing determination of states in the early twenty-first century to protect difference and diversity – a greater resistance to what they saw, in rather archaic terms, as the erosion of sovereignty. Like subsidiarity, to which the OMC was closely related, it was a way of limiting Community encroachment. Although a positive spin could be applied to it, the negative view was more persuasive. Other OMC problems were that it allowed influences from outside the EU to impinge on local practice, say from the work of the institutions in the UN system. Such views of best practice might be quite different from the EU view, and in consequence internal difference could be increased. On the other hand, it was not transparent, excluded national parliaments, and in consequence could allow special interests to dominate locally. It was paradoxical that the OMC depended on the good will of member states – that they wanted to abide by a version of EU norms, involving all sorts of mumbo jumbo convergence-speak (action plans, benchmarking, best practice, common indicators), but were sufficiently wary to resist competence creep and traditional regulation. There was the hope that it was a way forward, whereas it was just as likely that it reflected a drawing back. One commentator effectively summed up the situation. ‘This approach has allowed the EU to expand its decision-making capacity and has allowed the EU to enter into a number of new policy fields’.15 But ‘The OMC runs counter to the traditional method of policymaking at the EU level. The OMC is atypical to the traditional Community method of the first pillar involving regulatory/redistributive principles and atypical to the traditional diplomatic approach, which has evolved using international cooperation under the second and third pillars. Second, the approach of the OMC runs counter to the principles of good governance that have emerged (transparency, accountability, democratic input) as well as the fundamental principle that the Community is governed by the rule of law’.16 The OMC was an attempt to resist an adverse current opposing integration. It applied where convergence was needed to ‘halt a drift or slide towards divergent policies resulting in huge differentiation from the core of policies’.17 The British government was also responsible for another limitation on the growth of a more integrated system in Europe. This was the agreement in February 1988 of a system that, in effect, put a cap on the growth of the EU’s budget. The agreement imposed a ceiling for future spending, and an agreement between the EU institutions, Commission, Parliament and Council to stay within that ceiling. From then on, such agreements were renewed every five years or so and became a permanent feature of the system that ensured the budget would stay at little more than 1 per cent of the GNP of member states. The most recent agreement was negotiated

16

The End of European Integration

somewhat acrimoniously in December 2005, and was for 1.045 per cent of national wealth to apply up to 2013. Controlling the budget was a way of placing a limit on the expansion of EU powers, and ensured that the role of the Union must be limited. It was also very much a part of the process of confirming that the nation states would remain the dominant entities. The February 1988 budgetary settlement was a major victory for the intergovernmentalists and a defeat for those who favoured an ever-closer union of peoples. It is explored at greater length in Chapter 8. Integration had implications for sovereignty that in the history of the EU were often left unexamined. In this case, the chance would be good that they would later find ways of reconciling the achievement of a higher level of integration with the idea that they were still sovereign. In the history of the development of the EU, this was the normal way of proceeding: even sceptics such as de Gaulle had seen a potential – rather than an actual – challenge to sovereignty. Most states joined the EU in order to reinforce themselves as states rather than to lose themselves in some higher entity.18 They did not see membership, and extending an increasing range of competences to Brussels, as yielding up their statehood or their sovereignty. This was clearly true of the Mediterranean states, Greece, Spain and Portugal, which saw membership as a way of protecting their new-found democracy. But it was arguably true of all members. In other words, the process of integration led to a continuous adjustment of practical acts of integration to a new perception of what was necessary to national sovereignty. No member state could tell its public that it was actively engaged in giving away its sovereignty to the Brussels institutions. What emerged was a continuing symbiosis between the state and the collectivity. Greater levels of integration required different understandings of the nature of sovereignty, but in its essence, sovereignty was judged by all except the anti-Europeans to have remained intact, and the state grew stronger as integration went further, rather than the other way round. This could only happen if the implications for sovereignty of particular acts of integration were left unexamined and the risk was taken of affecting sovereignty in order to cooperate. It was only by working in this way that there was likely to be a change in views about what the nation state needed in order to survive: that there could be a transformation of the system. This could not have taken place if the states had always insisted on preserving their sovereignty as they understood it at the time of the negotiation of a new proposal, and had never been prepared to risk change. In this case, the principles of the international system of states would have been fixed, and that unique system of regional management that is now known as the EU could not have emerged. It would look more like a traditional alliance in which there was no question of sharing sovereignty and Europe would still be as it was in the nineteenth century. The Minister for Europe, Douglas Alexander, in 2005 wrote in a paper on the future of Europe that ‘the debate must focus on concrete achievements on the issues about which the public cares. But Europe’s leaders have to lead a

The Waxings and Wanings

17

debate which addresses Europeans’ doubts about the EU in the 21st century’.19 This was a formula that had become fashionable in some member countries by the early twenty-first century – the appeal for a kind of grand debate about what the public wanted from Europe. In other countries, such as Germany, the tone was more confident and the government was prepared to give a lead. The German government was clear in its commitment to the European Constitution and the need to revive integration, but accepted that the public had to be persuaded.20 Appeals for grand debates were usually an indication of a lack of leadership. These ‘Europeans’ doubts’ could not be taken as a realistic guide to what the EU should be doing in the early twenty-first century. The public’s hesitations about the EU had been carefully cultivated by a sceptical media, and reflected a crude and simplistic version of sovereignty, an impossible notion of independence in the modern world. No responsible politician could base action about the primary economic and political framework of a member state on such views. At various points in the same paper, Alexander, presumably reporting a UK government view, suggested that Europe must not challenge the nation state.21 Anti-European leaders, especially in Britain, often showed this lack of awareness of the history of Europe – a naiveity about past judgements of what was involved in integration and its implications for the nation state. He wrote as if readers had to be brought to acknowledge the reality in Europe that national identity and nation states were the dominant entities. As if this was something new! Few pro-European politicians in France and Germany would have imagined such a thing. In one sense this was a truism, and always had been. But if it was to be taken as a leitmotif of European strategy it would become a problem, as the great achievement of European integration was precisely to challenge the nation state – without destroying it. That this approach to future proposals for cooperation was recommended as the norm was one measure of the crisis of integration of the twenty-first century. Paradoxically, a British Prime Minister who had a prointegration reputation when he came into office in 1997 adopted this position. It was not just that the nation state had to be secured, which was obvious, but that there could be no imaginative reshaping of the context that could possibly lead to a rethinking of the essential character of the nation state. It was as if the view of national sovereignty had been fixed forever in 1922, when the British government refused to enter into an alliance with France in part because the French wanted joint military planning to deal with a future threat to its security from Germany.22 The joint planning operations that became a commonplace in NATO would have been unthinkable had the 1920s view of sovereignty survived into the post-War period.

The weight of Lourdeur in the early Twenty-first Century The above discussion referred to a range of negative factors regarding integration that had begun to emerge before the twenty-first century. There

18

The End of European Integration

were, however, also various positive factors that helped member governments in earlier periods to escape from a phase of inertia about integration and to restart the process of deepening, widening and completing Europe. The hesitation of the early twenty-first century was linked with the absence of two key resources that had been found in the earlier periods of recovery: there was no consensus among member governments about more ambitious integration and its desirability; and the willing lacked the capacity to exercise power leverage against the reluctant. One reason for this was that, after enlargement, the old core of the willing could be isolated among a majority of the reluctant, and this had not been possible before. There were factors that complicated the dominant alliance, especially concerning enlargement. After a time of pro-Europeanism in the immediate post-accession period, a range of doubts were appearing in Central and Eastern Europe.23 The governments had shifted from a Western European social market position to a more Anglo-Saxon one, although new governments had been forced to restore some of the welfare arrangements they had abandoned. But the broad orientation of the majority, as revealed by the experience of the first months of membership, was along the lines of the Anglo-Saxon model, preferring free market economics, a less interventionist state, and lower welfare spending. It was probable that, for these reasons, the new member states would be aligned with the British, although the latter’s attitude to budgetary support was a problem. Most importantly, the new majority was explicit in its dislike of any approach that smacked of federalism. There was no preparedness to take a flexible approach or to allow contradictions and uncertainties, but a determination to make their opposition explicit. No chances were now to be taken with sovereignty: as already pointed out, the proposed Constitution ensured this by giving national parliaments the right to decide whether the principle of subsidiarity had been satisfied. Enlargement had immediate effects for the theory and practice of voting arrangements in the Council of Ministers. In 1966 the Luxembourg Agreement, strongly promoted by French President Charles de Gaulle, reversed the Rome Treaty’s stipulation that there should be an increasing use of majority voting in the Council of Ministers. From then until the mid-1980s, decisions were taken on the basis of unanimity. In the Single European Act of 1985, however, the rules were changed to allow an increasing number of decisions to be made on the basis of qualified majority vote. In the succeeding Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice, changing qualified majorities were introduced, with the additional rule that the agreement of the European Parliament would also be needed in an increasing range of areas. The debate about the voting rules was an excellent illustration of the profound changes in the character of the EU brought about by enlargement. The prospect of enlargement brought the realisation that an increase in membership could make it more likely that proposals would be blocked by a minority of members, or that an approving majority would steamroller

The Waxings and Wanings

19

through unpopular decisions. The qualified majority rules were tinkered with in the Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice to find the right balance between a blocking minority and an approving majority, but in the proposed European Constitution a new formula was proposed: there was to be a double-majority system requiring the approval of a simple majority of states that also possessed 60 per cent of the EU’s population. Because of the protests of the Poles and Spanish, this system was later modified to require the approval of 55 per cent of the member states with two-thirds of the population.24 The failure to get the Constitution approved in the referenda in France and Holland in 2005 meant that the qualified majority rules, as agreed in the formula of the Nice Treaty, remained in operation. It was early days, but the fear was that leaving it like this would make negotiations about Council legislation hopelessly complicated and protracted. This discussion of the majority rules and the outcome was, however, largely irrelevant to the real problems of getting agreement in the Council. In practice, the majority voting rules were relevant only because they indicated possibilities rather than actual procedures. In the EU of Fifteen, the voting practice remained largely that of consensus. There were three possibilities: dissenting states could accept majority voting and go along with the majority because they did not care enough to act differently; discussion would continue until there was a general agreement, because it was clear that dissenting states would strongly object to being overruled; or a decision would be postponed until general agreement was possible. The overwhelming majority of decisions were taken on the basis of consensus, and states were rarely outvoted on matters that they judged important. As Fiona Hayes-Renshaw commented after a detailed discussion of the formal voting arrangements: ‘But this obsession with numbers may be premature and rather academic’.25 There was, in other words, a great difference between the actual procedures and the formal possibilities for voting. Enlargement appeared to bring the prospect that this would change. The discussions about voting at the constitutional convention and elsewhere seemed to assume that the new rules would be followed literally: that majorities would outvote minorities. The view appeared to be that the number of members and their range of interests and values in the new Europe required such an arrangement if anything was ever to be done. So there was the dilemma: before enlargement, qualified majority voting served only to lubricate a consensus system; after enlargement, majority voting was to be real because there was a lesser chance of consensus. Whether enlarged or not, the EU was a system of sovereign states that were always likely to object strongly to decisions of which they disapproved. The habit of consensus among the Fifteen reflected this. Now, however, precisely when there was a lower chance of consensus, the chances were to be increased that states would be outvoted, and the diplomacy indicated the working assumption that this could be the case. This was a recipe for disaster. It was a muddling of two principles, which were both inaccurate in

20

The End of European Integration

their application to what had been achieved up to the point of enlargement: it was mistaken to think the EU was a federation, in which governments could accept defeat on matters they judged important in the general interest, or that it was a traditional system of states in which the big states could impose on the small. In fact, the EU was a unique system of equal and sovereign states in which strong common working arrangements, often different from the formal doctrine or rules, had been developed: neither federation nor traditional system of states, but a system for building consensus among sovereign states. In the first years of the twenty-first century, the integration cause failed to attract any significant coalition of support because it seemed impossible to give it any specific economic or political content that would prove attractive across Europe.26 In Chapters 7 and 8, an attempt is made to resurrect the failing sense of purpose. What seemed to be happening was always merely finishing off an existing project, slowing a vessel that had reached its destination, and applying a brake on further movement. The prominent projects of the early twenty-first century were mainly about completing the single market, and were embellished with declarations of the need to protect the nation state. Diplomacy among the member states was always strenuous, but it had now acquired that quality first identified in the late 1970s and then called lourdeur, best translated as a kind of dull lack of expectation, and a weariness with the whole thing (see Chapter 3). The various proposals in the Lisbon Strategy, discussed more fully in Chapter 4, were very important but could not be portrayed as a great issue. They attracted little attention or enthusiasm from the European public. This was different from the earlier periods of hesitation; in each case there was a clear image of an attainable next step, even when the states were slow to act. The Single European Act centred on the completion of the common market and attracted the interest of the attentive public, and the Maastricht Treaty had the European Monetary Union project at its core. Some were enthused, some were appalled, but the debate energised rather than enervated. The failed referenda in France and Holland in 2005 indicated that the proposed Constitution as an integration project had no appeal. There were indeed specific objections, as pointed out in Chapter 3. But there was also a strong sense of ennuie – of being irritated by the boring complexity of the whole thing. If European integration was to recover its momentum, there was a need for a new grand project to capture the imagination at least of the attentive public. There was in 2006 no enthusiasm about any great next step that would be convincing and relevant to the problems of the lead states. The Constitution was not that! Indeed, one explanation of the failure to gain approval in France was the perception there that it was a dilution of what had been achieved. It had the character of a last act, a summation, rather than of a new start. Even though this was the case, the anti-Europeans did everything they could to talk up the dangers of the Constitution. The point could be

The Waxings and Wanings

21

put more strongly: a more integrated Europe was no longer a part of the vision of the future in the states that had previously made up the company of the willing. The loss was, of course, bound up with the political turbulence in Germany and France and the personal failures of two key political figures, Chirac and Schro¨der.27 It was also related to the falling away of the key supporters of the core, especially Italy under Berlusconi, and the Netherlands. But one of the key themes of the Kohl–Mitterand period of integration had also been diluted: further integration had been pushed by them in order to anchor a united Germany more firmly in the EU, then essentially a Western organisation. After enlargement that framework was no longer as tight: even in the EU, Germany was now more free to pursue an expanded role as a Central European power, and the election as Chancellor of Angela Merkel, whose origins were in the German Democratic Republic, made this more likely. Enlargement represented a defeat for the Franco–German strategy linking German unification with a deepening of European integration. It made it more likely that Germany would redefine its geopolitical space so that it was centred less on France and Western Europe and more on Central Europe in an enlarged EU, and in the world. There were also changes in the power configuration in Europe that made it more difficult for the cause of integration to get any purchase on political agendas. Integration had certainly been helped by the fact of the Cold War and the iron curtain, which encouraged the Germans and French to seek reconciliation and to reflect this in strong common frameworks. The US government was also likely in this context to approve of the strengthening of Western Europe as a partner in the anti-Soviet alliance. But after the ending of the Cold War this logic of power, which linked tight German– French relations with a positive view of integration from Washington, was fundamentally altered. The US government was less likely to see a united Europe as a positive, and therefore the cold war logic of the Franco– German alliance was less pressing: it was no longer necessary to push the close integration of France and Germany in order to ensure a maximum of anti-Soviet consolidation. Enlargement also meant that there were now a number of new members that favoured the strengthening of Atlantic links with the UK and USA ahead of any federalist project in the EU. Indeed, the US administration was now much happier to reveal its dislike of integration in Western Europe. The neoconservatives argued for a new defence posture according to which the USA would act pre-emptively and unilaterally in pursuit of its own interests. The USA would seek military supremacy on the oceans, on land and in space. There was less need for what Donald Rumsfeld had called the Old Europe. We were, in 2006, a long way from the autumn of 1954, when US Secretary of State Dulles had threatened an ‘agonizing reappraisal’ of US support for Europe if the French failed to ratify the proposal for a European Defence Community.28 Now the USA was concerned to prevent European moves towards a

22

The End of European Integration

common defence, unless links with NATO and US leadership were assured, and to resist any development of European capacity to thwart US economic interests. Unipolarity was not merely a situation – it was a US republican strategy. There is no doubt that the British New Labour behaviour on Iraq encouraged the divide between the USA and Europe. The power balance within the EU had changed from one that favoured the core Western European states to one that favoured the alliance between the new member states and the Atlantic states. This would become even more the case if the new members succeeded in developing their economies and consolidating their democratic arrangements within the EU. The latter had become a framework in which the old core was likely to become less important. This new coalition was not persuaded by the great cause. Indeed, the dominant discourse in the post-enlargement period had quickly become one in which advocacy of further deepening of integration was denigrated, even among those who were nominally pro-European, such as the British Prime Minister Tony Blair. This attitude is well illustrated in the views of Peter Hain, the main British negotiator in the negotiations about the Constitution.29 Such difficulties for the cause of integration were underpinned by the greater diversity of political, social and economic perspectives that came with enlargement. From the point of view of the governments in the core states, this was a major disappointment. Their view of the proper relationship between welfare systems, society and the free market had been dominant, but now the Anglo–American model, with weaker welfare systems, freer markets and a more flexible – some would say exploitable – labour force, seemed to be in the ascendant. These changes and challenges to traditional Western European arrangements came along when globalisation was also indicating to some the desirability of more neoliberal economic arrangements. For the leaders of the enlarged Europe, the experience of the Second World War was no longer a persuasive reason to promote integration, and in the globalising world there were new political and economic agendas. In other words, there was an element of amnesia in the attitudes of the new leaders towards the European achievement: the Second World War was now far enough away for the risks of returning to new conflicts within Europe to be dismissed. Until the early 1990s, we were in the post-Second World War world. By 2006, we were in the post-cold-war world. These changes meant that the recovery from the lourdeur of the early twenty-first century was more difficult than it had been earlier. It could not be achieved by going forward on the basis of what had been accomplished, and required a radical change of course. Care had been taken to remove all the declarations of ambitious intent, as with the British insistence on excluding the idea of economic and monetary union from the Maastricht Treaty, and preventing any reference to a federal Europe from the Constitutional Treaty. A number of steps had been taken to indicate that a point

The Waxings and Wanings

23

had been reached where a line had to be drawn around the integration project. There was to be no fiscal federalism in an unrestricted Union budget; there was to be no risk-taking with sovereignty in allocating new powers to Europe; there was to be a greater tolerance of local exceptionalism; and every effort was made to create a public mood that was hostile to any new beginning. Enlargement had strengthened the case for allowing the various states to adhere to those arrangements that suited them, and it was indeed the case that ‘variable geometry’ already existed.30 But this was not the point: it was both necessary to the enlarged EU, and likely to damage it. Further success with deepening integration was more likely to result from departing from the established integration path, for instance by starting a fresh enterprise between a group of willing states within the 25+ members. This would amount to the choice of a strategy of two-level integration by a core of the willing, an abandonment of the older linear path to integration in favour of finding a new model based on new agreements between members of the smaller group. This argument is developed further in the concluding chapters. It was not just that a core of willing states needed to go ahead. What was also needed was a new European Project for them to pursue, something to energise the enthusiasts, and challenge the antis. Many of these problems and possibilities are discussed at greater length in the succeeding chapters of this book.

2

The case against Europe

This chapter aims to evaluate how far the cause of European integration had faded in the early twenty-first century, and to consider some explanations of this. The explanations considered here are the ones that were usually given – they were held to be true, and form a part of public opinion, rather than being actually true. The failure of a cause may be attributable to well founded criticisms, or it may be attributable to the context that makes them persuasive. In the past, the pressure towards integration was created by a supportive elite, most frequently the governments of France and Germany, reflecting the waxings and wanings discussed in Chapter 1. The public, even in the more positive countries, tended to be moderately supportive, rather than enthusiastic, about their initiatives. This is shown in Table 2.1. There was a cause, and the publics treated it benignly in what was called a ‘permissive consensus’. It should not be supposed, from the clamour of the anti-Europeans, that the permissive consensus about Europe had disappeared by the time of the waning of integration of the early twenty-first century. Indeed, according to the extensive surveys of Europe’s public opinion collected under the heading of Eurobarometer, the permissive consensus had survived in a number of countries that had been members in the 1970s, although there had been a general fall in the level of support. Similarly, the hostile countries, especially the UK, were still doubtful – even more so. Overall, though, there was little or no support for withdrawal. But there were some differences. In some key countries there had been a considerable falling off in support. There was evidence of a general decline in confidence in the institutions of the Union, with both Commission and Parliament attracting increased distrust,1 and a majority believing that the cost of administration was the single largest item on the Union’s budget. In fact, this belief reflected prejudice rather than fact, as the administrative costs were low down the list of budgetary expenditures and, as is shown later, arguably lower than in member countries such as Britain.2 The instruments of the process were less trusted – indeed, in some matters, positively distrusted – although the benefits of what had been achieved hitherto were not disputed.

57 60 59 66 60 58 66

42 33 41 29 37 34 36

Denmark 63 62 61 57 59 58 63

West Germany 61 63 67 52 57 54 59

France 56 50 67 50 59 54 63

Ireland 69 82 75 68 70 65 73

Italy 67 73 73 77 73 73 63

Luxembourg

Source: Eurobarometer, 10, January 1979, Commission of the European Communities, Brussels, p. 69.

Autumn 1973 Autumn 1974 Autumn 1975 Autumn 1976 Autumn 1977 Spring 1978 Autumn 1978

Belgium

63 70 67 74 74 78 83

Netherlands

Table 2.1 Percentage of respondents agreeing that their country’s membership of the common market is a good thing

40 36 50 39 35 29 39

UK

56 59 63 55 56 53 60

EC

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The End of European Integration

Public attitudes to the Union The overall trend in public attitudes towards the EU was downwards, although there had been levels of support in the past at about the same level as in 2004–5. The run of figures in the 1970s showed a solid pattern of support, as illustrated in Table 2.1. In the sceptical states, the UK and Denmark, the percentage of those who thought that the common market was a good thing was generally in the 30s or lower 40s; the broadly supportive countries, such as France, Germany, Belgium and Ireland, had corresponding figures in the 50s and 60s; while the enthusiasts were more often in the 70s, occasionally dropping into the 60s. The latter included the Netherlands, Italy and Luxembourg. This was the period when the general view was that the European public provided enough support to encourage further integration in Europe: they allowed integration to continue and responded tolerantly to pro-European leadership. Positive votes over 50 per cent could reasonably be interpreted in this way. Through the 1980s, the numbers of those in support steadily increased, at different levels according to disposition, and in the late 1980s and 1990–1 a peak of the support between the 1970s and 2005 was reached pretty much everywhere. These figures are given in Table 2.2. The EU average then stood at a surprising 73 per cent. The Netherlands was at almost 90 per cent, Luxembourg, Italy and Spain above 80 per cent, and Belgium, Germany and France comfortably exceeding 70 per cent. Even in the UK and Denmark, traditionally sceptical, a majority said that membership of the EU was a good thing. The Danes, indeed, were positively enthusiastic. Table 2.2 National responses on support for EU membership: percentage saying membership was ‘a good thing’ Country France UK Austria Sweden Finland Germany Italy Portugal Netherlands Belgium Denmark Spain Luxembourg Greece Ireland

At entry 1995 At entry 1995 At entry 1995

High 1990–91

Low 2004

Fall

75 58 29 29 45 74 83 80 88 75 70 79 84 75 75

43 29 30 37 46 45 54 55 64 57 54 64 75 71 71

32 29 na na na 29 29 25 24 18 16 15 9 4 3

Source: Eurobarometer, 61, July 2004, Commission of the European Communities, Brussels, pp. B33–B51.

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Over the next 15 years or so, the trend in levels of support, described as regarding membership in the EU as ‘a good thing’, was clearly downwards. In Table 2.2 the figures for the Fifteen – not including the new states of Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean area, but including the 1995 entrants – are arranged to indicate the change from the peak of support, or from the point of entry, to the more recent low level of support. They are arranged according to the measure of the decline in support in the third column. The figures reveal that, among the 12 members before 1995, the level of support for the view that Europe was a good thing reached its highest level in the period 1990–1, or a little before that, and had generally declined by 2004. But the decline among the original core of the member states was remarkable, being around 30 per cent in each case. Particularly striking was the fall in France and Germany, which moved from being supportive to being unsupportive, in the sense of having fewer than half of respondents who thought membership was a good thing. Support in Italy fell from a very high level, but stayed above 50 per cent. Similarly, but less surprisingly, the level of support in the UK fell sharply, but from a lower level. Even there, though, the figures suggested little support for the idea that Europe was a bad thing, which overall stood at 17 per cent. The 1995 entrants were exceptional only in the sense that they started out without enthusiasm and generally remained in that condition. Of the rest, the level of support remained at over 50 per cent, with the figures for decline moving from striking (Portugal) to negligible (Ireland). In this group, the permissive consensus seemed to survive, whereas it seemed to have weakened among the rest. It was particularly striking, and damaging for the future of the EU, that the French and German respondents had been so disillusioned. Nevertheless, the Eurobarometer reporters pointed out that overall ‘in 2005 the feeling of belonging to the EU was at positive levels, with more than half of the people interviewed (54 per cent) declaring that EU membership was a good thing for their country’. They continued: ‘although this level was two points lower than that recorded in October 2004, it was still among the most positive recorded over the last 10 years’.3 These views were based somewhat misleadingly on average responses and changes, and left the disappointing results in the old core countries unmentioned. But more importantly, no notice was taken of the trajectory of the movement: the fact that it had declined so rapidly was in itself significant. The reporters acknowledged that citizens of the new member states were less positive about the benefits of membership. ‘This was not, however, synonymous with opposition to EU membership, since the proportion of opponents was still small and exceeded 20 per cent only in the countries which had traditionally been more sceptical about European construction, such as Sweden (28 per cent), the United Kingdom (27 per cent) as well as Austria’.4 In the latter country, the proportion of positive opinions about EU membership had fallen significantly, by nine points, between 2004 and 2005.

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In Table 2.3 the continuing decline in positive views about the EU between 2004 and 2005 is reported for the 25 member states. Respondents were also questioned about whether their country had benefited from membership of the EU. Support had declined by two points since the last, recent survey in autumn 2004. In 2005, 54 per cent of European citizens considered that, as a whole, their country had benefited from EU membership, compared with 33 per cent who took the opposite view. This indicator was now at a new record high for the EU as a whole for the period since 1994, when the figure was 42 per cent. Respondents in Ireland were the most persuaded of the benefits of being a member of the EU (87 per cent).5 Numerous respondents in Luxembourg (72 per cent), Lithuania (72 per cent) and Denmark (70 per cent) were also very much of that opinion. Eurobarometer noted: ‘It was interesting to note that in the two countries which in their recently held referenda voted against the Constitution, the assessment of EU membership, in terms of benefits for their Table 2.3 Changes in numbers of those saying membership was ‘a good thing’ between Eurobarometer September 2004 and September 2005

EU25 Luxembourg Netherlands Ireland Belgium Spain(?) Portugal Denmark Lithuania Germany Greece(?) Italy Slovakia Poland France Czech Republic Slovenia Estonia(?) Finland Sweden Cyprus Latvia Hungary Malta Austria UK

Eurobarometer 62

Eurobarometer 63

56 85 75 77 73 72 59 61 69 60 61 57 57 50 56 45 52 52 48 48 52 40 49 45 46 38

54 80 77 75 67 66 61 59 59 58 56 56 54 53 51 49 49 48 45 44 43 42 42 40 37 36

Change (%) 2 5 +2 2 6 6 +2 2 10 2 5 1 3 +3 5 +4 3 4 3 4 9 +2 7 5 9 2

Source: Eurobarometer, 62, September 2004, p. 68; Eurobarometer, 63, September 2005, p. 10, Commission of the European Communities, Brussels.

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country, was clearly positive, in France at 53 per cent and, even more so in the Netherlands at 67 per cent’.6 But the longer-term figures show a less encouraging and more complex pattern, particularly when the figures on ‘country has benefited’ are compared with those of support for EU membership, expressed as the view that membership was a ‘good thing’.7 There are three different types of pattern (A–C), which refer to the situation in 1990–1 in comparison with that in 2004–5. Type A: where figures for 1990–1 on membership as a good thing are high, but those on their country’s having benefited in percentage terms are a lot lower; and where figures for 2004–5 on membership being a good thing are a lot lower, and those on ‘benefited’ also a lot lower. This is true for France, UK, Germany and, to some degree, Italy, although the latter just gets over the 50 per cent level of support. Type B: where figures for 1990–1 on membership as a good thing are high, but those on their country’s having benefited in percentage terms are a lot lower, and where figures for 2004–5 on membership are lower, but in the range of permissive consensus, and those on ‘benefit’ are in percentage terms only moderately higher or lower. This is true for Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Denmark and Portugal. Type C: where the figures for 1990–1 on membership as a good thing are high, and those on ‘benefited’ in percentage terms are also high or higher, and where figures for 2004–5 on membership remained high, and those on ‘benefited’ similarly remained higher or at about the same level as in 1990– 91. In diagrammatic terms, these patterns are represented as in Table 2.4. These figures again illustrate the conclusion that the broad trend in support for the EU was downwards, although the decline was less for type C countries, where a few countries had not declined at all. In type C countries, also, the view that their country had benefited from membership had also declined little. Indeed, a perception of benefits had increased for Spain. Such countries might be judged as being relatively content with membership in the EU even in 2004–5. For type A and B countries, however, the situation was less positive. In type A countries there had been a steep fall-off in support, as well as in the perception that membership had brought benefits. When support was high, but benefits were much lower, there had to be an expectation of benefit for the future. For this group, the situation in 1990–1 could be interpreted as showing that membership was a good thing because, although current benefits were modest, there were rewards to come. The situation in 2004–5, however, suggested that few benefits could now be expected: there was disappointment about the rewards and continuing membership was unattractive. (This is different from supporting actually leaving!) The relationship between the two perceptions reinforces the problem of the decline in support: at the earlier point there were gains to be expected; at the later date the public believed that they were unlikely. For type B countries, of course, membership was still to be supported in 2004–5,

DE FR UK DE FR UK

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20

DE FR FR UK DE UK

2004–05

IT NL IT BE BE NL

1990–91

NL IT IT BE BE NL

2004–05

Type B

SP

LU LU GR SP P P IR IR GR DK DK

1990–91

GR IR GR IR LU LU SP SP P P DK DK

2004–05

Type C

Bold, percentage who think membership ‘a good thing’; italic, percentage who think country has benefited. Belgium, BE; Denmark, DK; France, FR; Germany, DE; Greece, GR; Ireland, IR; Italy, IT; Luxembourg, LU; the Netherlands, NL; Portugal, P; Spain, SP. Source: Eurobarometer, 61 and 63, 2004 and 2005, Commission of the European Communities, Brussels.

1990–91

Percentage

Type A

Table 2.4 Percentage who think membership ‘a good thing’ and percentage who think country has benefited, 1990–91 and 2004–05

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although with less enthusiasm than at the earlier date. There was also greater expectation of future benefits, although clearly less than in 1990–1. The overall conclusions from the juxtaposition of these figures from 1990–1 and 2004–5 is that for type A countries, attitudes towards Europe had become critical by 2004–5: there had been a vote of no confidence. For type B countries, the question of future rewards was key: if benefits came to be perceived as unattainable in a reasonable time span, there was a risk of further loss of confidence and the failing of the permissive consensus. In type C countries, which overall were major beneficiaries from the EU’s budget, the EU was well regarded: the countries were seen to have benefited, and membership was supported, strongly in some countries, but overall comfortably above the base level of permissive consensus. But this rather gloomy picture was not brightened by consideration of the situation in the newer member countries. One year after joining the EU, opinions on the benefits of membership after the first year were clearly positive for only six out of ten respondents (59 per cent). Citizens in Lithuania, as well as in Slovakia, Poland and Slovenia, were particularly convinced of the benefits. Among the ten new member states the only exception was Cyprus, where 49 per cent of citizens declared that their country had not yet benefited from being a member of the EU. That percentage had, however, declined by two points since October 2004. Alongside Cypriots, a majority of citizens in Sweden (50 per cent) and Austria (46 per cent) were critical when assessing the benefits of membership. That was also the case in the UK (42 per cent), Finland (43 per cent) and Germany (43 per cent). The figures for all member countries are given in Table 2.5. In 2005, the citizens of the 25 were also asked about their image of the EU – another way of testing europhilia against euroscepticism. Eurobarometer showed that less than half of its citizens had a positive image of the EU (47 per cent), a percentage that continued the downwards trajectory of the previous survey (50 per cent). This change was accompanied by a proportional increase in negative opinions, with approximately one in five citizens (19 per cent) stating a negative view. Nevertheless, the difference between positive and negative opinions remained very positive (+28 points). But the point should be made, and will be revisited later, that this overall view was an average of 25 countries that increasingly showed wide divergence in views about the EU. Seventeen of the 25 member countries were not very, or fairly, positive about membership, in the sense that their response in these two categories was less than 50 per cent. For the 25, this could not be seen as constituting a supportive consensus. In Sweden, Austria and the UK, approximately a third of citizens considered that the EU’s image was negative (see Table 2.6).

Explaining the changes By 2004–5, support for the EU seemed to be in decline. Across Europe there were certainly variations in opinions, but the overall trend seemed to

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Table 2.5 Perception of benefits from being a member of the European Union Country EU25 Ireland Lithuania Luxembourg Denmark Greece Belgium Spain Portugal Netherlands Slovakia Slovenia Poland Estonia Latvia Czech Republic France Malta Italy Germany Finland Hungary Austria Cyprus UK Sweden

Benefited (%) 55 87 72 72 70 69 69 69 67 67 63 62 62 58 57 56 53 53 52 50 50 47 41 41 40 36

Not benefited (%)

Don’t know (%)

12 6 12 21 20 24 26 15 24 28 27 31 25 28 31 33 34 30 34 43 43 39 46 49 42 50

12 7 15 7 10 7 5 15 9 4 11 6 14 14 12 11 13 17 14 7 7 14 13 10 18 14

Source: Eurobarometer, 63, September 2005, Commission of the European Communities, Brussels, p. 13.

be one of increasing doubt. Significantly fewer citizens in member states thought it was a good thing, and even fewer thought it could bring benefits, than in 1990–1. Furthermore, the institutions were less trusted than they had been. True, there was adequate support for the Union in a number of countries, but France and Germany, the old dynamos of integration, the countries that more than any others had pedalled the bicycle, were run down. The main purpose of this book is to explain how this broad decline in support happened. In 1990–1, as has been shown, attitudes towards Europe were very positive. There were a number of possible explanations for this. The Cold War seemed to have run its course and Germany reunited. There was obvious progress towards the completion of the common market, following the success of the 1992 process of the Single European Act in 1985. Kohl and Mitterrand were still short of their political end-games. The diplomacy leading up to the agreement of the Maastricht Treaty in December 1991 was marked by the usual wrangling, but there were a number of possible products

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Table 2.6 Percentage of ‘very positive’ or ‘fairly positive’ answers to: ‘Does the EU conjure up for you a very positive, fairly positive, neutral, fairly negative or very negative image?’ Country Ireland Italy Luxembourg Spain Slovenia Belgium Portugal Cyprus Greece Poland France Lithuania Malta European Union of 25 Slovakia Czech Republic Hungary Germany Latvia Holland Estonia Denmark Sweden Austria Finland United Kingdom

Percentage 68 63 58 57 57 56 56 56 54 51 49 49 48 47 46 43 43 42 40 38 38 35 34 30 30 28

Source: Eurobarometer, 63, September 2005, Commission of the European Communities, Brussels, p. 15.

that were seen as beneficial for a time. These included the reinforcement of the Schengen arrangements; the agreement (without the UK) of the Social Chapter; the promise, for the first time, of a European foreign policy and the appointment of an officer to promote that; and the start of cooperation on defence policy through the Western Europe Union (WEU). There was also the agreement to create a European citizenship and to give the European Community the new title of European Union. All of this, and more, looked very promising, and the specific gains became more attractive in the rosy setting of a world without the superpower nuclear balance, and an internal economy that seemed well set. What had happened to change all this by 2004–5? The answers to this question range from those that are reasonably objective to those that are significant because of their social–political setting. The process of the decline of a cause is a complex phenomenon that has a social setting and an

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economic and political context, which gives meaning to the various specific claims and counter-claims about the cause. Hence the enlargement of the EU acquired negative connotations among the public of the EU because of other developments, such as the high levels of unemployment in a number of member states, and the perceived threat of international terrorism. The idea that enlargement meant great movements of people from East to West, which had not been proved true by the time of writing, nevertheless was a strong weapon in the arguments of eurosceptics because of the perception that the outsider was a threat to economic and physical security. Similarly, the weakening of the European cause was bound up with the decline in confidence in politicians and political systems in a number of Western states. There was a coherence about political attitudes which meant that decline in belief in one political cause was likely to coincide with decline in political causes in general, unless there were strong countervailing factors such as the appearance of a charismatic leader. Similarly, the idea that national governments were untrustworthy was unlikely to coincide with the view that the Brussels institutions were trustworthy! These points are explored at greater length in later chapters. But at this point, complaints about the EU, which often served to justify anti-Europeanism, are examined. The reference country is mainly the UK, probably the most anti-European. The range of criticisms of the EU, often heard in the early twenty-first century, included:  Concerning budget and expenditure: that the British contribution was a waste of money as the UK paid far more to the budget than was received; any returns were entirely inadequate compared with the scale of contributions (mainly concerned the UK)  Concerning corruption, greed and waste: the Brussels civil service was seen to be entirely self-interested, greedy and corrupt; Eurocrats were constantly caught in acts of dishonesty and incompetence by the Court of Auditors; most of the budget was spent on administration (most members)  Concerning the Common Agricultural Policy: that it was mainly concerned with boosting the incomes of continental farmers, particularly those in France; that it was expensive, and without it food in Britain would be much cheaper and better; there was excessive regulation of the process of food production; British farmers were penalised by the way the CAP worked: it had suppressed the production of traditional British foods, such as types of apples and cherries, and had favoured French, Spanish and Italian producers (most members, but less in food-surplus countries such as France, Ireland and Denmark)  Concerning excessive interventions in domestic arrangements: it imposed restrictions on health and safety grounds which were unreasonable; it had limited the ability of workers to work longer hours in factories or in driving trucks; it had tried to impose unreasonable costs on hiring

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labour by requiring excessive training, unreasonable welfare provision, and interfering in pension and unemployment arrangements; so it made production more expensive and uncompetitive and contributed to unemployment; there was grossly excessive regulation, a burden on industry, especially discouraging to new enterprises, for which the EU was to blame (most members)  Concerning immigration: it had demolished national defences against uncontrolled immigration, from new member states as well as from outside the EU, so that more foreigners now took jobs that should be reserved for national citizens; it had been complicit in creating a whole range of social problems that resulted from excessive immigration; it had encouraged social unrest and unemployment, and imposed impossible burdens on national welfare systems (strongest in western countries – a key issue in France, the Netherlands and UK) The need to achieve a balanced view on any of these matters was not an issue with which anti-Europeans were much concerned. What mattered was that the arguments were believed by the public to whom they were presented. There were therefore two questions that needed to be put: was there indeed a more balanced view to be had on the budget and Union spending, the CAP, and the rest; and, if there was, how did we explain the public’s preference for one side rather than the other? The answers to the latter question lay in the social and political context of the debate, rather than in the weight of a particular argument. Some newspapers, especially in the UK, had made a point of stressing the negative, and this presumably helped to sell more copies. But this was only made possible by the general context of negativity towards Europe. That context, as much as the balance on each of the individual issues, has to be examined. The latter is looked at first.

Concerning budget and expenditure Writing in the Daily Mail on 15 October 1999, Edward Heathcoat Amory wrote scathingly at several points about Britain’s budgetary contribution to the budget of the EU. In reply to the claim by the ‘Britain in Europe’ campaign that Britain received the largest grant from the European Social Fund of any member state – £1.3 billion in 1997–8, an accurate figure – he wrote that ‘the only figure that matters is the bottom line. We pay £11 billion to Europe and only get half back’; and in reply to the claim that the EU helped 10,000 British students abroad, he argued that ‘these programmes are funded by the British taxpayer, which in 1998 paid £5.5 billion more to the EU than we received in return’. The figures used should be qualified at the outset: although the numbers were accurate, the units were Euros rather than pounds. In 2004 Britain made in total a net contribution to the EU of about E4.5 billion.8 The total payment to the EU was about E11.5 billion, which took account of an approximately 30 per cent reduction

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brought about by the rebate mechanism agreed in 1984. The EU spent about E7 billion in the UK. To put the amount into perspective, the net contribution might be compared with any number of UK government payments; for instance, it was reported in The Observer (15 January 2006) that the government had paid £5.6 billion to the company QinetiQ to manage UK military practice grounds for 25 years. The UK’s Department of Health spent about £68 billion in 2004–5, Defence about £30 billion and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister £6 billion.9 Nevertheless, the sum paid was a substantial one, and the question of whether it could be justified has to be taken seriously. The idea that membership in the EU might bring benefits that were worth paying for was discounted from the outset in the Heathcoat Amory argument. One way of showing that there were benefits, without the necessity of an item-by-item reckoning of accounts, is to point out that in 2004 there were six other big payers into the budget of the EU. If the sums paid were expressed, as they should be, in terms of payments per head of population, Britain paid E75 in 2004, Germany E102, the Netherlands E185, Belgium E144, Italy E61 and France E59.10 The fact of these payments suggested a belief outside the UK that membership was a common good that should be paid for; even though support had declined in these countries, there was no serious questioning of contributions in any of them. The question then becomes whether each member was paying something like its fair share. Again, the answer had to be that the British payment in 2004 was not unreasonable in terms of per capita GDP, accepting that it was fair for richer members to pay a greater proportion of the costs. In 2005, British per capita GDP measured in terms of purchasing power standards (PPS) was 27,300, that of Germany was 25,700, and that of France 25,500. Figures for the Netherlands were 28,900 and Belgium 27,600.11 In 1984, when Britain’s rebate was agreed, British per capita GDP was sixth in the Community. In 2005, although each Briton paid more than each inhabitant of France and Italy, each person paid less than each German, or inhabitant of the Netherlands or Belgium. If the British rebate were abandoned, Britain would end up paying about the same as Germany, but still less than the Netherlands or Belgium in per capita terms. It could be argued that this would be unfair to the British people compared with France and Italy, but the differences on a per capita basis, compared with the range of government expenditures, would be tiny. It is possible to be more specific about the benefits. These would include the advantages of entry for British industry to the common market of some 370 million comparatively rich people, the advantages of membership from the point of view of inward investment, the advantage of a collective presence in a number of external forums, such as the UN system, the IMF and the World Bank, the effect of membership on the attitudes of people, and the growth of European non-governmental organisations. Whatever doubts there may be about deeper integration, it has changed the way people of different nations think about each other, so that the possibility of war has

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retreated. And the framework of Europe has encouraged the development of a dense network of groups such as trans-European lobbies, interest groups and professional associations. The maintenance of peace and security among European states was one of the earliest and strongest motivations for embarking on setting up the Union, and it remained one of its strongest justifications. But the problem was that the benefits of membership were often very hard to quantify, so that if a critic were determined to discount the intangibles, the accounting of the costs and benefits of membership could easily be fixed to show a deficit. Yet all this is not the essence of the argument here. That is rather that it was the negative case which had appealed to the European publics, and the positive case which had been discounted. The latter had indeed become all but invisible in the UK by 2006: it was impossible to identify any positive note about the EU in 95 per cent of the British press, as if any positive expression was to be taken as a personal weakness of the offending reporter.

