Outlook N ervousness reigns ın the highest spheres of the EU as the Nice summit approaches. The setback of the Danish referendum, Te Ca involvement in the single currency, followed a series of failures.
These include • The fall in value of the Euro and the inability of Wim Duisenburg and his cronies at the European Central Bank (ECB) to develop a coherent policy;
• The absence of a coordinated reaction from the EU to the fuel CISIS.
• And the fiasco of the "anti-fascat" utersed fo in Ausrate yhe cally utilised to inaugurate birth of the political Europe".
All of these are symptomatic of deeper problems: once again the development of the EU is getting bogged down. (full employment through the new economy) have rapidly evaporated.
They were not enough to develop a united Community spirit within the EU, sufficient to enable the interests of the national states to be subordinated.
Public opinion is proving a disappointment to the social-democrats, shattering their dreams. At a time when the economic conjuncture is bullish, and many governments are making concessions, workers in a number of countries, instead of thanking their generous rulers for their promises, have moved into action to recoup their losses.
The Danish 'no' vote has not unleashed a tempest, either on the financial markets or in the chancelleries of Europe. The former had largely anticipated the event, while the EU governments have adopted a low profile.
Yet each EU government and political leader has had to deal with the fact that the referendum shows that half the population of a member country has been able to ICSisl an enormous ideological bombardment over several months, with huge resources behind it. T he Danish vote also brings to mind the enormous rate of abstention during the last European elections, and the setback the results inflicted on social democracy, the principal architect of the Amsterdam treaty.
The EU eniovs a very weak legitimacy in all the member countries (except the poorest countries and regions, which receive, for the governments are confronted with a series of major problems: how to become a European power, by supBlair with German Chancellor Schroeder Blair and Chirac agree on how to tackle a pint, while Commission President Prodi (inset) hangs on to powers plementing the single currency with a European army and The political-economic unification of The conimen It is in this framework that institutional reform is posed, to control the economic anal upheavals intrinsic to the "enlarged and powerful" EU, which will affect the relationship of forces between member states, but also external relations - projecting the presence of the EU on the world stage and its rivalry with the US.
The Nice Summit will have to deal with sizeable problems, which go well beyond the formal agenda: • The official agenda is confined the issues ett-over trom Amsterdam in June 1997, notably the size of the Commission, the weighting of member states' votes in the Council of Ministers, and issue of qualified majority voting or national veto on different types of issues.
• There is also the supplementary point of "strengthened cooperation", enabling some member countries to advance together on particular topics.
• Closely linked to these questions is the role of the Higher Representative of Commor Foreign and Security Policy, the post held today by Javier Solana. Solana is already Secretary-General of the Council of Ministers, which has entrusted him with setting up a proper Executive, but he must also embody the imperialist capacities of the EU and represent its states, particularly the most powerful.
This is crucial in terms of the relative weight of the Council and the Commission - which is why Commission President Romano Prodi amongst others prefers to see this function enidil with the Commission.
Their CONCCIS are further strengthened by the fact that the idea of a 'Higher Representative of Economic Policy' is also being put forward, a single figure to mediate with the ECB.
olana's new role is linked S to the establishment of a "European army", which is in turn linked the idea of a European police force and "European prosecution office" What is at stake here is "internal security" and the maintenance of order, in the framework of a new wave of immigrant labour.
Although a European army is not formally the agenda, the Summit will register a verdict on the progress on the ground (in relation to Kosova in particular) and draw the organisational conclusions.
The situation of the European Central Bank is absurd and untenable. Here we have a sovere an (and totally opaque) institution that manages "a currency without state" based on the sole exclusive criterion of price levels (zero inflation!). In no other country in the world does such a situation exist not even in the United States, which is supposedly the model. In good capitalist logic, montary policy is an instrument of economic policy. However in the EU, the Bank has a "dialogue" with the finance ministers but then makes all the decisions regardless!
Economic coordination in the EU is limited to the broad gudelines of economic policies following the "tability pact", which serves in practice solery lo dragoon the labour movement.
This incoherence now seriously annoys big capital. Formally this Dolnt does not figure on the agenda. But it is there under the surface, in fact at the heart of the executive apparatus, which is still to be built.
The oft-proclaimed enlargement of the EU is likely to begin. A new postponement could provoke a gigantic moral and political crisis in the countries waiting to come in, such as Poland and Hungary - and explosive social crises, which could have a boomerang effect in the EU.
But even if enlargement happens without major conflicts, this "new EU" would be so heterogeneous that the main fonders would be affected. It is not number of members which is so important, but the extent of economic and social differences The Charter of Fundamental rights which will be debated at Nice is an emasculated attempt to give a certain protection to citizens of the European state under construction: but it actually involves a step backwards on social policy.
It will give a 'European' stamp of legal support to national governments which try to dismantle the gains of a century of workers' struggles.
However, indirectly, and involuntarily, it raises the problem of the incorporation of this Charter in the Treaties, and, thus, the problem of a European Constitution.
Faced with this historic problem, a consequence of capitalist globalisation, the intorma summit at Biarritz presented a derisory spectacle. Everything turned around squabbles about posts (who and how many) in the Commission or the Council of Ministers.
B ehind this there are two basic questions which are LIC VC1 explicitly addressed. What sort of Europe, federation confederation? What institutions are needed to create a real political leadership?
Debates around Qualified Majority Voting (QMV) are certainly not very exhilarating but behind them lie bigger issues. Abandoning majority rule is not simply a question of functional efficiency in the face of enlargement.
In abolishing the right to veto in favour of (qualified) majority vote, one enters a regime of supranationality, of abandonment of national sovereignty since a country in the minority is obliged to implement the decision. And this is proposed for the Council of Ministers - the real decision-making power.
One cannot imagine that the big three (Germany, Great Britain, France) or any one of them could end up in a minority on any essential question. That would immediately lead to a great crisis So the weighting of votes has to be organised in a way that assures the numerical preponderance of this trio inside the Council, using demography and GDP as the supposed justification. What is suggested is that the countries of the trio, which now have 10 votes each, will have 30, as would Italy, Spain would have 27, and so on.
This would have a knock on effect on the composition of the Commission where the weighting is defined differently. The big countries (the trio plus Spain and Italy) each have two commissioners, the other countries only one.
What if the EU enlarges to 20 or more? They say would be impractical for every member country to have a commissioner.
They suggest smaller Commission, say 10 or 12 commissioners, would be more coherent and efficient. This would mean countries taking turns to have a commisioner But the problem is that a Commission without the big countries would be weakened in its dealing with the Council of Ministers.
Chirac's solution is that each country would be represented in the Commission, but a sort of Presidency of the Commission would be set up, composed of the biggest countries.
In this senario, it becomes possible to extend qualified majority voting. The countries of the trio would abandon entire areas of their national sovereignty in exchange for a new supranationality shared between them.
What is at stake here is giving a legal, institutional basis the mechanism that already exists, which is the real motor of the EU:
the bilateral (exceptionally trilateral) preparation of the summits by
moment, the manna of subsidies). Against this background, the EU