For decades, the EU has aspired to “speak with a single voice” on world affairs. For the past decade, the foreign ministries of member states have regularly and conscientiously consulted on major foreign-policy issues. They have achieved a few successes, such as overseeing the fragile settlements in the former Yugoslavia. But the brouhaha over Iraq exposed the fragility of their consensus. At Athens, new members Poland and the Czech Republic called for intensified foreign-policy action. But none of the current ones did. “Let the dead bury the dead,” said one Western European ambassador. “Perhaps our children can revive political cooperation. Or our grandchildren.”
As governments turn their attention from Iraq back home, even more intractable problems loom. The most urgent is the reform of EU institutions, all originally planned for six very similar countries, so that they can accommodate 25 states that vary widely in wealth and culture. If, for example, the EU continues to translate all speeches into all new languages, a minimum of 200 interpreters would be needed for every meeting. Such key Eurobodies as the Council and the Commission are slow and cumbersome with 15 members each. They will become bureaucratic monstrosities with 25, since each nation has the right to veto.
Come June, the grandly named Convention on the Future of Europe is supposed to come up with a solution to these and other problems, to be enshrined in a new European Constitution drafted by 105 “founding fathers” under the chairmanship of former French president Valery Giscard d’Estaing. It has considered some radical ideas, such as the creation of a popularly elected president of Europe, a much smaller Commission and even a constitutional procedure for disgruntled members to resign from the Union altogether. Each brainwave has some supporters; France and Germany, for example, favor the permanent presidency. (Giscard would be happy to serve as Europe’s George Washington, as might Tony Blair.) But all the proposals face tough opposition, especially those that would lessen the influence of smaller states, as most of them would.
Enlargement and its consequences are going to cost a lot of money, now in short supply in Europe. When negotiations with the candidates opened in the mid-1990s, Europe enjoyed regular and robust growth. Today, EU economies are almost flat. So it will be harder than once expected to come up with the funds to endow the new members with the infrastructure most of them desperately need. Anticipated surpluses in several budgets have also given way to the prospect of sizable deficits. France, Belgium, Portugal and Germany are all likely to run deficits larger than 3 percent of GDP. If so, they would be liable to multibillion-euro fines. No one expects such fines to be levied, much less paid. Thus the image of a rule-based Union will be tarnished, especially in the eyes of new members.
Meanwhile, the traditional split over transnational authority persists, with France and England jealous of national sovereignty, while Germany alone continues to cherish the old dream of a “federal” Europe. Altogether, it’s scarcely a promising start for the EU’s once sacred yearning for “an ever-closer union.”
Still, disaster is unlikely to result. Over the decades European integration has moved by fits and starts, two steps forward, one step back. Now, despite fierce resistance from small countries, the Union will streamline its organization and procedures. The fiscal discipline that was initiated by the Maastricht Treaty will be breached, ignored and ultimately revised. As for Europe’s role in world affairs, it will remain for a while what it always has been, the vector of 25 national policies, not of one. To the victors go the spoils. For the time being, the voices of Americans and their British cousins will drown out the European cacophony.
