The future, they say, is not what it used to be. No kidding. Just look at the various futures, proudly trumpeted and then usually quietly discarded, of today’s European Union, whose Treaty of Rome turns 60 on Saturday.
It was signed on the feast of the Annunciation, and there was a time when the treaty was spoken of as announcing an event almost as grand. History was being made by a Europe that was turning its back on a history of geopolitically induced wars.
That wasn’t something to be scoffed at. Every generation in mainland Europe had been involved in a war, at least for the previous century or so. To put an end to wars in Europe was a dramatic change.
War, identity and borders were deeply inscribed in the lives of the politicians commonly considered the founders of united Europe.
Alcide de Gasperi, an Italian from Trentino, had served as an MP first in the pre-World War I Austrian parliament, and continued to favour German as the language with which he spoke to certain family members.
Konrad Adenauer established himself first in the politics of Cologne, a major German city still probably better known, in many parts of Europe, by its French name, given its occasional occupation by France.
Robert Schuman was a Frenchman with a German name from the city of Strasbourg, another border town.
All three served as post-war prime ministers of their respective countries. Clearly, national identity and interests meant a lot to them. But their personal histories, perhaps, enabled to relativise geography in the light of a broader European history.
Meanwhile, Altiero Spinelli, a generation younger, wrote a European manifesto while a political prisoner of Italy’s fascist regime on the island of Ventotene. De Gasperi had escaped Mussolini’s reach only by securing employment within the Vatican as a librarian.
To the claims of peace, therefore, was added an understanding of freedom that opposed extreme right-wing nationalism as much as it did communism.
However, the background of the treaty, as well as the first half of its life, requires us to consider the role of the superpowers. From the immediate post-war years, the US was keen on a framework that eased free trade in Europe. It would reduce the likelihood of another war and, thus, the chances of the US being drawn into another one. It would also accelerate the recovery of European economies, growing the market for US goods.
And, of course, there was the Cold War. We cannot speak about the 70 years of peace only as a European achievement. Containment and restraint by the then superpowers played their part as well.
This doesn’t take away from the vision that some European leaders displayed. De Gasperi, almost four years before the signing of the Rome treaty, could speak of seeing the European project as including the whole of Europe, from the Iberian Peninsula to the eastern boundaries. Indeed, he even included North Africa and the Near East.
It was never a matter of a single vision. France’s Charles de Gaulle had a colder viewpoint, which could easily countenance rejecting the UK’s first bid for membership. He rejected the idea that Europe should be completely dependent on the US for its defence against Soviet Russia. It followed, for him, that therefore Europe should also be a third military pole in the world, which couldn’t happen without a combination of French political leadership and German economic power.
Malta should develop an informed sense of which option suits its national interests more and which options it could live with
When the Soviet Union collapsed more or less at the same time as the birth of the European Union (through the coming into force of the Maastricht Treaty), it seemed as though the constellations of history were finally aligned, and the triumph of an ever closer union beckoned.
It was around this time that Jacques Delors, then Commission President (1985-95), had his Future Studies Unit (the FSU was sometimes ironically called ‘Future Soviet Union’ within the Commission) prepare five scenarios of possible European futures.
They weren’t particularly compelling. Essentially, they boiled down to what Europe would look like if only one of its mainstream political ideologies had its way. The insouciance was striking: even the possiblity of a Europe becoming ideologically Green was contemplated (earnest environmentalism plus green jobs with affluent salaries and reduced working hours to enable parents to take art classes and spend more time with their children, etc.).
You could look back at those scenarios very mordantly, whether you’re a Green contemplating the current Commission, or one of the army of unemployed European youth, struggling to find real paying work.
But before you do that, notice two other things. First, the easy assumption that the future of Europe was up to Europeans only to decide. Second, that therefore geopolitics could be confidently ignored in articulating a scenario.
In retrospect, those two assumptions were also present during the drafting of Europe’s (failed) Constitution. And they are present once more in the current five scenarios being offered for our discussion by the present Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker.
The scenarios he is offering as a White Paper have a somewhat different basis from those shown to Delors. Juncker’s scenarios are based on five different decisions we could take concerning the interplay between national and pan-European competences.
The division of competences could remain the same. It could tilt in favour of the pan-European (greater integration). It could tilt decisively towards member states (with the pan-European focus being only on the single market).
Or, it could choose one of two hybrids. It could let member states decide on what level of further integration they wish, proceeding at different speeds or not proceeding at all (variable geometry, to use the old-fashioned term). Or it could let Europe scale back on what it does but then be much more deeply integrated on what it does tackle.
These are sufficiently stark choices. Malta should develop an informed sense of which option suits its national interests more and which options it could live with.
Wholescale deeper integration arguably would be too much for us, erasing what clout we have now. The other extreme would likely also erase many of the advantages of membership for us.
But what about the hybrids? Even if some include a completely unified foreign policy and a defence union? We should be discussing these questions, although right now Alfred Sant, as MEP, is the only one raising them.
Juncker’s White Paper, however, leaves out geopolitics and continues to assume that the decisions are entirely in our hands. (Perhaps it’s inevitable: a White Paper based on the assumption of a lack of complete control would play into populist hands in a year of critical elections.)
However, it is now evident that having Turkey as a member state would cancel any possibility of deeper integration, whether wide or narrow. With its particular troubled neighbourhood, Turkey would either never accept a European foreign policy or else seek to impose its own.
And there is also Donald Trump. He is a transient occupant of the White House but his actions or inaction could significantly foreclose Europe’s options. Say, de Gaulle’s old reluctance to rely on the US for its defence against an aggressive Russia might, today, persuade key member states that a defence union is a necessity, not an option.
These possibilities, too, are scenarios that Malta needs to air and articulate as crisply and acutely as possible. Before we’re forced to decide upon them in less serene circumstances.
ranierfsadni@europe.com