Concerning corruption, greed and waste Eurobarometer reported that a majority of respondents had supposed that the EU’s biggest expense was that falling under the heading of administration. In fact, according to the 2005 Report of the Independent Court of Auditors, only 6.6 per cent of the budget was spent on administration in 2004, and 5.35 per cent in 2002.12 In comparison in the UK, according to the Treasury, the cost of administration was about 8.51 per cent of total government expenditure.13 On this evidence, the EU was more efficient, in that less was spent on administration, than the British Government. (Incidentally it is surprisingly difficult to discover how much is spent on administration in individual UK ministries.) The biggest item in the EU budget in 2004, as ever, was spending on the CAP, and the second largest was spending through the Structural Funds.14 But the belief that spending on administration was the highest must be regarded as a vote of no confidence on the part of the respondents; there was a belief that the Brussels institutions were venal and corrupt. Again, there was a lack of nuance in the public’s view, which was played upon by anti-Europeans to confirm its worst suspicions. The Heathcoat Amory article mentioned on page 35 cannot resist a snide reference to ‘well-paid Eurocrats’ and the ‘corrupt and unreformed EU Common Agricultural Policy’. The anti-Europeans had the advantage that there were indeed significant problems concerning the European budget. In the interest of balance, note should be taken of the problems, as well as the steps taken to put them right by the time of writing in 2006. Complaints from a number of informed sources, led by the European Parliament15 and the Court of Auditors,16 had mounted through the 1990s and eventually led to the commissioning of an investigation through a Committee of Independent Experts, which produced a first report in March 1999.17 This led to the resignation of the Santer

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Commission in that month, and the setting up of a succession Commission under Romano Prodi in June 1999. The problems identified by the Committee of Independent Experts and the Court of Auditors included the following.  A failure to exercise effective oversight of spending on programmes once approved. There was no culture of responsibility in the Commission so that once a decision had been taken to spend in fulfilment of a policy, shoulders were shrugged and bucks were passed.  Linked with this was an inadequate system of internal audit. There was a department with this responsibility, but it was too small and lacked the resources or status to impose itself on top officials to compel them to exercise responsible oversight. This problem had developed in part because of the considerable expansion since the early 1990s of areas where the Commission had operational responsibility involving spending and exercising technical control.  The Committee of Independent Experts identified malpractice by a number of individuals in a range of areas. Commissioner Edith Cresson was found to have failed to apply the rules in appointing an individual to her staff, who then seemed to work mainly in an area not linked with the business of the Community. Another individual was found guilty of improper conduct in the area of the policy on tourism. Other abuses were found with regard to the Mediterranean programme.  There was no effective system in the hands of the Community to audit spending in and by member states, especially that through the CAP and the Structural Funds. This raised two problems that were characteristic of the budget – that much of the spending was not directly under the Commission’s control, and that improving auditing mechanisms would, ironically, involve increased spending and require more disclosure and cooperation from member states. In its report on the 1999 accounts, the Court of Auditors complained that the Community was open to overcharging by contractors, did not manage its internal finances effectively, often with no officer taking responsibility, and often underestimated costs and then had to make them up with ad hoc arrangements.18 The Court also concluded that the Community was much too slow to correct known financial mismanagement (para 04). Severe criticism of the Commission was implied in the Court’s view that ‘the measure of success for the Commission should be the extent to which policy goals are attained with the minimum of cost’ (para 06). It stressed that ‘the change of culture and practice that this would entail should be placed at the heart of the financial reform process’ (para 06). But blame was also attributed to member states: ‘there were persistent weaknesses in Member States’ management and control systems’, although ‘important initiatives have been taken to improve matters by strengthening the financial controls that

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Member States are themselves required to maintain over Communityfinanced or co-financed operation’ (para 10). The Court stressed that the Commission needed to increase its pressure on member states to put proper controls in place, and implied that it had been slow to do this in the past (para 13). For all these complaints, however, the Court also warned against the error of ‘misrepresenting the errors found . . . as an indication of the level of fraud affecting the Community budget. The references in the Court’s reports to payment whose (sic) amounts are wrong because of error and irregularity primarily concern problems of inadequate financial management and control. The bulk of the errors occur in the main expenditure programmes managed by the public authorities in the Member States and particularly concern such things as small overpayments to farmers and payments for expenditure by public authorities which is not eligible for EU co-financing’.19 The conclusion has to be that, although there were failures of Commission management, the auditing problems were not a result of fraud, and the bulk of them were attributable to problems, either accidental or intended within member states. The Court acknowledged that the Prodi Commission, established in September 1999, had immediately ‘set about a new reform programme’.20 Its aim was to tighten management, starting with a Financial Regulation of 25 June 2002, which set out new provisions for reporting the implementation of the budget and drawing up financial statements. At the time of writing, the most recent Report of the Court of Auditors, that on the 2004 financial year, was impressed by the improvements made.21 It concluded that the accounts, with a few exceptions, faithfully reflected the revenue and expenditure of the Communities for the year and their financial position at the year end, and that the Commission had made real progress in introducing better accounting procedures. There was now an improved system for following payments made through the CAP which considerably reduced the chance of intended or unintended over-claiming for subsidy.22 The Court also noted ‘the progress made by the Commission as regards the reform of its internal control system and the positive impact on the legality and regularity of the Commission’s internal management of expenditure’ (para VIII). But more could be done to check that payments under the CAP had been made correctly, and payments made under the Stuctural Programmes were still being made carelessly, with inadequate checks as to whether claims for payment were legal, or whether they had been deliberately duplicated. The Court concluded that progress was still required in terms of operational effectiveness. What conclusions can be extracted from this account? In 1999 there was certainly a case to answer, and the Commission was in serious need of a shot across the bows. A small number of its officials were found out and, as the Report of the Committee of Independent Experts stated, were disciplined too late and too little. But by 2005 the Commission had made

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headway in clarifying the responsibilities of its officers for the programmes they initiated, and strengthening the internal arrangements for auditing Commission activities. There was certainly more to be done: the Integrated Administration and Control System needed to cover all CAP operations, and the rules should be applied firmly and comprehensively to claims for payment from the Structural Funds. The Commission had been lax, but was now beefing up its systems. It was still not at the point at which a complete audit discharge could be recommended to the European Parliament, to which the Court was answerable, but there was strong evidence of progress. The main area of remaining problems was, however, much more intractable than that of internal Commission business, because in applying tighter systems it had to rely on the cooperation and, indeed, honesty of authorities in member states. At the European level, an anti-fraud machinery had been set up which was strictly independent of the Commission, the Office Europe´en de Lutte Anti-Fraude (OLAF). The Court reported, however, that ‘only a small proportion of the breaches of the regulations found by the Court have justified further investigation by OLAF or the authorities with criminal jurisdiction in the Member states’.23 The EU has a comparatively small budget compared with that of member states, about £70.2 billion in 2004–5 against, as mentioned, £71.5 billion for one administrative department in the UK, the Department of Health. It would, however, be unreasonable to suppose that there would be absolutely no fraud or error in such a budget. Fraud and error in the payment of benefits by the UK government to beneficiaries in the UK, according to one report, amounted to about £2 billion!24 There was an absolute need for flawless systems for managing expenditure: errors had to eliminated, and the Court of Auditors was correct to continue to refuse to say that all was well with the Budget when more progress was possible. The most recent estimate of the amount fraudulently taken from the EU in the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century was about £700 million, about 1 per cent of the total budget. Such fraud needed to be chased vigorously, and OLAF investigated several hundred cases each year, but it would be unreasonable to expect zero fraud. At the time of writing, as the Court pointed out, the Commission needed to continue to improve its systems, but real progress had been made and taking the process further would be more difficult because of the need to impinge on areas of national jurisdiction. A balanced account of these developments remained largely invisible to the European public, a situation that anti-Europeans were anxious to preserve. This account of a problem acknowledged in the EU, and a struggle to put it right, might be compared with what happened within states. The first decade of the twenty-first century contained at the national level a number of misdemeanours in business practice and financial probity. The Berlusconi government had some explaining to do. The British government had problems with such matters as loans to political parties in exchange for membership

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of the House of Lords, and several cases of unusual ways of financing the purchase of British armaments.

Concerning the common agricultural policy At the time of writing there were ample grounds for criticising the CAP of the EU, and developing a case in its defence was a risky enterprise.25 It was not that it did not need reform, because in many aspects reform was overdue, but rather that it also had to be acknowledged that there was a good case for having some kind of common policy for agriculture. There was indeed a case for keeping some of the present policies in modified form and rejecting some of the proposals made for its reform. Certainly, the argument that all forms of CAP should be abandoned, as was part of the canon of anti-Europeanism, should be discounted. There was the danger of escaping from one set of problems, resulting from the belief that farmers’ incomes had to be subsidised by the tax-payer and the consumer, and plunging straight into another set resulting from the dogma of neoliberal economics, which held that it could all be left to the market. Care had to be taken, above all, to prevent food production from falling into the hands of monopolistic global agribusinesses. The ideal CAP lay somewhere between these two extremes. The critical press saw only a ‘corrupt and unreformed EU Common Agricultural Policy’ (Daily Mail, 15 October 1999) without any concession to the view that reform of the existing system could be preferable. In the early twenty-first century, several proposals to change the CAP were agreed by the member states. One was in the so-called Agenda 2000 agreement;26 the second, major set of proposals were agreed by agriculture ministers in June 2003 and approved by the Council on 30 June 2003.27 They were responding to a set of internal and external problems. The CAP was seen to be expensive, estimated to have cost each family of four around E950 a year in 2004, a calculation based on direct payments from the Union, and higher prices in the shops for food deliberately created by keeping out cheaper imports from the world market.28 In 2004, the price maintenance mechanism cost around 57 per cent of all CAP spending as surpluses of internal production were bought up and stored to maintain the higher prices.29 The Agenda 2000 proposals aimed to reduce the amount spent on price maintenance, and set up a wider programme for rural development. The June 2003 agreement took these ideas forward in what became known as the CAP Pillar Two. This was a collection of proposals for rewarding farmers for good performance in a wide range of interrelated areas, which included good environmental practice, development of alternative rural activities such as tourism, and setting land aside for purposes other than farming. By 2003, therefore, two strands of reform of the CAP could be identified: first, the scaling down of market intervention by reducing target prices closer to world prices; and second, a greater concentration

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on rural development, in effect spending money on aspects of rural development other than the production of food. It had been realised, at long last, that rewarding farmers on the basis of what they produced had a number of unintended consequences. It could lead to increased cost of production, as incentives to produce more also led to the attempt to open up more land for that purpose, thus increasing its value. The point was made that often land-owners benefited more than farmers from this, as the latter were often tenants rather than owners. Providers of support services such as agricultural machinery and, especially, chemical inputs, fertilisers, weedkillers and the like also benefited.30 The result was a vicious circle – production went up, but so did costs, and farmers could end up no better off. And there was overproduction, and increased consumer prices in the shops, as well as environmental damage. The authors of a report produced by the British government in December 2005 concluded that less market support could lead to no decline in income for farmers as the costs of production would be reduced. They also supported very strongly the idea that support should focus on the individual farms, rather than crops, and should be concerned with a wider agenda of rural development, even if this meant diversifying into other forms of employment.31 The authors of the British government report mentioned a number of circumstances that, in the older member countries, would mitigate the effects of reducing support for production. It was noticed that it was widespread practice for farmers to have jobs outside the farming industry and that, contrary to popular view, farmers’ incomes were above the incomes of those outside the farming industry, in the UK about 150 per cent of the general level. These circumstances indicated a path to adjustment through alternative employment, and a certain amount of fat to help them keep afloat during the period of adjustment. It was also noticed that the benefits of support were not widely distributed, in that a small number of large farms tended to attract most of the benefits of the intervention mechanism, and of earlier arrangements for rural development assistance. The authors of the 2005 UK government report were led to the conclusion that no serious damage would be inflicted on British farmers if all market supports were abandoned and the Union was fully opened to competition from the world market, as long as care was taken with the speed of the introduction of the new system, and rural development, focused on single farm payments, took care of adjustment problems. Consumers would be able to enjoy lower food prices, and farmers would find ways to make a living. But the external consequences of the unreformed CAP were also damaging in a number of ways. The market intervention system depended on socalled agricultural levies on food imports, which were significantly higher than tariffs on imports of other products. Although there were exceptions, such as for bananas and sugar, and special arrangements for the products of associates of member states – such as butter from New Zealand – most less-developed

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countries found it impossible to export into the EU. As the production of basic commodities such as food was often central to the economies of poorer states, it was argued that the EU’s CAP was a serious difficulty standing in the way of their export-led development. Japan and the USA also had protected markets for food, and significant internal preferences for domestic food. The former spent US$49 billion on farm subsidies, and the latter US$47 billion in 2004,32 although resistance there to liberalisation remained strong. Nevertheless, the idea that there should be a general liberalisation of agriculture as part of a general liberalisation of trade was gaining ground. This was a central issue in the problematic Doha round of trade negotiations, which at the time of writing seemed to have reached stalemate because of the USA’s insistence on, inter alia, drastic liberalisation of the EU’s agriculture. The question was increasingly put – why should farmers be protected? Was there really anything special about them? It was not just that access to European markets was difficult for producers in less-developed countries. The problem was compounded by the EU’s policy of subsidising the export of food surpluses onto the world market. The effect of this was to reduce the market for the products of developing countries, even outside the EU, and to keep world market prices at a lower level than would otherwise have been the case. The external problems of the CAP were therefore also considerable, and the Europeans were increasingly subject to pressures in international trade diplomacy to reform their system. Here the question of what could be rescued from the CAP has to be nicely judged. The British government was careful to insist in 2005 that a move towards the complete abandonment of the price-support mechanisms had to be a carefully managed process: there could be problems in moving too rapidly to liberalise agriculture, which would need to be addressed. And there would need to be responses in the level of support to farms, under the heading of rural development policy, to cope with problems with which the market could not cope. One way forward was to encourage farmers to go part-time. Another was to improve the infrastructure of farming, presumably by merger or selling out.33 But the broad thrust of the policy was clear: farmers in the UK and in Europe should no longer be sheltered from the world market as, it was argued, consumers in the Union, tax-payers and the developing world would all benefit. Thus a British New Labour government took an approach towards EU agricultural reform that was based on free-market principles of a neoliberal tendency. But was this the only, or the best approach? By the time of writing, the anti-Europeans had the tactical advantage that it was highly unfashionable to say or write anything positive about the CAP. The leading academic commentators shared this reluctance with the columnists of the eurosceptic press. Nevertheless, a case for a reformed CAP could be constructed. It starts with the concession that the original version had indeed become outdated, in that it was part of the original bargain between France and West Germany on which the Treaty of Rome was based: West Germany

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would get the common market in industrial goods, while France would get the common market in agriculture. French politicians had a keen enthusiasm for this as, when the negotiations took place, about 20 per cent of the French population was involved in farming. Since then, that figure had fallen to below 10 per cent, and in France as elsewhere there was a majority, even among the rural population, who were not directly employed in agriculture.34 Things had changed, but the ancient French regard for their farms and food was certainly a drag on the kind of reforms supported by the British, which had been agreed in principle in June 2003 by all member states. At the time of writing there was continuing disagreement about the pace and detail of change. But the debate should be as much about the ultimate steady state after reform as about the speed and manner of movement to a liberalised agriculture. That it should be completely liberalised is by no means a given. There was, for instance, the idea that the market, instead of serving the interests of farmers, should be focused on the interests of consumers both in the short term and the long term, in other words that a system should be found that satisfied not only the basic criteria of reliability of the supply of food and reasonable price, but also its quality, and the best possible variety of food. It should also seek to preserve as wide a range as possible of traditionally produced foods for a public that was increasingly uneasy about modern production methods and such practices as genetic modification. The latter criteria were completely absent from the British report A Vision for the Common Agricultural Policy. In Europe of the twenty-first century, it was to be expected that the supply of food should be of a quality and range that would be acceptable to a leading chef, as well as being as inexpensive as possible. It should not simply reflect the interests of supermarket buyers and shareholders. The British report accurately reported that, in the event of market liberalisation, some developing food exporters (such as Brazil) could probably benefit quickly by increasing their food exports to Europe.35 A second group would be able to adjust in the medium term, but would need to put in place new supporting infrastructure such as roads, storage facilities and training for farmers. A third group would take a longer period to adjust because of the scale of change needed to enter the international market. They were the least developed. The effects of liberalisation had to be seen in the context of these three categories. The fact was that a large number of developing states faced the overwhelming problem of finding ways to feed their own people, and would be well advised not to try to find foods for export.36 It was already clear that supplying the world market was damaging to the rural economies of a number of developing states, particularly with regard to feeding themselves. But these countries, as well as the consumers in Europe, could well find themselves facing a further, more intractable problem, which the British Report entirely ignored. This was related to the consequences of agricultural

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liberalisation in the context of the determined efforts of developed country governments, in alliance with major corporations, to liberalise all trade and, in particular, investment. In a free world, as many commentators have argued, it is the rich who prosper. In this case the corporations of the developed world would have a major incentive and opportunity to extend their agribusiness activities. They would seek to increase their production of food by buying into farming wherever possible, and would have the opportunity of doing so in the second and third groups of developing countries identified above. EU policies were encouraging the selling of land to larger units, including to multinational companies. Evidence from the USA showed the increasing concentration of ownership and the increasing benefit of larger companies from government food subsidies, which Stiglitz described as ‘another form of corporate welfare’.37 The developing world would face the danger of being bought by large, multinational agribusinesses anxious to profit from increasing food supplies, cheaply produced with low-cost labour and other inputs, to the liberalised markets of the developed world. The populations of the developed world would, in turn, have to deal with a narrowing range of suppliers of food, and increasing dependence on the operations of massive multinational agribusinesses. Such businesses would include producers of chemicals, seeds and machinery. This would be a massive concentration of productive capacity in a fundamental area of life, and a new phase of the concentration of capital. Such are the long-term possibilities in the complete liberalisation being contemplated as reforms of the CAP. The argument here can be summarised as follows: what is being proposed by the British government in its Vision document, if applied strictly, would lead to duplication of the problems of the CAP on a global scale. There was no reason to suppose that the behaviour of the emerging agribusinesses would be any different from that of other manufacturers. It would be the application of the Nike model to the production of food. The danger should be acknowledged that the businesses would exert downward pressure on workers’ wages, damage traditional social structures, and attempt to remove all controls on patterns of investment in food production. In addition, the range of foods could be narrowed, its quality lowered, and risks taken with soil quality. The big omission from the discussion of the reform of the Agricultural Policy of the EU was the question of its consequences for global patterns, and global control, of food production. There were very large risks in this, which could be much more costly than the current consumer’s contributions to the CAP. The point has been made in favour of reform that the costs of transporting food around the world in the reformed system would be acceptable, as it would be carried relatively inexpensively by ship. This bland argument again leaves out a number of costs. The danger of extreme congestion in the world’s narrow waterways, as evidenced by the collision in the English Channel on 31 January 2006, would be increased as more food was carried longer distances, and the

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higher costs of carrying food around national supply systems, from port to market, would continue. The costs of such a system should be set against the environmentally sound alternative: local food, locally consumed. One alternative would be to find ways of lowering costs and mitigating the worst offences of the current arrangements. As already pointed out, a start would be to recognise the primacy of the interests of consumers, rather than those of the producers of food in the EU. The implication of this was not difficult to work out. In the past the Commission regularly proposed a budget that reduced spending on agriculture, and equally regularly governments overruled the Commission and increased expenditure. This was primarily because most governments, in the UK as elsewhere in Europe, did not want to alienate farmers by lowering subsidy – even though farmers were often ungrateful for the support they received. Governments could do this because farm prices were fixed by politicians for political reasons rather than technical or economic reasons. The first step, therefore, had to be to take decisions out of the hands of politicians and transfer them to a technical body that would be charged with the task of fixing food prices, in a manner reminiscent of the decision in the EU, as in Britain, to take control of central bank interest base rates out of the hands of politicians. Another analogy would be the process by which harmonised technical standards for electrical goods were left to the determination of bodies of experts formed for the purpose. The aim of this body would be to fix prices on an annual basis so that production would not exceed that required to satisfy the domestic markets. Agricultural levies would remain, but would be much reduced in consequence of the lower prices. The aim would be to get as close as possible to self-sufficiency, a situation that would necessarily coincide with the production of as wide a range of foods as possible from within the Union. The developing world would find it easier to get access to the European market, but would still need to face a degree of protection. But this would not be the major problem for the developing world – for most developing countries the main problem was to find ways of feeding their own population. A technical body would be more likely to manage food production so that significant surpluses were not produced, so the need to dispose of them on the world market, or by any other means, would be reduced. Certainly, subsidising such surpluses should be excluded and, incidentally, every effort made to encourage self-sufficiency in food in the developing world. There are other ways of thinking about the reform of the CAP that respond to the dangers implicit in the neoliberalisation of EU farming. The latter is likely to lead to a placing control of food in the hands of quasimonopoly suppliers, to losing control of food quality, and to narrowing the range of available foodstuffs. In this world, the idea of cuisine would become meaningless. It is a good bet that the writers of the British report had it in common with the eurosceptics that they were not foodies! Once again, it was striking that the debate about the reform of the CAP was an

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unbalanced one, which was slanted to discount the possible role of European institutions in food production, and to fit into the agenda of antiEuropeans.

Concerning excessive interventions in domestic arrangements In the eyes of the anti-Europe press, the Brussels institutions formed an irresponsible foreign bureaucracy that unilaterally regulated national economies and societies in malicious detail. This was a view that became part of the general perception of the EU: it imposed upon us, and as long as we were members we would be increasingly powerless to oppose. Heathcoat Amory complained about the ‘mountain of new red tape that Eurocrats have heaped on British businesses’, although mysteriously, Britain had succeeded in attracting more inward investment than France and Germany because ‘it has less red tape than other EU countries’ (Daily Mail, 15 October 1999, p. 5). In December 2003, in a comment on the proposed European Constitution, The Sun wrote ‘once we sign the Constitution we will have to accept any law Europe inflicts on us . . . decisions that affect our lives will be made by people we have never met, can’t elect, and can’t get rid of’. The latter had the headline ‘Shackle Britain, Europe’s Secret Plan’. It is difficult to decide whether such views reflected ignorance about the arrangements for making decisions in the EU, or whether this was deliberate misinformation. It was, however, probably the latter. The thesis of this chapter is that in Britain, by 2006, a balanced account was unlikely to find favour. The interesting question is why this was the case. It was not a matter of the implausibility of the more positive account, but rather some other grounds for hostility, to be explored in the following chapters. The positive account goes as follows. The British government was always closely involved in the discussions in Brussels leading up to taking decisions, most importantly in the form of Regulations or Directives, in the Council of Ministers, made up of Government representatives. The status of Union legislation was determined by the European Communities Act, which Parliament approved in 1972. By 2006 the procedure was one that gave the right to veto proposals for new Directives and Regulations in almost all cases to the European Parliament as well as to the Council. The people’s representatives could stop any proposals of which they disapproved. Of all the legislation that had become applicable in Britain over the past decade, less than 10 per cent had been decided in Brussels. But most legislation, including the vast majority that was entirely a matter for the UK government, increasingly involved EU questions. This was a necessary condition of access to the common market of 370 million people, which most of British industry strongly supported. Directives usually required further enactments to become applicable in member countries, including Britain. These enactments were in the form of Statutory Instruments, decided by the administration under ministerial

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guidance, without any significant involvement of Parliament. In Britain, therefore, European legislation increased the powers of the political masters, the Executive, and diminished that of the elected representatives in the UK Parliament.38 It was the Statutory Instruments that were the main reason for complaints by business and others. They were described as being ‘goldplated’ in Britain, meaning that they were too detailed, and often went further than was required by the Brussels directive.39 But this was the fault of the British government, not Brussels, although the government often pretended that Brussels was to blame. It was a convenient way of avoiding responsibility. By 2006 there was, however, some evidence that the politicians in Britain could do something about over-regulation by correcting their own procedures and, in particular, curtailing the excessive zeal of the civil servants in Britain. A small proportion of the laws that had their origin in Europe resulted from decisions by the European Court of Justice. These included such common market principles as the right of workers to seek and take employment in all member countries, and to be subject to the same employment legislation as nationals when they worked in another member country. The Court also played a key role in asserting the principle of equal pay for men and women in equivalent work, and equal pension conditions. National governments were required to apply these principles in national legislation. But in doing this, the Court was spelling out the conditions that were necessary in order to achieve an economic community. To illustrate this, it would obviously be unfair for some countries to have the market advantage of cheaper labour costs because they employed more women and paid them less. Equal pension rights were necessary for the same reason: if producers could avoid the costs of reasonable conditions of employment, they would have a competitive advantage in the market. It is worth stressing that these welfare matters were taken on by the Court, not because of humanitarian considerations, but for essentially economic ones. The EU involvement in the specification of goods, in questions of health and safety at work, and in such areas as food additives, happened for the same reasons. It was a necessary condition of the operation of the common market. The accounts of regulation from the EU in the anti-European press in Britain never contained any of these points. They were left entirely unconsidered. In consequence, the British public was left untroubled by the truth: that the British government was always involved in making legislation. The political masters saw membership of the EU rather as an opportunity to promote and protect the Executive at the expense of Parliament, although they were happy to pretend otherwise. Under Margaret Thatcher, this trend towards strengthening the Executive at the expense of Parliament was welcomed. The context of EU membership helped, but the cause was the greed of the Executive for greater freedom from Parliamentary supervision. On the other hand, the House of Commons could significantly increase its

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direct input and control if it were so minded – indeed, this was one of the proposals in the aborted European Constitution. The complaint should therefore be addressed to national governments. It should certainly not be hijacked to criticise changes brought about in Britain in areas such as conditions of employment and the specification of goods. These were necessary if British industry was to have access to the common market. None of this was revealed – one wonders why!

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The anti-Europeans

Why had British opinion on the EU moved from being well into the range of the so-called permissive consensus in 1990–1 to being quite close to supporting withdrawal in 2006? It might be supposed that the answer to this question would be quite simple: the British disliked the policies of the EU, in particular the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and the excessive regulation from Brussels, and the idea of adopting the Euro, and were unimpressed by the corruption and inefficiency of the EU institutions. But the question also has to be put as to why the negative case about European policies and institutions was so much more persuasive than the positive one. As explained in the previous chapter, there were certainly arguments in favour of the policies and arrangements of the EU which went completely unnoticed, and the scale of euro-corruption was much exaggerated. The answer has to be that there were deeper, underlying reasons for negativity. The decline of euro-enthusiasm in France and Germany (see Table 2.2, page 26) was, if anything, more important for the future of European integration, as Britain and most of the others had generally responded positively only when prodded by this central partnership. The big steps forward had been either initiated or shaped by France and Germany. From the point of view of an ‘ever-closer union of peoples’, the decline of support in France and Germany was therefore more significant. As Simon Usherwood pointed out, anti-European lobbies and political groups had become more influential in France and Germany relatively late – in the 1980s and 1990s – and acquired a strong public presence only during the debates about the EU’s Constitutional Treaty.1 In addition to explaining the continuing reluctance of the British to push for Europe, this chapter also asks why support for European integration in France and Germany declined so steeply through the late 1990s and the first years of the twenty-first century. Probably decline in each was, in part, a response to decline in the other. But each national polity also had its own distinctive causes of decline.

Myths about the British Doubts about closer links with the continent among the British public were strongly reinforced by the argument that the history of Britain and the

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British system of government was unique among the EU member states. The British were encouraged in this self-image of continuity and exceptionalism by academics who wrote about politics and history, and the antiEuropeans were very happy to use this argument against the EU. Britain’s Parliamentary democracy had emerged gradually, it was claimed, in a process of positive incrementalism, whereas the history of other member states was marked by crisis and their governments were continuously recreated ab initio from novel constitutional blueprints. Political scientists talked of the slow maturation of the British system of government, and forgot that the union with Scotland did not occur until 1707 and that with Ireland until the early nineteenth century. There was talk of peace in these islands without reference to the civil war in the seventeenth century, or the invasion of England by William and Mary in 1688, or the violent treatment of early trade unionists, or of those who sought votes for women, or the government’s violent campaign against striking miners in the 1980s. In an otherwise excellent article, Vernon Bogdanor, like most English constitutional historians, wrote about British constitutional development as if it were identical with that of England.2 In contrast, Timothy Garton Ash quoted Jeremy Black’s view that the British have ‘a genius for the appearance of continuity’.3 Hobsbawm and Ranger reported that the British were the people who invented ‘the invention of tradition’, not just the book but the thing.4 Nevertheless, British exceptionalism was widely believed, and the public was persuaded that Britain differed in fundamental ways from the other member states, and was therefore necessarily incompatible with Europe. Against this was the obvious point that all member countries had unique histories and believed they were exceptional. It was an English delusion that British history was the same as English history. In recent years, only Norman Davies has written anything that could be properly called a history of these isles.5 Even David Hume had seen his History of Britain renamed as a History of England when it came to a second edition. It was not clear that the British, as opposed to the English, position was so negative about the EU, as disaggregated information about public opinion in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland was hard to find, and there was some information that indicated a measure of support for closer links with the EU in these regions of the UK. For instance, the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales had positive views about their relationship with Europe and its potential for future development. The Scottish Executive, which had a Scottish Labour Party majority, indicated a positive attitude when it set out plans for its future relationship with the Union. Britain’s relationship with Europe was complicated by the differences between the different parts of the UK, and the tendency of the English to assume that they spoke for everyone, including the Scottish, Welsh and Irish. Margaret Thatcher revealed this deep prejudice indirectly when she complained in her famous speech at Bruges in September 1988 that we would all become

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identikit Europeans in a supranational Europe, just when the Russian Empire was collapsing.6 She failed to realise that the British had failed to turn into identikit English in a supranational United Kingdom. The Scots remained defiantly Scottish, the Welsh still Welsh, and the Irish, of course, Irish. These claims suggested that the English had a deep insecurity about their own identity, unlike the other British peoples. The nature of English identity was often questioned, and there was a steady flow of books purporting to provide an answer – a fact that was itself an indication of the problem.7 The answers were often unsatisfactory. They often had a negative characteristic: the English were not Welsh, or French or German. Margaret Thatcher’s Bruges speech indicated a deep insecurity in the face of European influences, rather than a confident defiance, which was not found in the more confident Scots when they joined the United Kingdom or, despite their having been conquered by the English monarchy, in the Welsh or Irish. This suggested that the English may have been particularly prone to antiEuropeanism precisely because they were insecure in their own identity, and that Euroscepticsm was more an English characteristic than a British one. It was a reinforcement of the main source of their self-definition: that they were not the others.

The nature of anti-European attitudes Public opinion on aspects of cooperation with the EU was interpreted by the anti-Europeans as much harder than it was in reality. For instance, there were claims by anti-Europeans that there would be rioting in the cities of the UK if the pound was abandoned in favour of the Euro. This seemed hard to believe. On the contrary, there had been times in the early 1980s and later when the British public had indicated a willingness to accept a form of European monetary integration.8 And the fact that opinion had changed so sharply since the early 1990s suggested that change could also move in the opposite direction. In other countries, too, there was evidence of this changeability. For instance, in France in the month leading up to the referendum on the proposed Constitution in May 2005, opinion moved from just 29 per cent against in early May, to 55 per cent against when the referendum took place on 29 May.9 In Britain, opinion on aspects of European cooperation was surprisingly volatile. The anti-Europeans were, however, determined to persuade the British public that British opinion on closer ties was implacably hostile: it was to be seen as hard rather than soft. The anti-European media conducted a well orchestrated campaign against Europe, which was brought to a crescendo at key moments, for instance in the spring of 2003 with reference to the diplomacy in the European Convention about the proposed Constitution. Anand Menon commented that the progress of the negotiations in the Convention went completely unnoticed by the press or the Conservative Party until a point at

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which the publication of a full draft of the Constitution was imminent. Then the Daily Mail launched a campaign for a referendum on the Constitution under the heading ‘a vote to save our country’, and dubbed Peter Hain, the main British government negotiator, as the Minister of Arrogance.10 The Daily Mail wrote on 19 May 2003 that our ‘independence, sovereignty, indeed our very soul is under threat’. The Sun went further: it described the chairman of the Convention, Giscard d’Estaing, as an ‘arrogant, condescending French snob who was planning to end Britain’s freedom’.11 This was despite the fact that the government had largely succeeded in its diplomacy on the Constitution, in that it had firmly checked any tendency towards federalism, and had firmly entrenched what were essentially intergovernmental arrangements. Unlike the Dooge Committee’s discussions in 1984, when the Thatcher government had succeeded only in entering footnoted reservations in an agenda that it could not control, the Blair government was always a key negotiator when shaping the agenda, and largely got what it wanted. The key British aims were to:  head off any federalist proposals or rhetoric; the proposal to call the EU the United States of Europe was batted away with high energy  get the centre of power and initiative moved from the Commission to the intergovernmental Council of Ministers  introduce an additional institution to guarantee that nothing was done by Europe that the states could do themselves (to entrench subsidiarity)  get a long term President of the Union appointed by the Council, separate from the Commission  delete any reference to the ‘ever-closer union of peoples’, which had been part of the preamble of the Treaty of Rome. In all of these ambitions for the draft of the Constitution, the UK government was largely successful. In its intergovernmental strategy, it was able to use a number of resources including, at various times, alliance with the Gaullist French President Chirac, and alliance with the intergovernmentally inclined Eastern European candidate countries. The UK government was stronger than it had been in the 1980s because of the membership of the pro-American states of Eastern Europe – and their unwillingness to compromise a sovereignty which they had so recently gained – and because of the internal problems facing the governments of Chirac and Schro¨der. For a time, at least, the French and Germans had lost their traditional ability to shape the integration of Europe. Their leaders were not personally close and both had serious internal political problems. The UK government was therefore able to avoid the diplomatic trap set for it by Mitterand and Kohl in the 1980s: then they faced a threat to go ahead to create a more integrated Europe, even if Britain decided to opt out. The British then were compelled to make

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what concessions were necessary to stay with the negotiations, as they could not tolerate the emergence without them of a more integrated group of states on the continent.

The stance of New Labour on Europe In this context, the interesting questions were why the British government found it so difficult to persuade the public of its success, and why it seemed so much at the mercy of the anti-European media. The two sides to the answer are obvious: the anti-coalition was formidable, probably orchestrated across the various anti-European media, with a significant back-up among the more informed, traditionalist elite; whereas the pro-coalition was weak in terms of effective battlefield troops and in terms of the weapons to hand. In addition, there were special difficulties for the pro-Europeans in the circumstances of the battlefield. These included the background of attitudes towards the history and character of their country and government. As we have seen, there were also real, if exaggerated, failings in the Brussels institutions, and negative as well as positive aspects to European policies, mentioned in the preceding chapter. A number of individuals who attained high office in the Blair government had a record of pro-Europeanism, and this tone in their public utterance continued for a while after the election of 1997.12 But there were also those who continued Old Labour’s hostility, and the leadership had to prevent fissures appearing in the party in relation to Europe. There were reasons to suspect the sincerity of some supposed pro-Europeans from the period before coming to power, as the then Conservative government was deeply divided by the clamour of the antis within its own ranks. Expressing proEuropean sentiments was a reasonable strategy for keeping these wounds open for Labour in opposition. A number of top Labour people had earlier placed themselves on the left of the party and, as was characteristic of such allegiance, had in the past expressed anti-European sentiments. The Prime Minister was pragmatic rather than committed, the Foreign Secretary Robin Cook was known to be hostile, and it soon emerged that the Chancellor Gordon Brown was also ambivalent about closer European integration. The new Minister for Europe, Doug Henderson, reportedly had ‘no strong views’ on the subject.13 There was a suspiciously long delay in becoming more proactive in favour of Europe after winning the election. For instance, a referendum on joining the Euro could have been held shortly after coming into office, and could arguably have been won. The excuse given for this delay was highly unconvincing. Blair’s economic adviser, Derek Scott, argued that neither the Prime Minister nor the Chancellor favoured an early referendum: ‘both thought that taking advantage of an election landslide in such a transparent manner would not establish adequate legitimacy’14 It was likely that the new government wanted a public that would tolerate developments with regard to practical cooperation at the European level,

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and appreciate an intergovernmental approach, but that was not marked by euro-enthusiasm. Peter Hain’s approach to diplomacy in the Convention on the Constitution was illustrative of this approach. This was likely to be the least controversial approach in the Labour Party in the House of Commons. When they came into office, they were anxious to damp down public expectations on closer links with Europe. The ideal position for them was very much the kind of position adopted by sensible Conservatives, and indeed in practice by Margaret Thatcher. The main difficulty in the way of holding the line on this, however, was not that the pro-Europeans remained invisible, but rather that there was very little public discussion around the middle ground, even on the part of those who were opposed. One of the few newspapers that took a reasoned critical position on Europe was the London Evening Standard under the editorship of Max Hastings, which had a number of balanced articles about the Euro. But when it was taken over by the Daily Mail this fair-minded approach disappeared. The antis were persuaded, probably rightly, that any attempt at balance and depth in the arguments about European issues was likely to favour the positive case. The debate favoured by them was not a reasoned one about the issues, but rather an adversarial one, which would be won by whoever shouted the loudest. And this was exactly what they got. The prejudice of the arguments was as apparent in the heavyweight organs like The Times, The Economist and The Telegraph, as in the more strident red-top tabloid papers like The Sun. The Economist complained that ‘Mr Giscard’s Convention is packed with enthusiastic euro-centralisers and harmonisers’ (The Economist, 27 May 2003). It did not point out that it also contained quite a number of the antis, including Edward Heathcoat Amory. Among the antis were a number who refused to participate on principle, as their involvement, it was argued, could give greater legitimacy to the process. The debate was overwhelmingly that of fighting a corner rather than analysing the issues. The antis did not in fact wish for a balanced discussion, even in the hands of the reasonable opponents of further integration. Keeping the debate at the level of public clamour suited their cause better. Simon Usherwood commented that ‘the idea of an anti-EU movement really only came into its own at the end of the 1980s’.15 Nevertheless, it became a formidable agent of anti-Europeanism: ‘one of the major developments within the movement over the 1990s has been precisely such an autonomous capacity to accumulate, evaluate and disseminate information. This is seen in the creation of umbrella groups, which create webs and contacts between individuals and groups, on both national and European levels and of specialised research driven groups, such the European Foundation or Global Britain’.16 The anti-EU movement was highly successful in optimising its resources, to its lasting benefit. In addition to those mentioned, the groups in the UK included the Bruges Group, the UK Independence Party, and the Campaign for an Independent Britain. At the European level the major umbrella group was probably The European

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Alliance of EU-critical Movements (TEAM). The antis had a number of rich benefactors, the most prominent of whom in the UK were probably Sir James Goldsmith and the businessman Paul Sykes. Usherwood is probably correct in concluding that the direct contribution of the anti-Europeans to the ‘No’ votes in France and the Netherlands was modest. But their impact on the maintenance of anti-European perspectives was considerable. They kept up strong pressure to hold referenda on matters such as the proposed Constitution across Europe, and there were almost certainly links with the anti-European media. In consequence, Usherwood concluded, ‘it may well be that there is some kind of recasting of the European order’,17 and the anti-European groups played a part in this. When the anti-European reporting and comment in the UK is examined, it is possible to detect a public relations strategy or, to use the modern idiom, a way of spinning the arguments. This strategy can be reduced to a set of rules of political advocacy, as if in a rule book of anti-integration practice, which was reminiscent of the electioneering techniques employed in a number of western democracies in the early twenty-first century, especially by the Republicans in the USA. They were readily visible to any student of politics in the anti-integration media in the UK. The elements of the spin would be as follows.  Denigrate the idea that any economic or social gains during the period of integration had resulted from membership of the EU. In pursuing this goal, various devices might be used, including focusing attention on partial failures of a policy while not mentioning any of its successes.  Where gains were hard to deny, stress that they could have been obtained without integration at the national level, or had already been obtained independently. This was the argument of subsidiarity as process, adapted to the cause of anti-integration.  Assert that an alternative framework, such as the global one, would do just as well, and insist that this framework was excluded by membership in the EU. The point could be sharpened by claiming that the EU was a trap that reduced capacity to exercise national talents, which would be liberated in the other framework. This argument was attractive in that it played on the theme that failure now was not ‘our’ fault: if we had a negative trade balance with Europe it was membership, rather than national economic or social arrangements, that was to blame.  Stress the excessive costs and difficulties of integration, and that they were grossly out of proportion to the benefits. Even when there were gains, there were costs, which may be specific, like economic ones, or intangible, like the loss of the sovereignty of Parliament, or of freedom. This argument was made deliberately vague as it allowed the public to believe that the intangible costs were the cause of the tangible ones. There was a challenge to Parliamentary sovereignty in Europe, which made the public poorer in specific terms (neither argument was valid!).

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 Denigrate the motives of the pros by exaggerating the scale of their ambitions or claiming they had a secret anti-patriotic agenda – they were fanatics and crooks, whereas the antis were moderate and honest.  Focus on a lead issue that resonated particularly with the public and constantly talk it up in disregard for balance and accuracy. Links between the lead issue and the European agenda should be pointed out or invented so that the European cause in general was denigrated by apparent failures in the lead issue. Anti-Europeans had detected opportunities for this in immigration policy and terrorism. They implied that the Commission was wilfully encouraging excessive immigration into Britain (more on this below, page 61). The implication was that the Commission was to be denigrated not only for this, but for the range of misdeeds that were linked.  Most recently attacks on the EU, and other EU states, were built onto discussions of the threat of avian flu (Daily Mail, 20 February 2006), which claimed in a highlighted text box that French farmers were likely to be particularly favoured by the European Commission in compensation for the culling of poultry. What was to be stressed was that membership in the Union was the cause of what was defined as excessive immigration, and that this was a necessary outcome of a whole range of other acts of integration and giving powers to Brussels.

The favourable context of anti-Europeanism The pro-Europeans were at a disadvantage. The academic community no longer played any noticeable role in the public discussion. The idea of integration as a dynamic process leading to a European political community had largely disappeared as an object of academic study in British universities, replaced (as argued in Chapter 5) by studies of European politics and economics as illustrations of more general phenomena. Among the public of most Western European states, attitudes towards politics in general had become cynical and suspicious, and even politicians felt that they were being treated with disrespect. The broadcaster Jeremy Paxman probably spoke for the British nation when he commented that his working assumption when interviewing politicians, in government or out of it, was: ‘why is this person lying to me?’. There was a worrying continuation of the trends of the 1990s towards low turnout in elections and falling membership of political parties. The Labour government was returned to office on the basis of a mere 36 per cent of the vote at the General Election in Britain in 2005. In France, there was increasing civil commotion and support for the extreme right. A wave of disillusionment with politics and politicians was evident across Europe, signalled by very low turnout in elections, and in some countries

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the rise in overt support for far-right agendas and resort to violence. Disaffection with European integration was surely linked with this: disillusionment was likely to affect the preparedess of the public to trust governments in European issues as much as others. And this was likely to spread across the states of Western Europe. In each country there were certainly particular reasons for doubt, but there was also an awareness of the others’ hesitations, which reinforced those arising locally. If others were fearful, especially those who were traditionally in the vanguard, like the Dutch, there was even greater reason to hold back. In the Netherlands, the leading right-wing anti-immigration politician Pim Fortuyn was assassinated, and there was, surprisingly, rapidly decline in approval for European integration in this usually pro-integration country. Indeed in the Netherlands a move to the right wing away from traditional liberalism was clearly linked with anti-Europeanism. In Britain, too, there was increasing anxiety about the increase in the number of votes for the anti-immigrant British National Party in some inner-city areas, especially in local elections. In Germany, Chancellor Schro¨der found himself and his party losing support in Land and national politics, culminating with the national election in the autumn of 2005, when neither of the two major parties obtained a clear majority. One reason for this was his support for the admission of Turkey to the EU. Given the concern among Germans about the large number of Turkish guest workers, and the high level of unemployment, this policy was deeply unpopular. His party gained surprising support but no majority. It was compelled to negotiate a grand coalition with the CDU/CSU parties led by Angela Merkel; Schro¨der himself was excluded. France went through a succession of political crises: the anti-immigration far-right politician Jean-Marie Le Pen astonished the pundits by coming second in the Presidential election of 2002, pushing the Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin into third place and excluding him from the run-off. Although Chirac won against Le Pen in the second round, it was clear that he was seen by most French voters as the lesser of two evils. In 2005, France was rocked by riots in the suburbs of a number of cities, especially Paris, which were caused by the anger of French citizens from overseas about their exclusion from the workplace and other forms of discrimination. It became apparent that there was deep prejudice among white metropolitan French against their black compatriots. On the Constitution, President Chirac had found himself very reluctantly compelled out of political weakness to follow the UK in opting for a referendum. In the situation prevailing in France at that time, it was not surprising that the referendum was lost. Not only was there deep anxiety about the future of the French system of social welfare, but a wider concern that the Constitution would lead to a Europe dominated by the Anglo-Saxons and their colleagues in Eastern Europe. But more than that, the defeat mirrored many of the problems in the UK – fear of immigration, insecurity in the face of perceived threats from outside, but most of all a profound dissatisfaction with politics and politicians. In France, as in the UK, there was

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a deep sense of uncertainty in the face of changes, the consequences of which could not be foreseen. In this situation, any further step towards integration was a further step into the dark, and for all the discontent at home, it was preferable not to venture out. This attitude was contagious: its existence in France and Germany and elsewhere reinforced that in the UK. The distrust of politicians was fuelled not by the success of their strategies of spin, but because of their failure. It looked to the public as if the politicians believed it could be conned. But the public relations techniques used by the spinners simply revealed the underlying truth more clearly. Their use was obvious, and alerted informed observers and the public to the possibility of deceit. Prime Minister Blair set up the Butler Inquiry to refute the accusation that the dossier on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which had been used to convince Parliament to approve the war, was dodgy. The accusation was that the evidence had been massaged to suit the policy, that it had been ‘sexed up’. The Inquiry came to the right conclusion from the government’s point of view. But, as The Observer pointed out, the Butler report was a ‘subtle indictment of the processes of British government’ under Blair.18 The evidence before the Inquiry seemed to support the view that the government’s claim that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, and would use them on 45 minutes’ notice, was a deliberate misinterpretation. The British government’s approach to the Iraq war promoted disillusionment and a belief in government conspiracies. It also contributed to increasing negativity about any political agenda, including that on European cooperation. This was not a good time for the British government to try to sell policies that involved a further pooling of sovereignty. The causes that were around in 2006, such as joining the Euro system, were old and fly-blown, and in the circumstances lacking any capacity to excite. And the government itself had created a political culture of distrust in which it had lost its ability to persuade. For a number of reasons, the government had rightly become convinced that in any extended campaign to win public support for a significant new measure of cooperation in Europe, the antis would be better placed than itself to win. Hence the New Labour government increasingly fought shy of holding a referendum, as had been promised, on either the proposed Constitution or joining the Euro. It appeared to welcome the failure to approve the Constitution in France and the Netherlands in 2005, and announced that in this case it was pointless to proceed to a referendum in the UK. It was announced that the process would be put on hold, but few thought that the Constitution as proposed could find approval in all 25 member states. It only needed one refusal for it to fail.

