Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-12-14-Speech-4-085"
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"en.20001214.1.4-085"2
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"There was one positive aspect to the Nice European Council: by declaring a new weighting of votes and a new distribution of Members of the European Parliament that includes all of the candidate countries from the East, a powerful signal was given to these countries that we want to welcome them into the Union soon. We can only welcome such a move.
On the other hand, we are much less enthusiastic about the rest of the institutional negotiations. The Heads of State and Government locked themselves into short-term haggling, without any great vision of Europe’s future. They “patched up” the Community machine in order to prolong its lifespan in the face of enlargement. They may have succeeded in this, at least for the moment, but at the cost of serious problems, such as greater supranationality, less democracy and greater German influence in the decision-making process.
With regard to the form of the Council, we note that it ended at dawn on the fifth day of negotiations, amid general exhaustion and uncertainty as to the exact shape that many of the decisions would take. The delay in the publication of the written conclusions – which are still not officially available, four days later – is a good illustration of the difficulty in clearly drawing up decisions taken in a state of confusion. Once again, in the haste and improvisation of the last night of the Council, very wide ranging measures that had not previously been discussed were adopted, such as the appointment by qualified majority of the President and the members of the Commission, which was not even mentioned for information only in the summary distributed by the Presidency before the Council.
We wish to state once again that this method of decision making is completely unacceptable in democratic countries. The solution, however, is certainly not, as the federalists propose, to have the IGCs prepared by conventions such as the one that drafted the Charter of Fundamental Rights, because this would simply increase confusion, one-upmanship and a lack of realism. On the contrary, future IGCs must now deliberate on a more solid basis, an agenda consisting of proposals adopted by a minimum number – for example, a third – of national parliaments. This is the only way to refocus the discussion.
With regard to the substance, we can decipher, from the tangled web of commitments, at least two tendencies that have been superimposed on one another. These are firstly the advance of supranationality to the detriment of national democracies and secondly the advance of German positions in the supranational decision-making process.
With regard to the first tendency, the main aspect to highlight is the immediate or soon to take place extension of qualified majority voting on major issues, such as asylum and immigration policy, international agreements in the field of services and copyright, or even the appointment of Commissioners. Despite a slight increase in the threshold for qualified majority voting, the scope of which remains to be seen, this extension is bound to mean that the gap will increase further still between the European institutions and national democracies. With regard to the trade negotiations mentioned earlier, for example, national parliaments will lose their last rights of ratification, and if a country is in a minority in the Council, it will no longer be able to say ‘no’ if negotiations threaten its interests.
At the same time, we should not be under any illusions about the apparent retention of parity in France and Germany’s votes in the Council: this is a trick of the light, because the new “demographic net” rule – the creation of a blocking minority representing 38% of the population – will automatically favour Germany, which alone will hold almost half of this minority following enlargement to 27 members. Germany will therefore find it easier than the others to reach the blocking threshold, by adding a few smaller countries to its sphere of influence. At the same time, the discrepancy between the number of German Members of the European Parliament and those from other countries such as France is increasing even further, which will have certain consequences in the context of the decision-making powers acquired by the European Parliament.
Some people may consider this development to be perfectly legitimate, because it tends to transpose the weighting of each country into the institutions according to the size of their populations. This method of calculation, however, is based on the implicit assumption that there is a single European people, which is not the case. The only way of preventing dangerous conflicts in future is to adhere to the traditional concept, according to which Europe is founded on mutual respect between national communities. For example, the new method of appointing the President of the Commission, which is by qualified majority in the Council and simple majority in the European Parliament, leads straight to appointing office-holders who may not enjoy the support of all the countries, whereas they will, almost out of necessity, enjoy the support of Germany. Have we properly considered the upheavals that such measures could cause to the philosophy of the European institutions, and the misdeeds that they may produce? The French should also ask themselves whether this new method of appointing the President of the Commission, together with the increased power of that position, is in complete accordance with the Constitution.
Can this new Europe last? Theoretically, it cannot, because it will, of its own accord, increasingly become cut off from national democracies. In practice, however, its proponents have had the skill, by making enhanced cooperation more flexible, to introduce a degree of flexibility, which will make it easier for the shock of enlargement to be absorbed. In time, however, this will not be enough, because the ultra-federal hard core will make the democratic deficit in Europe worse. That is why we urge the French Parliament to prevent a serious crisis arising in Europe’s future by refusing to ratify the Treaty of Nice."@en1
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