From Messina to Berlin

The President of the European Parliament, Josep Borrell Fontelles, writing after the conclusion of the last European Council which met in Brussels on June 15-16, looks ahead to the meeting in Berlin being held next year under the German Presidency which is expected to approve a Berlin Declaration to mark the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome

By the end of the 'period of reflection', 16 countries, including Finland, will have ratified the Constitutional Treaty. But at least three others have not made a commitment to do so. And France and the Netherlands are not going to hold another vote on the same text, even after the forthcoming elections there. Faced with either a problematic ratification or a premature revision, the Council decided there was an urgent need for a pause.

The day-to-day work of the institutions will carry on as normal. However, the problems of the scale, legitimacy and efficiency of the EU are liable to become a self-perpetuating vicious circle.

It is therefore not enough to let matters simply take their course. The Constitutional Treaty was not just the aesthetic whim of those who wanted a global vision for a political Europe. All agreed that the Treaty of Nice was not a basis on which to continue working in an enlarged Europe.

We have received many, and at times conflicting, messages from the public throughout the 'period of reflection'. And we have heard the same fears being expressed as were voiced in the referenda in France and the Netherlands.

Globalisation is generating fear and, whether or not it is justified, 47 per cent of Europeans view it as a threat. Enlargement is creating concerns. International competition is calling social security systems into question. Immigration and the aging of the population are changing the make-up of our societies. There is a feeling that national identities are under threat. Neighbouring regions are dangerously unstable and the terrorist threat still looms large.

What is Europe's role in the face of these anxieties? Europeans believe that there is too much Europe in areas where they feel it is not needed, and too little Europe in areas where it would be of more benefit. They are calling for more Europe, but want it to resolve matters for which their governments have not wanted to grant it competence.

Europeans seldom perceive the overall benefits of their Union. Europe is less visible in terms of the advantages it brings than it is in terms of the problems it creates or the solutions it fails to provide. A massive education drive is still needed.

Enlargement has been the subject of much debate. What is the 'absorption capacity' for new member states, beyond EU 27 with Romania and Bulgaria? Is the limit a psychological one or an economic one? Is it all in the mind or all in the finances? Is it a question of operational viability or of the type of project?

Enlargements, with all their attendant problems, have been the major strategic achievement of European integration. They have consolidated the political stability and economic prosperity of the European continent, and have reunified Europe through peaceful means.

However, they have also increased our diversity, and will continue to do so. Europe today is a world in miniature, with differences in income (the richest 20 times that of the poorest), and with different histories generating different outlooks on the world and on Europe itself.

That is why it is becoming increasingly difficult to reach agreements based on unanimity and why we frequently have lowest common denominator agreements that generate more frustration than action.

Rules on decision-making ill-suited to the numbers of member states involved create inefficiency. And inefficiency makes for less legitimacy. This is the vicious circle I referred to earlier.

It makes no sense to continue to add floors to a building without ensuring that its foundations are sound. The European Parliament believes that it is impossible to carry on the process of enlargement with the current institutional framework. That is one more reason for escaping from the impasse over the constitution, which will enable us to honour our offer of prospective EU membership to the Balkans.

We need this to avoid there being ever more Europeans for ever less Europe, and so that enlargement does not diminish our political ambition.

We must continue to maintain a balance between enlargement and integration. And today, many Europeans are aware of a constantly growing imbalance between the two, objectives that are increasingly unclear and tools that are becoming more ill-suited to the objectives.

For all these reasons, reflection must be backed with action. Firstly, by continuing the ratification process. Unanimity may be needed, but there is a difference between only two countries not ratifying and around five not having done so. Secondly, by preserving the institutional system proposed in the Constitutional Treaty. It will be very difficult to build unanimity under a different system. Thirdly, by developing more ambitious policies with the means at our disposal.

More can be done, and better, under the current Treaties if the member states wish to do so. The 'Europe of projects' is not an alternative to a project for Europe, but there is a need to make the positive effects of European policies more visible.

Poor co-ordination of economic policies and insufficient judicial and police co-operation are not the result of a technical or institutional problem, but of a lack of political will.

The same applies to immigration. If Europe wants to exert an influence over globalisation, especially in Africa, this must be the top priority. But seven years after the decision was taken in Tampere, we have made genuine progress in only one of the four pillars of a common immigration policy, namely in combating illegal immigration.

In the other three: legal immigration, co-operation with Third Countries and the integration of immigrants, we have made little or no progress. Unanimity rules have stymied decision-making. In order for any progress to be made, qualified majority voting must be applied in the Council, which should act in co-decision with the European Parliament. And that is quite possible under the present Treaty.

The Constitutional Treaty would have made police and judicial cooperation a community policy. But the current Treaties already allow this to happen, and it would result in greater speed, effectiveness and democratic accountability.

If we had used this possibility, the recent judgment of the Court of Justice annulling, on the initiative of the European Parliament, a decision of the Council and the Commission on the transfer to the US authorities of personal data on air passengers, could have been avoided.

Any necessary revision of the Constitutional Treaty must incorporate the parliamentary dimension. We cannot carry on building Europe without the European public, which is to say without the greater involvement of their parliaments. That is one of the big lessons to be learned from what has happened.

It is one I hope we will have learned when we come to drafting the 'Berlin Declaration', with which the Council is proposing to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, and which seeks to mirror the course followed by the founding fathers in their Messina Declaration.

Messina in 1955 certainly prevented the collapse of Europe after the failure of the European Defence Community. But it was not solely about a common market.

Reading the Declaration again one is amazed at the breadth of its political ambition. It proposed a common energy policy, and even the harmonisation of social policies, a taboo today, as well as common rules on working time, which have yet to be agreed today. So let us not point to Messina and say there should be 'less among more'. In Berlin, are we going to reassert the values and objectives of the Union, which we have already set out in the Constitutional Treaty, or are we to embark on fresh and thorny negotiations?

When it comes to referenda, the issue is not usually the text but the context. But let us not use contexts as pretexts. Because whatever the texts may be on which we Europeans reach agreement, they will only have value if they reflect shared beliefs and the political will to implement them.