Strategy and political culture The UK government’s failure to maintain a reputation for honesty in its political activities, and its reputation for resorting to spin to sell its policies,

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was a serious disadvantage with regard to its advocacy of any policy, including those on Europe. But worse than that, the Blair government had itself helped to create a situation in which public opinion in Britain moved to a more extreme anti-Europeanism. It had played a key part in keeping the ball at the feet of the anti-Europeans. Its strategy was illuminating. It seemed determined to avoid any risk of appearing to adopt the cause of European integration, and strove to focus on particular issues. Because of this, the only cause in town was the antiEuropean one, meaning by ‘cause’ an impassioned argument linked to an enticing vision of the future, such as one outside the EU. The government did indeed encourage officials and ministers to cultivate closer relations with their opposite numbers in other member states, but this was to be on an ad hoc bilateral basis. It became known as the tactic of ‘promiscuous bilateralism’, a highly suggestive phrase indicating movement from partner to partner without commitment to any of them.19 The strategy could not have been better designed to move the spotlight away from the great cause of integration, and to focus on particular policies. Indeed the government, like Margaret Thatcher, explicitly rejected any policy of building Europe on federalist lines. It was, as Blair explained to the Poles, to be a ‘superpower rather than a superstate’.20 This speech was interpreted as tending towards the intergovernmental, but in the Convention on the Constitution the line was clearly to reject anything that looked supranational. The policy of never allowing a Minister for Europe to stay in office for more than a short period was also a part of this strategy. It was important not to let any of them ‘go native’ by developing a feeling of collegiality with pro-integrationists across the Channel, as had allegedly happened to Thatcher’s appointment to the Commission, Lord Cockfield. Hence Doug Henderson, Denis MacShane, Peter Hain and Douglas Alexander were all moved on pretty quickly. The political–economic agenda of the early twenty-first century in the UK was also against the pro-European cause. The leading items were economic prosperity and terrorism – to maintain the first and defeat the second. But other issues were also relevant to the argument. The New Labour government had moved to the right, and in many areas seemed to have taken over the agenda of the previous Conservative government. But from the point of view of support for sensible cooperation with the other member states in the EU, the lead items had the disadvantage that they were part of a policy agenda that favoured anti-European positions. Policies usually tended to go in clusters of associated items. Although no association was a necessary one, the political culture of a country tended to create such clusters. In the early twenty-first century, there was a tendency for the following views to make up such a cluster in Britain. This was not just because of the compatible logic of the various policies, but because of the habit of juxtaposition of the items in the advocacy of political parties and pressure

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groups. Such a habit was certainly reinforced by the writings of a group of largely right-wing populist journalists who were the British equivalent of the American shock-jocks, the radio journalists in the USA who declaimed the ideology of the right. The pages of the right-wing press in the UK were outlets for individuals such Richard Littlejohn, who were strongly antiEuropean. There was support for strong measures to keep out refugees and asylumseekers, a view that seemed associated with the fear of terrorism as well as the threat of economic competition for jobs. The terrorism launched in London in 2005 was likely to reinforce the notion that the British government should do something, and the EU should be excluded. By association, support for extending EU competence in other areas of the current policy cluster, whether overtly to do with security, or with economic or social policies, was also likely to be damaged. Although the Blair government supported the development of a stronger policy on asylum at the European level, there had been little progress at the regional level and certainly no sense that it could be solved there. The right-wing press kept the issue alive by regular accounts of the failure of government policy and reports that claimed that Britain was being swamped by illegal immigrants. Anthony Browne contributed an article to the right-wing magazine The Spectator on 28 January 2006 under the headline ‘How many more can we take’. Despite the failure of the government to convince the public that immigration was adequately controlled, simply keeping it on the public agenda was likely to reinforce anti-European sentiment. The Browne article achieved this by suggesting that the enlargement of the EU was mainly to blame, with the new East European member states exporting 293,000 of its citizens to the UK. The forecast of the Home Office ‘was wrong by a factor of as much as 60’. It was argued that the British government had made the error of opening Britain to movements of labour from the East from the moment of accession of the states from that area. ‘And the right will be given to 30 million more people from Bulgaria and Romania when they join’. In 2006, the British government announced that there would be restrictions on the movement of people from these two countries to Britain. Even so, ‘you will not read about any of this in a European Commission report on the subject of immigrants from the East due out on 7 February 2006’. The effect of this skilfully maintained campaign on excessive and uncontrolled immigration was to keep pressure on the UK government, but also to portray the EU as a part of the problem. It was an element in the portrayal of the Union as a bad thing, no doubt an incidental part of a campaign on the part of the right wing of the Conservative Party, but nevertheless an effective lever of anti-Europeanism. The policy cluster also included support for the maintenance of the socalled Anglo–American economic model, which implied resistance to the continental European model of welfare provision (about which more in the next chapter). The economic success of the UK was frequently contrasted

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with the economic failure of the other Western European member states of the EU. This part of the agenda was therefore also reconstructed to create a case against Europe, by presenting a picture of a failing Europe as part of the EU, and a successful UK, which was more global and closer to the USA in its economic practice. The anti-Europeans had a difficult time in this agenda because their broad agenda was hostile to the New Labour government, whereas in this context it was necessary to approve of its performance in order to justify anti-Europeanism. They claimed that the economies of the main EU member states in Western Europe were failing economies, which tolerated excessive government intervention, and too much union power, as well as an overblown welfare system. We should, the argument went, take this as evidence of the general unacceptability of the pro-European agenda and do everything necessary to prevent our becoming like them.

Declining support in France and Germany French attitudes towards Europe had also changed since the early 1990s, and were now showing clear signs of hesitation or even hostility (see Table 2.2, page 26). French doubts emerged after President Mitterrand’s decision to abandon socialist policies for France and to adopt the Single Market programmes of the Single European Act of 1984 and the European Monetary Union proposals of the Maastricht Treaty of 1991.21 In consequence, economic liberalisation in France became necessary and European policies on getting rid of anti-competitive practices had to be accepted. This meant opening up the French economy to more international competition, as well as acting to maintain the value of the franc, in what was called the franc fort policy. With the formal acceptance of the proposal for a single European currency at Maastricht, it was necessary to follow policies that limited inflation and government spending. The consequence of this was that French industry could no longer rely on relatively low-cost investment finance obtained at the price of inflation and a weak franc. It also meant that industry had to follow community rules on such matters as mergers and government intervention in the event of failure. The stricter application in France of anti-competitive rules was bound to cause unease about Europe, particularly on the left, as French workers were now more likely to find themselves unemployed as businesses could not be helped with government hand-outs. The increasing price of investment finance led to a higher level of unemployment, which generally stood at 9 per cent in the 1990s and later. That the French economy proved that it was competitive internationally, significantly improving its balance of payments position, and generating periods of sustained growth, was little comfort to the unemployed and those attached to the traditional view of business–state relations in France. There was a set of specific grievances resulting mainly from the new policies of economic liberalism. But these were more deeply felt because of

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deeply held views in France about the relationship between state and people, which the EU now seemed to challenge. The dominant view had been described as Jacobin. A strong central government was needed, with a cohort of professional public servants, strongly committed to the general welfare, and ensuring that standards on health, employment protection, education and the like were effectively maintained throughout the land. The new liberalism challenged this, in that it imposed limits on public spending to combat inflation, and wished to open up even public services to competition. To make matters worse, it seemed that these new arrangements were at the cost of national sovereignty, and the French needed to be convinced that such a price was worth paying. Europe now challenged something basic about their way of life. A skilled President such as Mitterrand could – mostly – sell them the idea that the price was worth paying because the EU could itself acquire something of a more Jacobin character. It could develop effective protections for social democracy, could succeed in the neo-Gaullist strategy of effectively competing with the USA as an economic power, and could also acquire strong collective foreign policy arrangements through which Europe, with France in the lead, could bestride the world stage. The reconciliation of the traditional French view of the state with the development of more European integration was one that some described as Mitterrand’s ‘major achievement as President’.22 Commission President Delors cooperated with Mitterrand in selling this view, and helped by staying close to the French representatives in Brussels and, it was said, managing EU business to minimise embarrassment for the French. France had been an unreformed state, but now faced pressures to change. The traditional arrangements of strong central institutions, weak judicial review, common standards, government intervention to keep the people happy, weak interest groups, and an economy that permitted cheap investment finance at the expense of inflation and adverse balances of trade, were now under threat precisely because of the stage that European integration had reached in the 1980s and 1990s under French–German leadership. Increasingly, the impression in France was that the European agenda was not reflecting their interests and there was no pay-off in the form of uploading the French model to the European level. Some Europeans, including the Germans, were finding a compromise with liberal economic orthodoxy. As Foreign Minister Hubert Ve´drine put it: ‘There is a contradiction between the French attachment to public services, which is real, and the liberal push from Brussels, but that doesn’t create an anti-European sentiment here. We’re permanently discussing how to harmonise economic dynamism with social protection’.23 The continuing challenge to traditional French ways gave the impression that this new situation was dangerous. But whereas the anti-Europeans in Britain continued to see France as unreformed, the French themselves understood that they were now in a different era. The failures of leadership in France after Mitterrand, especially on the part of President Chirac, did nothing to correct this disappointment. Chirac’s

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difficulties were partly the result of the problems of the period of cohabitation between a Conservative Presidency and a more left-leaning Assembly. But they were also the product of his failures as a leader compared with Mitterrand. What was needed was a positive French vision of Europe articulated by an effective and charismatic leader, and Chirac was neither. For Germany, European integration had meant recovery as a state, and the gradual recovery of national sovereignty, however modernised in the period after the Second World War. For the French, the rewards of making payment for European integration in the sovereign coin had to be effectively portrayed as good for France, even when they were part of something relatively intangible, a grand vision of the future that favoured France. These payments went along with a second cost: the undermining of the credibility of any claim to great power status. It now seemed ridiculous to claim, as Dominique Moisi24 had done, that France was a kind of superpower in her own right. Mitterand could pull off this trick; Chirac could not. Mitterrand could argue that the liberalisation of the French economy was worthwhile in order to turn Europe into an economic and political power under French leadership that could stand up to the USA, and in order to preserve social democracy. Delors as President of the Commission reinforced the view of Europe as a French project. But neoliberal globalisation in the late twentieth century, which seemed to be the next step beyond European liberalisation, was more often seen as merely a new form of US dominance. Chirac failed to convey the view that Europe was a French project. Chirac also presented his European inheritance from Mitterrand as a challenge, rather than an opportunity. This was illustrated by his remarks on the austerity programme needed in preparation for entering the Euro – that it was necessary because France had been committed to joining, without any report of the benefits.25 His political style was to pursue short-term tactical advantage, even when this meant contradicting his earlier views, rather than to project any grand vision, including one of France in Europe. His Prime Minister Raffarin reinforced this impression by dismissing the Stability and Growth Pact as something that should be ignored when it did not suit French interests.26 But it was not just Chirac: there was a general disillusionment in France, as in Britain, with the political class. Increasing doubts about Europe, culminating in the vote against the proposed European Constitution in 2005, were as much a reflection of a more general disillusionment with politicians as specific complaints about European arrangements. Chirac had proposed the referendum on the Constitution not because of any search for its national approval, but because he believed it would divide and weaken his political enemies within France. As already reported, this strategy backfired badly when the vote was lost by 55 per cent against to 45 per cent in favour. French attitudes towards Europe were also adversely affected by the alteration of the geopolitical character of the EU after the 1995 enlargement to include Sweden, Finland and Austria, and the 2004 enlargement to

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include states from Eastern and Central Europe. The unification of Germany in 1989 added to the problems, as Germany was now a bigger state than France with stronger links with the Eastern neighbours, especially Poland. France had been a big fish in a small pond, but was now a smaller fish in a larger pond. Several difficulties for the French arose from this. The French way of coordinating policies towards Europe had been very effective, but precisely because of its centralised character – all ministries had to be coordinated in a single mechanism – it presented difficulties in the way of dealing with a large number of states on policies that could be decided increasingly by qualified majority vote in the Council of Ministers. The looser coordination techniques of the Germans and even of the British, Swedes and others seemed better suited to the needs of a more multilateral system that required constant modification of position in order to build winning coalitions in the Council. The French seemed to be losing their capacity to dominate the agenda, and were now better at stopping things from happening than at causing them. There were several examples of Chirac successfully resisting change, as with the insistence that spending on agriculture should not be reduced until 2013, but few French initiatives. The French also found themselves facing the beˆte noir that had haunted them ever since the British joined in 1973: a Europe that was more in sympathy with the Atlantic countries and the Anglo-Saxon world than with a world led by France. The French language was no longer the lingua franca of European diplomacy, as the overwhelming preference of the more recent members was for English rather than French. And the new states of Central and Eastern Europe inclined to support the British in Europe and to sympathise with the USA internationally. There had been a strengthening of the Atlantic inclinations after enlargement. In the early twenty-first century, Europe had become a context of challenge for the French, but lacked the institutional resources to cope. There was a double bind here, however: a possible response to failure at the European level and the discrediting of the Mitterrand strategy could have been to fall back on the French state. But the widespread disillusionment with French politicians was in the way of this. This dilemma indicated the flaw in the traditional stance of the French towards Europe, which went back to de Gaulle’s preference for a Europe des patries: wanting strong policies in Europe to stand up to the USA in economics and politics, but weak institutions in Europe. But the strong policies now demanded strong institutions to cope with the costs they generated, and for the French they seemed lacking both at home and in Europe. Enlargement also brought a number of specific and substantial challenges. There was increasing immigration, especially from Central and Eastern Europe, as a result of enlargement, but also from North Africa. The problem here was specific in that there was a continuing high level of unemployment, but also more general in terms of social discontent and

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strains generated by the exclusion of immigrants from the French-speaking world, and the surprising racialism in France which was revealed in serious disturbances around the main French cities in 2004 and 2005. The EU was a useful scapegoat for such problems, and Le Pen’s Front National successfully linked the problems with doubts about Europe to the extent that he won more votes than the Socialist Jospin and became a Presidential candidate, with Chirac, in the second round of the Presidential elections of 2002. French identity appeared to be under challenge from within and without: there were threats from French citizens of African origin in the banlieue, as well as from immigration from Eastern Europe. French doubts about the EU were further reinforced by the possibility that Turkey might join bringing even stronger threats to French jobs. The fact that, although negotiations had started, Turkish accession was unlikely for a decade or more, did not prevent the issue from being a further reason for opposing the European Constitution in 2005. The campaign on the Constitution was not just about issues of employment and fears about identity – there were specific problems to do with proposals for liberalising the provision of services (see Chapter 4) and specific examples of the Commission’s applying the rules of the single market, and attempting to stop French exploitation of delays in applying liberalisation directives such as those on the energy and communications industries – but the grand issues of security, in a wider sense, and identity were probably most important. Policy challenges included a further area of threat to something close to the French sense of national identity and the EU. The CAP was a traditional benefit for France, but was now having to be fought for more often, and there was an increasing sense that it had to change. There was increasing pressure to reduce spending on direct payments to farmers to support agricultural production, from which French farmers had benefited, and which was viewed as the key French gain from the common market. President Chirac, as mentioned, had successfully opposed rapid reduction in production payments in 2005. But, at the same time, there was an increasing sense that the policy was not worth fighting for, as French farmers were rapidly declining in numbers and the benefits of the CAP, it was realised, went mainly to the largest producers and the owners of land, rather than to the traditionally admired small farmers. On foreign policy, too, there was disillusionment. The French supported the strengthening of European defence arrangements – and, in truth, European contributions in the area of UN peacekeeping were impressive and increasing – but the overall impression was conveyed of division and weakness. There had been dramatic failures in ex-Yugoslavia in the early and mid-1990s, and a serious disagreement between France, Germany and the others over the action in Iraq. The French public had been particularly supportive of a stronger Europe in foreign and defence policy. But there was little in the behaviour of the member states that seemed to amount to an external aspect of the Gaullist legacy.

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As in Britain, the appearance of an increasingly critical stance towards Europe in France in the first decade of the twenty-first century was not just about specific problems. It was also about the political culture, especially an increasing distrust of politicians.

German views in comparison If the French were now more doubtful about Europe because of the widespread belief that French interests were not being supported, and because it had become the cause of a number of challenges to French identity – France was a dissatisfied state – Germany had lost euro-enthusiasm in part for the opposite reason. Germany was more powerful in the EU after unification and enlargement. The EU had served the German purpose of providing a context for recovering sovereignty and becoming a satisfied power. The German people’s perception of problems coming from the EU, such as the high levels of unemployment and the need to control immigration, was fed by the sense that Germany needed the EU less than she had. In a sense, Kohl’s and Mitterrand’s fears about the dangers of German unification had been realised. Overall, the German people were satisfied that their state had once again become a major power in Central Europe, and German identity was not so closely bound up with membership of the EU as it had been. The statement about foreign policy agreed by the grand coalition partners in 2005 certainly acknowledged the importance of German membership of the EU, but it also stressed the importance of Germany’s relations with states to the East, and named Poland in particular.27 The statement also mentioned the importance of NATO and of the UN, claiming that Security Council reform was still much needed, and that Germany was prepared to take a permanent seat in the absence of one for the EU. The statement also stressed that Germany laid great stress on the importance of multilateral institutions, and the contributions that Germany could make through them to peacekeeping and international development. No equivalent of the neoGaullist image of Europe had emerged in Germany. Although the Germans were still anxious to maintain and deepen good relations with the Europeans, they were now more prepared to act on their own account. One indication of this was their decision to take on a stronger military role in UN peacekeeping actions. The German government under Angela Merkel was more prepared to push for adjustments in Europe to suit German interests. Germany sought to alter the CAP, reduce its budget contributions, and acquire stronger voting shares in the Council of Ministers. There had been a phase of euroenthusiasm, which was a reflection of the Kohl–Mitterrand realisation that a unified Germany needed linking even more firmly to a stronger Europe. The German Foreign Minister under Schro¨der, Joschka Fischer, had carried this forward, but the vision had dimmed under his successors. Schro¨der’s withdrawal from the close embrace of the French was as much a reflection

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of a realisation that Germany needed that closeness much less than before, as of his own preference, with Chirac, for tactical rather than visionary politics. The fact was that Germany had got what it needed from the EU, and if the commitment and energy of the past was to be recovered, new motivations would have to be found. For German citizens, support for the EU had declined from the high levels of the early and mid-1990s less because of a perception of challenge from further integration, but more because of the view that it was not necessary to continue to accept the costs. Germany was now big enough and successful enough to put these off. Under Merkel, the appearance of German economic recovery and of continuing success with exports had encouraged this view, and there was consensus that the main change now necessary to return to lower levels of unemployment and the further revival of business was increasing confidence among German consumers. Like the Chinese and the Japanese, the Germans needed to spend more in their own high streets. Unemployment was certainly an important issue, and a source of social tensions, especially in the eastern lander, and the disciplines following from the introduction of the Euro were certainly understood to be one of the reasons for this. Political indecision on the part of Schro¨der, and the changes to levels of social support brought in to encourage a more flexible labour force, also damaged support for Europe. There were specific reasons for disappointment, but the underlying trend was influenced as much by a perception that Europe was not really as necessary as it had been as by specific grievances. The latter were difficult and damaging, but not the existential problems they were seen to be in France. Schroder’s personal failures as a politician did nothing to fan the flames of a somewhat ebbing tide of German euro-enthusiasm. In Germany, too, this decline was bound up with a general loss of confidence in politicians. In this sense, in Germany as well as France, the falling off of support for the EU was bound up with national political culture. There was a need for greater common action in the emerging context of Europe. Failure to go beyond the tipping point meant retreat to greater defensive nationalism. The dynamics of Franco–German interactions in the new Europe had altered.

Conclusions There was a powerful coalition of organised opponents to further integration, including anti-European groups and elements in the media. In Britain, the latter was almost entirely opposed. Its success in persuading middle England of the impossibility of European integration was such that, in a lead editorial in The Times about the prospects for the coming year on New Year’s Day 2007, the only two references to Europe were confidently negative: the Constitution would not be brought back, and Britain would not be joining the Euro.28 But there were also a number of other failures. The

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69

policy agenda favoured the antis in that problems of security, linked with pressure from asylum-seekers, had a tendency to reinforce anxiety about the role of the nation state. This was also true in many other European states, especially where there were high levels of unemployment. Fear of terrorism was also part of this agenda, which led the public to prefer national action ahead of that at the regional level. But there were also consequences for attitudes towards European cooperation, which arose from political problems and disillusionment with politics and politicians. Disillusionment was not a parsimonious sentiment, and distrust about some policies was likely to lead to more general distrust about others. In some cases, votes against European proposals occurred when a government was nearing the end of its life, as with the very narrow approval of the Maastricht Treaty in France in 1993, or in the UK Parliament in the dying days of John Major’s Conservative administration. The closeness of the vote in favour in France in 1992 was, in part, a result of the increasing unpopularity of Mitterrand. But in the French Presidential elections in 2002, it was more complicated as the public supported a sitting tenant, Chirac, despite its deep suspicions, because of the fear that the alternative could be worse. Blair still benefited from the reputation of the Conservatives for sleaze when he won the elections of 2001 and 2005. Chirac benefited from the realisation in France that Le Pen really could attain office unless Chirac was voted back. In this situation, any policy proposed by a government was likely to be treated with a high degree of suspicion – even proposals for sensible European cooperation. Although public opinion polls indicated that Britain was the most antiEuropean, a trend in that direction was evident, particularly in Northern and Western Europe. Active anti-Europeanism and the paralysis of proEuropeans were not just British phenomena. The miasmic cloud had settled across the channel and there was a degree of cross-infection. But in the UK, a complete picture was hard to obtain because of the twin habits of producing data on British attitudes rather than on the various nationalities, and interpreting English history as if it was identical with British history. British anti-Europeanism may be interpreted as essentially English anti-Europeanism, a product of English insecurity in an age of apparent threat to the UK brought about by devolution of a range of powers to Scottish and Welsh national assemblies. Was this retreat on Europe just another example of the succeeding phases of a European integration process, which would recover its momentum as it had done several times in the past? This time there were certainly a greater number of signs of the end of the process. Serious students of Europe were asking whether there were now problems with the European cause that were without precedent. Perhaps the Europeans were entering a new reality of scepticism about integration?

4

The challenges to EU Governance

Globalisation and enlargement were the most recent challenges to the pattern of governance of the EU. Globalisation was associated with a threat to social democracy, as it was linked with pressures to cut back on welfare spending and to have a more flexible workforce. The problems of the social democratic states that formed the old core of the EU were one of the leitmotifs of the anti-Europeans in states such as Britain. They argued that the reluctance of France, Germany and Italy, as well as other Western European states, to abandon their more generous welfare systems was a fatal barrier to greater economic growth. They were a handicap to the more dynamic economies of the ‘reformed’ states. Enlargement was also a major challenge to EU governance. It marked the end of the classic phase of integration in the EU, in that it changed the principle of decision-making in the Council of Ministers from consensus to outvoting dissenting minorities. The logic of numbers in the enlarged Union indicated a need for this, as a greater divergence of interests and economic and social circumstances made it much harder to find consensus. But the form of the reforms remained unclear, and the possibility of operating other than by hard-won consensus had yet to be demonstrated.

Changing the Welfare Systems in Europe By the early twenty-first century, there had been some adaptation of welfare systems. In Sweden and the Netherlands, the role of the private sector had been increased.1 In Germany and France there had been changes, but in Italy very few. But all systems in Western Europe, except in Ireland and the UK, were described as generous. The social-democratic model remained strong, although it was in modest retreat. This rather slow adjustment was likely to be seen by the anti-Europeans as an obstinate reluctance to reform. Their view was that high tax and welfare spending discouraged economic development and frightened investors away. It was not, however, as simple as that. The pattern of foreign direct investment (FDI) flows into the EU states in 2004–5, and other indicators, according to OECD figures, appeared not to be correlated with tax levels, and did not reveal any noteworthy differences

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between the states that had generous welfare systems and those that were not generous (Table 4.1). International business found the economies even of countries with generous welfare systems attractive. There was some indication that the form of taxation rather than its level mattered. Total company taxation, and higher employer social security contributions, seemed to lead to lower inflows of FDI. The figures suggest that changes in inflows and outflows of FDI changed rather quickly. In 1998, the only countries that had a positive position on direct investment flows defined as a percentage of GDP were Austria, Denmark and Ireland. All the rest, including the UK, had a negative position.2 Close to balance, although still in deficit, were Sweden and Belgium/Luxembourg. The UK had a negative balance, with outward flows at 55 per cent of inward flows. The figures on flows of direct investment in Table 4.1 are revealing in that they reveal very little. They do not demonstrate that the new members, with their relatively ungenerous welfare systems, or the older ungenerous members, such as the UK and Ireland, have a great advantage when it comes to attracting inflows of foreign investment.3 Measured as a percentage of GDP, the winner in 2005 was Benelux, with Belgium a generous provider of social benefit and Luxembourg a less generous provider. Among the older members of the EU, the UK seems to have done well in 2005, but in 2004 was behind new members Benelux and Ireland. Ireland’s performance was somewhat erratic in that there was a significant outflow of foreign investment in 2005, although there had been significant gains in earlier years. The UK’s good performance in 2005 was, according to one report, largely due to a major one-off international merger. The performance of the heartland social democratic countries varied from very good for the Netherlands in 2005 at 6.99 per cent of GDP – only marginally behind the UK (and well ahead of the UK’s 2004 figure) – to modest improvement in France, Germany and Sweden. France benefited from inflows to the amount of 2.99 per cent of GDP. (One report stated that inflows from the USA into France had exceeded those into China in 2006.) But France and Germany, like most EU members, had moved strongly upwards since the mid-1990s: the difference in performance between the member states was not strong enough to justify the claims of neoliberals that social democracy was a failing system. A glance at the figures on direct investment positions in the heartland countries and in the UK and Ireland confirms this point. With the exception of Ireland there was a marked increase, and although the UK was ahead on inward and outward investment, the other countries showed significant totals (Table 4.2). The figures on per capita GDP suggest that their economies were well capable of generating high incomes for their citizens. The value of inward investment in France and Germany was less than in the UK, but the difference did not seem to justify the claim that the Anglo-Saxon model was necessarily superior. The figures on direct investment reveal only a part of the pattern of economic improvement in Europe. In 2006 it was noted that, although further

4.92 (1.99) 1.73 (0.89) 2.97 11.30 (2.73) 5.82 (2.98) 1.90 (1.15) 0.67 (0.34) 0.40 (0.22) 2.17 (1.56)

8.98 (4.17) 7.48 (3.69) 6.99 6.14 (4.16) 3.83 (–0.53) 2.99 (1.99) 1.17

1.11 (0.22) –11.28 (7.75)

3.69 (3.32)

1995 (1994)

16.50 (22.17)

2005 (2004)

29.7

43.1

35.5

43.5

50.6

38.8 38.5

35.6

45.4 41.3 37.7

Total as percentage of GDP

26.5

25.1

23.9

17.5

31.3

17.9 18.9

28.7

31.4 17.1 13.0

Personal tax

9.2

20.6

19.9

25.7

22.9

11.6 24.1

10.3

19.1 12.4 28.0

Employers’ social security contributions

Percentage from:

Taxation 2003

12.9

6.6

3.5

5.7

5.00

7.6 5.8

7.8

7.4 19.1 12.3

Corporate income tax

39,200

28,500

29,800

30,200

32,700

34,200 17,200

32,100

32,500 67,700 20,200

Per capita GDP in US$ defined PPPs*

*PPPs: purchasing power parities, obtained by evaluating the cost of a basket of goods and services between countries for all components of GDP. Source: OECD in Figures, 2006–07 edn, OECD, Paris, 2007, pp. 12–13, 60–61, 64–65.

Ireland

Italy

Germany

France

Sweden

Netherlands Hungary

UK

Belgium and Luxembourg Belgium Luxembourg Czech Rep.

Country

Direct investment inflows (percentage of GDP)

Table 4.1 Direct investment inflows and taxation

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Table 4.2 Leading EU direct investment positions (in US$bn) Inward

Outward

Countries

2004 (2003)

1994

2004 (2003)

1994

UK Germany France Netherlands Ireland

707.9 675.6 619.6 501.1 ?

189.6 87.5 163.5 93.4 0.0

1268 (1235.9) 754.6 (718.1) 829.3 (720.2) 595.4 (544.4) ? (238.9)

276.7 194.5 182.3 142.9 ?

(609.0) (659.5) (520.2) (433.4) (217.2)

?, Not available or negligible. Source: International Direct Investment Statistics, OECD, Paris, 2006–07.

legislative and regulatory reform was needed, discussed later in this chapter, there were various signs of the growth of European economies.4 By 2003, of the 20 biggest non-financial multinationals ranked by foreign assets, 13 were European. In 2005, direct investment out of Europe was 20 per cent higher than in 2003, and exports rose from 17.6 to 19.2 per cent of world market share between 2000 and 2005, despite the rise of China. Inflows of foreign direct investment into the 15 pre-enlargement states between 2000 and 2005 amounted to half the global total, and equity returns in Europe outperformed those in the USA. There was new confidence in the recovery of the traditional leader of European growth, Germany. Although unemployment remained high, there were signs that it was beginning to decline. The point here is to demonstrate not that all was well, but rather that the view that European social democracy was a recipe for economic disaster could simply not be sustained. As reforms were being introduced, albeit too slowly, so growth was beginning to accelerate. But even before reform had got off the ground – around 2002 – improvement was taking place. The main explanation of the weakness of the Euro in its early days was the mismatching of European and US business cycles, rather than high levels of tax and welfare, and later other arguments were proposed, such as that in Germany lack of public confidence discouraged high-street spending, as in Japan and China. The most successful exporter in Europe remained the social democratic Germany, not the UK, and poor internal demand was a reasonable explanation of high levels of unemployment. Worker productivity in Germany was the highest in Europe. Nevertheless, in the early twenty-first century the debate about European economies revolved around the question of whether ‘the European Welfare state must die’.5 The key problems to be tackled were slow economic growth and high levels of unemployment – amounting to 10 per cent in France and Germany in 2006. The discussion of the real problems in the press was greatly confused by the intrusion of ideological considerations. Neoliberals and right-wingers saw the issue in moral terms: publicly supported welfare was bad for individuals, as it sapped their will to work, and the rich were

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robbed through high taxation. Little regard was given to the view that there was such a thing as a civilised state, marked by justice for all, the protection of the weak and a low level of differentiation between the mean salaries of the top 10 per cent of the population and those of the bottom 10 per cent. Too often, also, the debate employed weasel words: the word ‘reform’ was used to mean spending less, and the word ‘poor’ meant idle and undeserving. Real reform, as the Commission of the EU, among others, realised, could take place without abandoning the European social model. Speaking of the European Parliament’s contribution to the Directive on the liberalisation of services, the Commission President remarked: ‘The revised text [of the Commission] preserves the balance you struck, the balance between the urgent need to unleash the full potential of the internal market for services and the preservation of the European social model’.6 But the right-wing rhetoric, pushing for its view of reform, made real reform less likely because of the fear that change, if accepted, would mean tolerating extreme poverty and the kind of private affluence and public squalor found in parts of the USA and, increasingly since Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s, in the UK. The difficulties found by governments in France and Italy, in particular, in bringing about reform was partly because of this and partly because the leaders were not themselves clear about the possibility of defending welfare spending, accepting sensible reforms, as well as introducing beneficial change. They could not free themselves from the shadow of neoliberal economics. The example of welfare management set by the British New Labour government also sent out mixed signals to the continental countries. The British government used the rhetoric of the free market, while in practice following policies that were ‘very similar to those in other high-employment European states – Sweden, Denmark and Finland – although it never says so’.7 The British appeared to be sacrificing the interests of workers, and challenging social solidarity, as was happening in the USA, but in practice were much closer to the social democracies. The Germans under Angela Merkel were, it was reported, successfully copying the British reforms in the labour market with a minimum wage and holding the line on union rights, but in addition with greater investment in training and strong protection against unfair treatment at work. The German economy was beginning to recover, but in France and Italy there was still resistance to change, explicable largely in terms of a ‘fear of importing the principles of the American labour market into the heart of social Europe’.8 There was, however, a case for amending the pattern of welfare provision without regard for its overall scale or cost. There might also be a case for changing the pattern of taxation, although not necessarily its total, as there was an argument suggesting that FDI was somewhat less in countries that had direct taxation on companies to finance welfare. There was a good case for reform of the pensions systems of the social welfare states. Across the heartland of Europe there was certainly an excessive generosity in allowing retirement at too young an age. In Italy, retirement on full pension at 55

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was possible, even though falling birth rates had caused a reduction in the workforce and the tax base. In developed countries with increasing life expectancy, there was a strong case for increasing the legal age of retirement to the late 60s or 70s, equally for men and women, depending on fitness to work. Perfectly sensible changes in pension provision were possible and would make it possible to maintain civilised levels of payment, as the Turner Report in the UK in 2006 had indicated. ‘Currently for every senior citizen four people are at work but the ratio will be 2 to 1 by 2050’.9 If the narrowing of the tax base was the problem, it was also possible to broaden it again by increasing the numbers of women and immigrants in full time work! Perhaps, after all, it was not so much the numbers of people of working age that was the problem, as the reluctance of governments and trade unions to have a more open labour market. The welfare states of continental Europe were also criticised for having excessive support for their labour force, which therefore became inflexible, and too expensive. It was difficult to lay workers off, they had no incentive to look for work in other areas, and minimum wages were too high. In consequence, they were being priced out of the market, and jobs were flowing out of Europe to places such as China or India, or to lower-cost new member states in Eastern Europe. The lack of flexibility in labour policies created a difficulty in the way of economic adaptation, made companies more hesitant to hire, and contributed to a lack of consumer confidence. Hence high-street spending was too low to stimulate economic expansion. A number of changes were conceivable that could set this right without leading to the impoverishment of unskilled labour. One proposal was that wages should be allowed to follow the market, but should be made up, as was the case in Britain, with income support from taxation.10 That way labour costs would be kept low, but incomes would be high enough to protect basic living standards. This was the point where the arguments of the neoliberals collided headon with those of social democracy. The neoliberals interpreted flexibility of labour as the employers’ right to fire and the worker’s obligation to look after him- or herself. Social democrats, in contrast, realised that the need was for effective systems for helping workers to move from one job to another. This would mean a number of forms of support: it would mean protecting incomes during the period of adjustment, providing effective retraining, and providing efficient systems for advertising work and facilitating the new placement. The right wing would argue that workers needed the threat of extreme poverty to adjust. Some might – and some incentives might well be needed. But the overall system in a civilised state had to be one that supported, retrained and re-placed. In 2006, the governments of the core social democratic states of Western Europe were caught in a problem that was as much a problem of ideas as of practical matters. The moral codes of the mumbo-jumbo right wingers, so powerful in neoconservative America, had to be met with greater clarity

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The End of European Integration

and less fear. It was also necessary for them to grasp the reality that the over-rich would have to pay more. From the point of view of the right wing of the political spectrum, the problem was that the costs of civilised labour flexibility could not be financed just out of savings from pension payments. Of course the rich would prefer such saving to come from cutting back the level of spending on other aspects of the welfare system such as health and education, but in a civilised state it was likely that they would have to pay more. In European countries overall, the contribution to public wealth of rich and poor had become amazingly skewed. The poorest 10 per cent paid more tax than the richest 10 per cent.11

Welfare and the Dollar The explanations of the strength of the dollar against the Euro in the early days of Euroland – the group of EU countries that had adopted the Euro – also reflected the moral quality of neoliberal judgement rather than its economic penetration. The solution to Europe’s problems was to stop being what was described as tax-and-spend economies, to reduce the level of taxation, and to deregulate the economies. Between 2000 and 2006, however, the fortunes of the Euro and the dollar were reversed. By 2004–5 the dollar was showing weakness and the Euro seemed excessively strong from the point of view of Europe’s exports. The problems of the dollar under the regime of George W. Bush derived from the enormous trade deficit and the judgement that the continuing buoyancy of the retail markets in the USA was being financed primarily by inflows of money from China and Japan. The feeling was that this could not continue. At the time of writing, the stock markets of the world seemed on the point of collapse, sparked mainly by the failings of the US economy. In contrast, the problems of the European countries had been narrowed down to the need for adjustment of welfare provision, and for real progress on the Lisbon agenda, which had been agreed by member states in 2000. As is indicated later (page 78) these were all serious difficulties, but they were problems of adjustment rather than signs of the underlying malaise the neoliberals had claimed in 2000. A better explanation of earlier Euro weakness was almost certainly that there was a mismatch of the business cycles in the USA and Europe. The judgement that Europe suffered from deep moral failures was appealing to both neoconservatives and neoliberals – but it seemed misplaced. But, as importantly, abandoning social democracy could only have a modest shortterm positive impact on the underlying difficulty, regardless of the reasons for the weakness of the Euro. A key aspect of the business cycle argument was the timing of reductions in budgetary deficits. The USA had entered the recession of the early 1990s with a low deficit, which permitted more expansionist policies, while the Europeans had a higher level of deficit, which they were then required to reduce according to the convergence criteria applicable to monetary union. They therefore had to follow tighter monetary

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and fiscal policies through the 1990s.12 As Sarah Hogg put it: ‘the Euro’s launch coincided not merely with cyclical strength in the US economy but with serious re-rating of its economic potential. Euroland actually managed a quite respectable 3.8 per cent growth over the past year (to mid-summer 2000) but the supposedly exhausted US economy managed a stunning 6 per cent’.13 This was also helped by the attractiveness of the US economy to mobile capital at this stage of the business cycle. By late 2000, the assumption that the US economy had discovered the secret of eternal youth, in defiance of all the arguments about the inevitability of a downward turn in the business cycle, was looking increasingly suspect. By 2006 it had begun to look profoundly flawed, and the omens of European recovery were looking increasingly positive. The US trade deficit was causing concern as it soared to a new peak of US$31.89 billion in July 2000. This was merely the beginning: by 2006 the deficit had reached the multi-trillion mark. Although the US stock markets recovered from the trough of the first months of the twenty-first century, when there had been warnings of the falling away of profit margins, and the selling of industrial shares in the US stock markets,14 there was increasing concerns that the US economy was in trouble. When push came to shove, it was the failures of the US economy, presided over by the neoliberals, that seemed to be about to unleash a major international economic crisis, rather than the coy hesitations of European social democrats. The downturn in European economies in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the initial weakness of the Euro, appeared to have nothing much to do with the burden of social democracy. But what if it did? The neoliberal argument could be reversed: if social democracy was the cause of Europe’s failure, then Europeans had the right to argue that the USA should have more of it. This point is underlined by the arguments presented in Chapter 7. The fact was that globalisation also meant that Europeans had an interest in the proper resourcing of the US welfare system The development of an increasing cosmopolitanism, in which there was a mutual responsibility for maintaining standards, meant they had the right to say so and to push their point. Just as the USA had a mission to promote democracy, so the Europeans had a mission to promote civilised standards of social welfare – even within the USA itself. Why should the Europeans accept the demolition of their social democracy as a consequence of low social standards and cheap energy in the USA, with all the social problems and environmental damage caused? In the USA in 2000, 44 million people had no medical insurance and therefore had inadequate medical support.15 This had not changed by 2006. Similarly, much of US labour had little or no unemployment protection. By 2006, the agenda to destroy US welfare systems embarked on by the Bush regime had been exposed and discredited. Low welfare costs were no doubt a plus for American capital in the short term, but they amounted to a penalty for European business, and in the longer term the costs would be high. In a

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The End of European Integration

number of European states, as a result of high levels of energy taxation and increasing scarcity of oil, it also became clear that everyone was paying a price for the low cost of US energy: in effect, Europeans were paying for a global energy strategy on behalf of the Americans.16 The conclusion had to be that in the early twenty-first century some US citizens had been the happy beneficiaries of a neoliberal orthodoxy that made it appear that maintaining civilised welfare standards was suspect, and that low standards were beneficial. The economic playing field could, however, be made level by equalising upwards as well as downwards. There could be a more effective reconciliation of the principles of a civilised society and the long-term needs of industry. In the meantime, European states could make sensible adjustments to their welfare provision and still be successful economies.

The strategy for jobs and growth The EU’s approach to stimulating the economies of member states was laid down in the so-called Lisbon strategy in 2000. It was a plan for revitalising the economies of EU member states, and was relaunched at the European Council meeting of March 2005 as the Strategy for Jobs and Growth. Its policies were intended to achieve a number of interrelated goals reflecting the need to expand jobs, to develop sustainable arrangements to cover pensions, and to help to increase economic growth. Success in these areas would have other implications: the fear of immigration was, in large part, a reflection of high levels of unemployment, and more jobs would take the edge off this fear. It was accepted that the states and the Union had to divide their responsibilities. The Commission could not micro-manage for growth and jobs in the varying economic situations of member states, but the various states needed a common overall framework of policies and goals defined at the European level. The plans of the states were called national reform programmes, and would be available for inspection and comment by the Commission and other governments. Whether such a division was necessary, or whether it represented a downgrading of the integration project in favour of increasing diversity, was open to question and will be discussed further. The Lisbon strategy, and policies adopted in its support, advocated a number of objectives.17  There was an intention to encourage more people, men and women, to work for more years than before, but to allow more flexible work patterns. There was a plan to increase the number in employment by 2 million by 2010 by employing more young people and retaining older people for longer.  A new term was invented to describe the employment arrangements being sought – ‘flexicurity’ – meaning balancing flexibility and security.

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‘Europe has to exploit the positive interdependencies between competitiveness, employment and social security’.18 There was to be additional funding for workers made redundant because of major changes in patterns of world trade. There was to be more investment in knowledge and innovation. The 7th Framework Programme and a new European Research Council were to support this. There was to be an expanded programme for research and innovation across the Union, and E30 billion in venture capital and bank loans was allocated to support new investment in this area. There was also to be a programme for life-long learning, and an increased effort to train workers ‘to support greater mobility and an efficient labour market’.19 It was recognised that growth in the economies would come from an increase in the number of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and a number of steps were to be taken to encourage this. This was where the innovative and entrepreneurial skills of a population would emerge, and where they should be encouraged. The Commission was to look at the amount of regulation they faced, evaluate how much came from national and community sources, and seek to simplify and lighten the load. The regulatory framework had to be made ‘simple, transparent and easy to apply’.20It was planned to make it possible by the end of 2007 for new SMEs to be created within a week, and that by 2007 there should be established in member states ‘a one-stop shop, or arrangements with equivalent effect, for setting up a company in a quick and easy way’.21 Funding sources were to be made available, and easier to obtain, at the Community and national levels to facilitate the setting up of new SMEs. There was, for instance, to be new investment and employment aid up to E15 million for SMEs without the need for notification.22 Two plans for extending liberalisation of the market were also a part of the Strategy for Jobs and Growth. The Commission was energetically seeking to liberalise the market in energy, while at the same time ensuring security of supply and sustainability for all member states. Sustainability meant having assured suppliers from outside, a wider range of means of producing energy, and also good environmental practice. This objective was underlined in early 2007 when oil supplies via Belarus from Russia were interrupted.23 There was also to be a priority interconnection plan that would ensure efficient supply across the European market. This would help to avoid the shortfall of gas supplies to Britain in the winter of 2005–6, which had been caused in part by technical limitations on cross-channel flows of gas. The other proposal was to liberalise the service industries. It should be possible for service industries in one state to compete on equal terms in all other states, and to post workers to carry out the service. At the time of writing, the proposed legislation had been examined by the European

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The End of European Integration

Parliament and approved there on 15 November 2006. The Commission had welcomed the Parliament’s input, and was moving to complete its proposal. The Commission revised an earlier proposal because of protests about the proposal that services should comply with the standards of the EU home country rather than those of the host country. In the revised formula, the host country was given a greater say on the conditions under which it would permit non-national EU service provision, including a right in effect to grant or deny a licence and to impose conditions. Member states would be able to apply protective measures, but only if they were non-discriminatory, proportionate and necessary to protect public policy, public security, public health and the environment.24 There were, however, a large number of exceptions from the liberalisation proposal: financial services, telecommunications, transport services, port services, healthcare, social services relating to social housing, childcare and support of families and persons in need, activities connected with the exercise of official authority, temporary work agencies, private security services, gambling and audiovisual services.  The member states also agreed at their meeting of 23/24 March 2006 (reported in the Presidency conclusions) that the 12 member states who were in excessive deficit, as defined by the Stability and Growth Pact, should ‘use the opportunity of the evolving economic recovery to pursue fiscal consolidation’. They could now, it was asserted, reduce government debt levels to below 60 per cent of GDP as the pact required. The new programmes for jobs and growth reflected a degree of optimism about economic growth in Europe, and about this being the right moment to encourage it to accelerate. There were frequent references to the need for changes that were compatible with the European social model and a rejection of any move towards the American approach. Labour was to be consulted about the changes: the social partners were to be involved. The trade union and employer representatives were asked to agree their positions and were formally consulted. And there was an effort to relate economic policies to social and environmental requirements. The proposals also happily fitted in with this stage of the evolution of the economic union. It was indeed time to liberalise service industries and energy. The background of green shoots of economic recovery now visible in Germany was helpful. Unlike the late 1990s and very early twenty-first century, it now looked as if there could be a European way forward distinguishable from that in the USA.

New forms of Governance in Europe Pressures towards social change came along at a time when European economies were facing the need to adjust to increasing globalisation and to the problems of enlargement. They also came at a time of change in the governance of Europe. In the early twenty-first century there were intimations

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of the abandonment of the integration project as well as challenges to traditional forms of welfare provision. The European Community had developed by the 1970s into a unique international organisation, which combined two features that had usually been seen as mutually contradictory: a high degree of common management together with a system of states that retained their sovereignty. The reconciliation of these two features was achieved by splitting the idea of competence and the idea of ultimate responsibility. Governments learned that their sovereignty could survive, if altered, even if they extended competences over key areas such as currency to a central set of institutions – those in Brussels – as long as they remained ultimately responsible. If things went wrong, they retained the legal and constitutional right to take back the competences they had extended, and in any case they were accountable to their domestic constituencies for the protection of their interests in the common framework. Anti-Europeans did not accept that competences could be extended to the centre while retaining ultimate responsibility in the member states. Sometimes the language used by leaders of the more ambitious countries, such as Germany, alarmed the anti-Europeans. For instance, in May 2000 the German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said that a federal outcome should be sought. A reading of the text, reported in Britain as a plan for a European superstate led by Germany,25 should have quelled the alarm. It amounted to a modest appeal for a clearer division of responsibilities between the centre and the states, and an assertion, yet again, of the primary role of the nation states. The reconciliation of a high degree of shared management in the EU with the retention of sovereignty also depended on a range of characteristics of the Union’s decision-making. The whole system rested on a treaty, the Treaty of Rome, which had been legitimised through national constitutions. It was the latter and not the former that gave legitimacy to the Union. It followed that states could withdraw if they wished. It was also arguable that as long as they followed their own constitutional procedures – that they acted legally according to the terms of their own system – they could individually and separately reject Community legislation. The chances were, however, that this would not happen because the member states shared economic and political interests in staying together – the British remained convinced that they were better in than out. It was also unlikely to happen because, as has so often been argued, the way in which legislation had been made in the main EU institutions rested on the principle of consensus. All participants understood that it was better to avoid breaking the consensus: to do so would be dangerous. The new major initiatives were always determined in meetings of the heads of states and governments, the European Council, on the basis of unanimity. Obviously pressures towards enlargement indicated a general view that membership was desirable and that it did not threaten sovereignty: for those states that had recently emerged from the thrall of the Soviet Union, such a possibility would have been anathema.

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The correct image of the Union’s institutions was that they were not something outside, or apart from, the states, an outside actor that could threaten or impose on states. Even the Commission, the Union’s executive body, had a representative quality despite its formal task of administering the Union’s rules – acting as guardian of the treaty – and proposing European policies. Even though members of the Commission were strictly forbidden from seeking or receiving instructions from their national governments, governments were always anxious to get their people into key positions where they felt their interests could best be served. The anti-Europeans wilfully misunderstood the situation – they talked of the Commission as if, to quote Charles de Gaulle, it was ‘a foreign bureaucracy’ with opposing interests. The fact was that all the Commission’s actions were in pursuit of policies that the states had approved. If they did not like those policies they had no-one but themselves, or earlier governments in their state, to blame, and they could not lay blame on the expropriation of sovereignty by Brussels institutions. But usually the statements of the antiEuropeans revealed ignorance about the tight links between the national and collective systems. In Britain the press, with few exceptions, was all too willing to promote anti-European views, and if the cause was best served by misinformation, then so be it.26 This complex pattern nevertheless had three clear lines of development. It moved simultaneously towards an increasing range of competences in the hands of the Brussels institutions; an extension of the capacity of the centre to exercise common powers; and an increase in the number of its members. These three developments were summed up in the doctrine first enunciated in connection with the meeting of the Meeting of the Heads of State or Government at The Hague in 1969: completing, widening and deepening. Pro-Europeans were determined that no contradictions between these three goals should be acknowledged. For instance, in a 2006 speech in Bucharest in connection with Romania’s proposed accession, Peter Mandelson again asserted the need to deepen, meaning to make it easier to obtain approval for legislation in the Council of Ministers by majority vote. He repeated the mantra that enlargement had always been associated with deepening in this sense, as had indeed been the case.27 But there were reasons for supposing that this could not go on for ever: the only connection between widening and deepening was that contrived by politicians. Continuing enlargement certainly created an increased need for reformed majority voting, as without it decision-making could become impossible. But the link was not a necessary one. In an enlarged Europe, decision-making would be more difficult because there was a wider range of interests and increasing demands. Making it easier to obtain majorities by fixing the voting arrangements would not get round this. Countries that were outvoted would soon begin to protest and insist that being outvoted did not mean the end of resistance. In the old, smaller EU, decisions had depended in practice on a consensus among member states, encouraged by

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the possibility of being outvoted, but never forced by it. Dangerously, enlargement made it more likely that voting would usually take place: states would actually be outvoted, and often. Enlargement meant a major challenge to the way in which the EU had traditionally operated. Mechanisms were now to be introduced, and they were proposed in the European Constitution, which reflected the impossibility of continuing to work through consensus. The trend in EU decision-making was clearly indicated by the protests of the politicians: increasingly frequently it was denied that the EU was moving towards the looser intergovernmental model of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). ‘But I do not want to see the EU mutate into the loose structures of something like the OSCE’.28 Such denials were a clear indication that this was indeed happening. The new direction of movement of forms of decision-making can be traced back as far as the Maastricht Treaty which, paradoxically, was both the highest point of attainment of the traditional form and the first indication of its abandonment. At Maastricht, subsidiarity was introduced and its application was made subject to increasing control by the intergovernmental authorities in the EU. Despite the acknowledged impossibility of coming to any clear decisions about what was better done at the EU level and at national levels, the Commission was quickly required to demonstrate a need for Europe-level action in each proposal it made. In the proposed European Constitution, the decision was to be overseen by national parliaments. Parliaments would be likely to opt for the national level more often than not. As explained in Chapter 1, the open method of coordination introduced in 2000 reinforced subsidiarity by requiring the Commission to exercise restraint, even in areas where it should have competence. In the growth and employment programme, the nations were to develop ways of achieving the goals agreed by the Council and filled out by the Commission. They would be stated in national plans and subjected to inspection by member states and the Commission. Member states were to pursue reforms at the national level and present them in their national reform programmes. This happened for the first time in October 2005. But the national plans, owned (to use the language of the Commission’s proposal) by the states, were to be drawn up with reference to the frameworks and goals agreed and owned at the community level. In this way, according to the Commission, ownership of the parts of the strategy was established. The precise steps to be taken and the speed at which they were undertaken was up to the national authorities. The main pressure towards implementation was to be the approval or disapproval of progress made in the monitoring process. Such a way of working was more like that found in the UN than that traditionally found in the EU. It left considerable discretion to the states, and lacked any overall enforcement mechanism, or the backing of legal obligation in the Union’s legal system. Most importantly, these new

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methods reflected an expectation of increasing diversity rather than of an ever-closer union of peoples.

Scenarios of future development These challenges to the governance of the EU, deriving from globalisation and enlargement, and reflected in a retreat from integration, suggested three scenarios about the future of the EU. Social democracy was safe in the old core states, economic recovery was starting, integration was ending – what new patterns of association between the 25 member states were conceivable in this context? 1 The first accepted the dilution of the existing arrangements of the EU by granting derogations and exceptions to all members in the enlarged community. Subsidiarity would be applied more systematically and the European framework would permit a degree of flexibility in the application of community rules at the national level. Allowing greater scope for national manoeuvre implied the immersion of member states in the global economy, as well as the European one, and, it probably also went along with increasing pressure on the social democratic states to adjust their systems in the direction of the low-tax/low-welfare Anglo–American model of economic management. This meant the further liberalisation of trade, and lower levels of government intervention and spending on welfare throughout. This was very much the agenda of the anti-Europeans, as it removed the challenge of supranationalism to which they had strongly objected. It would also fit with the social and political agendas of the anti-Europeans with regard to internal policy, as very low tariffs, adopted within the framework of multilateral free trade negotiations, would mean that the costs of adaptation were more likely to be placed on labour, while the advantages of free trade accrued to companies and richer individuals. 2 The second scenario was the successful adjustment of the Union’s arrangements to accommodate all members in a higher level of integration. This would involve the least possible dilution of existing cooperative arrangements in the arrangements with new member states, and resistance to arrangements that allowed an increase in the discretion of national authorities within community frameworks. The freedoms associated with the open method of coordination, for instance, would be carefully monitored and restrained. The institutions would also be adjusted so as to protect the powers of the centre and to find a generally acceptable compromise between national independence and supranationalism. The creeping disengagement of the Court from oversight of Community goals would be resisted. There would be a measure of adjustment of welfare spending, but the principle of state responsibility for individual welfare would be acknowledged throughout the Union. In

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this way the Union would continue much as before, but with a considerably increased membership, and a moderating of ambitions for future integration, combined with a measure of compromise with the forces of globalisation. This would be a kind of half-way house between an EU that had regressed to the level of a traditional common market, or something like the OSCE, and one that had moved to a higher level of political integration.29 3 The third scenario is an attempt to capture the likeliest shape of a Europe which continues towards an ever-closer union of peoples, a continuation of the traditional way. It is hard to see how all the member states of the enlarged community could be equally involved in such a deepened Union. The likeliest evolution would be an increased differentiation between a group of social democratic states and a group of states that had a lower level of welfare spending and lower ambitions for political integration. In this two-level system, questions would arise about the relationship of the non-core states with the more integrated ones, and the relationship of the integrated states with global economic arrangements. The likeliest candidates for the core group were the social democratic states of Western Europe, especially France and Germany, while the likeliest non-core states were the more recently admitted members, and possibly the group of cautious western states including the UK. A number of considerations pointed in the direction of the third scenario.  On 12 May 2000, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, in a lecture at the Humboldt University in Berlin, made a proposal that was echoed in October 2000 by President Chirac. They called for Germany and France to lead a core of countries towards deeper integration within an enlarged EU.30 In the Treaty of Amsterdam, and later at Nice, this theme was reflected in the notion of flexibility or enhanced cooperation, intended to allow states that wished to go ahead of the others the right to do so – if all agreed to this. But flexibility, as already pointed out, became a contested concept in the sense that the more cautious states, and those sceptical about integration, were fearful about the prospect of a more integrated core.  One option was for the core states to move ahead by signing a separate treaty among themselves, or by exploiting the new flexibility arrangements of the Amsterdam and Nice Treaties. The failure to approve the proposed Constitution in France and the Netherlands by no means indicated an insurmountable obstacle in the way of this outcome, as a part of the explanation of rejection appeared to have been the fear that the constitution would dilute rather than strengthen the EU. The rejection was also a reflection of the unpopularity of the political elites, as discussed in Chapter 3. The former strategy had been proposed by the leading core states on several occasions in the 1980s and 1990s in the

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face of the reluctance of the cautious states, led by the British, to accept stronger powers for the central institutions.  There remained a number of serious practical difficulties in the way of adjusting the existing arrangements of the Union to involve the new members of Central and Eastern European states on completely equal terms after the period of transition. In 2006 there were difficulties with the Community’s budget, with the application of the Common Agricultural Policy, with labour mobility, and with voting arrangements in the Council, and in all these areas, despite formal membership, solutions that were compatible with the achievement of the old Europe and the demands of new members were hard to find. For instance, on the budget, there were difficulties that would lead to greatly increased demands on the European budget and the implication of higher contributions by the richer member states. Traditional redistribution policies would need re-examination.  It was most likely that enlargement, despite formally succeeding – on the basis of the Copenhagen and Helsinki criteria – would be associated with a long-term disagreement between the core social democratic states, which preferred to protect the achievements of integration, and the new members and older cautious states, who wanted them diluted.31 In late 2006 this view was underlined by the apparent preparedess of the Commission in its report on the admission of Romania and Bulgaria to accept their membership even though they had not yet met the Copenhagen criteria, a position that would have been unthinkable in the earlier East European expansion.

Conclusions At the time of writing there were a range of challenges to the governance of the EU. One was the need to tackle the misperceptions about the survival of the European welfare state. As economic recovery got under way, there was evidence that it could be defended successfully and that the way of the neoliberals was not inevitable. The key to this strategy was the realisation that inward investment did not follow neoliberal strategies of low standards of social welfare provision and low overall taxation. The relationship between high taxation, and high levels of government spending as a proportion of GDP and inward flows of investment, varied considerably across Europe, and some states with high scores on both counts were successful in attracting inward investment, and in keeping it. British boasts of success often needed qualifying – for instance, high levels of inward investment in 2005 were largely attributable to a smal number of very large international company merges. But there was less inward investment when taxation was directly on companies, and this could suggest that more tax should come from other sources. If paying for welfare was not necessarily a problem, it was, however, undeniable that a degree of sensible mitigation of welfare spending was

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desirable. But there was a socially responsible way of developing greater labour flexibility and protecting welfare. As has been pointed out, there were a range of conceivable changes that could promote growth and employment without damaging the European social model. The beginnings of further economic growth in Germany was a happy context for a new effort by the EU to push the Lisbon agenda. There had been positive changes there. What was needed was for the French and Italian governments and workers to be convinced by these arguments. They needed to believe that things could be done without buying the so-called Anglo– American model wholesale. In these countries there was a debilitating background miasma of neoliberalism that needed to be burnt off. There was a new energy about the process, but it had come along at a time when, largely because of enlargement, there were increasing doubts about the possibility of continuing with a programme of what could be called linear integration (a process of integration that continued with economic, social and political integration in a step-by-step fashion towards a union of peoples over the whole territory of the Union). In fact the Maastricht Treaty in the early 1990s had indicated the possibility of an end to integration in this sense. The view had become increasingly common, even among those who enjoyed a reputation for being pro-European, that the new Europe would be an intergovernmental arrangement. Ideas of federalism and a superordinate European identity became anathema, and this coincided with enlargement. The new grand challenges, like those being tackled in the Lisbon strategy, produced responses that reflected this new view of integration. The policy was a development of the idea of subsidiarity, enunciated at Maastricht, and carried forward into the open method of coordination and the approach of national reform programmes. As the Commission itself proposed, it consisted of a more careful definition of the ownership of the policy, with the Community having the role of defining goals and frameworks, and a degree of monitoring of progress, while within this framework the work was done according to national preferences at the national level. This method did indeed construct pressures on states to do something, but allowed various degrees of progress at various speeds. National reform programmes were not a national response, as in the old days, to a Council Directive, but rather an indication of free-wheeling national compliance. There might be censure for falling short, but the goals were not legally binding targets subject to any kind of oversight by the European Court of Justice. It was therefore likely that the levels of national achievement across Europe would vary considerably. The outcome was more likely to be a multilevel system of discordance rather than a multi-level system of governance. There was now an underlying disagreement between the core and the rest about the nature of the institutional arrangements of EU and the future of integration. Should there be a continuing effort to achieve an ever-closer union of peoples? Should they reflect and encourage diversity, or should

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they encourage convergence around the European social model? Continuing with the social systems of Western Europe was practical, but likely to be divisive rather than integrative, and economic growth was likely to be uneven. The new, poorer states were still likely to be a source of cheaper labour, and the threat of finding less costly production there would remain of concern to western labour. The western states would still yearn to do it better – solid targets, backed by legal obligation, and using techniques that were recognisably the old form of integration in pursuit of an ever-closer union of peoples. In other words, the institutional arrangements, and the framework and goals of the Lisbon agenda, now reconstrued as the growth and employment strategy, was likely to encourage the emergence of a two-speed Europe.

5

Integration theory in the early twenty-first century: a setting for disintegration?

In the early twenty-first century, theorists of the EU often wondered whether they were concerned in any way with the study of European integration. The problem was not just that there were a number of different definitions of integration; there were also doubts about whether a general view of integration was now possible. The usual conclusion was that there were so many different definitions that seeking any overall view was a futile exercise. At the same time, there was an odd disjunction between the rapidly increasing knowledge of the EU, linked with a multitude of theories, and the sense of approaching a period of possible disintegration found among a number of scholars and commentators. The author was tempted to speculate about whether there was any link between the scholarly development of ‘bringing European studies in from the cold’, as Helen Wallace put it,1 and the increasing problems with the health of the creature under scrutiny. In the 1960s, neofunctionalists such as Ernst Haas and Leon Lindberg had proposed a general definition of integration in Europe.2 Haas said European integration was ‘the voluntary creation of larger political units involving the self conscious eschewal of force in relations between participating institutions’3 and, famously, that it was ‘the process whereby political actors in several distinct national settings are persuaded to shift their loyalties, expectations and political activities towards a new center, whose institutions possess or demand jurisdiction over pre-existing national states. The end result of a process of political integration is a new political community, superimposed over the pre-existing ones’.4 In the 1970s, R. J. Harrison held that the ‘integration process may be defined as the attainment within an area of the bonds of political community, of central institutions with binding decision-making powers and methods of control determining the allocation of values at the regional level and also of adequate consensusformation mechanisms’;5 while W. Wallace wrote in 1990 that ‘it amounted to the creation and maintenance of intense and diversified patterns of interaction among previously autonomous units’.6 These definitions specified the end situation of a process of integration and understood it as some kind of general system. They insisted that such a system represented a transformation of the current one. But they were also

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concerned with the dynamic processes which led to that transformation. Although there could be any specific level of integration, defined as a particular condition of interaction or communality, the idea of European integration was only useful when it contained both the element of process and that of condition. There was also the argument about whether there was a primary aspect to the end of integration: was it enough to deal with the development of security community, on the lines of Karl Deutsch?7 Or was it necessary for the range of activities within the state to be affected by integration, including economic, social and political arrangements? In the process of integration, did economic integration lead to political integration, or was it the other way round? For many, Donald Puchala summed up the whole problem when he argued in 1972 that studying European integration was like a blind man studying an elephant:8 whatever element came to hand was understood, wrongly, to represent the whole. If there was no agreement about the character of the end condition of the integration process, different theorists had no way of knowing that they were not studying different animals.

Patterns of multi-theorising in the 1990s In consequence, those seeking fresh theories about the EU after the early 1990s concentrated less on the grand questions about the development of an integrated Europe, and more on the understanding of particular aspects of it. Even the founding father of integration theory, Ernst Haas, had moved on by the mid-1970s to recommend that the ‘theory of regional integration ought to be subordinated to a general theory of interdependence’.9 He declared that integration theory was obsolescent.10 But it should be noted that the difficulties found by integration theorists in the 1960s and 1970s were not the same as those of the 1990s. The earlier problems, as identified by Haas himself and by Stanley Hoffman, were that neofunctionalism had given too little attention to what Haas called authority–legitimacy transfer and Hoffman labelled as the logic of diversity.11 Haas had agreed with Hoffman that the neofunctionalist theory had failed to take enough account of the various ways in which member states were linked with the outside world.12 By the 1990s, big changes had taken place. There had been self-contained academic developments in the sense of evolution from one set of theories to another, as well as developments in the real world. In addition to the study of international relations, other disciplines, including those that could be placed broadly under the heading of comparative politics, had entered the fray. European studies became an academic area where theories about politics with wider applicability could be tested and developed, and the question of whether Europe was moving towards political community or a new kind of state – the big questions – were left to one side. For some, this was good news: the study of Europe had become less sui generis and more commonplace.

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Put another way, and perhaps less elegantly: the 1990s was a period of multi-theorising. One of the tasks of this essay is the examination of the character of this multi-theorising as a reflection of a particular kind of reality.13 By the time of writing, those theorising about European studies could be divided into five major groups.  First, those who continued to look for ways of understanding the big picture, who tried to understand the parts of the European system in the light of a predetermined image of the whole. These included Andrew Moravcsik in his writing about liberal intergovernmentalism, and arguably the present writer in his examination of the EU as a consociation.14  Second, a new group of formidable theorists who sought to understand the process by which particular policies, or related groups of policies, were made in the EU. They included policy network analysts and neoinstitutionalists.15 The former looked at the various kinds of group input into the making of policy, while the latter examined the formal and informal aspects of work within the institutions of the Union. The neoinstitutionalists took some of their categories and modes of understanding from regime theory, an approach that had been developed in the study of international relations as a way of explaining cooperation among sovereign governments.  Third, a group who theorised about Europe as a multi-level system of governance. They were distinctive in that they identified actors working at different levels of EU governance and sought to understand relations between them in the policy context. There was a group that followed Puttnam’s argument that international cooperation could be best understood as a two-level game: one at the level of intergovernmental relations and one within the various nation states, with each game being played to protect and reinforce the power of governments.16 And there was a group that theorised the opposite view: that relations between the supranational executive, the Commission, and regional authorities within the various states, could be used to enhance the role of the Commission and reduce that of governments.17  Fourth, a group of scholars of comparative politics, including those more concerned with comparative government. These tried to understand the political processes and structures in the EU in a comparative setting. There were in the EU particular examples of general patterns in political systems, which could usefully be compared with what happened, say, in Germany or France. There were also categories of government structure, such as legislatures or executives, or parties, which could be identified within the EU just as they could within the states.18  Fifth, theorists who were concerned with understanding the different ways in which the idea of integration could be understood in different social settings in Europe, who applied the approaches of social constructivism,

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The problems of achieving an agreed definition of European integration should not, however, be regarded as sufficient grounds for giving up any version. It is possible to describe a kind of minimalist consensus view of the idea. This could be that an integration theory needed two elements: a sense of a system, defined with regard to stated criteria, which was different from the current system; and a sense of dynamic processes in the current system with the potential for creating that different system. It is important to have that effect of transformation, and that sense of the dynamic process. And, if the end of integration could not be substantially defined in empirical terms, it might still be possible to identify dynamic processes in the present system. Indeed, given the concern with transformation, it may not be possible to identify the end situation in detail, as it cannot be known. But there has to be a general notion of the end, although the dependent variable may be speculative or uncertain. The dynamic processes might, however, still be identified in more specific terms, and this is attempted below. These, it is proposed here, could be called ‘elements of integration’. It is necessary to ask the question as to what is to be excluded from the category of integration theory in theorising about the EU. Obviously, integration theory cannot be made up of theories that just happen to be about Europe. A theorist about European political processes can be concerned with understanding better an aspect of current reality, such as what happens when a particular policy is made, or particular types of contact are established between central institutions and those in the regions. If that were all, this concern could not be said to be about an aspect of integration theory, as it has no idea of the end of integration or of a process leading to it. A more modest claim might be made – that such an exercise is a measure of integration at a particular time. Even this, however, cannot be true – what is it measured against? An integration theory needs two further elements, which might be called a generalising principle and a transforming principle. It has to be argued that the patterns identified in the current arrangements are typical of a general system, that they are the identifying feature of that system and, further, that they have a dynamic quality that pushes towards a new system possessing this identifying feature. That does not mean there could not be disagreement about the identifying pattern, or the way in which it might lead to transformation. Or that it might not be possible to identify a general pattern – in which case there can be no end called integration, and this

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theory is not an integration theory. But integration theory cannot simply be a wish list about research in Europe that might be interesting. Puchala did not say that the blind man could not draw important conclusions about the whole from a single part if he had examined a good many parts. The blind man would have been perfectly correct to say that the essence of the elephant was its trunk: that was a good working understanding of what was essential about the elephant. A look at its circulatory system would have suggested something characteristic about very large mammals, and a look at its stomach and digestive system would have indicated its character as a large ruminant. Every bit of the animal can be used to give a picture of the essential character of a larger entity, the character of the whole being seen in the light of that of the part. To make these deductions, that blind man would have needed only a knowledge of the characteristics of a living system. Similarly, an integration theorist requires, in addition to expertise in one aspect of the system – institutional processes, policy networks, and so on – a knowledge of the minimum requirements of an integrated political system. It should not be deduced from Puchala’s metaphor that it is enough just to look at a particular part.

The qualities of multi-theorising It is not claimed here that any of the multi-theories made no contribution: many of them were innovative and insightful, and certainly added to the range of useful theorising about Europe. It is just that they were often not about integration. Indeed they were not just not about integration, they were sometimes, by implication, hostile to it. As argued below, however, even when this was the case they sometimes implied particular elements of integration, meaning that they included particular processes that could be linked with integration. Parts of the theory could be extracted and interpreted as integrative. What is it that distinguishes the various theories? Is there something about their character that is specific to each, that amounts to a distinguishing pathology? The policy networks theorists seemed to be particularly liable to the identification of margins around the particular area they were studying. Because of this, they risked detaching the process of making policy from the system-setting. They tended to be unconcerned with the transformation of political systems, but worked within them, and accepted them as a given. Margins were placed around the field of analysis and the end product was an explanation of the process by which the policy emerged, rather than of the nature of the new system. The new institutionalists also tended to set margins. They stressed the special characteristics of institutional settings, even of parts of administrations within the larger administrative entity, such as the Agricultural Directorate in the Commission, and, because of this, lost focus on the overall character of the system of governance of which these

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administrative units were a part. They were less concerned with questions such as the sources of authority, which Haas had recognised as a problem with neofunctionalism. Indeed, these new approaches could be characterised collectively as the study of smoke-filled rooms, without regard to the relationship of policies and public. Of course, these scholars could retort with truth that this was what they had chosen to study – and what is wrong with that! This writer is considering their work as an example of integration theory. It was as if concentration on the parts of Puchala’s elephant had become a virtue. He suggested a metaphor of the difficulties facing those who sought to understand integration in the early 1970s. Instead, there was a legitimising of the encapsulation of policy areas and the special identity and distinctive operations of sections of institutions, which itself limited the chance of developing a greater prospect for understanding the system. This academic tendency had its counterpart in the real world. A feature of the EU that was often complained about was that there was insufficient coordination of policy sectors. For instance, in areas such as the Union’s foreign policy, officials often complained that there was a need for greater crosspillar coordination. With regard to environmental policy in the Union, there had been a realisation that an ever-wider range of policy areas had environmental implications, and that holistic action was necessary at the highest level. But it was difficult to match this with any effective trans-pillar, or trans-institutional, coordinated action. The point here is that the pattern of meso-theorising of the 1990s was related to this complaint. It described this compartmentalisation of policy settings and administrations, and tended to harden the boundaries. There was no search for the elements that could push for a greater overarching coordination, for example in external dealings with Geneva institutions, or in a complex policy setting such as that concerning the environment. Attention was not focused on policies that required such overarching coordination. Among the macro-theorists, Moravcsik engaged in depth and at length with the concept of integration in a wide variety of contexts. The distinguishing pathology, however, was in a commitment to understanding the role of existing governments in taking key decisions: immutable intergovernmentalism. For all the concern with integration, there was less concern with the transformation of the system, with an end pattern in such politics which was different from that applying in the present. There was, however, considerable engagement with the elements of integration. These were generally located in the study of the demand side of the political process, where the interests of articulate groups were shaped and addressed to governments. As with the meso-theorists, however, attention was focused on what the student of comparative politics would label interest group politics. Indeed, the theory chosen made it impossible to detect the transformation of the system.20 The supply side of the political process focused on the

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ways in which national governments sought to obtain the interests defined within their countries, particularly with regard to the negotiations in the early 1980s that led to the Single European Act. As many have pointed out, the problem with this approach, from the point of view of integration theory, was that it had a built-in presumption against change. The international regional system was seen as one of intergovernmental bargaining, in which the dominant actors were governments. The approach defied the Ruggie stipulation about what to look for in a good theory that would help us to understand change: there was no allowance for the possibility that any other kind of system could emerge.21 The system was an intergovernmental one and, seen through this theoretical lens, there was no way in which this could be fundamentally altered. Moravcsik was very skilful in his avoidance of traps that might have been set by his critics. His views on the Commission and on the democratic deficit are illustrative. He theorises that the Commission could be seen as having power in intergovernmental negotiation only to the extent that it possesses and uses ideas and information. ‘If, for whatever combination of reasons, the three core assumptions of the supranational bargaining theory hold – the distribution of information and ideas drives negotiated outcomes, the transaction costs for states generating and distributing information are high, and supranational actors enjoy a comparative advantage in such generation and distribution – there is good reason to believe that supranational actors may enjoy bargaining power in intergovernmental negotiations’.22 But these core assumptions, Moravcsik stated, did not hold and therefore the Commission could not enjoy bargaining power. The theory takes little account of the Commission’s considerable capacity to influence, such as its role in building epistemic communities and the interpenetration of bureaucracies, its ability to shape the agenda and to time its own interventions. In consequence, the Commission was seen as playing a supporting role in the conduct of intergovernmental negotiations, and its role in constructing the parameters of the debate was downplayed. Moravcsik’s understanding of intergovernmentalism must also be connected with his view that there was no democratic deficit in the EU.23 How could a greater role for a European Parliament be envisaged when the system was necessarily controlled by governments? The point about the role of the Commission is of crucial importance in Moravcsik’s theory, as it is a key point in his commitment to a nonintegrative version of liberal intergovernmentalism. Leon Lindberg put the point of criticism politely but cogently: in arguing against Moravcsik’s use of the rational choice approach, he wrote that ‘I think that governments perhaps do not really know what their preferences are. Even if they do, it is not clear that they can find an area of agreement. We know that positions are not stable. We know that in certain cases a proposal, a well-chosen proposal from the Commission, can change the whole nature of bargains and bring in new issues. In that sense, I think, in a system like the EU, in

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which intergovernmentalism is as much a process of integration as is supranational behaviour ... everyone is locked into a system in which the costs of failure are fairly high’.24 [my emphasis] The present writer’s theorising about consociationalism in the EU, and the linked writings on confederalism, had the same characteristic.25 The theory of consociation, like Moravcsik’s theory of intergovernmentalism, involved a predetermined image of the end system, which made it difficult to detect the emergence of any other kind of system. It added the point that the way in which the institutions of the EU actually worked – different from the formal arrangements – was that of a cartel of elites. For all the special characteristics of the Commission, and the formal introduction of majority voting in the Council of Ministers in the 1985 Single European Act, it was still national governments that dominated. They retained the capacity to veto legislation they disliked, despite the formal possibility of majority voting. The system remained dominated by the principles of national sovereignty, which was in part concealed by the achievement of an arrangement in which, on the one hand, there was the appearance of supranational arrangements, but on the other the practice of intergovernmentalism. The present writer has argued often that this was the achievement of the Europe of the Fifteen member states: the apparently symbiotic relationship between the state and the community. The macro-theorists of the 1990s therefore seemed to have in common with the meso-theorists that their theories had no built-in idea of system change. There may have been elements of integration, but no integration theory. The pathology of the theories of multi-level governance lay in its commitment to a procrustean vertical stratification of political organisation of the state and the Union. There was little sense of an end situation much different from the present one. The relationship between the three levels – national government, sub-national actors, including regions, and the Union – could be to the advantage of one or several of them and have negative or positive implications for integration. The Putnam approach was calculated in such a way that it was positively anti-integration. It was theorised that the game at the international level would be played in such a way that the position of the player, the government, was strengthened in the other game, the one within the state. The government used the regional arrangements to strengthen its position with regard to possible rivals within its state. This view of multi-level governance is like that of the consociational/confederalists as it sees governments as protecting and extending their national power base in their dealings at the European level. The other tendency in the study of multi-level governance focused more on developments that could weaken national governments. It concentrated on the way in which the supranational actor, especially the Commission, could develop relations with regional actors within the state in opposition to the preferences of national governments. There was an alliance of supranational and local actors that could indeed radically change the system by

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progressively strengthening their common governance at the expense of governments. This approach, it might be judged, was indeed a kind of protointegration theory, as it envisaged the triumph of a supranational–local system of governance. It was capable of development into an extended theory of integration, especially if a theory of attitude change could be added, and especially if the theory was shaped to include an account of the development of a habit of supranational–local cooperation across an increasing range of policies. It was easily adaptable to neofunctionalism, as it involved the socialisation and incorporation of political/technical elites at the supranational and local levels. One failure of the theorising of the 1990s was that there was no awareness of the potential for system reversal that could result, for instance, from the weakness in the democratic basis of the arrangements of the EU. This was the case for the meso-theorists because of their style of theorising, and for the macro-theorists because of unintended or deliberate omission. As already pointed out, Moravcsik concluded that the democratic deficit in Europe did not exist and the lack of public accountability was not a problem. There were elements sustaining the system within which all these theories had evolved. But what went largely unrecognised was that there could be pathologies specific to that system, related to the modes of its development. This was really what Stanley Hoffman had contributed with his logic of diversity:26 he saw a pathology that could be highly damaging for integration. But in modern theories there was little alertness to the possible development of circumstances in which an accident could happen. One illustration of this would be the election of a government that was radically anti-European. There was little sensitivity either to the possibility of this happening – it clearly could happen – or to the kinds of action such a government, and its allies, might take in detaching itself to the extent it judged appropriate from the European system. In a comparable case, the member governments found themselves on the horns of a dilemma about the action that might be taken with regard to the inclusion of Jo¨rg Haider’s right-wing extremists in the Austrian government. On the one hand was the principle of democracy, which required that the judgement of Austrian voters be respected. On the other hand was the values for which the EU claimed to stand. The reality was that disintegration was possible, and that it could happen without being recognised with a number of the multi-theories. The lack of involvement of European publics in decision-making was sometimes seen as a functional advantage. Underneath the complex and fascinating politics of the smoke-filled rooms there was, however, the possibility of great tectonic pressures, which could quite suddenly topple the edifice. Wallace implied that the public was only important when it showed positive dissent.27 Tsoukalis suggested the danger in this: ‘The ‘‘Golden Straitjacket’’ [meaning limited democratic input] may be sometimes good for economic efficiency. But in the long term it is certainly bad for democracy and

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politics, and hence unstable and potentially dangerous, especially if there were a significant number of losers hiding behind the general concept of efficiency. We could be approaching such a point in Europe today’.28 Wæver’s point should also be noted: that ‘the success of the EU was involved in detaching EU issues from questions of security’.29 Now that security issues had come back on to the agenda, partly as a consequence of the adoption of a European defence policy, and also because of the middleEast situation and the purported errors of some western governments, there were major risks with regard to external defence and dealing with terrorism. The public was again becoming concerned about how security was to be maintained, and once again European integration was vulnerable if it seemed not to be a way to cope. Multi-theorising went on in happy disregard of the appearance of factors that could destroy the integrated system of the EU. There were also practical consequences. The lack of any group of europhile warriors among the community of EU scholars in the early twenty-first century was no accident: as they did not identify any systemic goal, there was no cause to support. There was almost certainly a connection between the appearance of such warriors in the early years, in the UK as on the continent, and the existence of integration theorists, both directly and indirectly. Circumstances in the real world then looked favourable, and there was a cause which the work of academics helped to look realisable. Haas had reported the extent to which his theories had entered the vernacular of the Commission. It seemed unlikely that this was the case with the multi-theorists.

The incidental elements of integration But was there any evidence of concern with the other aspect of integration theory, that found in the processes of integration and depicted here as ‘elements of integration’? These are understood as processes that had a built-in dynamic element capable of creating a pressure towards further integration. The classic example of this was the neofunctionalist concept of spill-over, understood as a tendency for the problems getting in the way of the attainment of a particular integrative goal, such as a common market, to be solved by a further act of integration, such as creating a common currency. There were elements of integration either specified or implied in European studies theorising in the early twenty-first century, although they were often not made explicit. These could often be brought out by simply sharpening and making more explicit what was already present in particular theoretical approaches. For instance, in the policy studies approaches – policy networks and neoinstitutionalism – there was evidence of the following.  An incremental policy-making process according to which an agreed policy led to another related agreed policy for reasons of sunk costs, policy trajectory, existing administrative structures and interest groups.

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Once it had been agreed to establish the single market in the Single European Act in 1985, the argument seemed persuasive that there should now be a single European currency. There were bureaucrats and lobbies who favoured the move, as well as good reason not to risk what had been achieved in the single market.  Incremental policy-making in the sense of neofunctionalist spill-over: problems arising that could be solved by a further policy agreement, leading in turn to the strengthening of the polity. The single market could not work if different levels of state support were permitted in different countries. Therefore the Commission was allowed to tighten the rules governing the amount of support a government could give to a bankrupt company. The agreement in 1995 to a French government subsidy to Air France was given on the understanding that there would be no more. The historically large bail-out Cre´dit Lyonnais package of 1996 was made conditional on the bank’s privatisation. In 2004, partly in response to the government help given to the troubled engineering firm Alstom (in the shape of the purchase of 31.5 per cent of Alstom’s shares by the state), the Commission fixed as a general rule that any major firm should pay half the cost of any restructuring package itself before government aid became acceptable. The existence of a competition policy with teeth was the inevitable corollary of the single market.  Incremental policy-making in the sense of becoming committed by the unintended consequences of a general declaration of the principles to be applied in a particular area, such as the Council’s commitment to core labour standards. In this context, as the present writer has argued, the Commission acquired a lever by which it could increase pressures on governments to reach common positions in external policy, and in consequence strengthen its own position in internal policy-making (see Chapter 6). The Commission was able to argue that the non-application of basic standards for workers in external trading partners made competition with them less fair, but that if they were to insist on such standards abroad, they needed to insist on them at home among the EU member states. The Commission would have oversight over the application of such standards within the single market.  Policy-making could also play a part in the development of communities of supporting individuals among key actors. The meso-theorists were studying a process in which the attitudes of civil servants ‘in key institutional settings’ could be affected, as had been argued powerfully by the neofunctionalists. Similarly, the process not only could respond to the claims of communities of interest and communities of individuals with common expertise, such as professors of European political economy, but also help to create such communities. It is not suggested here that the theories ignored such possibilities, but rather that their qualities as elements of integration were not made specific or brought out sufficiently strongly.

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 By seeking the elements of a constitutional settlement in the intense and wide-ranging debate that fed into the discussions of the Constitutional convention in 2002–4, there was a sense in which the comparative politics theorists were drawn into integration theorising. A number of them became actively involved in the numerous seminars held in the early twenty-first century to discuss the constitutional proposals, and had their views fed into the discussions of the Convention. They were drawn into the integration process when they responded positively to the invitation to consider what could work in governing the EU. Some who had previously concentrated on national institutions were now thinking of blueprints for the relationship between the European Commission, the Council of Ministers, the European Court of Justice, and the European Parliament.

A context of disintegration? The fading of the idea of integration among the multi-theorists was part of a retreat of the idea of integration from the attention of a wider attentive public. Any theory of disintegration must start from the declining reputability of the idea of integration. It is an aspect of the group dynamics of the attentive publics in Europe, of which the members of political science departments are a part. There was no doubt in the spring of 2006 that the great days of integration theory were remote. There were a lot of theories about what was happening in Europe, but nothing that added up to an account of the transformation of relations between the states and societies of Europe, such as that implicit in neofunctionalism or federalism. Major texts on international theory, which in earlier days had been the intellectual homeland of integration theory, had few, if any, references to regional integration; just one reference in the index of a major – probably the major – successful current international relations text, that edited by Baylis and Smith.30 Any new overarching theory about Europe would have to start from a new reality. There was a strong sense in 2006 that the practice of European politics was at a point of precarious imbalance, and that the beginning of disintegration was as much in prospect as further integration. As was often the case, theorising marched a few paces behind the practice: when the going was good the academics had a lot of ideas about the way to go, and when the way was unclear, so were they. It may be that the pattern of theorising in the early twenty-first century was part of the loss of any sense of direction, of getting lost. In 2006 there were a number of impressive theories about EU questions – just that they were not about integration, and did not encourage or reflect any commitment to the cause. There was a link between the nature of theorising and the retreat of Europe, although it was of the nature of an academic permissiveness or licence rather than a direct cause. On the other

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hand, it was probable, as had been the case in the 1960s, that enthusiasm among academics to develop theories about integration would coincide with an enthusiasm among practitioners. Each theorist strove to reflect the essence of that reality which was the object of study – so much is a truism. What was less obvious, however, was that the overall character of a number of different theories might together reveal something about the reality to which they collectively applied. This might be seen as a problem of metatheory, and asks the question: what does the practice of theorising in general at a particular time and place tell us about that time and place? Any single theory, even one that claimed to be a general theory, was bound to present only a partial view of that reality. So the multi-theorising of the 1990s, and later, suggested, as has been argued, that the circumstances of the EU were turning away from integration. To argue that the study of European integration was no longer sui generis was to argue that there was no longer European integration. Integration was necessarily the result of a transformation, and therefore of itself. A number of developments encouraged those who were opposed to the further integration of Europe, and who, indeed, preferred a measure of disintegration. These were discussed in Chapter 1 and need not be repeated at length here. Suffice it to say that a group of anti-integrationists were encouraged to challenge the previous reality of Europe. They claimed that the successes of integration were a delusion, and that the earlier reality of a beneficial EU was a false perception. They wanted the European public to subscribe to a new reality, from where Brussels institutions, the sharing of sovereignty, and the like, were banished. This was not just a debate about current issues, but an argument in favour of moving into a different world from that inhabited by the EU. The coalition of the antis was a key element in the dynamic of reality change that formed disintegration. That it had power was the result of a variety of political circumstances in the member states, although it had greater power in some than others. In the 1990s and the early twenty-first century, the energy of the coalition of anti-Europeans in pursuit of the strategies of disintegration was striking. They acquired enhanced purchase on public opinion because of the enfeebling of the pro-integration coalition. The coalition of the antis was, however, broader than the group of eurosceptics. The parties to the coalition included those who were gently defensive traditional nationalists, such as Christopher Meyer,31 and those who were aggressively hostile to Brussels and tended to be fearful of intervention from without. The latter were the group who most deserved the title of eurosceptics. The former often included internationalists, but also, among the British, a kind of old-buffer, clubland suspicion of anything that challenged the old order. Such individuals often cherished a Burkian dislike of change and a profound suspicion of any proposal for improvement. The EU was classed with all kinds of liberalism or utopianism as being out of touch with reality.

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There were also organisations and individuals who were advocates of globalised interests that saw regional regulation, however enlightened, as leading to costs. Regulation had an effect that was equivalent to tariffs and detracted from their ability to maximise profits. This group included multinational companies, and media empires such as those of Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black. There were also business organisations, managed by individuals who were motivated by right-wing ideologies, especially neoliberal economics, which stressed the advantage of a free market global economy, and particularly resented the involvement of the EU in welfare arrangements. These included such people as the British businessmen Stanley Kalms and James Goldsmith. There were other special economic interests, companies or individuals with a capacity for exploiting barriers and difference, rather in the manner of old-style toll-keepers. As Robert Jackson so ably argued, developing countries were often dominated by individuals who profited from a gatekeeping function.32 There were similar individuals in Europe. Both, by reason of interest, were opposed to attempts to eliminate boundaries. An obvious example was the financial institutions that derived reward from national borders, for example by changing currencies. But there were many other ways of exploiting boundaries for economic benefit, such as the accrual of gains from protecting positions of national dominance or monopoly. Such anti-integrationists always existed, and in the history of European integration were mostly in retreat. What they needed was a window of opportunity through which they could push their cause. In the early years of the twenty-first century, for reasons explained in Chapter 2, it was possible that a window had opened. Once retreat from integration had started, the difficulties arising in the way of preventing further retreat were likely to increase. The first President of the Commission of the European Communities, Walter Hallstein, had argued that the integration process was like riding a bicycle: once forward movement ceased, the rider was likely to fall off. In order to retain a particular level of integration, it was necessary to maintain a forward momentum, and this was now precariously slow. As explained in Chapter 1, a number of problems arose from enlargement from 15 to 25 members. The addition of the Eastern European states weakened the sense of collective interest. The old common values of Western Europe were diluted: there were different views about the nature of the state, a different style of Christianity, a different perspective on international politics. It also led to agonising over European identity, even more inflamed with regard to the application of Turkey. The question of that identity was of course fundamental for the institutional, political and theoretical issues discussed in this book. Enlargement also led to challenges to what could be called the great achievement of European integration, which was the symbiotic relationship between the member states and the Community. The view had come to

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dominate after the mid-1970s: it came to seem persuasive that the survival and development of the state was completely compatible with the strengthening of the common arrangements. This was an idea, based on an apparent contradiction, that became harder to defend after enlargement. The increase in numbers made it more likely, on the one hand, that majority voting in key institutions would be the practice rather than the doctrine, and on the other hand that in the larger system the dominance of big states would be real and visible. Enlargement also encouraged governments to put much greater stress on short-term interests, and less stress on longer-term ones. There was likely to be less upgrading of the common interest and more seeking the lowest common denominator. Leon Lindberg had pointed out that the theory of neoliberal intergovernmentalism had already obscured this distinction.33 These difficulties arose in a context that was unfavourable for the integration project for a number of further reasons. There was, for instance, a lack of attraction of the centre. The Brussels institutions, as a metaphor for integration as well as a practical arrangement, had acquired a negative image, partly because of the advocacy of the anti-Europeans, but also because of real failures of leadership or initiative, with regard to internal as well as foreign policy. In the latter context, the image was created largely in ex-Yugoslavia in the early and mid-1990s with the EU’s failure to do what they told the world they could do, namely bring peace to Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia. This image of ineffectuality was reinforced by the British and US denigration of the French and German role in opposing the proposal for a second Security Council Resolution on the use of force against Iraq. Internal policy failure was symbolised in the public mind by the unreformed Common Agricultural Policy, by the disregard in France and Germany of the Stability and Growth Pact on managing the Euro,34 and by the fall of the Santer Commission in 1999 in what was claimed to be a maelstrom of incompetence and corruption. The Report of the Committee of Independent Experts and the reports of the Court of Auditors showed the bad reputation was exaggerated, but not entirely undeserved. There had been a falling off the bike; integration was not possible without the impression of a competent centre. There was also a lack of clarity about who had authority and who had ultimate responsibility. The issue here was that the discussion of the proposed European Constitution brought home to the public a feature of the EU that had previously been obscure to the general public: that the Brussels institutions in some sense shared in the sovereignty of their national governments. The notion of shared or pooled sovereignty, one that academics had long reported, was not one that had much appeal to the public, who always preferred clarity about such matters. Ironically, the attempt to bring Europe closer to the people, which was one purpose of the European Constitution, only served to identify what they did not like. Shared sovereignty had no public appeal and was not understood. Now the proposed constitution

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asserted a mysterious doctrine, the sharing of sovereignty, which confused more than it clarified and raised the fear of who would take care of us now. There was a sense in which the success of integration, in a setting of nation states, was a condition of the beginning of disintegration. In Chapter 1 it was argued that there was evidence of declining commitment to integration in EU agreements and declarations, especially in and after the Maastricht Agreement. For example, subsidiarity and the open method of coordination, although intended to facilitate a further, sophisticated integration, also implied hesitation about integration (these terms are discussed more fully in Chapter 1). Maastricht was the culmination of the integration process. It pushed the enlargement of the powers of the European Parliament, and the identification of a European foreign policy, of a common defence policy and of European citizenship. But it also signalled a mark in the sand, an intimation of the end of the process of integration. It challenged the idea of an ever-closer union of peoples contained in the preamble of the Treaty of Rome. For the first time, the proposed European Constitution had specific arrangements for the withdrawal of member states from the Union, as well as enhanced powers for national parliaments over the granting of new competences to Brussels. All this meant that the climate had become unfriendly to ideas about integration. The appearance of multi-theorising was but an aspect of this changing climate. The academic enthusiasts, who had formed a powerful pro-integration cohort in the early days, had immersed themselves in a range of partial theories that lacked any hold on an integrative dynamic.35 And the elites who might otherwise have favoured integration lacked any great cause that could be used as a bait to hook the public. The gains of integration had become mundane and often invisible: there was a kind of post-acquisitive society with regard to the benefits of integration. There was a lack of any energising of the process by a sense of important things to be done. The multi-theorisers were an aspect of this de-energising. In these conditions, the anti-integrationists were likely to have a much greater impact on the imagination of the EU publics than the pro-integrationists. In consequence, the EU was increasingly likely to be treated as a joke at the dining tables of the attentive public around Europe.

Integration theory now? Is integration theory possible in these circumstances? It would be of a different kind from that of the 1960s. It would have to take account of the social–academic context as well as the political circumstances of the early twenty-first century. The academic context of multi-theorising since the 1990s had an antiintegration disposition. Concern with integration did not fit, it was thought, with the real world but, just as importantly, it had also become unfashionable. Indeed, it was a commonplace among experts on Europe to view the

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earlier period of such concern as a period of naivety, and it was proposed that the new multi-theorising was getting closer to what was important about intra-European relations. We were told that European studies had come in from the cold, as if what happened earlier was the cold. We were also told that it was better not to see the case of European integration as sui generis. Academic studies in the social sciences have to take care not to be overtly political. But that does not mean being unconcerned with how a greater degree of integration might be obtained. Academics are perfectly properly concerned with the mapping of future routes to preconceived goals. They can ask the question in their detailed research of what strategies might be available for greater integration. It is only a way of asking about the nature of current trends. There might be micro- and macro-integration strategies. Micro-strategies would involve the plotting of connections with a greater level of unity from a set of current circumstances. For instance, the pattern of the Commission’s involvement in the UN system in Geneva is suggestive of routes to higher internal integration (see Chapter 6). The Commission links trade with core labour standards which, in turn, need to be applied within the EU. This implies an expanded role for the Commission, a deepening of integration. The identification of such routes can often be added to empirical research. In external relations, of course, the key question would be how the member states could develop more unity in their exercise of soft power. But the theorists have to accept that there is good reason to lead their studies towards the articulation of integrative goals and strategies. A search for macro-strategies leads the student to choose between, on the one hand, those approaches, like neofunctionalism, which start from a particular view about the relationship between economics and politics, and on the other hand those that start from a radically different set of circumstances. In the early twenty-first century, the need for a political strategy, rather than a strategy from economics, was indicated. This alternative has already been seen. In the history of European integration there were at least three phases. First was the period when integration was about consensusbuilding strategies among actors, usually a permutation of France, West Germany and the Commission, which had a wide range of common values and broad agreement about goals. In a second phase, however, from the mid-1970s until the early 1990s the project was based on power – the capacity of the committed core states to frighten the reluctant partners into cooperation. They could threaten to build a more united Europe without them. In a third phase, which started in the early 1990s and is still with us, integration became increasingly a bounded concept, liable to a widening range of restraints and, of course, marked by multi-theorising. Further unification in Europe must include a strategy like that of the second phase. The new reality was that economic integration in the early twenty-first century, by convention as much as necessity, involved the

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acknowledgement of diversity. The open method of coordination, and the acceptance of the idea of flexibility, had illustrated this. The concern of the Commission to establish ownership of the two parts of the Lisbon process, in the form of the strategy for growth and employment, was further evidence. It seemed that the national programmes in the strategy allowed considerable national discretion, without commitment to legal deadlines or oversight by the Court of Justice. The states could adopt diverse ways and speeds of adjusting to the aims of the strategy. The process of economic coordination was now to be a process of confirming diversification, rather than one of pressing for harmonisation. These were ways of working in the EU that were reminiscent of those that had emerged in the 1990s in the UN’s development programmes. What was stressed was a process of socialisation to appropriate behaviour, rather than the application of legally backed specific targets, which had been the EU’s normal practice.36 Another part of the strategy was to embark on a more political approach to integration. We arrive back at the federalist dilemma, which was discussed in the early days of European integration in the 1950s and 1960s – the impossibility of reaching integration by gradualist means even when extensive competences had been transferred to a new and larger centre. The federalist argument was that the jump to integration would be made only when it had been generally accepted that the Union was indissoluble, and that decisions about the allocation of competences were unaffected by the sense of competing destinies. These criteria did not apply in the EU in the early twenty-first century – the possibility of formal dissolution was now recognised, and the disagreements about competences were about hanging on to national control. It was, however, possible to formulate tests about having reached that sense of common destiny which concerned the integration of particular areas of activity. These were not areas that were essentially economic or technical. The practical demonstration would be the decision to have a common army and to be prepared to merge national forces in the larger entity, and to commit all the military production and technical capacities to making that new single army as effective as was necessary. There would be future occasions on which it was necessary to go to war together, and to take all the risks together which that decision involved. The limited progress towards such a development is described in Chapter 8. In a full union there could not be any limited pooling of military capacity, as at present, since any withholding would be a measure of the lack of common destiny, and the expression of a deep belief in different interests. It could be argued that the creation of an army could come first. It could create the sense of common destiny and the development of durable collective interests. It was possible that by some means, by the back door, a common army could come into existence in the EU that would have purchase on the development of a sense of common destiny. This looked unlikely. The logic of diversity argument proposed by Stanley Hoffman was always a totemic reference in writings about the integration of the EU. It suggested

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that the different patterns of engagement of members with the outside world imposed formidable difficulties in the way of integration between them.37 Any new theory of integration had to deal with this Uhr-problem, and develop a theory about the convergence of members’ external interests. This could involve the daunting tasks of mapping those interests and devising a method of determining whether they were moving closer together or further apart. An integrative element would need to be identified, being the nature of the process by which members’ interests were pushed towards convergence. Such an exercise would take integration theorising back to where it started – in international relations theorising. Was the EU capable of effective participation in the international balance of power? Could the EU become, with a unified military capacity, an effective partner, and balancer of the USA and the other emerging superpowers such as China, India and Russia, in the Security Council of the UN? This was the most important research question about the EU in the early twenty-first century. But it was rarely asked. The answers demand greater resources than are available to the present writer. A second area in which integration might express a common destiny was that of social solidarity. Montesquieu’s well known aphorism, that Western Europe had unity in diversity, was not the expression of a form of integration, but rather an expression of a state system. It was necessary to create social solidarity that went further. It would be manifest in the apparatus of social welfare, and the collective means of controlling the movements of peoples inwards from outside. There would be common measures for managing unemployment and coping with its consequences in terms of unemployment benefit, retraining, and a common policy on growth and jobs. There needed to be a general European theory of employment. There were a whole range of further conceivable expressions of social solidarity, which would reflect a common destiny in, say, the harmonisation of provision for education, from primary to tertiary levels, or ways of supporting health and retirement. The process of integration had approached these areas. The frontiers of what was meant by social solidarity in future acts of integration were discernible. (These developments are also discussed in Chapter 8.) Health systems were becoming more permeable, and common policies on refugees and asylum, as well as terrorism, were beginning to emerge. But the policies were a long way short of what was necessary, because their development was held back by the reluctance to commit to a common future. There was, as yet, no social solidarity. Something might be learned from the past. When Scotland and England were joined together in the early eighteenth century, the constitutional settlement declared that the union was to be a permanent one. But, more than that, the union was marked by the confirmation that there was to be single army for the United Kingdom. It was also marked by a high degree of social solidarity, in that the politically powerful Scots who won the day on the Union were closely involved with their English equivalents. There was a

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high degree of intermarriage, and a keen recognition of common commercial interests. There was a sense of common destiny. In the EU of the twenty-first century, if there was not to be dissolution, there needed to be some kind of functional equivalents of the earlier conditions. The creation of a common army and the reinforcement of social solidarity would bring the sense of common destiny much closer. Increasing social intermixing, even intermarriage, among French and Germans, would be a powerful indicator of integration, as Karl Deutsch suggested in the 1960s38 – probably far more important than comitology! The new integration strategy had to be a political, not an economic one. One way would be to promote the capacity of the social democratic group of states to deploy its power against the cautious states. The core states had a greater desire than the others to protect West European values, centring around the idea of social democracy, and they would have the capacity to threaten the more cautious states, yet again, with a two-level Europe. This would also fit into one of the patterns of more recent EU development as it conforms with the idea of flexibility proposed in the Treaties of Amsterdam and Nice: that those states which decided to become more integrated could do so by taking decisions to go ahead of the others. The political problems of France and Germany, and the economic slow-down across the continent, allowed such ideas to retreat into the background. Here it is enough, however, simply to outline the possibilities and probable character of further integration strategies. The move away from integration theory since the early 1990s was understandable: it reflected developments in the kinds of theorising available, as well as an increasing difficulty in the practice of integration. But there was also something to do with academic fashion about it, the view that it was good to leave integration behind, and better to see Europe as just one area for the testing of theories with general applicability. In the post-enlargement Europe, the practice of integration was bound to be more difficult, to the delight of many. It was, however, perfectly proper that academics in the area of European studies should seek to identify further strategies for integration. They could – and should!

Conclusions Theorising in the social sciences is a part of the real world, and the pattern of the changes in the theories of European integration reflected the changing practices in European politics. In the early days, the optimism of the early practitioners was reflected in the theories of the neofunctionalists, who in their theorising of something that could happen could not avoid implying that it would. The people in Brussels liked the neofunctionalists because, unlike federalism, their theory gave them to understand that there was something important for them to do, but also that they would succeed. In the late 1980s the agreement of the Single European Act, and the prospect

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of rapid integration to the higher level of a completed common market and a European currency, promoted a temporary revival of neofunctionalist writing. And why not? Again, it seemed to be in touch with the actual practice. In the meantime, however, the late 1970s had witnessed a drawing back from integration theory in line with the period of consolidation and, as was suggested at the time, lourdeur. And in the 1990s the loss of theoretical focus on integration was again in step with the addition of explicit limitations on the process in the doctrines of member governments, which were specified in the texts at Maastricht and later. By the early twenty-first century, the doctrine had moved to the point that it was safe to assume that integration was no longer about an evercloser union of peoples as in the Rome Treaty. Always the theorising was in pace with the realities. The ground was in fact being prepared for a changing of that reality, both in practice and in design. There were those who saw an opportunity for the retrenchment of the practice of doing things at the national level as far as, and even beyond, what was optimal. The big debate was now not between those who wanted to move towards a greater capacity for collective action, even as far as single EU seats in the world’s major international forums, and those who wanted a more modest multilateralism; but rather between those who wanted a sensible level of European cooperation on the basis of perceived interest, and those who wanted to give priority to the development of a greater capacity for independent national action. Like a theory of integration, any theory of disintegration has to start from the circumstances that obtain in the real world at the time of theorising. There are, as ever, links with previous acts of theorising, although the trick must always be not to let theory become a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the evidence massaged to suit the theory. Any theory of disintegration must have sight of an end situation, generally stated, and a view of the elements of disintegration, being dynamic factors in visible trends that tend to change. In this chapter, the dynamic factors are the shaping of interests in the light of the preferences of organisations and individuals for frameworks other than the European one. These can now be identified as global and national. These changing perceptions may be judged as a result of mistaken evaluations and prejudices, but they are part of the new reality, for all that. The multi-theorising of the 1990s was but a part of the process of developing a setting for disintegration in this sense, which is foreshadowed by the changing circumstances in the EU. But the result is not necessarily catastrophic.

6

The EU in foreign policy: capacity in the economic and social organisations of the United Nations1

The European Union member countries had long-established mechanisms in the United Nations in New York through which to discuss and, as far as possible, harmonise their policies towards issues under consideration in the General Assembly and the Security Council. (This may seem surprising at a time when the members have been at loggerheads about how to proceed over the crisis in Iraq.) Although the French and British protected their freedom to act on their own account, as Permanent Members possessing the veto, they had committed themselves to consult with, although not be bound by, the others. These arrangements were usually discussed in the context of the issues that concerned the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) of the EU; the extent to which they applied on economic and social matters was rarely addressed directly. In consequence, the arrangements for coordinating the policies of the EU actors, member states and Commission, and Presidency/Troika in this area were often much weaker than expected. They illustrate the incapacity of the EU in an area in which, with a little effort, they could be much stronger. This discussion is about the capacity of the EU to organise its soft power (to use the distinction between hard and soft power used by Joseph Nye).2 The thrust of the argument can be baldly stated: if the EU got it right in the various multilateral forums in which it was involved – and it could – it would be well placed to balance the hard power of the USA effectively. The discussion challenges some of the assumptions made about the quality of hard and soft power. It is, as will be seen, also a challenge to the assertion of American neoconservative Robert Kagan that Europe was from Venus and the USA from Mars. By the early years of the new millennium, the member states and the Commission had begun to address the question of relations with the economic and social institutions of the UN more directly and energetically. In May 2001,3 the Commission produced a major attempt to do this – in its document on Building an Effective Partnership with the United Nations in the Fields of Development and Humanitarian Affairs – which made a number of proposals about how cooperation could be improved with regard to development and humanitarian affairs, in particular. A further report, which

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contained a large number of recommendations to strengthen arrangements in this area, appeared in 2003.4 An examination of the work of the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the member states of the EU with regard to the social and economic organisations of the UN system suggested a number of preliminary observations about their relationship.  There were areas in which the member states, through the Council of Ministers or the European Council, had recorded a commitment to a common stance in the social and economic areas with which the UN dealt. These included the Statement by the Council and the Commission on the European Community’s Development Policy of November 20005 and the statement on Human Rights of 8 May 2001.6 There was also a code on core labour standards agreed by the member states, which is discussed later. There were a number of similar statements, and some of these were contained in the conclusions of the meetings of the Heads of State or Government. Such declarations implied a commitment to coordinating the policies of member states in the executive committees of the UN organisations among their EU membership, but they could not be seen as constituting a legal obligation. The Amsterdam Treaty confirmed a rather modest formula, according to which the Presidency could act for the Union, and conclude an international agreement on its behalf, but ‘constitutional let-outs were written into the procedure’.7 According to New Article J.14 of the Treaty of Amsterdam, a country could withhold approval for a proposal in the Council of Ministers on the grounds that it needed to comply with its own constitutional procedures, and in this case other countries could say that their acceptance was only provisional. The EU states qualified their commitment to codes they had agreed among themselves in their work in UN institutions. Nevertheless, the Treaty of Amsterdam confirmed that ‘member states shall coordinate their action in international organisations and at international conferences’ (Article J.9). Most importantly, ‘they shall refrain from any action which is contrary to the interests of the Union or likely to impair its effectiveness as a cohesive force in international relations’ (Article J.1). The Council was asked to ensure that these principles were respected.  There were areas where specific common policies had been agreed in the Council of Ministers between the member states, according to the procedures agreed at Maastricht, and which they were all committed to apply, as and when related questions arose, in all the forums of the UN system. All member states were expected to support the common policy, individually and separately, whenever the particular issue was discussed in the forum in which they were involved. This could be in the UN or outside it. But in this case, too, the agreements had to be seen more as

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indicative of an expectation – that the rule would be applied in particular policy areas.  There were areas where the EU members had worked together to develop international arrangements, or alter existing organisations, as with the pursuit of changes, described as reforms, in the working arrangements of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in the 1980s and 1990s.8 These particular changes were actively pursued, in particular by the British through their mission in New York, and actively supported by the French and German governments. The other member states gave tacit support but varied in how active they were. The member states generally agreed about the structures of international organisation that should exist in this area, although they were less united about the policies they should pursue within them.  There were areas where the Commission acted as the agent of the EU in the organisations of the UN system, although its status and powers varied from institution to institution. The Commission also cooperated with such UN organisations in the context of UN programmes within particular countries. In a few cases, the Commission had entered into specific agreements with member organisations of the UN, as with the agreement with the International Labour Organization (ILO) on ‘managing globalisation’ in May 2001.9 The EU had also had an agreement with the World Health Organization (WHO). These agreements were an interesting example of the interpenetration of regional and global organisations, in that they included a commitment by the Commission to promote the practice of codes agreed within the global organisation on the part of the EU member states. For instance, the ILO agreement mentioned above committed the Commission to advising member states on how to prevent the exploitation and abuse of child labour. It also committed the Commission to seeing that such standards were adopted and applied by the states in their own territories. The expansion of the role of the Commission had followed a principle enunciated in 197010 by the European Court of Justice, according to which the Commission was seen to have the right to act externally if it had been allowed a competence in the area under consideration in the Treaty of Rome, and had actually exercised that competence within the European Community. With amendments to the Treaty, this principle had been overlain by specific grants of external competence to the Commission. By the late 1990s, the Commission could be involved in any area of the Union’s external relations which its members had agreed, although this was unlikely to coincide with the areas where it had the right to act. The range of its responsibilities, thus expanded, needed to be specified at the time of writing, and the fact that this was a moving frontier inevitably caused some problems, such as the lack of clarity for outsiders, about who was responsible for what.

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The EU was a member of only one of the UN’s social and economic organisations, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO); it was a ‘privileged member’ in the World Food Programme (WFP); it was an ‘active observer’ in the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), WHO, ILO and four further UN organisations; and an ‘observer’ in the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN Fund on Population Activities (UNFPA), the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the UN Economic Social and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and four other organisations. As a privileged member in the WFP, the Commission sat with the Executive Board and its participation was deemed necessary for consensus; being an active observer meant it participated in and contributed to the work of the governing bodies, including making a contribution to decisionmaking; while being an observer meant participating in meetings and reporting to headquarters. The Commission wanted to upgrade its membership in the ILO and to become its main representation in the World Trade Organization (WTO) and other organisations, although governments were unpersuaded.11 In practice, the Commission’s behaviour was not necessarily limited by lower status. Commissioner Lamie was very assertive in the WTO framework, even though the EU, as represented by the Commission, was not a member – a status it should have had as protector of the common market. And the Commission behaved ‘like a government’ in the ILO, even though its status was that of observer and formally could only speak when invited.12 The Commission aimed to move up the hierarchy of forms of involvement from observer, to active observer, to privileged observer, to full member. But the degree to which the Commission, representing the EU, was actively involved in building coordination among EU member states in the organisation was not dependent on the form of its involvement. It claimed to be the EU’s main coordinator in the UNHCR, although in that institution its formal status was that of observer. Its role in this case was likely to be stronger if the members had already committed themselves to the principles of a policy.  The EU and its member states were committed to strengthening their coordination on economic and social questions in the UN system along two linked pathways. First, in a series of treaties amending the Treaty of Rome – the Single European Act, Maastricht, Amsterdam and Nice – the member states had agreed that they would avoid national policies that could get in the way of developing common foreign policies or challenge them. Although this was stated in the context of the CFSP, it had necessary implications for the range of the Union’s and member states’ external relations, as differences on

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economic and social policies could easily spill over into differences on questions of common security and foreign policy. This was certainly one of the reasons for the Commission’s increasing anxiety about failures of coordination in the multilateral frameworks. Second, the Commission was anxious to develop its own role in international organisations concerned with economic and social matters, to establish its right to negotiate on behalf of the Union, and to increase its capacity to do so. A primary example of this was the WTO, where the logical policy was for the Commission to take over the role of representing the EU in the area of external trade policy, which was a key Commission responsibility under the treaties. It was disappointed in this ambition in both Amsterdam and Nice Treaties. But the pressure to upgrade Commission involvement was constant because of the recognition that the Commission had to be involved in all areas of the Union’s external relations, and because of the increase in the areas of the Commission’s active exercise of its competence within the Union, as well as its special responsibility for external trade relations. One conclusion was that the two pathways implied an increasingly solidarist tendency with regard to EU positions, and those of its member states, in the economic and social arrangements of the UN system: the member states were committed to enhancing mechanisms for coordinating their policies and activities; and the Commission was seeking to expand its capacity to act in pursuit of agreed EU policies, and to represent the Union in these areas. This process followed what might be called a ‘logic of synthesis’. Yet there were also pressures in the opposite direction, which might be called – using the traditional term – a ‘logic of diversity’. These two logics are discussed below. It is interesting to plot where these opposing tendencies intersected in the first years of the twenty-first century. The logic of synthesis was pressed mainly by the common institutions, while the member states were gripped by a system that led them to diversity.  A further brick – which could be regarded as a capping stone – in the structure of this arrangement was implied by the appearance of proposals for the Commission to become involved in coordinating the policies of EU members in policy debates within the organisations of the UN system, as well as of the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. There were pressures on member states to become more solidarist in their behaviour in the UN’s economic and social organisations, and the Commission had sensed an opportunity, and a need, to develop its role as the agent of the EU. In September 2000, the Council asked the Commission and the member states to play a proactive role in the coordination arrangements established by the IMF, the World Bank and the UN, and ‘to step up their own coordination in order to make the arrangements more effective and thereby increase the influence and visibility of the European Union’.13 The start that had

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been made was indeed modest. In 2001, as mentioned above, the only organisation in which there was active Commission–member state coordination was the UNHCR, although in that organisation the Commission only had the status of observer. The EU member governments acknowledged that they needed to work together more in the UN, and the Commission was asked to do something about it. This was an interesting extension of regionalisation: the regional international organisation, in this case the Commission, had been asked by the member governments to become more proactive in getting them to cooperate in the global organisation. The members of a particular multilateral organisation had asked its executive to coordinate their actions in another multilateral organisation. They were to be a single entity abroad, solidarist, even although they remained pluralist at home!  The various government representatives of the regions in the other forums were put under pressure there, which promoted greater regional coherence. There were feedback effects from external cooperation that helped internal integration. There were, of course, pressures the other way, which are discussed below, but the logic of synthesis was nonetheless real. The regional secretariat might also take on the role of promoting among members within the region policies that they had helped to approve in the global organisation. Greater cooperation in global organisations could help to produce a higher level of internal integration, and in Europe increase the role of the Commission. If the regional members, acting together externally, helped to develop the role of the global organisation, there could be both stronger regions and more global cooperation. This was another route by which the process of globalisation might be promoted but also reconciled with regional preferences, and illustrated the symbiotic relationship between regionalisation and globalisation.

The Commission The Commission as the organisational embodiment of the EU had two major ambitions, related to each other, in its approach to the organisations of the UN system. First, it was preparing for enhanced participation with the work of selected organisations, and various concerns were related to this. These included finding satisfactory financial arrangements with the UN organisations, so that it could satisfy the stringent EU auditing requirements, especially as they were tightened after the budget scandals of the late 1990s. The Commission had developed a ‘standard grant agreement with international organisations’ (December 2000), which put into contractual, operational terms the clauses and principles set out in the agreement. It concluded that

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‘this standard grant agreement is now widely used for operations financed by the Community and implemented by UN entities. It has, to the satisfaction of various UN entities, already substantially simplified and accelerated the preparation and conclusion of the specific grant agreements for the operations concerned’.14 A further EC–UN Financial and Administrative Framework Agreement was signed on 29 April 2003. The EU would, rightly, wish to have effective control over the way its money was spent. The sensitivity of the issue, after the resignation of the Santer Commission in 1999, was made clear in the Prodi Commission’s pronouncement that ‘the Commission is prepared to reduce or even suspend its support to UN partners, which fail to perform to an acceptable standard’. One problem, however, was that the costs of auditing and controlling EU budgetary contributions to UN, and other external organisations, had become an unusually high percentage of the net contribution compared with those of other donors.15 Such is the price of rectitude! But the increased EU–UN cooperation presupposed greater coordination between member states and the Commission in the international forums and within partner countries. It was based on the concept of increased complementarity both between the Community and its member states, and between the Community and the UN.16 The EU insisted that its role would depend on finding ways of adding value to the UN projects, and that it would not wish to have its funding substituting for that of member states of the UN organisations, even when they were EU members! The EU would not wish to take over payment of members’ assessments. The EU also had to choose partners who worked in areas relevant to the interests of the EU, where it could make a contribution that could be judged as adding value, that is, an additional contribution entirely derived from the participation of the EU as a distinct organisation. The Commission believed that there were some UN organisations where it could be particularly promising to seek cooperation. There were also indications that in the areas of cooperation, the Commission would more often act on behalf of the EU – it expressed an ambition to take over from the member states in areas where it had competence.17 Several UN system organisations were identified by the Commission as possible EU partners. The focus of UNDP on good governance as a policy priority could provide a good basis for a closer programmatic co-operation, matching the EC’s considerable financial resources with UNDP’s expertise and human resources, especially in the field. In the context of our collaboration with IFAD, debt relief programmes, poverty reduction strategies, micro-finance as a tool to support poverty alleviation and development and Household Food Security, as development tools, could be further explored. Co-operation with new and innovative

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structures such as UNAIDS should also be strengthened. Dialogue with mainly normative and policy orientated bodies in the economic and social field, such as UNCTAD, ILO and UNIDO, should focus on the integration of developing countries into the world economy and on labour standards. Co-operation with in particular UNCTAD should aim to complement other policy instruments and be supportive of efforts to mainstream trade into development policy and to provide, as appropriate, trade related technical assistance and capacity development for trade.18 The Commission saw its greater involvement in the planning processes of the UN organisations as a necessary precondition for partnership. The UN organisation needed to offer ‘the Commission some form of permanent representation in the programming and administrative organs of its agencies and in their external audit arrangements’.19 Again, an ambition was seen to become an essential, if not primary, EU actor in these areas. In the area of development, the EU had developed country strategy papers with partner states in the developing world, and was aware that the UN system had similar strategic planning instruments such as the UNDP country strategy plans and the development assistance frameworks of the UN Development Group. The EU realised that its plans and those of the UN needed to fit together. This need also applied to the Consolidated Appeal arrangements, which the UN’s Department for Humanitarian Affairs (later rechristened the Office of the Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance, OCHA) under Mr De Mello (sadly killed in Iraq), had long conducted. To further the process of achieving closer cooperation with the UN system, the Commission drew up a list of the things that it needed to do. (The 2001 and 2003 lists overlap to a great extent.) This provided another measure of the achievement, and its shortfall, in this context. The Commission had to set about the following tasks.  Analysing the mandates, strengths and weaknesses of partners in the UN in order to match their key capacities to EU policy priorities, identifying ‘strategic UN partners’ and considering support for the ‘key’ capabilities of these strategic UN partners and increasing programme funding to these bodies.  Strengthening the dialogue with strategic UN partners on programming and policy-making, including in particular by participating in activities of governing bodies as active observers and in relevant donor group meetings.  Ensuring adequate articulation of programme funding, and pool funding with the strategies set out in country strategy papers and integrating funding envelopes in multi-annual budgeting processes to guarantee predictability and stability.

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 Integrating the implementation of these guidelines with the process on increased coordination and complementarity with EU member states, other donors and multilateral agencies. In sum, the Commission wanted to work with selected partners in areas where there was policy convergence in the framework of integrated programmes, where its budgetary contribution would be identified in a transparent budgetary process, and where there was no double-payment. A second way in which the EU, through the Commission, could enhance its involvement in the UN organisations was somewhat different. The concern was to establish the EU as an effective participant in the decision-making of the international organisation, so that it became more like an ordinary member, with wider-ranging responsibilities regarding the activities of the UN organisation than those merely concerning the EU. This would extend beyond projects in which the EU could have programmatic or operational interests, to the more wide-ranging role of helping the UN organisation to formulate and discharge its own mandate, using its own resources. In this area, the Commission would be charged with following policies that reflected the positions agreed by the member states in the European Council or the Council of Ministers, or formulated by itself with the explicit or implicit support of member states. This would have an impact on what the UN organisation did, but not necessarily involve EU involvement at the operational level, or EU funding. But after negotiations in the UN organisation the EU would also be committed to following and applying the agreed resolutions of that organisation. The Commission acknowledged that member states needed to improve their cooperation in the UN: there had been only ‘low-key EU co-ordination on UN policy and operational issues in the fields of development and humanitarian issues’.20 This contrasted with the strong EU coordination on General Assembly matters. Even in the context of the preparation of the EU’s country strategy papers, there was scope for improving consultation between the Commission and the EU member states. It was argued that joint consultation between the European institutions (the Commission and the European Investment Bank) and the member states concerning country analysis should be strengthened, as the country strategy papers were seen as a major tool to ensure the complementarity of the cooperation activities of the Community and its member states. This had become a standard coordination instrument in the UN before the EU, and it was a problem that the two organisations had duplicated rather than consolidated such plans. But in the EU, it was progress that the Commission and the member states had agreed to share their analysis of the political, social and economic context of the target country at an early stage. This was a labour-intensive process and its success depended on good initial planning, maximised exchange of information, expertise and labour input, and rapid and relevant on-the-spot feedback. Active data-sharing with multilateral agencies would also be an essential part of the process.

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The member states On 18 May 2000, the Council presented recommendations on the basis of the evaluation of development instruments and programmes by the Commission and the member states.21 As regards internal coordination ‘within the EU, it asked the Commission and the member states to take advantage of the potential for complementary action on a country-by-country and sectorby-sector basis [my italics]; to adapt the partner country strategy documents taking account of the need for a poverty reduction strategy; to pinpoint obstacles to more frequent use of cofinancing [among member states] [my addition] and draw up proposals for harmonising procedures and financial rules; to strengthen the coordination of humanitarian aid; and to step up the exchange of information’. The Council stressed the importance of strengthening the partner country’s ability to assume responsibility in working out development programmes and strategies. But clearly, the main concern was the weakness of coordination with regard to development policy among member states of the EU and between them and the Commission. The member states also enhanced their solidarity in the UN’s economic and social organisations by a number of routes. These included declarations about their common purpose, as with the commitment to move together towards the goal of providing 0.7 per cent of their GNP in development aid, as agreed in the UN development programmes. There was a wider-ranging agreement on the principles of development support to which all member states should adhere, as well as a statement about the conditionality of aid programmes with respect to democratisation and the support of human rights. The EU members were also collectively committed to outlawing the death penalty and a range of abuses such as child labour, and sought to impose these as a condition of their support for the policies and programmes of the UN organisations. There were therefore two tracks towards enhancing EU member state cooperation in this context. The first was the enunciation of principles of policy to which all members were expected to adhere. These were expressed in declarations or conclusions resulting from the meetings of the member states in the relevant EU institutions – Council of Ministers, European Council, intergovernmental conferences. These principles were to be respected in general, both in the bilateral and the multilateral context. But the second was more explicitly related to tightening the coordination of the activities of the EU members of specific UN organisations, and part of the requirements for improving this process was improving coordination within the EU itself.

Coordinating EU action in practice in Geneva The development of the coordination of the policies of the EU and of its member states in outside forums, such as the Specialised Agencies of the

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UN in Geneva, could be examined from two opposing perspectives. There was a logic of diversity as well as a logic of synthesis. There were problems of logic in the way of coordination in the context of multiple overlapping multilateralisms, which generated special problems in the way of enhancing coordination, as well as pressures towards stronger coordination. The analytical task here was to trace the line between these two opposing tendencies. This was a complex problem: it involved delineating the interrelationships between one coordinated multilateral system, the EU and its member states, and a set of other multilateral systems, the Agencies of the UN, with imperfectly overlapping memberships and various degrees of internal and system coordination. The logic of diversity The pattern of EU involvement in external forums often illustrated a logic of diversity, in contrast to the linear process of enhancing EU cohesiveness in external frameworks implied in the first part of this essay. In practice, the external involvement of the member states took the form of a large number of overlapping and differentiated multilateralisms. The member states had no legal obligation to follow the same policies in the various organisations; on the contrary, the variety of positions each might hold within different parts of its own administration encouraged a variety of external positions that were in conflict with each other. One or more of the EU member governments could be members of the executive committees, but they were not bound by legal obligation to seek consensus. There was an aspiration to coordinate members’ policies, and an ambition to play a stronger role in this on the part of the Commission. But against that was an irresistible tendency to differ, symbolised first by the lack of effective coordination at national levels among the different parts of state administrations, each of which could have a special departmental interest and its own links with particular international organisations; and second by the different ways in which member states related to their international environment. In the UK, there were sometimes disagreements between the Department for International Development and the Department of Trade and Industry: for ILO matters, these two departments tended to a divided mandate. One official commented that on social, development and trade matters ‘it was hard to get an integrated view out of a country’.22 The logic of diversity was encouraged in this world of overlapping multilateralisms by the wishes of member states, which contributed money to the budgets of the external international organisations to get full credit for their contribution in each policy framework. They objected to other EU members ‘free-riding’ and getting credit for contributions which they had not made. And they lacked the mutual confidence to balance a credit in one policy dimension against a deficit in another. Diversity was also encouraged

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by EU member states’ reflecting the views of outsiders in diplomacy between member states, and, at its strongest, entering into alliances with outsiders against insiders, although it was suggested that this was less common in the ILO and more common in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Credits with insiders were not always the preferred balance. This was a natural consequence of the fact that the EU was a multilateral organisation made up of sovereign states, which were of necessity free to pursue their interests with outsiders as well as insiders. For instance, the UK in 2002 supported a Canadian proposal on humanitarian policy in Sierra Leone in defiance of an insider alternative. In 2003 it hardly needed mentioning that the British and seven other EU members sided with the Bush regime in the USA against the other EU member states over the question of how to deal with Iraq. In the absence of an exclusive commitment to insiders, it was always on the cards that there would be dalliance with non-members. What was lacking here was an effective mechanism for enhancing an EU collective presence in the international organisation. There was, for instance, no agreed strategy between EU states on their membership of the executive committees of other international organisations, both the UN system and the Bretton Woods institutions, the World Bank and the IMF. The pattern of intense disagreement with regard to membership of the Security Council was an amplification of a general discord with regard to membership of any forum outside. On executive committees of the other international organisations in the UN system there had been no attempt to agree a strategy for EU member-state election. A comparison with a similar issue in the UN system was revealing. In the process of defining agendas for development in particular countries, the Coordination segment of ECOSOC played a key role by the early twentyfirst century, in that it contained processes that tended to an embedded multilateralism.23 24 In this case, as with analogous cases, such as that of the Global Compact, there were ways of strengthening the commitment of participants, companies, states and individuals, etc., to an agreed agenda and the programmes to which it led. This was achieved by effective monitoring in a common framework and the range of pressures that derived from an anxiety about the provision of finance. This was a way of working which, in the early twenty-first century, might also be found in the EU pattern of involvement in an Agency such as the ILO, and indeed the EU had an additional element of coordination in the collective institution of the Commission. The latter was potentially a far more powerful agency of coordination than ECOSOC and its subordinate bodies in the UN system. But this was not very manifest in Geneva. What was stressed was that integration was helped by the tendency for the same diplomats to crop up in different policy contexts. But this argument, that informal networking was a valuable coordination asset, was indicative of the weakness of the integrative mechanisms. The common institutions, particularly

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the Commission, were yet to get a hold on the coordination mechanisms in Geneva. This was also indicated by what can only be judged as a major structural problem of the EU in its dealings with the outside world: the problem that outsiders had in finding any single representative of the EU that could be judged to have the responsibility to deal. There was not just a problem of coordinating activity to deal with outsiders, but also a problem for outsiders dealing with the EU. Being effective in areas of external relations, in the whole range and not just in that of CFSP, was a real problem to which the lack of an authoritative foreign policy representative caused Europe to punch below its weight. (Policy on Burma was an illustration.) But the problem was also a reflection of the absence of a strong mechanism for policy coordination in non-EU multilateral frameworks. The Commission tried to develop a logic of synthesis. There was often an awareness, among officials and diplomats, of commitment to general policies, but an inadequate authoritative direction about how these generalities worked out in particular policy and institutional contexts. This combination of a known commitment to a generality, but uncertainty about detail, was bound to be debilitating in dealing with outsiders, and made it hard for them. It was understandable that outsiders should find difficulty in identifying the right person from the EU to talk to about the policies that concerned the UN in Geneva, such as labour, human rights and trade policy. One problem was that of the differentiation of competences between the Union, in the form of the Commission, and the member states. Insiders could steer delicately round areas of responsibility of the Commission and the areas of member state responsibility. On human rights, for instance, governments dealt with principles and strategic plans, but the details were left to the Commission in negotiating conditionality with regard to Lome´/Cotonou programmes. A linked problem was the ups and downs of EU member states’ involvement, which surely appeared impenetrable to outsiders. There was an abundance of informal and formal meetings among national officials in Geneva. There were formal meetings of individuals from national missions to discuss particular business, such as proposals for the preparatory committees of agencies such as WHO and ILO, annual meetings, meetings of executive boards, meetings of plenary assemblies and ECOSOC commissions. The Commission might or might not take part. The Presidency and the Commission worked together in meetings of representatives of the governments to agree common positions in the ILO Preparatory Committee. But the lines of responsibility of the Commission and the Presidency were gradually being redrawn in Geneva, and it was hard for outsiders to be sure how things stood. It was pointed out that the Commission tended to be more strident when its status was less certain. The question of who was responsible for what was a difficult one, and on the intergovernmental side it was answered by insiders on pragmatic grounds. In the past few years the Presidency had tended to initiate more

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and more specialist meetings for political questions, or in times of crisis. More technical questions, such as the business of the Universal Postal Union (UPU) or the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), tended to be left to more expert committees and dealt with more frequently in a technical way. In the latter area of work the self-identification of the EU member states as an international actor tended to be at its weakest. In this way, the formal arrangements moved from higher level to lower level, from more expert to less expert, from active Commission involvement to little Commission involvement, according to judgements made on the hoof rather than according to any overarching principle of responsibility. Certainly there was no principle that might be understood by someone who lacked the arcane knowledge of the insider. The difference between the EU’s intergovernmental arrangements and the arrangements proposed by the Commission was, however, clear enough. The former tended to diversity, whereas the latter tended to synthesis, and was often resisted by member states precisely because of that. The appeals from the Bunker, the name given by government officials to the EU Council’s office in Geneva, to organise EU meetings were often resisted. In Geneva, the Secretariat of the Council was the body from the EU that had charge of organising meetings of EU representatives through its Bureau de Liaison, although there were also meetings that were not organised in that framework. It was reported in 2003 that the Secretariat was unhappy with holding such extra-mural meetings, but found it impossible to stop them happening in the course of the hectic business periods of the various institutions. The wish of the officials in the Council Secretariat to develop their role as manager was suggested by their taking on the job of counting the meetings not held under their auspices after January 2001. Figures from the mid-1990s until 2002 indicate that the total number of meetings of EU representatives increased from a mean of around 450 to around 650 in each of the six-month periods of the Presidency, but the number organised by the Bureau de Liaison went up less noticeably.25In January–June 2002, there were 422 meetings of this type, while in January–June 1997 there were 390. The policy sectors where the increase in meetings organised by the Bureau was most striking were human rights and humanitarian affairs, although meetings for the WTO, which was not a UN system organisation, were consistently the most numerous. In the Presidency, from July–December 1996 there had been 26 meetings on human rights and humanitarian affairs; from January–June 2002 there were 75 meetings. Overall, the figures suggested a steady drift upwards of total meetings of EU representatives in Geneva, but a marked increase of in-house meetings only in the area of human rights and humanitarian questions. The EU members did at least emerge as a group within which mutual consultation was expected in the conduct of business in Geneva, but not necessarily in a framework of leadership by the common institutions.

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In the absence of strong coordination mechanisms, it was always likely that the logic of diversity would be sustained by the lack of effective coordination within the administrations of the separate states. And the lack of coordination in that context was reflected in the lack of coordination between the three pillars of EU policy. One official regretted that the foreign policy offices, and the CFSP procedure, were not more directly involved in, for instance, the discussions about core labour standards in the ILO. ‘There was a need for multi-pillar committees’. The inconsistencies among the policies of different parts of national administrations inevitably reinforced the differences between the member states in the different multilateral frameworks in which they were involved. There was a logic of diversity here that could be defeated only by a qualitative change in the way the EU related to these forums, by having both an agreed EU mode of participation – agreed membership on committees including the executive committees – as well as coordination on policy, which included effective coordination within governments as well as between them. This argument explains the point in the Gillig report from the European Parliament: ‘one is immediately struck by the lack of coherence between the approaches of the various institutions and sometimes within the same institution, and can only stress the need to define a new architecture for world governance on the one hand and call for better integration of European policies on the other’.26 The logic of synthesis On the other side, however, there was a logic of synthesis, which was supported by the interrelationships between agendas as well as the interest among the EU’s common institutions in having stronger coordinating procedures that would enhance their own role. One interesting nexus of agendas was that linking human rights, labour rights, trade and the work of the ILO. Commissioner Lamie was anxious to promote more liberal international trade arrangements, but realised that such arrangements would have to be deliberately shaped to avoid the kind of severe social costs that had plagued neoliberal market strategies. Allowing the market to reign untrammelled by social legislation produced unacceptable costs in terms of unemployment and welfare provision. These had both a moral dimension as well as an economic one, as lower social costs outside Europe could lead to lower production costs for competitors. This concern also worried the European Parliament. Accordingly, the two common institutions, Commission and Parliament, were clear that they needed to develop their own strategies on such questions as human rights and core labour standards. But they also needed to work with the ILO to form an alliance for a socially responsible liberalisation of trade in the WTO. Hence Lamie cultivated close relations with the ILO, and the European Parliament produced the Gillig report on promoting core labour standards and improving social governance in the

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context of globalisation. ‘There is an urgent need to respond to the serious and growing lack of equilibrium where there is a lack of binding social norms on one side and rapid liberalisation of trade and finance on the other’.27 This agenda was also a way of enhancing the roles of the common institutions of the EU, the Commission and the European Parliament, within Europe. It was part of a more widespread evolution of machinery and activities to promote social codes in an important area of the wider agenda of human rights. In this context, it was likely that any aspects of core labour standards, and more refined human rights, would redound to the benefit of the common institutions: as a general rule, when external codes were agreed that needed application within the EU, the Commission would supervise them – its role would expand – and the European Parliament would also play an enhanced role in overseeing and shaping the agreed policies. ILO codes were ratified by governments not by the Community, but the Commission had a strong interest in the question of their application. In this way, increasing standards in the external context was also a valued strategy for them, not only because it went along with the further liberalisation of international trade, but also because it contributed to greater integration within the EU. A number of points were frequently placed together: the need for higher international standards, the need for European businesses and governments to be bound to uphold those standards in their work in third countries, the need for all member states in the EU to ratify the agreements concerning these standards, and the primary role of the Commission in promoting and supervising the system. In 2003 the formal mandate for the Commission to act for the Fifteen in the social area was not strong, as social policy was a late addition to the list of areas that involved Community competence, and was not spelled out in detail. Nevertheless, the external activities could have implications for the extension of Commission competence. Even if there were no direct consequences for enhancing the executive capacity of the Commission within the Union, there would certainly be more to do: there would be an expanding agenda of work. The Commission would be involved in monitoring the standards outside the Union and seeing that they were applied within. And the primary responsibility of the Commission for the Union’s external trade would make it easier to expand its competence externally and internally with regard to an expanding agenda. It would also make it seem logical that the Commission should be the Union’s representative in an increasing number of institutions. The point here is an important one – that it was becoming more apparent that the strengthening of international standards and machinery could have the effect of expanding the role of the common institutions within a region like the EU. The pursuit of higher standards externally could be linked with a renewal of efforts to improve them internally. Marie-Helene Gillig’s report for the

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European Parliament made the point, in response to the Commission’s paper on development policy, that the Commission ‘mainly concentrates on the strategy needing to be implemented in the developing countries at the risk of over-estimating the level of application of the core-labour standards in Europe, . . . it is therefore necessary to guarantee the actual application of these standards in Europe’.28 The report also called on member states and candidate countries that had not yet ratified the ILO conventions on core labour standards to adopt them ‘as soon as possible’.29 Here was a case of an external agenda driving an internal one. The EU states needed to make more explicit their commitment internally to standards that they needed to apply externally. The Commission also had a motive for working closely with organisations like the ILO, not only in the context of trade liberalisation, but also in the accession process. The level of coordination as regards the latter may be described as enhanced, as the ILO established a specific office to work with the Commission on the development of core labour standards, as well as the social dialogue, in Central and Eastern Europe. It had an office in Budapest that liaised with the accession states. This was a form of inter-institutional collusion that some Eastern European states found objectionable.30 Enlargement of the EU had rightly been made subject to conditionality: the accession states had to meet social and labour standards that had been defined in successive EU documents. But there was tactical advantage in having outside organisations like the ILO involved in this, since that meant the Commission had a neutral organisation by its side to judge deficiencies when they occurred. It would be less vulnerable to the charge of acting as judge and jury in its own case. The argument also appeared in the case of international trade. The Gillig report asserted that those states which did not respect core labour standards could be subject to trade sanctions by the ILO – which it was allowed to do in its constitution – and that the WTO should agree that such sanctions would not be incompatible with its own founding treaties. It was stressed, although, that a shortfall in labour standards should not be used as a justification for protectionism, and the EU states were very anxious to make this point. The Union had an interest in working with global organisations such as the ILO, the IMF and the World Bank, that were committed to higher standards in labour practices, as more generally with regard to human rights, fundamental social rights and poverty reduction, because through such alliances it was easier for it to maintain and extend its own high internal standards. It could do so in alliance with other organisations and counter a possible charge of simply promoting its own interests. Child labour and the exploitation of women were moral concerns, but they were also economic advantages in some sectors for states where they were practised, as with the use of child labour for the manufacture of footballs in Pakistan, a practice that the EU was instrumental in removing.

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The EU strategy reflected moral concerns, but was also a way of avoiding some of the costly effects of its own more advanced welfare systems. It could conceal its economic self-interest by linking its efforts to a global movement. It was nevertheless hard to see where the line was to be drawn on grounds of principle between taking steps to prevent slave labour in Burma, stopping children from making footballs in Pakistan, and tolerating exploited labour in production zones in the Philippines.

EU strategies for increasing policy coordination National representatives in Geneva often complained about particular procedures and proposed amendments to these. For instance, they complained that the Presidency of the EU was often overloaded and that the other EU ambassadors there did not do enough. Meetings of EU ambassadors in Geneva were usually no more than once a month. The Portuguese Presidency had tried to solve the problem of being overburdened by adopting the procedure of employing an individual, chosen on the basis of ability and status rather than nationality, to take over responsibility for a particular area of policy coordination. But such proposals were adjustments in the existing low key multilateralism rather than attempts to go beyond it. The first strategy used by the common institutions to increase coordination can be described as one of incorporation. This was rather like the process of embedded multilateralism in the UN, previously mentioned. It contained, as has been reported elsewhere,31 a series of steps. The first was an agreement of a general statement of position and principles by the member states. Examples of these included those on development policy and on human rights, referred to above; another was the Council conclusions of October 1999 on trade and labour, which indicated strong support for the protection of core labour rights, and agreed that the ‘WTO should encourage positive incentives to promote observance of such rights’.32 The principles of core labour standards had been agreed in an ILO declaration on 18 June 1998, and were themselves derived from the 1995 World Summit for Social Development. The next step was to develop a more detailed set of proposals that would have the effect of incorporating the member states in a common effort to apply the principles in specific contexts and policy areas. The Commission took on the task of pushing a more focused and proactive role by member states in the ILO/WTO policy nexus: member states had already unanimously suggested that the WTO set up a working party to look at the relationship between international trade and working conditions,33 but the Commission now proposed seven specific actions in support at the international level, and 11 for actions at the EU level. The former included specific injunctions on behaviour in the ILO to seek to reinforce the effectiveness of ILO supervision of, and respect for, core labour standards, as well as a

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review of social policy at the country level in all international organisations of which they were members. At the EU level, specific recommendations were made to member states to increase the range of incentives offered to non-members, for instance in the context of the Generalised System of Preferences, to respect the new standards. The Union would seek policy coherence among its members in this area,34 and explicitly identified four instances where member states, as well as itself – through the Commission – would have to act. For instance, the Commission pointed out to members that they should actively promote such policies as social labelling in developing countries in order to get ‘premium market access opportunities in the EU’.35 In this way the Commission attempted to tie the member states down to the implications of their own commitments in the same way that the members of the UN were tied down to the agendas of the global conferences by procedures involving the reformed ECOSOC. On the human rights side, the Commission also understood that its role was to obtain coherence and consistency across EU and EC policies; to place a higher priority on the mainstreaming of human rights and democratisation objectives, and to adopt a more focused and strategic approach.36 (Emphasis from document referred to in endnote.) The strategy was intended to incorporate member states in a commitment to common action. First, the principles were identified and incorporated in EU Declarations – they became part of the ideology of the system. Then the specific implications of the ideology for action in particular instances were spelled out, and further actions in this context recommended. The role of the member states, in their sphere of responsibility, was stated, as well as the role of the collectivity. In this way a collective commitment to action was strengthened. The Commission had considerable resources to help it with this strategy – much more than the Functional Commissions around ECOSOC or, indeed, ECOSOC itself – but its success had to depend on the constant reiteration of the policy agenda and its implications. It hoped to socialise governments into a habit of good practice externally, and matching good practice internally with a clear legal basis, under its own supervision. The second strategy may be dealt with more briefly in this context. It was that of the deliberate building of inter-institutional linkages as appropriate to the particular policy nexus, a strategy with two dimensions. First was the identification of international institutions that were active in the area of the policy agenda being pursued, and attempting to manage the related processes in the different frameworks. In the area of core labour standards, the two primary institutions to be linked were ILO and WTO, but others included UNCTAD and the World Bank. Second was doing as much as possible to ensure that the positions of members and the EU in the various UN institutions were compatible and mutually reinforcing. There were no formal powers in its hands to achieve this, but it could set out often and at length the implications of policy positions in one context

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for those in other contexts, and the costs of holding contradictory positions in different organisations. The Commission could reinforce the overall rationality of the diplomacy pursued by EU members in different multilateral frameworks. As has been pointed out, this process was similar in many ways to that in the UN system itself, which the present writer has described as one of embedded multilateralism. It involved relating collective intentionality to collective action.37 In this case, however, there was the additional problem for analysis caused by the need to deal with relationships between a cluster of multilateral frameworks with overlapping memberships, one of which was a relatively strong regional framework with two kinds of participating actors, collective institutions and member states.

Conclusions In conclusion, it would be useful to extract from the preceding discussion the main arguments concerning the logic of synthesis and the logic of diversity. Concerning the logic of synthesis there were a range of positive developments, including the following.  There was a commitment to enhanced coordination and the definition of common policies, expressed in the amended treaties and in the various agreed codes and targets.  The Commission was involved in an increasing range of UN institutions and was seeking to expand its role. There was explicit commitment by members to an active role for the Commission in enhancing coordination between members in the non-EU institutions. Two strategies were available: incorporation and institutional linkage.  The Commission was helped by the role it was given explicitly in a number of areas to prepare policies for the implementation of the agreed codes; the Commission could also use the implicit assumption that a code or declaration logically implied particular policies that it articulated.  One interesting aspect of the logic of synthesis was that the strengthening of global governance was positively related to the strengthening of regional governance in a system of overlapping multilateralisms, as norms and procedures agreed for the outside world also needed to be reflected in the norms and procedures of the inside world. This implied a stronger role for the regional executive, the Commission. The codes and policies often required increased integration within the EU, which implied an enhanced role internally for the Commission.  There developed a greater need for cross-sector and cross-pillar polices, for example on trade, labour standards and human rights, which was again an opportunity for the EU institutions to enhance their role, as

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they were well placed to achieve an overview of policy sectors across institutions.  The next steps included the coordination and pursuit of EU positions in the agendas of the external international organisation, not just on immediate EU issues and interests.  Enhanced policy linkage in the external frameworks was likely to increase pressure on national administrations to enhance their own internal cross-departmental coordination. The EU had an opportunity here to lever national administration coordination. But concerning the logic of diversity, there were various disincentives to coordination.  Particularly that the outside forums were themselves political systems that generated outcomes which were not necessarily coordinated with EU positions, and might reinforce the problems of coordination in the EU by attracting the support of some member states, but not others. These were contexts where external alliances could be formed, which then got in the way of internal coordination. Similarly, ‘very often the agenda of bilateral meetings between the EU and its partners does not reflect the objective pursued by the Union in multilateral forums and vice versa’.38 This is the result of a lack of coordination in at least three directions: between the states and the EU, between the departments of the individual states, and between the pillars of the EU, especially CFSP and the social and economic areas.  There was a lack of capacity for deciding priorities across the range of policy sectors – reliance on informal arrangements and the chances of one or other government taking the lead.  There was no agreement on the appointment strategy. EU membership arrangements in most external institutions were more or less disputed, despite the advantages that having an agreed EU team could bring. (Hence the view of the Heritage Foundation, expressed on BBC News on 19 June 2005, that the USA would rather deal with individual EU countries in such forums.) This problem, like most of the others, applied to the IMF and the World Bank as much as to the Geneva institutions.  Member states also gave little attention to the voting behaviour of other EU states in the executive and plenary meetings in the light of the requirement for an EU foreign policy as enunciated in the Maastricht Treaty, for instance, by publishing the voting records in the outside institutions and pointing to infidelities. They had agreed to take partnership seriously, but in this matter at least did not seem to do so!  The EU representations in Geneva were either overwhelmed with work, as with the Presidency, or short of business, as with the other EU

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ambassadors, or they were battling to keep themselves up with the game, as with the Bureau de Liaison of the Council Secretariat’s offices (the Bunker). But among the officials there was a certain pride in the informal reactive system in Geneva, which member governments were reluctant to change by placing under a single authority. One defence of the status quo was that there was agreement about a wide range of the social and economic issues that came up. But in some ways this was debilitating, as it led to a less proactive stance.  There was weak EU coordination of its response to the agendas of the Geneva institutions in their executive committees, or plenary meetings, be they agencies, funds and programmes, or other, especially when the link with current EU policies from Brussels was not obvious and immediate. That is, the EU was not proactive in relation to the agendas of the other institutions, including the World Bank and the IMF. In the latter there was a weakness in the EU states’ capacity and willingness. This was acknowledged in the comments of some US officials that they would prefer a single EU seat in the Washington institutions as, if the EU states voted together, the USA would always be outvoted!  There was naturally no clear location of EU responsibility for particular policies that would be visible to non-members: the system was one of opaque informality. Henry Kissinger would still have the problem of whom to call if he wanted to know the EU policy on an ILO debate on core labour standards.  The budgetary arrangements were also dysfunctional from the point of view of coordination. The EU contributions were very carefully managed to avoid any duplication of national contributions to the external international institutions. This tended to preserve a situation in which states sought to promote national rewards for what they put in, and saw such EU contributions as those from the European Community Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO) as getting in their way. The budgetary system was a pluralist one and contained a self-perpetuating element, which could only be avoided by setting up an EU system for UN system budgetary contributions. (Again the US government hated the thought of this, as it would advertise that EU member vote together paid 37 per cent of the UN assessed budget as opposed to the US contribution, after the new scale of assessments of 2002, of 22 per cent.) The evidence suggested that, in the sectors discussed, there was a considerable EU output in terms of codes, declarations and the like, and some achievement in developing and implementing more specific policies. But the EU was not a unitary actor in the UN system, although the logic of synthesis suggested there was a move in that direction; neither was it a ‘front-runner’. The conclusion has to be, rather, that in the early twenty-first century the EU tended to be reactive in the outside institutions, and to

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respond to their agendas and timetables rather than imposing its own.39 The arrangements in Geneva tended to encourage this; the Presidency was often overloaded, many meetings took place outside the framework of the EU, and there was too much reliance on informal meetings. There was, in other words, no clear EU agency in Geneva or in Washington (the seat of the IMF and the World Bank). But the EU indubitably contributed to the UN’s effectiveness. The above discussion had many examples of the two working together in specific policy sectors and territories.40 The question had to be put, however, as to whether the EU could contribute even more, and the answer to that has to be ‘yes’. Hence the long list of recommendations proposed by the Commission in 2003.41 The system was a weak, multi-centred one, without a unified mechanism for producing EU policy, and no obvious organising brain or uncontested management centre. Hence it tended to weak compromise, and was opaque to those who were not insiders, including the governments of non-members. It lacked capacity for EU proactivity, and was dominated by a habit of reaction to the agendas of others.

The EU in the Internatioanal system These shortcomings were clearly relevant to the discussion in the early twenty-first century about the relative power and world role of Europe and the USA. Joseph Nye made a useful distinction between soft power and hard power, the latter being military capacity, and coercive, and the former being non-military, especially economic, and persuasive. The argument was that Europe was good at soft power but not at hard power, whilst the US forte was hard power. The role of the European states and the USA in the second Gulf War of 2003 seemed to confirm, in the words of Robert Kagan, that Europe was from Venus and the USA from Mars.42 The USA would do the hard military work and the Europeans would be asked to help pay for post-war restoration. The assumption in much of the literature was that hard power was both the more difficult and the predominant instrument. But this is too easy an assumption, although deficiencies in the conduct of soft power, such as those of the EU in Geneva, might make it appear to be true. There were ways in which the management of soft power by the Europeans could overwhelm the capacity of the USA to deploy its hard power. Was American hard power always likely to allow US domination of international society, and allow it to prevail over European soft power and impose its image of an American century? The strategies and doctrines of the administration of George W. Bush, shaped before and after the Iraq War by the political–intellectual establishment in Washington, the neoconservatives, placed a narrow interpretation of US interests and security above those of all other states, and placed these ahead of the development

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of international law, multilateral diplomacy and economic cooperation. This was now to be a unipolar world dominated above all by the economic, strategic and political interests of one state – the USA. Was Europe necessarily powerless, as many thought, in the face of overwhelming US hard power and overweening ambition? Europe could, however, improve its command of the multilateral process and thereby counter the hard power available to the USA. Two points should be stressed: that such strategies are indeed necessary, and that they need not be anti-American. They would serve the cause of balancing the USA in the interest of the stability of international society, and indeed that of the USA itself. The intention would be to strengthen the hand of those within the USA who feel uncomfortable with the new US posture. The neoconservatives, of course, have an answer to this. They oversimplify in the traditional manner of US populism, whether intellectual or not, by saying that if you are not with us you are against us. This charge was addressed to liberals and internationalists in the USA as much as to those outside. The case here, however, is that to rectify the present weaknesses of European multilateralism would serve to counter the USA effectively, and strengthen the hand of US liberals and multilateralists. It would also demonstrate that soft power, effectively managed, can be more than adequate to balance the hard power of a democratic state. It is a gross oversimplification to suppose that modern military power, however advanced, would necessarily win the day.43 Battles might be won but, as is all too clear from the experience of the second Iraq War, that is often only the beginning. In the modern world, also, it is often difficult to apply military force because of difficulties of terrain or of identifying the enemy, as in a civil war. It is also foolish to think that exercising such military power is the difficult, or manly, thing to do – as Kagan seems to claim. Unleashing that military power is easy if several trillion dollars have been spent in its development. But the problems in conjuring up such power, as well as those of cleaning up after its deployment, have also to be recognised. In the USA it is still at the beck and call of an unpredictable democratic process. Its control cannot be predicted with any confidence by a US administration, as Congress and the US public are both hard to convince and changeable. And there are still costs that may prove unacceptable to the public of an open society, such as the appearance of large numbers of military casualties, and the diversion of resources away from what many feel are the more important goals, dealing with terrorism and building solid alliances. In other words, in the modern USA, unlike a military dictatorship, the exercise of military force is hedged around with serious limitations of process and attitude. It is misleading to assert that Europe is good at multilateralism and, as the saying goes, doing the washing up, but US power always trumps this, wherever it is deployed. In fact, the opposite is the case: Europe is not good enough at multilateralism, as the behaviour of the EU in Geneva reveals,

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and there are severe limitations on the exercise of US military power. Hitherto the USA could afford to downplay the role of the multilateral institutions, in the UN system and outside it, because it had been able to do enough unilaterally to frustrate any policies or actions of which it disapproved. The USA never faced a united, purposeful group of states in any of the multilateral frameworks in which it was involved. If the member states of the EU acted together consistently in the multilateral institutions, they would consistently get their way, even if opposed by the USA. The EU problem is not that it is necessarily weak, even at the present level of military spending, but rather that it is wilfully ineffectual.

7

European values: why bother?

In this chapter, European values in the early twenty-first century are contrasted with those that seemed dominant in the USA. This is a way of bringing out more clearly what was distinctive about the values of the European Union, why they had become a force to be reckoned with, and why at this moment of hesitation about European integration, more effort should be devoted to their defence. At a time when American leaders such as exSecretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld were prepared to express publicly their contempt for the old Europe, it was worth comparing the values for which the USA stood, or which were broadcast in their name in the early twenty-first century, with those of Europe. It is concluded that European values are different and that they should be more vigorously and intelligently defended. To this end there should be a New European Project, which is developed in the next chapter. National values, US or European, are not found evenly spread. They are not what all Americans or Europeans hold to be true. But generalisation is possible because they are supported by a dominant political elite or because they recur most frequently in the general population. Many people may hold a completely different set of values, but in the USA of George W. Bush a majority, at least for the 2004 election, were prepared to go along with what he and his colleagues stood for. And even if such values were overtaken by others, there was always the chance that they would regain their ascendancy. Similarly, in Europe many may hold views that are anathema to the majority to a greater or lesser extent, but generalisations can nevertheless be made about the majority, or the prevailing, view.

Strategies of influence In a powerful article in The Times on 13 January 2007, Matthew Parris discussed the problems he was experiencing in continuing to favour the USA as against the EU, especially with the possibility of the USA now launching an attack on Iran. For the first time, he wrote, he was beginning to wonder whether there might not be a good case for switching more firmly to the European cause, or at least away from the US one. He quoted a colleague,

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Gerard Baker, who wrote: ‘If we’re going to follow the US or the EU, I’d take clumsy America any time,’ and wondered whether this was still a sensible position. In this chapter it is argued that Parris was right to have his doubts. Too often it was blithely assumed in ignorance, especially in the UK, that US values and ways of doing things were preferable to those of Europe. The USA was capable of great generosity, and its government and people energetically espoused the great causes of democracy and liberty. But increasingly alongside this good there was a massive downside, seen all too clearly in the views of right-wing America. Europe has the power to attract. It has proved that it has the strengths and energies to make it necessary for most of its neighbours to seek full membership. There were few exceptions – in Western Europe only Norway and Switzerland. The reasons for this were sometimes obvious. The EU was a massive market and membership gave access to almost 400 million consumers. It also attracted inward investment because location of production facilities anywhere in the Union gave access to the whole market. It was a framework that encouraged the development of high standards in government and civil society, with an insistence on the rule of law, on the right to associate in political parties and trade unions, with core labour standards and democratic government. ‘The United States cannot boast that any country has ever adopted its norms and followed its preferences to the extent that would-be members of the EU have done’.1 In its laws, if not always in its practice, its members protected the rights and interests of minorities, and as a union of states, had never used force to impose itself. It had, however, required from those who sought membership a commitment to liberal values, the rule of law and the free market economy. This ability to tempt neighbouring countries to come close was, as Mark Leonard pointed out, a powerful reflection of a deeper reality.2 It had been able to impose conditions, represented in the Copenhagen criteria, with which applicant countries must comply as a condition of accession. The application of what was called ‘conditionality’, according to which the EU attached conditions to its economic aid, and to other forms of help, had been welcomed as an opportunity for desirable internal change in candidate countries as well as making accession possible. Unlike the USA the EU was unique in having developed a capability to request that its values be applied outside itself without causing undue resentment. Overall, it was welcomed in the target countries as an opportunity to bring about desirable internal reform. Turkey was perhaps the one exception, although its educated elite welcomed the pressures from the EU. There was a caution to be entered at the time of writing in 2006: the slow pace of reconciliation between Turkey and Europe raised the prospect that Turkey might seek a different destiny. As Gul Berna Ozcan wrote: ‘For the first time in its history, [in 2006] the EU is becoming a destabilising influence on its neighbourhood. The first casualty of this might well be Turkey’.3

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Compare this with the US way. There was a surge of enlightened support for European recovery in the Marshall Plan after the ending of the Second World War. But later there were interventions, especially in Latin America, to oppose changes that did not satisfy specific US interests and ideology, with little regard for practical internal improvements in the lot of citizens in the target countries, and little or no investment in a more civilised state. It was arguable that the US judiciary was fair and liberal, but the US executive too often was not. Even desirable changes, such as introducing democracy, were often seen in target countries as a way of consolidating US influence rather than a way of improving the lot of its citizens. Getting closer to the USA was seen as giving in to US culture. Compare the conduct of the USA since the 1980s in south and central America, in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Chile, Columbia and even Mexico, with the conduct of Europeans in the states of Central and Eastern Europe and Turkey. The Europeans often had serious disagreements among themselves, but together in the Union they had been a powerful pole of attraction. The regional arrangements of the EU seemed to be a model for the future. The world was becoming a world of regions, linking states together within them, and it was the arrangements of the regions, at their most basic in common markets, which were the links with global organisations. The EU was the precursor and model of this evolving international society. It was the image of its multilateral arrangements, and of the opportunities they provided of multiple equal connections, that seemed to dominate in the view of the EU of outsiders. Compare this with the image of the USA in its external relations. Their image was one of unilateralism, even of imperialism, and of the risk of domination. The North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) had in many ways been a success but, unlike in Europe, the partners of the USA, Mexico and Canada were constantly aware of the need to stand up to the dominant power. Indeed Mexico became increasingly disappointed by the lack of any tangible gains from their membership in NAFTA.

Policies on Economic Development In recent years US unilateral action had failed more often than not, disastrously so in Iraq. The policies of the European governments were closer to those of the UN as regards development assistance than were those of the USA, although outside Scandinavia they could also be doing a lot more.4 It was the Europeans, sometimes through wider multilateral frameworks such as those of the United Nations, who filled in the humanitarian and developmental gaps left by US policies, as when they worked to increase debt relief in Africa. The US inclination was to resist this. The political culture of the Europeans, pretty much across the board, was much more conducive to welfare support, be it for development or to alleviate crisis, than was that of the USA. US political culture inclined Americans on

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the right of the political spectrum to suppose that even their own people should help themselves and should not expect the support of others. It was hardly surprising that attitudes towards supporting foreigners were also sceptical. The USA was much more proactively delinquent than the Europeans with regard to helping the world’s poorest countries. This is the message that emerged from Joseph Stiglitz’s best-selling 2006 book, Making Globalization Work:5 the explicit evidence primarily concerned US predatory conduct against the poorest countries and said rather little about European policies. With regard to trade, the USA repeatedly abused safeguard measures, exploited punitive anti-dumping measures to protect their industries,6 and pushed for confiscatory intellectual property rights. Stiglitz pointed out that almost half of the 4000 plant patents granted by the USA concerned traditional knowledge obtained from developing countries. It was argued that what mattered was that the medicinal properties of a given plant were known in the USA, and not that they were known to indigenous peoples. Even if the knowledge had been published, it would not count if expressed in the local language. Europe withdrew similar patents in the early years of the new millennium, but the USA refused to do so. The US authorities complained bitterly about the support for agriculture in Europe through the Common Agricultural Policy, but massively subsidised its cotton producers, corn producers and other food growers, much to the advantage of the large agribusinesses that were close to the Republican administration. The search for new biofuels only served to increase the subsidy for US corn producers. Eighty-seven per cent of US agricultural subsidy went to the top 20 per cent of farmers, each of whom received on average of about US$200,000 (Stiglitz, p. 86). In 2002, the USA enacted a new farm bill that nearly doubled its subsidies, while the Europeans were promoting CAP reform. In 2000, the Byrd amendment determined that dumping duties should be go directly to the affected industry (Stiglitz, p. 93). The USA provided large, disguised subsidies to companies such as Boeing and Lockheed through the defence budget, but attacked European support for Airbus, which complied with EU rules. Across the board, the US administration showed a determination to protect its large industries and thwart the efforts of developing countries to increase their exports to the US market. Stiglitz pointed out the skill with which levels of protection were determined by the USA to exclude precisely those goods where the developing world had an advantage. ‘In one of the high points of hypocrisy and cynicism in the Hong Kong meeting in December 2005 the United States offered to open itself to up to 97 per cent of the goods produced by the least developed countries, a number carefully calibrated to exclude most of the products, such as Bangladeshi textiles and apparel, that it wanted to keep out’ (Stiglitz, p. 83). At the same meeting the USA offered, to great fanfare, to open its markets to cotton imports from Africa. This meant nothing, as the USA was a massive exporter of its own

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highly subsidised cotton (Stiglitz, p. 81). In contrast, in 2001 the EU removed almost all barriers to imports from the poorest countries. The Europeans could hardly be described as generous, although in the first decade of the new millennium they seemed to be getting more so. But American policies on liberalising trade with the developing world, and on related issues, were sophisticated, deliberate and unscrupulously aggressive. The US Republican administration of the early twenty-first century acted deliberately as the hired gun of corporate America in the globalised economy. Indeed, predatory business reinforced the Republican administration’s inclination to exploitative unilateralism, and government and big business were close allies in the US strategy for global economic domination. In return, the Republican Party benefited from massive corporate donations. European governments, particularly the French, also protected their own companies, but lacked the punch to impose their corporate interests on the world. They were also more likely to be moved by the moral case for doing something about the poorest people in the world, and overall were not so clever in their exploitation. As already pointed out, the Europeans were closer to the UN orthodoxy on development than were the Americans. European governments, with the exception of Margaret Thatcher’s government in the UK, never espoused the view of the neoliberals that there was no need for an explicit development policy if free-market economic principles were applied fully. The Europeans tended to think that special measures were needed: there had to be a specific development policy. It was undeniable that the US way, from Mars rather than from Venus, had been attractive to some right-of-centre European governments, such as those of Spain under the conservatives, and the UK under New Labour. But the mistake of this alignment came to be acknowledged as the Iraq crisis developed and the administration of George W. Bush proved incapable of dealing with it effectively. The UK government and those who had supported its involvement in Iraq were being brought to face their error, and there were some dramatic confessions of misjudgement. The new socialist government in Spain withdrew from its military involvement there. Mark Leonard went too far when he wrote that ‘Europeans will run the 21st century’ as, despite its considerable assets, it was lacking in some important ways (discussed below). But the strengths of the European way, as opposed to that of the dominant elite in Washington, were all too clear.

Internal Social and Economic Divisions In the USA, social divisions were increasing to dangerous levels. The gap between rich and poor was at new high levels. Forty-six million Americans, 8 million of whom were children, had no medical insurance.7 Middle-class families were increasingly finding it impossible to save enough to fund their pensions, and relied on their one last asset, their house, to support them in old age. At the same time, taxation on the rich was slashed, public squalor

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increased, and in cities private affluence often needed to be protected in gated compounds. The treatment of the poor in the USA, be they native, legal or illegal immigrants, was uncaring to the extent that politicians seeking election did not dare to recommend increasing taxation to support welfare spending. Per capita average GNP was still marginally higher in the USA than it was in Europe in 2006. But this advantage was largely squandered because income was so unevenly distributed, and because of the need to pay the price of social problems within the country, through the massive prison population, the poverty of public services, and the massive spending on defence and internal policing. The emergence of the class of super-rich came with a massive price tag that everyone, rich and poor, had to pay. The European tendency overall was still to keep the idea of the civilised state firmly in mind, although some might claim that the British under New Labour were the exception. It included the views that the difference between the richest and the poorest should not be excessive; that adequate old-age pensions should be assured for everyone; that health provision should be available to all, with strong government involvement; and that there should be a minimum of public squalor. In the USA, policing, especially in cities, was often peremptory and unnecessarily violent, as had been witnessed, much to the embarrassment of the authorities, on television. Justice and success in elections was too often seen as the product of wealth, although this was an area where some European states were catching up. But, overall, European communities were less violently policed and justice was more evenly spread across the various sectors of society. There were distinctive features of the European practice in areas covered by the founding EU treaties: setting up monitoring systems in member and applicant states that could report departures from agreed codes. Leonard rightly stressed this as a dominant feature of the European way – it was an area of laws and rules under the surveillance of common institutions. In the view of many observers the US economy was at risk, and the question was raised as to whether there could be a sudden collapse, leading to even higher levels of social tension. The level of personal and public debt in the USA was at a dangerously high level, with continuing US prosperity dependent on Chinese and Japanese willingness to buy dollars. Towards the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century there were worrying signs that the Chinese and Japanese were having doubts about continuing to finance the US deficit by purchasing US government bonds, and this could lead to a dramatic fall in the value of the dollar. There were indications that they might divert their overseas investment into other currencies, such as the Euro. Some oil producers had moved to price their production in euros rather than dollars. An overall judgement of the condition of the US polity and that of the EU in the early twenty-first century would have to be that the USA had high levels of internal political and cultural tension, was running high risks with its economy, and was pursuing external strategies that made it increasingly disliked. Europeans, in contrast, retained a greater

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feeling of security, even though increasing immigration was an issue, an economy that was showing signs of new growth – but was in any case less threatened – and overall were well regarded in the community of states. There were, of course, economic inefficiencies, and serious problems such as high levels of unemployment in some countries. But at least Europeans overall had adequate welfare support, and there were signs of economic recovery in lead countries such as Germany. There was a lot to be said for European arrangements. But they were certainly less capable of exercising military power, with lower levels of military technology, and a weaker logistic capability than the USA. On the other hand, superior US military power could lead to a lack of appreciation of the problems that could result from its use. This was all too clear in postinvasion Iraq, whereas European civilian power, and the skills of its military, were indeed relevant to a wide range of crisis situations. American military power, although real, was often extremely clumsy, with very high levels of collateral damage. Its use generated moral dilemmas in the eyes of the US public as well as outside observers, as in Iraq and Vietnam. The increased reporting of military action and its consequences for human life made a public reaction more likely. How many US soldiers could be killed, how much departure from the Geneva protocols was acceptable to achieve victory without leading to public opposition? Examples of this were the withdrawal from Somalia after 18 US soldiers had been killed in a helicopter crash, and the withdrawal from Vietnam. The European way was a vindication of the dictum, attributed to Jean Monnet, that to make improvements when economies and polities were failing it was best to enlarge the context and work together.8 It also illustrated the doctrine, enunciated by David Mitrany, that if you bring people together peacefully and give them a moderate sufficiency of what they need and ought to have, they will keep the peace.9 If you contrive to upgrade the common interest, and focus on the best ways of solving particular problems, you will create a working peace system and encourage the appearance of a world of cooperative regions. The way of the US administration in the twenty-first century, in contrast, was more a reflection of traditional power politics, inviting only the appearance of a more formidable enemy to balance the system, such as China, or the new Russia. It is argued later that the appearance of Europe as an effective balancer would be kinder to the USA and better for international society. In recent years, the Europeans and the USA were almost at opposite ends of the power spectrum, with the Europeans advocating diplomacy and the US threatening violence. The US administration refused to deal with the Iranian government directly in attempting to suspend Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. The Europeans had been actively promoting diplomacy to deal with the similar problem in North Korea, although the USA was eventually persuaded. Too frequently, US diplomacy seemed entirely devoted to securing the complete victory of the side it supported, rather than to

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finding a sensible compromise. Clausewitz famously remarked that war was an extension of diplomacy by other means.10 For modern America it was the other way round: diplomacy was an extension of war by other means.

Might and Right in America There was some merit in the view that the USA needed an enemy, and that if there was no real enemy, one would be invented. This went along with the determination to have the maximum conceivable capacity to defend against an enemy either real or imagined. The extension of dominion into the lands of the Native Americans through the nineteenth century was supposedly the origin of the US tendency to see right and wrong in terms of sharp distinctions, as if between black and white, and to be either for you or against you. The experience of the wild west and the frontier spirit encouraged the feeling that might was right. In western movies, it was a happy coincidence that the man who could shoot first and straight was the one in the right. That pattern can easily be found in the period of the Cold War. The enemy of Communism was often turned into a campaign against individuals within the USA as well as without. Too often an opponent was placed beyond the pale. Critics of US government policies were accused of being un-American as a matter of course. And there was a need for massive armaments to resist the external foe. After the end of the Cold War, there was a degree of perplexity about who the enemy could be now. The successful candidate was Islam, as determined by Samuel Huntington in his argument that the future would be dominated by a clash of civilisations between Islam and the West.11 Huntington’s book was perfectly timed to coincide with the apparent ending of one threat, that from the Soviet Union. It was as if he had set out to see who the next enemy could be. The appearance of real terrorism, which in fact derived from problems in which the western states were sometimes involved, such as the Arab–Israeli conflict, as well as those in which they were not involved, such as the deadly disagreements within Islam, was easily associated with Islam as a whole in the American mind. The US public came to see the threat from terrorism as being the same as a threat from Islam. The one was identified with the other. Multilateralism succeeded if it created agreed rules and norms, under supervision in a common, regional or global (as appropriate) legal framework. The strategy required the acceptance of the possibility of a global community within which all actors, individuals and groups, such as companies, were subject to the same law within a common jurisdiction. This was something the US neoconservative administration and its ideologues did not accept. They showed contempt for the existing multilateral institutions, including the EU, constantly qualified their acceptance of international arrangements, and reserved their right to act unilaterally. Indeed the US strategic doctrine of the early twenty-first century was everything that a

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positive approach to multilateralism should not be.12 It was explicit about the need for the superiority of US military forces over all others on land, at sea and in space; it insisted on the US right to take pre-emptive action unilaterally in its own interest; and it claimed the right to use force without the need for any other authorisation from the UN. It was contemptuous of the multilateral security mechanisms of the UN. This doctrine went along with a refusal to accept the jurisdiction of the international criminal court, insisting that it was an anti-American conspiracy, and the US was unique in upholding a far-reaching extra-territorial jurisdiction. This meant that the general rule for Americans was that its laws took precedence over the laws of all other states, not just in the USA but, as far as could be obtained, in other countries as well. The US view was hostile to the further strengthening of international law and was critical of existing international legal principles when they did not coincide with US interests. In 2006, the USA had yet again come out against any effort to control the international arms trade and defied the international consensus on the need to outlaw land mines and cluster bombs. It refused, as did Tony Blair’s government, to condemn the seeding of south Lebanon by Israel with tens of thousands of cluster bombs at the end of its action against Hezbollah in Lebanon in 2006. It was necessary to recognise that in the early twenty-first century there was a strong hegemonic inclination on the part of US political elites. This went along with a common belief in US exceptionalism: uniquely punished in the attacks of 9/11; uniquely insightful about the proper arrangements of economies and societies; and uniquely qualified to lead. For all the myth of itself as open to new ideas, the US polity was in fact committed to conformity. Unlike Europe, the USA was a country where to step outside that conformity could be dangerous in the physical sense. In some parts, vigilante groups could resort to extreme sanctions for publicly advocating a liberal agenda. US liberals needed to be much more courageous than their European counterparts in arguing their case. Indeed, the word liberal had become a common term of abuse in sections of the media. This would be interpreted as anti-American and dangerous, and therefore deserving of the severest punishment. The neoconservatives promoted the further narrowing of this artery with their preparedness to report any criticism of Israeli policies towards Palestinians as anti-Semitic. There was a sense that Europe was the place where the openness of political systems was being defended, and where the right of free speech was respected in practice as well as in principle. It was undeniable that the deadly attacks of 11 September 2001 were carried out by terrorists professing Islam. But the US government then set about strengthening the enemy by attacking governments that had not been previously involved with terrorism, such as that of Saddam Hussein, by using extreme force against groups they imagined included terrorists, and by denying that there was any merit in criticisms of US policies on the Middle

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East. Terrorism was blamed on the ideological motivation of their opponents and on the collusion of Islamists in an arc of evil. This was a direct descendent of Ronald Reagan’s vision in the 1980s of the so-called evil empire led by the Soviet Union. Both were delusions, characteristic of the right wing of the US political spectrum. Through all these developments, of course, there was real cause for vigilance and a preparedness to defend effectively. Most revealing about US neoconservative attitudes were the mistakes made in the invasion of Iraq, with the deliberate downplaying by the US administration, particularly Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, of the need to provide sufficient resources to take care of the aftermath. This was a particular instance of a failure to acknowledge the real grievances that fed terror, and the complete failure to understand that other cultures, such as that of Iraqis or Somalis or Vietnamese, were different from that of the USA. Iraq was not so much a failure to deal effectively with the regime of Saddam Hussein as a mistake of US grand strategy in the Middle East. It was caused by an arrogance of power and a denial of cultural difference, rather than a concern for the weak, as its main purpose was to create in Iraq a client state that would shape a more stable regime in the Middle East to suit US interests. The action against Saddam Hussein could easily be justified on humanitarian grounds, but it was undertaken for precisely the wrong reasons. There was little evidence that Iraq had any links with terrorist organisations or that it had weapons of mass destruction. Since the USA decided, post-Second World War, to make itself the most technically advanced and most heavily funded military machine the world has ever seen, it has consistently relied too heavily on its technical ability and too little on other, more human skills. As in Vietnam, so in Iraq – there was overconfidence in the technical skills of warfare, and a lack of appreciation of the human qualities of the enemy such as their courage and determination, even though their values could be objectionable. As ex-US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara later admitted, the mistake made by the USA in Vietnam was to rely too heavily on technical indicators of military success, such as the enemy’s body count, which was a direct consequence of the weakness of strategic thinking in the 1960s. The mistakes of the Iraq War were comparable. There was concentration on technical efficiency in fighting, and little regard for the human skills required to achieve a real victory. President Bush showed an inability to understand what the word ‘victory’ really meant. The cost of these failures for American citizens was enormous. It was foolish to think that exercising such military power was the difficult, or manly, thing to do – as Robert Kagan seemed to claim.13 As pointed out in Chapter 6, unleashing that military power was easy if several trillion dollars had been spent in its development. But the problems in conjuring up such power, as well as those of cleaning up after its deployment, had also to be recognised.

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Power and the Europeans The Europeans had their own kinds of limitations. They were good at spotting and complaining about departures from agreed rules or laws, both internally and externally, and at projecting an expectation of high civic values. They had great strength in using the various carrots they could deploy, and at contriving compliance with the rules of their own systems as a condition of accession. They were ‘good at the washing up’, as Robert Kagan put it. These were parts of a general category of power which the EU could exercise, and that might be called the power to impose system compliance, or soft power, as Nye had put it.14 The problem was that the EU was structured in such a way that it had difficulty in being effective in the balance of power. The individual member states were too weak or dependent to play the game, and the EU was not equipped to do so either in its military resources or in its decision-making. Europe had a quality of military inertness. In many ways, Europe had become a subject of international relations, rather than an actor. Most damaging was that the reactions of member states often depended on their various views about how to relate to the USA – either cloyingly close, as with the British, or anxiously distant, as with the French. The most recent example of this was the disagreement over the second UN Security Council Resolution authorising military action against Saddam led by the USA and the UK, which failed in the face of French and German opposition. In 1998 at St Malo, the French and British agreed to set up a European rapid reaction force, and the EU has since been involved in disputes in Africa (in Sierra Leone), and has taken over responsibility in Macedonia and may do so in Kosovo. The general view was that the Europeans had made important and useful contributions. But the rapid reaction force had never acted rapidly and forcibly in pursuit of agreed EU foreign policy goals. It seemed unlikely that this could be case for the foreseeable future, both because of disagreement over goals in high foreign policy, and because of the inadequacy of resources. In view of this, it was hard to see how Europe could run the twenty-first century, as Leonard predicted, in the sense that it could command respect for its military capacity and play an effective part in the balance of international power. Mathew Parris recommended a role for future British forces that would also suit the forces of the EU: dealing with military firefighting, small wars, coups and insurgencies, riot control, training allies’ armies; rescue and disaster work.15 (Parris also argued that instead of spending billions on renewing the Trident missile system, the British could, for the same amount, beef up conventional defences, supply and support our existing armed forces properly, improve our intelligence work, and ‘develop further the defence roles we already play well’.) Again, the point is supported that the EU was not best suited to playing the grand strategic game in the military field.

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This comparison suggests that, in the early twenty-first century, there were European values and attitudes that were worthy of vigorous defence. There was such a thing as a European identity, which was sharply different from that of the USA. It was not enough to accept a specialisation of labour in dealing with the rest of the world, with the USA doing the heavy lifting and the Europeans doing the more complex humanitarian things or, as Kagan put it, ‘doing the washing up’. Europeans needed to sharpen their awareness of their distinctive assets and common values. They needed to defend them internally in the face of pressures towards diversification. And they needed to resist a progressive Americanisation even when couched in the form of academic orthodoxies such as neoliberalism. They needed to develop sufficient resources to defend and pursue them in their external relations. The European values described in this chapter were an aspiration for the whole of Europe, but whether the new members from Eastern and Central Europe had fully accepted them was a matter for debate. Older values about the rights of minorities, and the form of civil society and methods of government, which derived from their experience under Soviet Communism, or even from before that time, were still visible in the new Eastern members. There was evidence to suggest that more hardline, even anti-democratic, tendencies were only just below the surface, and that the more liberal local elites, together with the core social democratic countries, still had a job to do. The safest course was to assume that enlargement had been led by security considerations, and that the teaching of Western European values had to continue in the East, even though the process of adjustment to the Copenhagen criteria formally ceased on accession. In the early twenty-first century it was a mistake to assume that European values were safe in the whole of Europe.

8

A new European project: defence, social policy and the budget

This chapter discusses policies that could form the elements of a new phase of integration. As indicated many times in this book, France and Germany have been the motor of integration in the past, and remain the only two countries that could again take up that role. The policies are not new. They have been tried before, but in the early twenty-first century they have the advantage of moving on from the tired agendas of the 1980s and 1990s. They also have the merit of being about issues on which the public in Western Europe, with the exception of Ireland and the UK, as indicated in the polls carried out by Eurobarometer in 2005, seemed happy to support a higher degree of common action by the EU (Eurobarameter 64, June 2006, p. 106). They are also about issues that are key to the European identity: defence and social democracy. Denmark was the only country in Western Europe where the majority view was that decisions concerning European defence policy should be taken by NATO. A majority thought that NATO or the national governments should be responsible, not the EU, in most of the new member states in Central and Eastern Europe.

Defending European Values Member states were right to insist that candidate states must have accepted in full the acquis communitaire and must have satisfied in full the Copenhagen criteria before membership. In order for this insistence on the acquis to make any sense, it was essential that there should always be a single opus of achievement. It should not be diluted in a mess of varying local practices. Otherwise departures from the norms could always be defended as local custom. The Commission made a mistake when it accepted that Bulgaria and Romania were near enough compliance to become full members in 2007, but that they should go further on such matters as eliminating corruption in public life after accession. Such softening of the criteria of membership inevitably leads to reducing the civil power of the European Union, and the power of the EU as a model for the rest of the world. As suggested in the previous chapter, it might also be unwise to assume that

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the conditions of membership, as represented by the Copenhagen criteria, would not need further tuition in Eastern Europe after formal membership. In any successful multilateral system, there has to be effective leadership. That was how the game was played. The effective leadership coalition in Europe was unlikely to include Britain, as Britain had always done what it could to head off European integration. There were some encouraging signs in late 2006. For instance, the government of Angela Merkel in Germany restarted the process of ratifying the European Constitution when Germany took over the Presidency of the Union in 2007, and Nicolas Sarkozy, one of the Presidential candidates in May 2007 – and the leading one at the time of writing – had argued for the rapid ratification of a slimmed-down version of the Constitution. It looked as if the Germans and the French were anxious to make a new start, and that could be towards a more committed role in Europe. At first sight, it might seem illogical to suggest that successful multilateralism required leadership. But it would be easier to obtain agreement among a small group first, and then to persuade others to that position, than it would be to get agreement at the outset among the members of the larger group. Action could not depend on the general and equal commitment of members, even of a small group. The expectation of this would lead to paralysis. States would choose a wide variety of courses of action and become attached to them. Conversely, leadership within a group of states with common interests and attitudes is likely to attract support, and sometimes creates strong diplomatic pressures to conform. There can be a bandwagon effect. An EU of 27 or 30 members was more in need of small group leadership than, say, an EU made up solely of the six original members. The Six could reliably expect to be equally involved, and to be equally consulted, although even then the leadership of France and Germany (called here ‘the couple’) was critical. With 30 members, general involvement was bound to be more problematic. But why should the lead coalition not be recreated with regard to each issue? Why, in other words, did it need to be a particular group, and why were the members of that group in the EU most likely to be France and Germany? Leadership states should be acknowledged as being positive towards the organisation and have a history of leadership for the advantage of the wider membership. In the EU these would be France and Germany – not Britain or Italy. There needed to be an identification of the values of the lead states with the values of the organisation, and complete general confidence that that was the case. Britain in the EU had deservedly acquired the reputation of being unreliable in its commitment to the project and aggressively exploitative, and the Italian government was too fragile to be a reliable leader. France and Germany were therefore better candidates for the role of regional hegemon. Enlargement had taken place largely without much thought about the internal power dynamics necessary for the larger group to move forward. By

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default there was the argument that the enlarged community could rely on ad hoc leaderships in relation to each policy area, or that a sufficient degree of general agreement could be relied on to develop common Council positions. This was highly unlikely to be an effective way of conducting EU business in the globalised world: leadership was necessary, and it was highly likely that the same leadership over a wide range of EU issues was the better alternative. The EU had become a large multilateral organisation, and for all its special qualities, effective action had to be based on the same principles that applied to other large multilateral organisations. In other words, the analogy of the UN was now better than that of the Europe of the Six. The UN had worked when the five permanent members had jointly committed themselves to its success. This had happened for a short time in the early 1990s. A similar dynamic was increasingly needed in the EU. There was a substantial literature on two-speed or multi-speed Europe, which went back to the 1970s and the time of the first enlargement. The general question raised was whether a small number of states, including France and Germany, could go ahead of the others. The question was added as to whether this could be on the understanding that their going ahead would simply be a temporary arrangement, showing the way, and that the others would catch up. Or would it be a definite staging of different levels of integration for the long term? Another version of this image was that of differential attainments in integration among the various member states. Some would be more integrated on some issues, and others would be more integrated on other issues, with no obvious leaders and laggards. These possibilities were often discussed, and became a part of the diplomacy among member states. For instance Britain, Denmark and Greece were threatened with the introduction of a two-stage Europe if they declined to go along with France and Germany in the 1980s. But in general they were intimations of what was possible, and primarily a tactic of diplomacy, rather than anything actively sought or reflected in concrete treaty proposals. It was striking, as pointed out in Chapter 4, that the first formal agreement about this possibility was in the Treaty of Amsterdam, developed further in the Treaty of Nice, and that this coincided with the introduction of new ways of loosening the strict applications of general rules in the methods known as subsidiarity, the open method of coordination and the separate levels of ownership of responsibilities for action in the Lisbon Agenda. The more ambitious states realised that they might be subject to restrictions in the new, enlarged Union, as the least ambitious states clung on to their right to be different. In the formal rules, the unwilling states succeeded in introducing the right to veto the willing from going ahead of the others. The situation, however, had changed. It was in the way of EU diplomacy that governments would probably find a way to do what they wanted. The idea that some states could go ahead was now established, and the ways of stopping them were softening. The more ambitious states could

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claim that the rules did not apply in this particular instance, or agree to act outside the Treaty of Rome and its related treaties among themselves, a tactic that could not be trumped. New extra-Union treaties had been threatened before, and this ploy was a favourite of the French when the British were being difficult in the 1980s. Such a route was clearly possible, and was made more so in the proposed European Constitution which, for the first time, made reference to the procedures for withdrawal from the EU by member states. The threat of formal withdrawal could now be used to force general acceptance of a more integrated core, and if this failed, actual withdrawal and the signing of a new treaty would do the trick. In the real world, power and community were often related. Common values and common policies emerged from the practice of hegemony, as was the case with the setting up of the modern system of international organisations after the Second World War under US leadership. In the EU, too, there had been an achievement in the area of community, common practices and common legal arrangements. But this was also under the leadership of a kind of regional hegemon, the couple – France and Germany. In the system of 25–7 states in the new millennium, the hegemon had, however, weakened. This was partly because of enlargement itself and the problems caused by this for the existing members, and partly because of problems within the two states, such as disillusionment with the politicians, as discussed in Chapter 3. Three courses were probably desirable if the enlarged EU was not to decline into a more conventional kind of alliance. First was the reappearance of the couple as a more active hegemon. Second was the creation of a more integrated area within the larger one of the Union. That would be made up of a core of willing states, at the heart of which would be France and Germany. Third was the development of new policies on integration that could attract more widespread support, even if that was because of the exercise of hegemonic power. At the time of writing in 2007, integration as practised since the signing of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 was reaching its end. That integration was characterised by waxings and wanings, but overall it constituted a progress towards an ever-closer union of all the peoples in its member states. In the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, that image was questioned. The vision of such an ever-closer union was formally abandoned at the instigation of some of those who had seemed committed, such as Tony Blair. And the idea of a single community of common practice and common standards was challenged. There remained a massive achievement of uniform and supervised practice, which could enmesh applicant states. But the concession to local variation had been made, and it was now not clear where this would stop. And a conclusion of the process of federalisation had been announced. What was needed was a new beginning. Perhaps the end of the old integration could be a prelude to the new. Some insight into the range of policies that could make up a new European project could be gained by looking at where the roadblocks in the way of

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integration had been erected in the past. Some had been deliberately put in place, with great skill. The immediate effect of the roadblocks was often innocuous, and apparently beneficial, as with the 1988 budgetary settlement, or the agreement of subsidiarity, or the open method of coordination. But the deeper effect of these small reservations was highly damaging. They constituted an ever-increasing weight of handicap on further integration, and promoted, as was intended, an impression of the inevitability of intergovernmentalism, and the impossibility of supranationalism. Other false dawns were that which seemed to be leading to a European Defence Community in the early 1950s, and that which promised a European Great Society in the early 1970s. The first was lost when the French rejected it in 1954. The latter, although it was alluded to in the concluding statement of the Paris Summit in 1972, was lost in the turmoil of the international monetary system at that time.1 The external stance of the EU was strong on capacity for complex, multifaceted and specific action, particularly with regard to humanitarian crises and development policy, and in this its multilateral character was an advantage. Its weakness was that it had no strategic sensitivity. It had no capacity for detecting and responding to changes in the balance of power, and was not seen as a participant in the changing patterns of power distribution around the world. It was therefore vulnerable in the face of major challenges to its interests. European values might be summarised in the term social democracy, and its multilateral humanitarian and developmental activities abroad were a reflection of these values. But lack of strategic capacity was one explanation of a vulnerability here too. The constant challenge to European values from over the Atlantic was, in part, derived from the absence of any reinforcement of European values by European military power. The fact was that the reports of right-wing Americans that the Europeans were from Venus – in some cases more explicitly that they were weak – was damaging to the sense of European identity. Values were an aspect of identity, and identity required a capacity for self-defence against the strongest challenges from the outside!. Without it, there was uncertainty and a lack of confidence, and even the danger of an increasing uncertainty about those values. There was a reluctance to stand up for what in extremis could not be defended, and therefore a preparedness to compromise with the values of others, in this case US economic and social values. The absence of EU strategic capacity went along with the vulnerability of European values. A New European Project must therefore include ways of dealing with two kinds of challenge that Europe faced in the first decade of the twenty-first century. These were the threat to European social democracy, and the weakness that resulted from the lack of any European strategic capacity. Dealing with these required resources from the European budget. The nature of the limitations placed upon the budget therefore also had to be discussed. In all these areas, what was proposed was the start of a new

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integration process that addressed these fundamental problems. What follows is not a detailed blueprint, but a sketch of the route. It does not herald the ending of the end.

European Defence Policy The first area of EU policy where there could be a policy effort under the heading of the New European Project was that of defence policy. For such a policy to succeed, there needed to be a sense of European identity, although such an identity might be encouraged during the evolution of the policy. As the authors of the Bertelsmann Foundation’s report on European defence2 pointed out, the enlargement of the Union was a problem in this context, as the new members were likely to be a net consumer of such a strategy as well as a weakness with regard to identity. The report correctly pointed out that the point had been reached that represented what the US called a tipping point. European defence policy could tip backwards into a series of separate national strategies and defence efforts, or it could move forward to a policy that included a common strategy, effective joint command and control mechanisms, and integrated forces amounting to a European army. An effective European effort which was independent of that of the USA, as far as was necessary to protect European interests, was likely to take time to develop, but the chances of needing to face a major threat to the homeland in the near future were low. The popular view was that the quarrels between the French and Germans and the other states over the Iraq invasion in 2003 had destroyed the progress towards a stronger EU effort on defence, which began with the agreement between France and Britain at St Malo in 1998.3 President Chirac and Prime Minister Blair had agreed to set up a Rapid Reaction Force of 60,000 men, with the aim of providing a quick response to crises around the world. Progress towards setting up such a force was slow but real. The dominating view until Maastricht was that Europe should not be directly concerned with defence, as the Atlantic alliance was (and must remain) the primary organisation for defending the North Atlantic territory. At that point it was agreed that the West European Union (WEU) could act for the Europeans in strengthening their join contributions to NATO activities.4 But there was also a dissenting view. The French led the effort to make European efforts more independent of the Americans, although they did not necessarily favour granting the EU as an organisation a defence capacity.5 But before the problems over Iraq, the EU member states had made progress. The serious disagreements did not prevent a series of steps being taken that strengthened European arrangements.  On 12 December 2003, the member governments approved a proposal by the UK, France and Germany to establish a collective capacity in the

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EU to plan and run certain military operations. In effect, the WEU had lost its pivotal role as the EU’s forum for the collective management of defence matters, and links with NATO would now be protected by a small EU cell in the NATO Secretariat. This arrangement became known as the Berlin Plus procedure. It essentially required that proposed EU actions coincided with the preferences expressed through NATO.  Meetings of defence ministers in a new European Security Council took place for the first time, and were now to be a regular feature of the EU’s institutional arrangements. This was an institutional accretion which was to discuss the problems facing Europe’s collective defence, something that would have been impossible ten years earlier.  A European Military Committee of Chiefs of Staff of member states was also set up, as well as a small permanent planning and intelligence committee in Brussels, able to exploit a greater pooling of national intelligence. The heads of national armies began regular meetings to discuss the ways of handling new problems and pooling their collective capacity.  A European Defence Agency, responsible for pooling information about national plans for defence spending, was established in July 2004. In December 2005, the member states agreed on a long-term capabilities plan. This was to coordinate defence building and procurement, so that the resources would be available to carry out the tasks thought appropriate for the Europeans. These included, in particular, the provision of a capacity to respond to the demands of crisis situations in any part of the world that had been identified in the so-called Petersberg Tasks agreed in 1992. They included humanitarian and rescue tasks, peacekeeping tasks, and tasks for combat forces in crisis management. European forces became involved in various parts of the world, including Macedonia and DR Congo. But there were two interrelated problems: how far would the Europeans develop the capacity to pursue a global strategy and be a military power capable of acting independently of the USA; and how far would the European forces be integrated into those of NATO, and European planning and command capacities kept dependent on NATO resources? The British government was a key player in the diplomacy on these questions. They insisted that the European arrangements should be closely linked with those of NATO, and that there should be no development of a truly independent capacity in the sense of one that had the potential to act independently of the USA. There had been some progress in this direction. In November 2003, the French, Germans and British agreed that the collective capability of the EU should be strengthened, including the ability to plan and run certain operations. But this was still to be in the context of cooperation with NATO. The planning group in Brussels would contain representatives from Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), the NATO European HQ, and have its own representation in SHAPE. Despite the apparent

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British success with this, some US officials expressed themselves profoundly disappointed with what they claimed were excessive concessions by the British to the idea of a more independent European defence.6 The US reaction was a sure reflection of the direction of movement. But the British headed off the attempt made by the French, Germans, Belgians and Luxembourgers on 29 April 2003 to set up a more independent force centred on the French–German joint brigade. This meeting was dismissed contemptuously by the US as the ‘Chocolate Summit’.7 Relations sank to a new low level over the French and German refusal to support a UN resolution to authorise the use of force in Iraq. The French and Germans were described by Donald Rumsfeld as the representatives of old Europe, and the French attracted another culinary epithet in the right-wing American media as ‘cheese-eating monkeys’. In some US fast fooderies, French fries were outlawed in favour of ‘freedom fries’! What was surprising after this was that the French and Germans were prepared to accept the new European arrangements, even though they seemed to tie Europe to the USA. Some commentators argued that the quarrels had clarified issues, and the British boasted about having brought a sense of reality to the negotiating table (not the first time they had assumed this arrogant posture). That was probably true in the sense that the French and Germans, and their supporters, saw that what was agreed was at least a step in the right direction. The new arrangements were indeed part of a process of developing a European capacity, which could become more independent of the USA, despite the claims of the British. It was unlikely that the French, in particular, had given up the idea of playing a role on the world stage to defend European interests with or without the USA. As the Germans became more prepared to develop an independent military capacity, they were likely to wish to develop stronger European arrangements. There was a good case for this. The choice in the early twenty-first century was clarified by the Iraqi experience in more ways than one: it was an achievement that Europe had developed the techniques for dealing with humanitarian crisis and insurgency, but there was also a good case for having the capacity to choose to follow European strategic interests when they did not coincide with those of whatever US administration happened to be in power. There were European values, experiences and standards that were different from those of the USA, and should be defended. Without strategic power, Europeans could not be sure they could do this. The relationship between Europe and the USA had been fundamentally altered by the Iraq war, with the Europeans more suspicious than ever of US intentions. Even for the British, the special relationship could never be the same again. Future British governments were more likely to be wary of getting too close to the USA. This was not to argue for a strategic anti-Americanism, but for a greater possibility of independent choice so that working with the USA was not just, as had been the case with Iraq, a matter of attempting to steer a runaway

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horse. US governments had also been prepared to refuse to make available to Europeans what they decided were strategic supplies, and even to threaten to withhold supplies that were not strategic in order to preserve an American monopoly. The USA was attempting to restrain and shape European military capacity. The USA also promoted a ‘buy American first’ policy and, according to the Venusberg Strategy, the Europeans should in response adopt a ‘buy European first’ policy, as this would ‘secure Europe’s autonomous supply of advance military technology and equipment and its re-supply is a prerequisite for a strategic European Security and Defence Policy’. Europeans should be able to choose an Atlantic alliance when it suited their interests, and not because of the need to stay in with the boss. To be able to act strategically and globally, it was not necessary to build a separate European capacity for matching the USA across the board in military power. There was a case for increasing European military capacity so that it was adequate in a number of key areas. A reasonable baseline would be an effective independent lift capacity, possibly by the development of military versions of new models of the Airbus; the development of a range of high-quality military ground vehicles, including military transport and tanks; the development of air attack, defence neutralisation missiles and aircraft; the introduction of the Euro fighter; and the introduction of high-quality intelligence collection and computer analysis systems, as well as a range of vessels for projecting military power from the oceans.8 The European states had reduced their spending on defence after the end of the Cold War, and it was now reckoned that the level of spending should be increased to at least 2 per cent of GDP. There should be a preference for European development and procurement to match the US insistence on buying American. It might well be possible to purchase US equipment in a number of areas, and some European equipment might be sold to them. But there should be a refusal to accept any limitation placed on the development of military equipment in Europe on the part of the USA. These proposals went beyond the agreement on developing joint capability of December 2005, which insisted that the decisions would still be made by the separate sovereign governments. There were, however, a number of necessary adjustments in existing arrangements, and the Venusberg report suggested that at least 10 per cent of the 2 per cent of GDP should be spent on them. These adjustments included making the inter-operability of existing European forces a high priority by standardising weaponry and ammunition, and training; and having a European security strategy that went ahead of the existing one in that it related all available European forces to agreed tactical and strategic goals, and identified gaps to be filled as well as redundancies in force levels, equipment and training. The Germans still seemed to be equipped to fight a large-scale European land war, rather than to meet the demands for greater flexibility and rapid deployment outside central Europe, although there was evidence of new thinking. The coordination of existing forces should also be

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taken much further under a much increased European strategic headquarters, with high staffing levels, which was capable of acting, if necessary, independently of SHAPE. As already pointed out it had been agreed in December 2002, after protracted negotiation, that the Europeans could use NATO planning and intelligence for operations in which NATO was not involved – called the Berlin Plus arrangement. But it was necessary to go beyond this, as it applied only when NATO, including the USA, was prepared to accept that the Europeans could act. The new European headquarters should be capable of dispensing with the NATO resources. On 14 December 2006, the EU governments agreed on the principles of a Capability Development Plan, which was to build on the Long-Term Vision report agreed in October 2006. The aim of this was to ‘identify areas for capability improvement, identify opportunities to pool efforts and cooperate by sharing information about our national Plans’.9 The Venusberg Strategy added that in a time of military need, there should be arrangements whereby ships from EU member countries could be taken over and placed under European command. It was also proposed that national transport infrastructures should be made available to the European command for moving troops around Europe as they were required, say from Britain to the Adriatic ports. What was being suggested was the welding together of national armies, navies and airforces, under European command, so that they formed the kernel of a European army. The French and British nuclear deterrent could also be formally dedicated to European strategic goals and made available in extremis to European command.10 The situation towards the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century was that there had been real progress towards the development of a more effective European force. There was strong evidence to suggest that defence and security was one area where the European public, with a few exceptions, supported much stronger European arrangements. Paradoxically, most people were ahead of most governments on this. Three developments were needed to reflect the emerging strategic realities. It was necessary to greatly develop European capacity with regard to resources, and command and control structures, although it was not necessary to match the USA. It was necessary to make it possible for Europe to defend its own interests in its own region, in its near neighbourhood, and in more remote locations, with or without the support of the USA; and it was necessary for the European public to support and promote the idea of a common European defence to protect their values and interests. It was unlikely that the governments and peoples of all 27 member states would be equally enthusiastic about developing a European army, and probable that the states that would be most in need of its resources, those of Central and Eastern Europe, would be against it, as illustrated by the poll material reported above. It was most probable that such an army would emerge out of the more general, tighter defence arrangements in a core of states in Western Europe led by France and Germany. They, with Belgium

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and Luxembourg, had already made one attempt to strike out on their own. It was unlikely that this project had been abandoned, despite the dose of British ‘realism’. As always, the question remained as to how far the British would cooperate. This could be a restarting of the European Defence Community project, but based on a much stronger sense of common identity and self-consciousness about common European values than had been the case in the 1950s.

The new European Social Policy In the first decade of the twenty-first century, European social policy consisted of a series of treaty-based social objectives, and a wide range of initiatives to coordinate national systems. In the Treaty of Rome, Article 119 stated one of the earliest social goals, that of gender equality in the workplace. This was the legal basis of a series of rulings by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on such matters as equal pay for equal work, and equality with regard to pensions. Later the ECJ played a key part in laying down the legal underpinnings required to establish a common market in labour. The EU tried to get the highest standards in the workplace across member states, and to facilitate the mobility of workers. Thanks mainly to the rulings of the ECJ, it was established that workers from other member states had the right to look for work, and that they and their dependents had the right to equal welfare treatment with nationals when work had been found. Without pressure from the EU, standards in a number of member states, including the UK, would have been much lower – in the latter especially with regard to equal pay for equal work. The EU’s authority to act was gradually expanded by such mechanisms as the agreement of codes of social practice. In 1989 a Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers was agreed. It was augmented by the Social Chapter of the Maastricht Treaty in 1991, and both were incorporated into EU law in the Treaty of Amsterdam (Article 136) in 1997. The EU was also concerned with preventing the use of social policy by governments to give aid to their own economies. It acquired the power to limit governments’ capacity to alter the levels and character of national social provision to help their industry, say, in national regional policy. But social policy remained essentially a matter for the separate member states, and had little or no supranational character. There was no Union involvement in the direct provision of welfare, ‘no European welfare law granting individual entitlements against Brussels, no direct taxes, or contributions, funding a social budget to back such entitlements, no Brussels welfare bureaucracy to speak of’.11 There was little positive integration beyond a small social fund. Governments were opposed to the development of a social welfare function in Brussels, as welfare was of key electoral significance, and was seen as a vital aspect of their sovereignty.

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Questions were not asked about whether this was still the best way of sustaining the welfare of their citizens, or whether there might be a strong economic policy case for developing a more solidarist, supranational welfare policy. Some governments, such as that of Britain, were particularly vociferous in opposing EU attempts to increase welfare standards in particular areas within their own country because of business pressures. The Conservatives strongly opposed the Maternity Directive of 1992 and a directive on aspects of health and safety at work in 1991. In 2006, there were still weaknesses in British laws on health and safety at work, an area in which the EU was involved, which meant that around 4,000 people a year experienced some form of industrial injury. The British government appeared to be prepared to hold off any increased common involvement in welfare provision in order to protect lower standards for their own workers. Governments had been taken by surprise by the unintended consequences for their welfare systems of their agreement to complete the single market in the Single European Act of 1985, and by later liberalisation decisions culminating in the liberalisation of services in 2005. Pressures to drive down government expenditure on welfare brought about by globalisation outside Europe, and the Stability and Growth Pact inside, persuaded governments to involve the private sector in welfare provision to a greater extent. It was widely canvassed that labour costs should be reduced by between 1 and 2 per cent of GDP ‘particularly for the least-skilled workers’.12 With more privatisation, especially in the liberalisation of services, more of welfare provision was subject to the rules of the single market. The rulings of the ECJ brought home the consequences. Mid-way through the first decade of the twenty-first century, with a few exceptions and qualifications, member states were told that they now had to extend most social benefits to other EU citizens. A government could no longer insist that the benefits could be consumed only in its own territory. Member states had to accept the right of non-national service providers to operate in their territory. And migrants from other states could now benefit from welfare service providers in other member states. In the cases of Kohll and Decker, both of 28 April 1998, the ECJ decided that citizens of one country had the right to payment from their own sick fund for treatment in another.13 This was a development of great importance. Sovereignty with regard to welfare provision had ceased to exist in member states. Welfare was de facto detached from the traditional European agenda of social democracy, as patients from less generous systems, the non-social democratic ones, could seek treatment in the better systems and have their costs covered. In sum, social provision was becoming aterritorial within the Union. It was, however, a problem that there was no increment in control of social policy by the Union as control by national agencies was reduced. ‘Member states have lost more control over national welfare policies, in the face of the pressures of integrated markets, than the EU has gained de facto in

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transferred authority’.14 States could no longer insist that their welfare system, paid for by their tax-payers, was just for their own citizens – an exclusive good not available to outsiders. And the Union had not developed its own transnational system of welfare, nor was it empowered to do so. It was argued that what we now had instead was ‘a kind of market place of coordination’.15 A consequence of this was that the idea of citizenship had been devalued in Europe, as neither the individual state nor the EU now had ultimate responsibility for the citizen’s welfare. The situation regarding welfare provision in Europe had become comparable with the situation regarding the management of the global economy. Economic organisation and flows of money and goods transcended the nation states, and there were frequent pleas for a more effective international economic government as national controls weakened. Similarly, the question needed to be asked whether there was now a case for a more solidarist, supranational approach to the provision and financing of welfare in the EU. This was not to recommend a rapid complete transfer, but only to ask whether a start might be made, and if so in what areas. After all, the states were clearly losing control. One argument for a more supranational approach as part of a New European Project was an extension of the economic argument: that it was in the general interest of member states to have a European system for applying and supervising the agreed principles of a flexible labour market. There was a strong case for having a single system and level of unemployment protection, including a common definition of what was meant by ‘unemployed’, linked with adequate support for retraining and relocation based on common standards and equal provision. The principle of solidarity could start with labour arrangements, unemployment protection, retraining and the like, and then go on to linked matters such as pension provision and health provision. The argument is that the EU should be given an increasing role in both managing and financing these activities. This would need new management mechanisms at the European level, and also had budgetary implications, to be discussed in the next section. There was every reason to use the Union to obtain a more flexible labour force throughout, and no reason that this should get in the way of a more liberal competition policy, following the Lisbon Agenda, and its later variants. But there was also a strong argument for working against the tendency towards the lowering of standards which arose from liberalisation. This could only be done through a more solidarist approach, as individual states were unlikely to be willing to increase their own costs if others held back. This could mean paying more. Effective labour flexibility, for instance, could not be obtained free: it required support between jobs, relocating costs, as well as retraining. The states had declared their fervent support for such measures more than once, but as the Commission had pointed out, progress in the various member states was disappointing.16 This was because business was constantly caught on the horns of a dilemma: whether

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to save on longer-term costs and investments in order to reap shorter-term benefits. More solidarity in the EU on welfare provision would promote effective reskilling, whereas leaving the matter in the hands of national governments under pressure from industry would be more likely to lead to deskilling. This was not a matter of basic education before entering the workplace, but a matter of the effective management of the market for labour for the whole of the individual’s working life. Governments were caught between traditional welfare sovereignty and the nation state, which was now leading to decreasing control, and a stronger, more solidarist approach through the EU, which would allow them to take back control through the common institutions and produce a better welfare system in common. The latter would involve a collective decision-making which, for some states, was also unacceptable. Welfare policy in the EU in the early twenty-first century took up the largest slice of government spending, and it was unlikely that the Europeanisation of this would be easy. But there were areas of labour policy where there were strong arguments for making a start. The equivalent in welfare of the European army was perhaps the European pension. There would then be quite a close approximation to a European social space, in which the EU impinged on the working life of individuals, and became one of the experiences that defined their identity. The development of a more solidarist social system, which was visible in a rudimentary form in the early twenty-first century, would have significant implications for the development of a sense of common destiny across Europe, and would give substance to the idea of European citizenship, as that would involve enhanced rights and obligations at the European level. It would also help to consolidate a base of common interests, would have an impact on the logic of diversity, and would help shape positive attitudes towards the development of a European strategic military capacity.

The new European Budget What is not widely appreciated is how successful the anti-Europeans were in choking off integration. As mentioned in Chapter 1, an area where they – represented by Margaret Thatcher and her anti-European colleagues – were particularly successful was that of the control of the budget. In the mid1970s, the McDougall report had reported the prospect of fiscal federalism. It argued that the budget of the European Community could rise above 4 per cent of GNP, and at about that level, spending through Europe would affect the performance of national economies and begin to weaken national authorities’ ability to control their economies separately. At that point, there was every prospect that spending through the common institutions would continue to increase as the range of common policies increased. There was to be not only an ‘ever-closer union of peoples’, but also an ever-increasing

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common budget compared with national budgets. The increasing budget would also augment the power of the European Parliament, as it was responsible for its approval. The anti-Europeans were determined to head off this federalist strategy. The goal of capping the expenditure of the European Communities, as they were then called, was achieved in the late 1980s. In 1987–8, three interrelated issues rose to the top of the diplomatic agenda. They were controlling farm spending which, by general consent, had got out of hand; strengthening budgetary discipline because there were too many demands above the regular budget, and confused accounts; and increasing the amount of regional aid to the new Mediterranean member states Spain and Portugal. These matters were discussed in particular at three meetings of the European Council: at Brussels in June 1987, which ended in great acrimony; at Copenhagen, 4–5 December 1987, at which no settlement was reached but which, much to everybody’s surprise, was characterised by ‘remarkable good temper’;17 and at a special meeting at Brussels, 10–12 February 1988, which produced a settlement. As in previous years, the battle lines were drawn between the British, in occasional alliance with one or more other members – but in increasing danger of being isolated – on the one side, and a larger group led by France and West Germany on the other. The immediate appearance of the outcome in February 1988 was that the British had failed. On each of the major items on the agenda, there was either ‘no change’ or a major British concession. The specific item that occupied pride of place was the level of spending on the Common Agricultural Policy. Margaret Thatcher said on Friday 12 February, when it looked as if the Brussels Summit would again, for the third time on these questions, end in deadlock: ‘we came here to get agricultural spending under control’.18 Some limitation of spending on the agricultural intervention system was agreed, but the overall balance of the agreement was closer to the higher level supported by France and West Germany, and rather remote from the demands of the British for a drastic cutting-back. With regard to the Structural Funds, Britain appeared to be the most adamant in resisting increases above 50 per cent by 1992. France gave some support to this position for a while, although West Germany wanted a greater increase.19 In the event, it was the British who eventually conceded most ground. It was agreed that ‘commitment appropriations for structural funds will be doubled in 1993 by comparison with 1987’.20 In view of these various retreats, when compared with earlier positions, it was surprising that Britain also accepted largely without alteration the Commission’s original proposals for increasing the European budget. Margaret Thatcher’s government had insisted that any increase should be tied to a significant tightening of controls on farm intervention, ‘the problem which has faced us for eight years’ (The Times, 13 February 1988). Relative failure in this area did not, as might have been expected, lead to increased opposition to expansion of the sources of Communities revenue. A fourth

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‘resource’, which would ensure that own resources for commitments would increase to 1.3 per cent of GNP by 1992, was accepted.21 The three other ‘resources’ remained unchanged. Why did the British make such concessions with regard to the specific items on the agenda, which were such a departure from their demands before the meeting? It would seem that the change of mind came rather late in the day. On 11 December 1987, The Times carried a singularly bellicose leader warning of the dangers of giving way on the various matters that were to be negotiated, and on the afternoon of that day British officials seemed to be prepared for failure. ‘This thing is headed for the rocks. It is just a question of which rock it crashes against’ (The Observer, 14 February 1988). By late on Friday, however, the British had back-pedalled enough to allow a settlement. It seems likely, in view of these comments, that responsibility for the change of position rested firmly with Margaret Thatcher herself and a relatively small group of her closest advisers. These anti-Europeans realised that the crisis about the budget presented bigger opportunities, rather as Charles de Gaulle had realised that he could head off majority voting in the Council of Ministers in the settlement about the CAP in early 1966. The disagreements about specific issues offered an opportunity for more far-reaching, and more profound, alterations. It was no coincidence that budgetary discipline had become an issue in other international institutions in the mid-1980s. This was a time for knocking down the expectations of those who wanted stronger international institutions in the UN system as well as the European Communities. The USA vigorously pursued budgetary discipline in the central system of the UN and in the Special Agencies, and in 1985 decided to withhold contributions in order to get its way.22 In this case, as with the British and the European Communities, the apparent objective was to use resources more efficiently, to relate decisions about finance more directly to decisions about policy, and to place responsibility for decisions about new tunes more firmly in the hands of those who paid the piper. It would not be surprising that British and US diplomats adopted similar strategies, especially as President Reagan and Prime Minister Thatcher were close. With the UN, as with the European Communities, specific issues were used to get a grip on the pattern of the future development of the organisation. The cornerstone of budgetary discipline was the laying down of an annual ceiling on receipts by the Communities from member countries, and annual ceilings for payment appropriations, that is, those sums actually to be paid in each year, up until 1992. The 1988 agreement was that these sums were to increase from 1.2 per cent of GNP in 1988 by annual increments up to 1.3 per cent of GNP in 1992. Ceilings for commitment appropriations, that is the sum of future payments, were also to be agreed, maintaining a ‘strict relationship’ with appropriations for payments. Decisions about the sums to be allocated were to be made before each financial year according

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to a ‘medium-term financial perspective’. Implications for the particular year’s spending were to be ‘submitted for approval to the Council and Parliament not later than the 15th February’.23 It was stressed that ‘the Communities’ annual budget for the financial years 1988–92 shall be kept within the ceilings’.24 A wide range of new procedures were adopted to help achieve these goals. A much more careful distinction between payments for appropriations and payments for commitments was one of these, as it was obviously helpful from the point of view of budgetary discipline to know about obligations to pay that had been entered into, as well as actual payments that were required to be made. There was also insistence that, in future, the Communities’ accounts should be ‘transparent’ and that, as far as possible, all sums to be spent should be measured on an annual basis. There should be no ‘carry overs of differentiated appropriations’25 so that it would be easier henceforth to know what was owed and how much funding was available to cover debts. The effect of these changes was that they produced a more complete – and transparent – annual statement of finances. They mitigated the problem of not being sure what sums were carried over from the previous year, what sums the community was liable to pay in the coming financial year – ‘which must be paid’ – and those sums that could be paid later. This was to deal with a past problem, that the Council had sometimes agreed policies without knowing what money was available to pay for them. The unreformed system had created uncertainty about how much was in the kitty. Hence there were continuing threats of incipient bankruptcy in the 1980s, which were solved by creative accountancy such as the ‘negative overdraft’. This involved the unworthy stratagem of not paying for policies that had actually been agreed. On the other hand, this uncertainty about the budget also made it more likely that the Council would adopt policies that led to the expansion of the budget and continue the progress towards financial federalism. Although an increase in the budget in February 1988 was unavoidable to pay for the expanded structural funds, despite some reduction in spending on agriculture, a ceiling was now in place that kept the budget within clear limits. A brake could now be applied to future expansion, although a means of controlled acceleration was needed until 1992. This was not a temporary arrangement, but was to provide a straitjacket for all future budgets. The 1988 agreement became the model for the future. From then on, there was always an agreed cap on spending for the next five years or so, and it became a norm of government behaviour that the amount spent through the Communities should now be stuck at around 1.25 per cent of GNP. As in the UN system, there was powerful support for zero growth in the EU budget. The arrangements were also incorporated in an interinstitutional agreement, which in effect bound all the central institutions, including the European Parliament, to respect the budgetary ceilings in

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their decision-making. From now on, no policy with budgetary implications could be agreed unless a decision about revenue was taken at the same time. This was a significant strengthening of the hand of anti-integrationists such as the British. The budgetary discipline agreements were therefore implicitly about the future structure of the Communities. Not only were governments now to be brought more rapidly in the Council to a realisation of the budgetary implications of their choice of policies, a good recipe for a minimalist approach, but the hand of those who wished to place a cap on Community spending was entrenched. The promise of a steady expansion of the European budget had implied a corresponding accretion of powers to the European Parliament, as they had responsibility for its approval.26 Finance was one of the primary sources of power and the anti-integrationists had realised that the steady accrual of such power to Europe, and to the European Parliament, could be stopped by limiting the flow of money. Surprising concessions on the specifics had been made by the British in February 1988, but the gain had been well worth the price. It was a decisive blow against federalism and supranationalism. Margaret Thatcher made a speech about the future of Europe at the College of Europe in Bruges on 20 September 1988, which attracted considerable attention. It was sharply criticised as being ‘unrelentingly negative’ by those who favoured a more supranational Europe, in the Commission and states such as Italy and the Netherlands, and welcomed enthusiastically by opponents of a stronger Europe (The Times, 21 September 1988). It was certainly a speech of major importance, and its origins were probably in the anti-federalist victory earlier that year with regard to the future of the European budget. The Bruges speech is worth recalling at this point as it is magnificently representative of British anti-Europeanism. Margaret Thatcher argued that the European Communities were definitely not to be a framework within which new regional administrative and governmental arrangements were to be nurtured. Her image of Europe seemed to be of a kind of macro-enterprise zone, free of regulations that could increase the cost of labour and impede the movement of capital, and equally of the kind of centralised supervision which could be the product of ‘arcane institutional debates’. In this fashion, Thatcher justified her opposition to a European Central Bank (this was not ‘the key issue’ – rather what was needed was to ‘implement the Community’s commitment to free movement of capital’). Similarly, those who wished to see stronger institutions in Brussels were derided: ‘it is ironic that just when those countries such as the Soviet Union, which have tried to run everything from the centre, are learning that success depends on dispersing power and decisions away from the centre, some in the Community seem to want to move in the opposite direction’. ‘We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European superstate exercising a new dominance from Brussels’.

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A new European Project? What were the prospects in the twenty-first century’s first decade of finding new money to pay for the Europeanisation of social policy or the development of strategic capability in defence, recommended above? For the old anti-Europeans, governments and individuals, the answer was probably none. The armlock on the budget would need to be removed, and the budget expanded to meet the costs of new arrangements. But it was worth making a start on the New European Project by looking at possibilities and prospects. It was also worth recalling that, in both policy contexts, there were periods when significant progress could have been made in the specified areas. At the Paris Summit in 1972, there was talk of a Great Society in Europe, mirroring that of Lyndon Baines Johnson in the USA, and there was some support for unemployment benefits being handled through the Communities. This progress was halted by the failure of the proposal for monetary union in 1973. In 1952–4, the European Defence Community proposed an integrated European army, supported then by the USA, and rejected by the French National Assembly in August 1954 because of French fears of a re-armed West Germany. On the new European social policy, the first steps could be to set in place a European mechanism for handling unemployment benefits. Payment into the EU Unemployment Fund would be on an equal per capita basis, with an additional sum payable by countries with a higher level of unemployment or a higher level of per capita payment. France and Germany, with some of the other core states, might favour such a scheme. No British government would approve, but in that unlikely eventuality, money could be diverted from the national insurance charge. The EU system would be subject to the principle of hypothecation: money would be transferred for a purpose and could be spent only in pursuit of that purpose. The EU was already involved in expenditure from its structural funds on training programmes, and the step of transferring full ownership of these programmes to the EU was a big one, but not inconceivable. An EU management of unemployment, and the expansion of its role in finding new employment, would have several advantages. It would, for instance, ensure that national figures on employment were comparable, not fixed by governments to suit their political purpose, and would improve the transnational advertisement of employment vacancies. The European Employment Fund would also take the lead in discussions about the equalisation of unemployment payments. It would also be a key participant, with representatives of industry and labour, together with government officers, in devising strategies for increasing employment. With regard to defence, the role of the EU would evolve naturally from the existing military staff committee and its supporting planning and command and control arrangements. It would be unlikely that the EU could play a direct part in the development and purchase of military equipment at

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any level for the foreseeable future, but it could be involved in the financing and managing of planning and command-and-control arrangements. Such a capacity would be like the department of peacekeeping in the UN, but would be larger and with greater direct responsibility. The EU framework would be the natural supervisor of the procedures by which decisions were made about future defence development and procurement policy. It should have the budgetary resources and procedures to decide on new requirements, and to allocate the division of responsibilities between the states for producing particular weaponry and supporting technology. Any keen observer of the frontiers of European integration has no difficulty in spotting opportunities for European initiatives. The EU could take on the role of managing more directly the sale of arms to other states, to grant licences for export, which were abused by national governments and companies. It would also arrange for the purchase of weapons from nonmembers to cover gaps where there was no European supplier, and would need assured finance, possibly through a defence levy, to pay for this. The EU would also instigate responses to major threats to European interests, whether from adjacent countries or further afield, and to this end would need to be established as a collector and analyser of intelligence in its own right. These proposals are mere outlines of possibilities: the kind of thing that could be. They are based on the assumption that there would be benefits from more solidarist arrangements, with a stronger input from well founded common European institutions. They require that the budgetary straitjacket on EU spending be broken. This would be necessary, however, only with regard to the ceilings on spending and the multi-annual spending limits. The other 1988 arrangements are necessary, and should remain. It is important that new policies should be properly financed, but it should be possible to choose such policies even though they might lead to an increasing EU budget. There should be discipline, but not the kind of restrictive anti-federalism applied by the anti-Europeans. These proposals need not lead to a European superstate. In her Bruges speech, Margaret Thatcher let the cat out of the bag with regard to her perception of the UK, which had a solidarist welfare system – with some regional variations after Scottish and Welsh devolution – as well as a single army, when she said that we would all become identikit Europeans. It is hard to understand how she had failed to notice the differences between the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish. Even with a single army and a common welfare system, the peoples of Europe would certainly remain distinctive, and jealous guardians of what they believed to be their national character.

9

Conclusions

What will be said about the European Union when historians come to judge it in 25 years’ time? The failure of the EU will be seen as a failure to move beyond an inwardlooking multi-state system of common management to an entity capable of defining and pursuing its own interests in international society. It will be seen as an organisation that only just got beyond its role as a facilitator of enterprise. This judgement may be reduced to one simple proposition: it failed to develop international power. It certainly developed a knack for providing support in humanitarian crises, and it successfully developed a capacity to intervene in low- and middle-level civil wars. But it never went much further than that. It failed to develop an effective procedure for making foreign policy, it failed to build up a European army that had a reasonable logistical, command and strike capacity, and it failed to develop machinery for pursuing its collective economic and social interests in a coherent fashion across the range of relevant multilateral organisations. In itself, it remained a multilateral organisation dealing externally with other multilateral arrangements. It failed to add power to capacity. Future historians will report the internal disagreements that led to this failure. It will be seen that enlargement added significantly to the level of disagreement between members, with regard to both the outside world and internal integration. The emerging of a more powerful and more aggressive Russia led the members of Eastern and Central Europe to opt for the only countervailing power that seemed realistic. In the absence of any convincing European strategy for developing its own power, they aligned themselves with the USA and became hyper-Atlanticist. As they settled down in the new, enlarged EU, they exercised their muscle more frequently but negatively. They were unpersuaded by the appeals of some governments to develop a European army and therefore did what they could to preserve its dependence on NATO and US resources. It was not that such an army was not necessary, but rather that efforts to establish it were dilatory. Within the Union, decision-making became bogged down in interminable wrangling between the 30 member states – Turkey was still not a member. There was agreement on the new voting arrangements in the Council of

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Ministers in a scaled-down European Constitution, but it soon became obvious that consensus was still the main condition of agreement. This proved hard to achieve among the 30 states with such diverse interests and divergent economies, and in the absence of effective leadership. Increasingly, the behaviour of the EU members pushed towards greater difference and diversity. It came to resemble a more traditional kind of international organisation, with stress placed on the power to veto proposals, rather than to generate new initiatives. It became more of a framework for crosssterilisation than for innovation. The lines were drawn between those who wanted a bigger budget and bigger structural and regional funds, and those who wanted to continue with zero growth. There was still weakness in the foreign policy-making machinery, which derived from the tension between the need for leadership on the one hand, and representation on the other. The smaller states resisted any attempt by the large ones to form a directoire that could shape foreign policy, so there was no way of telling whether the large states could agree enough to project European power abroad. There was also the chicken-and-egg problem. Why have a European army when there was no agreement about European interests or preferred alliances? There were those who argued that if there were to be a European army, agreement about interests and alliances would be more likely. At the root of these missed opportunities was the failure to develop any sense of common destiny. But the UK and France still insisted on protecting their position in the Security Council and other international organisations. The British government’s view that it was influential in the USA, and that the special relationship mattered, increasingly seemed slightly mad. Indeed, the disastrous British participation in the Iraq War through the Bush–Blair coalition led to the profound discrediting of the idea of the special relationship, so that the question of the relationship with the USA became as contentious as that with Europe. The French habit of defining Frenchness, in opposition to the Anglo-Saxons and the USA, seemed quite out of touch, since the USA was now only one pole of the multi-polar system. The enormous attraction of the common market of the EU was still there, but the development of the colossal markets of China, India and Russia had made it less important. And the regional markets of Southeast Asia were just as valuable as that of the EU. In 25 years, the continuing European memberships of the United Nations Security Council seemed incongruous, and part of the increasing difficulty in persuading the world that the UN mattered. The veto powers still included two small north-western European states, the UK and France, now completely submerged in the world of the new superpowers, China, India, Russia, and a still formidable, but declining, USA. The problem became that by the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the next obvious steps towards greater integration were avoided because they seemed to reflect commitment to a common destiny. At dinner tables across Europe the EU became a commonplace joke, with few being

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prepared to argue in its defence, or to see much benefit in greater togetherness. There was an arcane pride in the ineffectual nation states, and a foolish exaggeration of the extent to which they mattered. There had been periods of hesitation about integration before, from which there had been recovery. This time the obvious next great projects, including the creation of a European army and setting up a foreign policy-making mechanism, which could identify the interests of an independent Europe, were steps too far. Similarly, moves towards a more solidarist approach to European social policy were defeated by continuing national fears of the foreigner within, a concept that, since enlargement, now included other EU citizens. The European budget reflected this. It was insisted that it should be held at a level that protected the primacy of national economies and national plans for economic management. On looking back, the failures will be seen as those of the governments of the leading states of the old Europe. In a period of difficulty in France and Germany, the British New Labour government failed to push for any new initiatives and, as had often been the case, took pride in placing new impediments in the way of further integration. A New Labour government that had come into office with a pro-European reputation quickly discarded that mantle. The public in the main Western European states became decidedly agnostic about the European project, and the strength of the movements that supported leaving the Union increased. Paradoxically the pace of movement was determined by the states of Eastern and Central Europe which, beyond their initial enthusiasm, had become lukewarm about Brussels. In particular, the Commission became unpopular because of its attempts to prevent evasions of community rules on competition and investment, and its insistence on liberalisation. The view of Walter Hallstein that the integration process should be compared with riding a bicycle seemed to be correct.1 He said that if forward momentum stopped, the bicycle would fall over and the rider would fall off. This metaphor should be updated. The problem was that the EU had failed to reach the steady-state conclusion that would be analogous with the cyclist’s reaching her destination. There was a failure to move integration to the point at which there was a strong sense of common destiny, which would justify the claim that there was now a union of peoples, which need not be closer. Indeed, there came a point at which measures were advocated to avoid that outcome. The precise nature of the end of European integration in the early twenty-first century was that it was the end of the ‘ever-closer union’ promised in the Treaty of Rome. This mattered because it meant no more striving for the transformation of the European system of states. Even though federalisation was not attainable, it was important that a union of peoples should be acknowledged as the common destiny, a promise, or a threat, endlessly postponed. As long as that goal was not convincingly denied, every single new initiative agreed by the member states could be

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seen as fundamentally changing the system, transforming Europe. That was why the opponents of integration were so frightened at every step and why the supporters were encouraged. But, most importantly, the assumption by the core states that an evercloser union was needed led to profound changes in the character of relations between European states. It formed the existential link between individual decisions about such banal technical matters as the completion of the single market. More grandly, the goal as stated in the founding treaties was indeed the main reason for the creation of a zone of peace among the states of Western Europe, sometimes called a security community, in which war was now unthinkable. The victory of the anti-Europeans was to close down the ever-closer union, and to stop the further transformation of relations between member states. Had they prevailed earlier, there would have been less prospect of a security community. But, having agreed to peace among themselves, the European states could not agree enough to make arrangements to impose a European order in international society. The cutting-off of the process of forming an evercloser union meant that it was now unlikely that would be achieved. It was a denial of the possibility of a common destiny. This was not the achievement of a superstate, or even of an overriding European identity. It was rather the continuation of a process of reshaping the European system of states in the light of the ever-closer union. The contours of such a future system were, of necessity, unknowable. Accordingly, the European states fell short of emerging as an international actor that could balance and direct the power of other actors, including the USA, but in the future probably China, India and a new Russia. Being a civilian power was not enough. To have such power was useful, but insufficient as a contribution to international stability. Without that ever-closer union, it was unlikely that Europe would run the twenty-first century.

Notes

Introduction 1 Mark Leonard, Why Europe will Run the 21st Century, Fourth Estate, London, 2005. Leonard argued that Europe ‘will run the 21st century’ ahead of the USA. 2 Peter Mandelson, EU Trade Commissioner, Europe’s Critical Challenges of Openness and Enlargement, Speech to Business Community, Bucharest, 6 April, 2006, Commission, Brussels, Speech 11/06/230. 1 The waxings and wanings of European integration 1 Paul Taylor, The European Union in the 1990s, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996; Desmond Dinan, Ever Closer Union? An Introduction to European Integration, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. 2 This was the word used to describe the state of the European Community in the report of the Committee of Wise Men, which was presented to the European Council in October 1979. They reported (p. 9): ‘this excessive load of business aggravated by slow and confused handling may be summed up in the French word lourdeur’. 3 Loukas Tsoukalis, The Politics and Economics of European Monetary Integration, London: Allen & Unwin, 1977. 4 Paul Taylor, International Organization in the Modern World, London: Pinter, 1993, pp. 49–79. 5 Geoffrey Denton, ‘Reflections on Fiscal Federalism in the EEC,’ Journal of Common Market Studies 16(4), 1978, 283–301. 6 BBC News online. ‘The EU has agreed a new framework budget for 2007–2013 after months of tense negotiations’. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/ 4078796.stm 7 Paul Taylor, The European Union in the 1990s, op. cit., pp. 39–44. 8 Miriam Camps, European Unification in the 1960s: From the Veto to the Crisis, London: Oxford University Press, 1967. 9 Andrew Knapp and Vincent Wright, Government and Politics of France, 5th edn, London: Routledge, 2006, chapter 14. 10 Andrew Duff, John Pinder and Roy Pryce (eds), Maastricht and Beyond: Building the European Union, London: Routledge, 1994. 11 If a third of national parliaments decided that a proposal did not comply with the rules of subsidiarity, the Commission was required to reconsider it. 12 Uwe Kitzinger, Diplomacy and Persuasion: How Britain joined the Common Market, Thames & Hudson, London, 1973; Paul Taylor, The Limits of European Integration, London: Croom Helm, New York: London/Columbia University Press, 1983.

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13 See Erika Szyszcak, ‘Experimental Governance: The Open Method of Coordination’, European Law Journal: Review of European Law in Context, 12(4), 2006, 486–502. 14 Erika Szyszcak, ibid., p. 488. 15 Erika Szyszcak, ibid., p. 489. 16 Erika Szyszcak, ibid., p. 495. 17 Erika Szyszcak, ibid., p. 491. 18 Paul Taylor, The European Union in the 1990s, op. cit., passim. 19 Douglas Alexander, Europe in a Global Age, London: Foreign Policy Centre, 2005, p. 17. 20 Coalition Agreement Between the CDU, CSU and SPD, Berlin: Press and Information Office of the Federal Republic, 11 November 2005, p. 121. 21 Douglas Alexander, Europe in a Global Age, op. cit., p. 18. 22 Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Locarno 1925: Spirit, Suite and Treaties – Locarno in Diplomacy, Guarantees and Security, 1919–24, Historical and Research Papers, London: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, www.fco.gov.uk. 23 Kristina Mikulova, ‘Post Europeanism’ in Central Europe, Center for European Policy Analysis, www.cepa.org, 14 December 2006. 24 Loukas Tsoukalis, What kind of Europe? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp. 218–23. 25 Fiona Hayes-Renshaw, ‘The Council of Ministers’, in John Peterson and Michael Shackleton (eds), The Institutions of the European Union, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, especially p. 58. 26 A point well illustrated by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office report on the 2005 British Presidency of the EU, Prospects for the European Union in 2006 and Retrospective of the UK’s Presidency of the EU, July to December 2005, Cm 6735, London: Foreign and Commonwealth Office, 2006. 27 Richard Whitman, ‘No and After: Options for Europe’, International Affairs, 81(4), 2005, 673–87. 28 Daniel Lerner and Raymond Aron, France Rejects EDC, New York: Praeger, 1957. 29 Anand Menon, ‘Britain, the Convention and Europe’s future’, International Affairs, 79(5), 2003, 963–78. 30 Charles Grant, ‘Variable Geometry’, Prospect Magazine, July 2005. www.cer.org.uk/ articles/grant_prospect_july05.html 2 The case against Europe 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Eurobarometer, 63, European Commission, July 2005, p. 19. Eurobarometer, 61, European Commission, July 2004, p. B48. Eurobarometer, 63, European Commission, July 2005, p. 10. Eurobarometer, ibid., p. 12. Eurobarometer, ibid., p. 12. Eurobarometer, ibid., p. 13. Calculated from figures in Eurobarometer 61 and 63, op. cit. Calculated from figures in Official Journal of the European Union, 30.11.2005, XVII, Payments (to states from the EU) and XVI, Own resources (from states to the EU). 9 HM Treasury, Public Expenditure Statistical Analysis 2005, Cm 6521, April 2005, p. 12. 10 Calculated from own resources figures in Official Journal of the European Union, 30.11.2005, p. XVI and EU population figures at http://europa.eu/abc/keyfigures/ sizeandpopulation/index_mt.htm

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11 The units of measurement are not Euros, but in terms of a comparable and representative basket of goods. Source: Europa: Key Facts and Figures About the Europeans, http://europa.eu.int. 12 Official Journal of the European Union, Court of Auditors, annual reports concerning financial year 2005, 30.11. 2005, p. XII; 2002, 28.11.2002, p. XII. 13 HM Treasury, Public Expenditure 2001–2002 Provisional Outturn, Cm 5574, July 2002, pp. 3–5, 12. 14 Official Journal of the European Union, Court of Auditors, annual reports concerning financial year 2005, 30.11.2005, p. XII. 15 European Parliament, B4-0065, 0109 and 0110/99, 14 January, 1999. See also John Peterson, ‘The College of Commissioners’, in John Peterson and Michael Shackleton (eds), The Institutions of the European Union, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, especially pp. 77–79. 16 Official Journal of the European Union, Court of Auditors, annual report covering the financial year 1999, 2000/C342/01, pp. 5–7. 17 Committee of Independent Experts, First Report on Allegations Regarding Fraud, Mismanagement and Nepotism in the European Commission, 15 March, 1999. No attribution. 18 Official Journal of the European Union, Court of Auditors annual report concerning financial year 1999, loc. cit. 19 Official Journal of the European Union, ibid., para. 13. 20 Official Journal of the European Union, ibid., para 3. 21 Official Journal of the European Union, Court of Auditors annual report concerning financial year 2004, Statement of Assurance, 30.11.2005, pp. C301/10 and 11. 22 Official Journal of the European Union, ibid., para V. 23 Official Journal of the European Union, Court of Auditors annual report 1.12.2000, para 13. 24 European Movement, Fraud and Accounting in the European Union, European Movement, London, 2005, www.euromove.org.uk/publications/expert/fraud. 25 Elmar Rieger, ‘The Common Agricultural Policy’, in Helen Wallace and William Wallace (eds), Policy Making in the European Union, 4th edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 179–210. 26 Commission of the European Union, Europe’s Agenda 2000:Strengthening and Widening the European Union, X/D/5 Final Version 31.8, 1999, pp. 5–8. 27 Council of the European Union, Presidency Compromise in Agreement with the Commission: CAP Reform, Brussels, 30 June 2003, 10961/03, Agri 213. 28 HM Treasury and Defra, A Vision for the Common Agricultural Policy, Stationery Office, 2005, p. 4. 29 HM Treasury and Defra, ibid., p. 19, quoting OECD Report Analysis of the 2003 CAP Reform, Paris, 2004. 30 HM Treasury and Defra, ibid., p. 22. 31 HM Treasury and Defra, ibid., Chapter 3. 32 HM Treasury and Defra, ibid., p. 7. 33 Proposals in Official Journal of the European Union, Council Regulation(EC) No. 1698/2005, on support for rural development by EAFRD, 21.10.2005, Article 20. 34 F. Roy Willis, France, Germany and the New Europe 1945–1967, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. 35 HM Treasury and Defra, op. cit., para. 4.10. 36 A classic discussion of the dangers of globalising agriculture is given by Paul Hirst and Grahame Thompson, Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999. 37 Joseph Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work, London: Allen Lane, 2006, p. 86. The 2002 Census of Agriculture produced by the US Department of Agriculture

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reported that in California, since 1997, the number of farms had fallen by 10 per cent, their size had increased by 6 per cent, and the average receipts per farm had increased by 30 per cent. 38 Paul Taylor, International Organization in the Modern World: the Regional and the Global Process, London: Pinter, 1993, pp. 80–111. 39 David Stephen, Regulation by Brussels? The Myths and Challenges, Policy Paper 2, London: European Movement, 2004, p. 10. 3 The anti-Europeans 1 Simon Usherwood, ‘Realists, Sceptics and Opponents: Opposition to the EU’s Constitutional Treaty’, Journal of Contemporary European Research, 1(2), 2005, 5. 2 Vernon Bogdanor, ‘The Historical Perspective’, International Affairs, 81(4), 2005, 689–701. 3 Timothy Garton Ash, ‘Is Britain European?’, International Affairs, 77(1), 2001, 1–14. 4 Eric Hobsbaum and Terence Ranger (eds), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983 (quoted by Garton Ash, op. cit., p. 8). 5 Timothy Garton Ash, ibid., p. 7. 6 The Times, 28 September 1988. 7 One of the more recent successful attempts was by the popular British broadcaster Jeremy Paxman, The English: A Portrait of a People, New York: Overlook Press, Woodstock, 2000. 8 Paul Taylor, The European Union in the 1990s, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 158–68. 9 Andrew Knapp and Vincent Wright, Government and Politics of France, 5th edn, London: Routledge, 2006, p. 107. 10 Quoted by Anand Menon, ‘Britain, the Convention and Europe’s Future’, International Affairs, 79(5), 2003, 975. 11 Anand Menon, ibid., p. 975. 12 Julie Smith, ‘New Labour’s European Policy’, International Affairs, 81(4), 2005, 703–21. 13 Julie Smith, ibid., p. 708. 14 Julie Smith, ibid., footnote 69, p. 718. 15 Simon Usherwood, op. cit., p. 5. 16 Simon Usherwood, loc. cit. 17 Simon Usherwood, loc. cit. 18 Leader, The Observer, 18 July 2004. 19 Julie Smith, op. cit., p. 709. 20 The Prime Minister’s Speech to the Polish Stock Exchange, 6/10/2000. www.number-10.gov.uk/output/Page3384.asp. 21 I am grateful for much of this section to Andrew Knapp and Vincent Wright, Government and Politics of France, 5th edn, London: Routledge, 2006, chapter 14. 22 Andrew Knapp and Vincent Wright, ibid., p. 34. 23 Interview given by Hubert Ve´drine, Time, 22 April 2002. 24 Hubert Ve´drine and Dominique Moisi, France in an Age of Globalization, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2001. 25 Andrew Knapp and Vincent Wright, op. cit., p. 88. 26 Andrew Knapp and Vincent Wright, ibid., p. 60. 27 Coalition agreement between CDU, CSU and SPD, Working Together for Germany – With Courage and Compassion, Press and Information Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, 11 November 2005. 28 The Times, 1 January 2007.

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4 The challenges to EU Governance 1 For a penetrating analysis of the trends in the welfare arrangements of various EU states, see Colin Hay, Matthew Watson and Daniel Wincott, Globalisation, European Integration and the Persistence of European Social Models, Working Paper 3/99, POLSIS, University of Birmingham, UK. Although their conclusions differ from those developed here, they do agree that ‘It is surely right to point to the potentially positive externalities of social democratic institutions and practices, particularly quality (as distinct from cost) competitive growth strategies and encompassing labour market institutions. Nonetheless, it is by no means unproblematic’. (p. 24) Also: ‘The relationship between welfare states and labour markets in contemporary Europe is a complex, changing and, above all, contingent one. As such it is subject to political contestation’. (p. 39) 2 Figures in OECD, International Direct Investments Statistics, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Paris, 2000. 3 Description of the welfare systems of EU states in these terms is taken from Bernard Casey and Michael Gold, Social Partnership and Economic Performance: the Case of Europe, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2002, p. 16 and passim. 4 Figures here are taken from an article by Dan O’Brien and Aurore Wanlin, ‘Reasons to be Cheerful about Europe’ Financial Times, 24 November, 2006. 5 Hamish McRae, quoting a paper from the German Ifo Institute, The Independent, 12 April 2006. 6 Jose´ Manuel Barroso, European Commission President, Debate on ‘Results of the European Council – Lisbon Strategy’, European Parliament Strasbourg, 5 April 2006, Speech/06/222. 7 Editorial in The Observer, 16 April 2006. 8 The Observer, loc. cit. 9 Gu¨nter Verheugen, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for Enterprise and Industry, Europe Working for Growth and Jobs, Speech/06/215. 10 Hamish McRae, The Independent, 12 April 2006. 11 For an amusing discussion of this issue, see Francis Wheen, How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World: A Short History of Modern Delusions, London: Harper Perennial, 2004. 12 Nigel Grimwade, International Trade: New Patterns of Trade, Production and Investment, 2nd edn, London/New York, Routledge, 2000, p. 138. 13 The Independent, 25 September 2000. 14 The Independent, 21 September 2000. 15 Consumer Reports, Volume 65, No. 9, 2000, New York: Yonkers, pp. 42–53. 16 A further illustration of US obduracy on fuel and linked environmental issues was their stance at the Environment Conference at The Hague in December 2000. The EU negotiators were united in resisting US arguments on tradable environmental quotas and the setting up of alternative strategies to cutting fossil fuel consumption by setting up so-called sinks in the form of new afforestation. 17 The summary that follows is an interpretation of Council of the European Union, Presidency Conclusions from the Presidency to the Delegations, Brussels European Council 23/24 March 2006, Brussels 24 March 2006, 7775/06. 18 Council of the European Union, ibid., p. 12. 19 Council of the European Union, ibid., p. 6. 20 Council of the European Union, ibid., p. 8. 21 Council of the European Union, ibid., p. 9. 22 Council of the European Union, ibid., p. 10. 23 The Independent, 10 January 2007.. 24 Statement by Commission, Brussels, 4 April 2006, IP/06/442. 25 The Times, 14 May 2000.

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26 British Prime Minister Tony Blair was moved to an energetic criticism of the way the British press reported European issues in November 2000. 27 Peter Mandelson, EU Trade Commissioner, Europe’s Critical Challenges of Openness and Enlargement, Speech to Business Community, Bucharest, 6 April 2006, Commission, Brussels, Speech 11/06/230. 28 Peter Mandelson, ibid., p. 1. 29 See arguments of Ulrich Sedelmeier in Karlheinz Neunreither and Antje Wiener (eds), European Integration: Institutional Dynamics and Prospects for Democracy after Amsterdam, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 218–237. 30 Financial Times, 4 October 2000. 31 The objections to enlargement are given by Paul Taylor, The European Union in the 1990s, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, Chapter 3. 5 Integration theory in the early twenty-first century: a setting for disintegration? 1 Helen Wallace, ‘Analysing and Explaining Policies’, in Helen Wallace and William Wallace (eds), Policy Making in the European Union, 4th edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 69. 2 In this paragraph I follow the selection of definitions made by Ben Rosamund in his Theories of European Integration, New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000, pp. 12– 13. 3 E. B. Haas, ‘The Study of Regional Integration: Reflections on the Joy and Anguish of Pretheorizing’, in Leon L. Lindberg and S. A. Scheingold (eds), European Integration: Theory and Research, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971, p. 4. 4 E. B. Haas, The Uniting of Europe, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1958, p. 16. 5 R. J. Harrison, Europe in Question: Theories of Regional International Integration, London: George Allen & Unwin, p. 14. 6 W. Wallace, ‘Introduction’, in W. Wallace (ed.), The Dynamics of European Integarion, London: Pinter, 1990, p. 9. 7 See in particular K. W. Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957. 8 Donald Puchala, ‘Of Blind Men, Elephants and International Integration’, Journal of Common Market Studies, X(3), 1972, 267–84. 9 Ernst B. Haas, ‘Turbulent Fields and the Theory of Regional Integration’, International Organization, 30(2), 1976, 199. 10 Ernst B. Haas, The Obsolescence of Regional Integration Theory, Working Paper, Institute of International Studies, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1975. 11 Stanley Hoffman, ‘The Fate of the Nation State’, Daedalus, Summer, 1966, p. 864. 12 Ernst B. Haas, ‘Turbulent Fields’, loc. cit. 13 This was the same period when, from a variety of disciplinary directions (including history, literature and philosophy) the question of European identity was being posed in a direct and acute way. It was not where we were going, but who we were becoming that was being questioned. See Ju¨rgen Habermas, ‘Citizenship and National Identity: Some Reflections of the Future of Europe’, Praxis International, 12(1), 1992, 1–19; see also various chapters in B. Nelson, D. Roberts and W. Velt (eds) The Idea of Europe. Problems of National and Transnational Identity, New York: Berg. 1992. 14 Andrew Moravcsik, The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998; Paul Taylor, The European Union in the 1990s, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

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15 K. Armstrong and S. Bulmer, The Governance of the Single European Market, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998; J. Peterson and E. Bomberg, Decision-Making in the European Union, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999. 16 R. D. Putman, ‘Diplomacy and Domestic Politics: The Logic of Two-Level Games’, International Organization, 42(3), 1988, 427–60. 17 K.-E. Jorgensen (ed.), Reflective Approaches to European Governance, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997. 18 Simon Hix, The Political System of the European Union, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999; J. Richardson (ed.), The European Union: Power and Policy-making, London: Routledge, 1996. 19 M. Jachtenfuchs, ‘Conceptualizing European Governance’ in K.-E. Jorgensen (ed.), loc. cit. 20 For a discussion of this problem see John Gerard Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity: Essays on International Institutionalisation, London and New York: Routledge, 1998. 21 John Gerard Ruggie, ibid, p. 193. 22 Andrew Moravcsik, op. cit., p. 59. 23 Andrew Moravcsik, ‘Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union,’ Journal of Common Market Studies, 40(4), 2002, 603–04. 24 Leon N. Lindberg, Comment on Moravcsik, in Simon Bulmer and Andrew Scott (eds), Economic and Political Integration in Europe: Internal Dynamics and Global Context, Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1994, p. 84. 25 Paul Taylor, loc. cit. 26 Stanley Hoffman, ‘The Fate of the Nation State’, Daedalus, Summer, 1966, p. 864. 27 William Wallace, ‘Collective Governance’, in Helen Wallace and William Wallace (eds), Policy Making in the European Union, 4th edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, especially p. 533. 28 Loukas Tsoukalis, What Kind of Europe? Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 209. 29 O. Wæver, ‘Insecurity, Security and Asecurity in the West European Non-war community’, in E. Adler and M. Barnett (eds), Security Communities, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, especially p. 80. 30 John Baylis and Steve Smith (eds), The Globalization of World Politics, 3rd edn, Oxford, UK/New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. 31 Christopher Meyer’s book, DC Confidential, London: Phoenix/Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2005, has quite a few illustrations of his disdain for the EU. 32 Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations and the Third World, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 33 Leon N. Lindberg, op. cit., p. 83. 34 The Pact required that no state in the Eurozone should run an annual budgetary deficit of more than 3 per cent of GDP. France and Germany went above that in 2003–4 and the Commission reported them to the Court for non-compliance. They were, however, given time to return to the required limit. 35 See William Pickles, Review Article, ‘The Bourbons of Europe’, Journal of Common Market Studies, IX(2), 1970, 175–83 for a lively critique of the work of some of the academic advocates of integration. 36 See Paul Taylor, International Organization in the Age of Globalization, Continuum, New York and London, 2003, especially chapter 4, ‘The Social and Economic Agenda of the International Organization in the age of Globalization’. 37 Stanley Hoffman, ‘The Fate of the Nation State’, Daedalus, Summer, 1966, especially p. 864. 38 K. W. Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication, 2nd edn, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1966.

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6 The EU in foreign policy: capacity in the economic and social organisations of the United Nations 1 Research for this chapter was carried out in the period 2000–3 and included extensive interviews with national and EU officials in Geneva. I am grateful to them for their help. Part of this Chapter appeared in the author’s Chapter 7 in Katie Verlin Laatikainen and Karen E. Smith (eds.) The European Union at the United Nations. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan, 2006. 2 Joseph S. Nye Jr, Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics, Public Affairs, New York, 2004. 3 Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament: Building an Effective Partnership with the United Nations in the Fields of Development and Humanitarian Affairs, Brussels, 2.5.2001 COM(2001)231 final. 4 Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, The European Union and the United Nations: The Choice Of Multliateralism, Brussels, 10.9. 2003, Com (20003) 526 final. 5 Statement by the Council and the Commission on the European Community’s Development Policy of September 2001. http//:europa.eu/scadplus/leg/en/lvb/ r12001.htm 6 European Commission, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament: The European Union’s Role in Promoting Human Rights and Democratization in Third Countries, Brussels, 8 May 2001, Com(2001) 252, final. 7 Andrew Duff, The Treaty of Amsterdam: Text and Commentary, Federal Trust/ Sweet & Maxwell, London, 1997, p. 127. 8 See Paul Taylor, ‘Managing the Economic and Social Activities of the United Nations System: Developing the Role of ECOSOC’ in Paul Taylor and A.J.R. Groom (eds), The United Nations at the Millennium: The Principal Organs, Continuum, London, 2000. 9 The EU was developing strategic partnerships with several UN organizations. See Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, Brussels, 10.9.2003, COM(2003), 526 Final, p. 12. 10 See Trevor Harley, The Foundations of European Community Law, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981, especially p. 155. 11 This comes out very clearly in the Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, The European Union and the United Nations, loc. cit. 12 A comment made to the author by an official in Geneva. 13 Bulletin EU 5-2000, 09/08/2000. 14 Commission of the European Communities, Commuitical from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, Brussels, 2.5.2001, COM(2001), 231 Final, pp. 6–8. 15 UN official, Geneva, 2002. 16 From Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament: Building an effective partnership with the United Nations in the fields of Development and Humanitarian Affairs, Brussels, 2.5.2001 COM(2001)231 final. 17 Bulletin EU-5.2000 para. 1.6.56 ‘the Commission recommends . . . extesnive devolution of project management to the Commission’s delegations . . . ’ 18 Bulletin EU-5.2000, ibid. 19 Bulletin EU-5.2000, ibid.

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20 Bulletin EU-5.2000, ibid. 21 Bulletin, EU 5-2000, Development Cooperation, 3–9. See also Council conclusions on operational coordination between the European Community and its Member States: Bulletin 6-1997 point 1.4.53; and Council conclusions on coordination between the Community and the Member States in the field of development cooperation: Bulletin 3-1998, point 1.3.41. 22 An official, Geneva, 2002. 23 A term coined by John Ruggie, who also discussed the entrenchment of multilateralism with regard to the Global Compact. See John Ruggie, Constructing the World Polity, London: Routledge, 1998. 24 See Paul Taylor, International Organization in the Age of Globalization, Continuum, London, 2003, pp. 135–66. 25 Data shown to the author by an official in Geneva, January 2002. 26 European Parliament, Report on the Commisssion Communication entitled ‘Promoting Core Labour Standards and Improving Social Governance in the Context of Globalization’, Committe on Employment and Social Affairs; Rapporteur: Marie-Helene Gillig, A5–025/2002, para. F, p. 14. 27 European Parliament, Report on the Commisssion Communication entitled ‘Promoting Core Labour Standards and Improving Social Governance in the Context of Globalization’, ibid., para. F, p. 7. 28 European Parliament, Report on the Commisssion Communication entitled ‘Promoting Core Labour Standards and Improving Social Governance in the Context of Globalization’, ibid., para. G, p. 7 29 European Parliament, Report on the Commisssion Communication entitled ‘Promoting Core Labour Standards and Improving Social Governance in the Context of Globalization’, ibid., para 4.1, p. 8. 30 I am indebted for this point to my colleague Abby Innes. 31 European Parliament, Report on the Commisssion Communication entitled ‘Promoting Core Labour Standards and Improving Social Governance in the Context of Globalization’, ibid., para F., p. 14. 32 Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament and the Economic and Social Committee: Promoting Core Labour Standards and Improving Social Governance in the Context of Globalization, Brussels, 18.7.2001, Com(2001) 416, Annex 1. 33 Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament and the Economic and Social Committee: Promoting Core Labour Standards and Improving Social Governance in the Context of Globalization, ibid., p. 7. 34 Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament and the Economic and Social Committee: Promoting Core Labour Standards and Improving Social Governance in the Context of Globalization, ibid., p. 22. 35 Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council, the European Parliament and the Economic and Social Committee: Promoting Core Labour Standards and Improving Social Governance in the Context of Globalization, loc. cit. 36 European Commission, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament: The European Union’s role in Promoting Human Rights and Democratization in Third Countries, Brussels, 8 May 2001, Com(2001) 252, Final, p. 20. 37 Paul Taylor, ‘Managing the Economic and Social Activities of the United Nations System: Developing the Role of ECOSOC’, op. cit., pp. 134–8. 38 Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, The European Union and the

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39

40

41 42 43

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United Nations: The Choice of Multliateralism, Brussels, 10.9. 2003, Com (20003) 526 final, para. 1.2.(b). The situation in 2005 is captured neatly in the Commission‘s own recommendation: ‘Opting for a front-runner approach would make it necessary for the EU to establish common positions as early as possible in major UN events and meetings, including those of the Security Council, and to build alliances with its partners so as to create the ‘critical mass’ necessary for the success of important multilateral initiatives,’ para 1.1. in Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, The European Union and the United Nations: The Choice of Multliateralism, ibid. Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, The European Union and the United Nations: The Choice of Multliateralism, ibid., a range of EU contributions are outlined in paras 1.1a–c. Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, The European Union and the United Nations: The Choice of Multliateralism, ibid., passim, but especially Annex 1. Robert Kagan, Paradox and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, London: Atlantic, 2003. See Joseph S. Nye Jr, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go it Alone, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

7 European values: why bother? 1 Speech by Olli Rehn, Member of the Commission responsible for enlargement, to the Transatlantic Institute, Europe at a Crossroads: Enlargement, Constitution and the Future of the EU, Brussels, 20 June 2005, speech 05/363. 2 Mark Leonard, Why Europe Will Run the 21st Century, Fourth Estate, London, 2005. Leonard argued that Europe ‘will run the 21st century’ ahead of the USA. 3 Gul Berna Ozcan, ‘Turkey and Europe’, IDEA Global, Eastern Europe Edition, 5 December 2006. 4 Paul Taylor, ‘Development and Labour Welfare in the Age of Globalization: The US International Economic Stance’, in Paul Taylor, International Organization in the Age of Globalization, New York/London: Continuum, 2003, chapter 5. 5 Joseph Stiglitz, Making Globalization Work: The Next Steps to Global Justice, London: Allen Lane, 2006. 6 The USA applied rules on dumping on other countries that were much harsher than those applied within the USA. If the US rules were applied internationally, hardly any cases of dumping would have been found. 7 Anon., ‘Viewpoint: The Consumers Unions’ Perspective’, Consumer Reports, February 2007, 72 (2), 61. 8 See Richard Mayne, The Dawn of Today’s Europe, London: Thames & Hudson, 1983. 9 David Mitrany, The Functional Theory of Politics, London: Robertson, 1975. 10 Raymond Aron, Peace and War: A Theory of International Relations, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966. 11 Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. 12 See Washington Post, 10 December 2002. 13 Robert Kagan, Paradise and Power: Europe and America in the New World Order, London: Atlantic, 2003. 14 Joseph S. Nye Jr, The Paradox of American Power: Why the World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone, New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 15 Mathew Parris, The Times, 2 December 2006.

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8 A new European project: defence, social policy and the budget 1 Roy Pryce, The Politics of the European Community, London: Butterworth, 1973. 2 See Bertelsmann Foundation, A European Defence Strategy, Gutersloh, 2004 (written by Julian Lindley-Frencg and Franco Algieri). Referred to for the rest of this chapter as the Venusberg Strategy. The strategy is named after a hotel on the Venusberg in Berlin where the team met. 3 This view is effectively challenged by Anand Menon, ‘From Crisis to Catharsis: ESDP after Iraq’, International Affairs, 80(4), 2004, 631–48. 4 Anthony Forster and William Wallace, ‘Common Foreign and Security Policy’, in Helen Wallace and William Wallace (eds), Policy Making in the European Union, 4th edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, pp.461–92. 5 Stanley Hoffman, ‘French Dilemmas and Strategies’, in Robert O. Keohane, Joseph S. Nye, and Stanley Hoffman (eds), After the Cold War: International Institutions and State Strategies in Europe, 1989–1991, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993, pp. 127–47. 6 Anand Menon, op. cit., p. 642. 7 Anand Menon, ibid., p. 639. 8 The Venusberg Strategy document, loc. cit., contains a list of military requirements. 9 European Defence Agency, ‘EU Governments Set Timetable for Initial Plan to Strengthen Defence Capabilities’, Brussels, 28 June 2007, Press Release, www.eda.europa.eu/newsitem.aspx?id = 230 10 Edgar Buckley, ‘Britain and France Must Pool Parts of their Defence’, CER Bulletin, 49, August/September 2006. 11 Stephan Leibfried and Paul Pierson, ‘Social Policy: Left to Courts and Markets?’, in Helen Wallace and William Wallace (eds), Policy Making in the European Union, op. cit., p. 268. 12 Stephan Leibfried and Paul Pierson, ibid., p. 275. 13 Stephan Leibfried and Paul Pierson, ibid., p. 281. 14 Stephan Leibfried and Paul Pierson, ibid., p. 267. 15 Stephan Leibfried and Paul Pierson, ibid., p. 280. 16 Directorate General for Education and Culture, European Employment and Social Policy: A Policy for People, European Commission, Brussels, May 2000. 17 The Times, 7 December 1987. 18 The Times, 13 February 1988. 19 Financial Times, 10 February 1988. 20 European Council, Texts of Agreement Reached at European Council, 11–12 February 1988, Section 2, p. 2. 21 Commission of the European Communities, Communication on Budgetary Discipline, Com(87) 430, Final, Brussels, August 1987, p. 3. 22 Paul Taylor, ‘Reforming the System: Getting the Money to Talk,’ in Paul Taylor and A. J. R. Groom (eds), International Institutions at Work, London: Pinter, 1988, pp. 220–236. 23 Commission of the European Communities, 1987, op. cit., p. 9. 24 European Council, op. cit., p. 3. 25 European Council, ibid., p. 10. 26 Commission of the European Communities, The Role of the Public Finance in European Integration (McDougall Report), Brussels, 1977. 9 Conclusions 1 Walter Hallstein, Europe in the Making, London: Allen & Unwin, 1972, p. 17.

Index

accession 126, 136, 147–8 Adenauer, Konrad 12 administration costs 37 Agenda 2000 41 agricultural levies 42–3 Alexander, Douglas 16–17, 60 Amsterdam, Treaty of 18, 111, 157 Anglo-American model 22, 61–2 Anglo-Saxon model 18 anti-European attitudes: disintegration theories 100–4; favourable context 57–9; French support 62–7; German support 67–8; nature of 52– 4; New Labour and 54–7; overview 69; political culture 59–62; victory of 170 appropriations 161–3 asylum seekers 2, 61 audits 38–9, 116 Baker, Gerard 136 bankruptcies, government support and 99 Baylis, J. 100 Berlin Plus procedure 153, 156 Bertelsmann Foundation 152 Black, J. 51 Blair, Tony: further integration 22; Lebanon 143; stance on Europe 17, 54, 150; superpower/superstate 60 Bogdanor, V. 51 Brandt, Willy 9 Britain: entrance fee 14; joins EC 9; marginalisation 10; myths about 50–2 ‘Britain in Europe’ 35 British National Party 55 Brown, Gordon 1–2, 54 Browne, Anthony 61 budgets: ceiling of spending 15–16, 162–4; coordination 131; criticisms

of 34, 35–7; difficulties with 86; New European Project 160–4; size of 40 Building an Effective Partnership with the United Nations 110 Bulgaria 86, 147 Bureau de Liaison 123, 131 Bush, George W. 76, 132, 144 business promotion 4–5 Butler Inquiry 59 Capability Development Plan 155 ceiling of spending 15–16, 162–4 Central European power 3, 21, 64–5, 67, 167 child labour 126 China 140, 168 Chirac, Jaques 21, 58, 63–4, 69 Christian Democrats 11 citizenship, reation of 33 civil servants, attitudes of 99 clash of civilisations 142 Cold War 3, 21, 142 Commission: as guardian 82; theories about 95–7 commitments 161–3 Committee of Independent Experts 37– 8, 39 Common Agricultural Policy: Agenda 2000 41; audits 38, 39; budgets 161– 2; consumer/producer 44, 46; costs of 41; criticisms of 34, 41–7; entrance fee 14; expenditure 37; fixing food prices 46; framework for 12; French benefits 66; globalisation 45–6; liberalisation 43–7; US complaints 138 Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) 110, 122, 124, 130 Community Charters 157

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competences/ultimate responsibility 13, 81 conditionality 136 consensus, principle of 12, 19–20, 83 consociationalism 91, 96 Constitution: case against 47; federalism 22; media campaigns 52– 3, 55; proposals 13; ratification 148; referenda 19, 20–1; theories about 100 contributors: criticisms of 35–6; juste retour 10, 12 Cook, Robin 54 Copenhagen criteria 136, 147 corruption 34, 37–41 Court of Auditors 38–40 creative accountancy 163 Cresson, Edith 38 criticisms 34–5 Daily Mail 53 Davies, N. 50–1 De Gaulle, Charles 12, 162 death penalty 119 debt-relief programmes 116 defence policy 152–7; failure of 168; New European Project 165–6; spending 155; unified military 106–7 defence systems 142–4 deficits 80 Delors, Jacques 9, 63 demand/supply theories 94–5 democratic deficit 94, 95, 97 Department for International Development 120 Department of Trade and Industry 120 Deutsch, K. 90, 108 developing countries: contrasting values 137–9; partnerships 116–17; social labelling 128 difference 4–5 Directives, enactments and 47–8 disintegration theories 100–4, 109 dissolution 106 diversity argument 120–4; acknowledgement of 106–7; disincentives 130–1; neofunctionalism and 90, 97; pressures for 114 Doha round 43 Dollar, Euro and 76–8 Eastern Europe: doubts of 18, 53, 126; immigration 61; problems with 3, 75, 86, 102; values 147–8

economic development: contrasting values 137–9; future development scenarios 84–6; rural development policy 43; social democracy and 71– 3, 77; strategy for 78–80; taxation and 70–3 economic union, case for 9 Economist 55 ECOSOC 121, 128 elephant metaphor 90, 93 enactments 47–8 energy issues 77–8, 79 English/British history 50–2 enlargement: complicating factors 18–19; deepening and 82–3; disintegration theories 102–3; failure of 167–70; negative connotations 33–4; new governance 80–4; voting rules 19 equal rights 157 d’Estaing, Giscard 9, 53 Euro 73, 76–8 Europe of States 12 European Central Bank 164 European Coal and Steel Community 9 European Communities Act 1972 47 European Community Humanitarian Aid department (ECHO) 131 European Court of Justice 48, 157, 158 European Defence Agency 153 European Defence Committee 21 European Defence Community 151, 157, 165 European Research Council 79 European Security Council 153 European studies 89 Evening Standard 55 exceptionalism 50–1 expenditure, criticisms of 35–7 exports 43, 73 falling away from integration: early 21st century 17–23; overview 2–3; pre-21st century 8–11; theories about 100–4, 109 federalism: Constitution 22; to integration 106; opposition to 12, 18, 53, 87, 92; unattainable 169–70 Fifteen, EU of 19, 26t, 27, 96 Financial Regulations 39 Fischer, Joschka 67, 81, 85 flexibility 85–6 flexicurity 78–9

Index foreign direct investment (FDI) 70–1, 71t, 72t, 74 foreign policies: Commission 125; coordination in practice 119–27; coordination strategies 127–9; logic of diversity 90, 97, 106–7, 120–4, 130–1; logic of synthesis 114, 124–7, 129–30; member state cooperation 119; policy harmonisation 110–14; United Nations 115–18 Fortuyn, Pim 58 France: declining support 62–7; elections 58, 69; overview 3; racialism 66; referendum 58–9 Franco-German cooperation 9–10, 12, 21, 67–8 fraud 39, 40 French-German brigade 154 Fundamental Social Rights of Workers 157 future development scenarios 84–6 Garton Ash, T. 51 Generalised System of Preferences 128 Germany: Franco-German cooperation 9–10, 12, 21, 67–8; overview 3; unemployment 3; unification 3, 21, 65 Gillig report 124–6 globalisation 64, 77–8, 84 Goldsmith, James 56 governance, new forms of 80–4 Great Society 151, 165 greed 37–41 Gulf War 2003 132 Haas, E. 89, 90, 94, 98 Hague Meeting (1969) 8, 11 Haider, Jo¨rg 97 Hain, Peter 22, 53, 55, 60 Hallstein, Walter 102, 169 hard power 110, 132 Harrison, R.J. 89 Hayes-Renshaw, F. 19 health and safety 34–5, 158 Heath, Edward 14 Heathcoat Amory, Edward 35–6, 37, 47 Henderson, Doug 54, 60 Hobsbawm, E. 51 Hoffman, S. 90, 97, 106–7 Hogg, S. 77 human rights 122, 123, 125, 128 Hume, D. 50–1 Huntington, S. 142

185

identity: challenges to 12, 17, 52, 66–7; English/British 52; European 102, 146, 151, 152 IFAD 116 immigration 35, 58, 60–1 imports 42–3, 44 inactivity, pattern of 8–9 incidental elements 98–100 income support 75 incorporation 127 incremental policy-making 98–9 India 168 Integrated Administration and Control System 40 integration theories: definitions 89–90, 92; disintegration 100–4, 109; future of 104–8; incidental elements 98–100; multi-theorising, qualities of 93–8; patterns of multi-theorising 90–3 interdependence, theory of 90 intergovernmentalism 94, 95–6 international agreements 111–12 International Labour Organization (ILO) 112, 113, 120–1, 122, 124–5, 126 international law 143 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 1, 114, 131 international organisations, role of 1–2 international relations 6–7 international system 132–4 interventions, excessive 34–5, 47–9 Iran 135 Iraq War: defence policy and 152; dodgy dossier 59; failure of 139, 141, 144, 168; opposition to 22, 121, 145, 154 Ireland 51–2 Islam 142 Israel 143 Jackson, R. 101 Japan 43, 140 jobs and growth strategy 78–80 Jospin, Lionel 58, 66 juste retour 10 Kagan, R. 110, 132, 133, 144, 145 Kissinger, Henry 131 knowledge and innovation 79 Kohl, Helmut 9, 21 Kosovo 145 labour policies: common market 157; flexible market 159–60; jobs and

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growth 78–80; labour costs 158; logic of synthesis 124–6; pensions 75; unemployment 165; workers’ rights 127 Lamie, Commissioner 124–5 Le Pen, Jean-Marie 58, 66, 69 leadership 148–50 Lebanon 143 legislation, status of 47 Leonard, M. 1, 136, 139, 140, 145 liberal intergovernmentalism 91 Lindberg, L. 95 Lisbon strategy 14, 76–80, 159 Littlejohn, Richard 61 logic of diversity 120–4; disincentives to coordination 130–1; explanation of 97, 106–7; neofunctionalism 90; synthesis and 114 logic of synthesis 114, 124–7, 129–30 London bombings 61 lourdeur 8–11, 17–23, 109 Luxembourg Agreement (1966) 18

national reform programmes 78, 83, 87 NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) 1, 147, 152–4, 156 negative overdraft 163 neofunctionalism 89, 90, 98, 99 neoinstitutionalism 91, 93–4, 98–9 neoliberalism 5, 75–6 New European Project: budgets 160–4; defence policy 152–7, 165–6; prospects for 165–6; roadblocks 150– 2; social policy 157–60 New Labour: Constitution 53–4; disillusionment with 57, 59–60; impeding progress 169; stance on Europe 54–7; strategy 59–62; welfare management 74 Nice, Treaty of 18 North American Free Trade Area 137 North Korea 141–2 nuclear deterrence 156 Nye, J. 132, 145

Maastricht Treaty 9, 11, 13, 157 McDougall report 160 Macedonia 145 McNamara, Robert 144 macro-theories 94, 96 MacShane, Denis 60 Making Globalization Work (Stiglitz) 138 Mandelson, Peter 2, 82 Maternity Directive 158 media campaigns 52–3, 55, 60–1 Menon, A. 52–3 Merkel, Angela 2, 21, 58, 67, 148 Mexico 137 Meyer, C. 101 Middle East 143–4 migrations 34, 158 military capability 151 Military Committee of Chiefs of Staff 153 military power 141 minimum wages 75 Mitrany, D. 141 Mitterand, Franc¸ois 9, 10, 11, 21, 63 Moisi, D. 64 monetary union 9, 11, 52 Monnet, J. 141 Moravcsik, A. 91, 94, 95 multi-speed Europe 149–50 multi-theorising: patterns of 90–3; qualities of 93–8 multilateralism 142–3 multinational corporations 45, 73

Observer 59 Office Europe`en de Lutte Anti-Fraude (OLAF) 40 oil supplies 79 open method of coordination (OMC) 4–5, 14–15, 83, 84 opposition, deployment of 12–17 Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 121 Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) 2, 83 Ozcan, G.B. 136 Parliament, foreign policies and 125 Parris, Matthew 135–6, 145 Paxman, Jeremy 57 peace, keeping the 141 pension rights 48 pensions systems 74–5, 160 perspectives on Europe 4–6 Petersberg Tasks 153 policing 140 policy network analysts 91, 93, 98–9 politics, disillusionment with 57–9, 64 Pompidou, Georges 9 power: balance of 141–2; Europe and 145–6; hard and soft 110, 132–4; might and right 142–4; power structure 10 Presidency 111–12, 122–3, 127 privatisation 158

Index Prodi Commission 38, 39–40, 116 public opinion 23–31; appeals for grand debates 16–17; budget and expenditure 34, 35–7; Common Agricultural Policy 34, 41–7; corruption 34, 37–41; declining support 27–32, 28t; defence policy 156–7; explanation of 31–5; interventions, excessive 34–5, 47–9; nature of anti-Europeanism 52–4; overview 2, 3; patterns of support 29–31, 30t; peak support 26–7, 26t, 32–3; perception of benefits 32t; positive perceptions 33t; 1970s 25t, 26; see also anti-European attitudes Puchala, D. 90, 93 Putnam, R.D. 91, 96 Raffarin, Jean-Pierre 64 Ranger, T. 51 Rapid Reaction Force 145, 152 rational choice theory 95 Reagan, Ronald 144 regional aid 161 research and innovation 79 right-wing extremists 58, 97 Romania 86, 147 Rome, Treaty of 2, 18, 81, 112, 157 Royal, Se´gole`ne 5 Ruggie, J.G. 95 Rumsfeld, Donald 135, 144 rural development policy 43 Russia 3, 168 Saddam Hussein 143, 144, 145 Santer Commission 37–8 Sarkozy, Nicolas 148 Schro¨der, Gerhard 21, 58, 67–8 Scotland 51–2 Scott, Derek 54 Second World War 22 Secretariat of the Council 123, 131 security 37, 98 Security Council 67, 121 September 11 terrorist attacks 143–4 service industries 79–80 7th Framework Programme 79 sick funds 158 Sierra Leone 121, 145 Single European Act 1985 8, 11, 18, 20 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) 79 Smith, S. 100 social constructivism 91–2

187

social democracy 5, 71–3, 75–6, 77 social labelling 128 social policy 124–6, 157–60, 165 soft power 110, 132 solidarity 107–8, 159–60 sovereignty: challenges to 13, 16, 19– 20; competences/ultimate responsibility 81; sharing 103–4 The Spectator 61 spill-over 11, 98 spin, elements of 56–7 Stability and Growth Pact 64 standard grant agreement 115–16 Statutory Instruments 47–8 Stiglitz, J. 138 Strategy for Jobs and Growth 78, 79 Structural Funds 37, 38, 39, 161 subsidiarity 4, 12–14, 84, 87 Sun 47, 53 superpower/superstate 60 supranationalism 12, 84 Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE) 153 Sykes, Paul 56 synthesis, logic of 114, 124–7, 129–30 taxation 70–3, 71t, 74 terrorism 61, 142, 143–4 Thatcher, Margaret 51–2, 160, 161, 164, 166 The Times 68, 135–6, 162 trade policies 124, 127–8 trade unions 80 training programmes 165 Tsoukalis, L. 97 Turkey 66, 136 Turner Report 75 two-speed Europe 149–50 ultimate responsibility/competences 81 UN Development Programme (UNDP) 116–17, 119 UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) 113 UNAIDS 117 unemployment 73, 78–80, 165 Unemployment Fund 165 United Nations: Commission 115–18; coordination in practice 119–27; coordination strategies 127; EU’s effectiveness 131–2; member state cooperation 119; membership of 168; peacekeeping role 1, 67; policy harmonisation 110–12; relationship

188

The End of European Integration

with 111; social and economic organisations 113–15 Universal Postal Union (UPU) 123 USA: agricultural policies 43, 138; antiSoviet alliance 21; budgets 162; defence policy and 153–5; dislike of integration 21–2; economic development policies 137–9; economy 76–8; hard power 110, 132– 4; might and right 142–4; single EU seat 131; social divisions 139–42; special relationship 168; strategies of influence 135–7 Usherwood, S. 55, 56 values: defending European 147–52; economic development policies 137– 9; might and right 142–4; overview 6–7; social and economic divisions 139–42; strategies of influence 135–7 Ve´drine, Hubert 63 Venusberg Strategy 155, 156 vetoes 47 Vietnam 144 A Vision for the Common Agricultural Policy 44–5 voting rules 18–19, 167–8

Wæver, O. 98 Wales 51–2 Wallace, H. 89, 97 waste 37–41 welfare systems: Anglo-American model 22, 61–2; Anglo-Saxon model 18; changing 70–6; contrasting values 139–41; Dollar and 76–8; future development 84–5; non-integration of 157–60; overview 5, 86–7; socialdemocratic model 70 Wendt, A. 92 West European Union (WEU) 32–3, 152–3 withdrawal 104, 150 women, exploitation of 126 workers’ rights 48 World Bank 1, 114 World Food Programme (WFP) 113 World Health Organization (WHO) 112 World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) 123 World Trade Organization (WTO) 113, 114, 127 zero growth 163