HS Column 27.12.2001 - Life after Laeken

By Pentti Sadeniemi

In the field of public relations, the European Union has a rich and long tradition of being its own worst enemy and shooting itself in the foot. The European Council summit held in mid-month in the Brussels suburb of Laeken was in many respects a great success. In fact it delivered more than anyone really had a right to expect beforehand. Laeken signposted a way forward for discussion on EU reforms that promises - contrary to earlier experiencess - to be both democratic and controlled. The contrast with the dreadful display served up at Nice twelve months ago was a pleasing one.

For all that, Laeken will still probably be remembered above all as “The Prosciutto Summit”. The reason for this was a trivial spat that should have been resolved - at least provisionally - long before any of the participants packed their bags to go to Belgium. The subject of the dispute was by no means irrelevant for the member-states, but in terms of the big issues of reform and enlargement of the EU, it was nevertheless a gnat-bite.

Success in PR and image-building is anything but a trivial matter for the Union. It is intricately connected with the EU’s democratic acceptability and the problems of the so-called legitimacy gap, issues that the forthcoming enlargement threatens to make even more thorny. The petty and yet again inconclusive haggling over the placement of European agencies was a sad spectacle for this reason, too.

Still, there was one positive feature to be seen.

The Union was unmistakably its own self. If there was no skill on show in the finding of a golden mean between sharp-elbowed national self-interest and vacuous, pompous declarations of intent, at least the former is better than the latter. As it happens, there was no need for such an awkward choice of opposites to be made in Laeken; there was some heavy business on the table and progress was made.

On the more immediate problem of siting European agencies and authorities there would in principle be two solutions. One is to get a pair of compasses and put the sharp end down in the middle of the Grand Place in Brussels, and to draw a circle of radius 50 kilometres. If all the EU’s bodies were to be found within this circle, then we should see an end to the twin problems of internal communications and national jealousies.

In practice we know that this is impossible, and in any event it might not even be such a desirable idea anyway. In a multi-national Union there is a psychological need for devolution that carries with it a price measured in reduced comfort and increased costs. But then each member must be allocated a share of the bureaucratic cake, too.

The Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi leaned on two arguments when he made a stab at derailing Helsinki’s claims for the new European Food Safety Authority in favour of those of his own choice, Parma.

One was amusing - and arguably true - but of scant consequence: Parma ham is delicious and Italy’s gastronomic culture does rank better than Finland’s. The other claim was a rank piece of arrogance: after Italy had agreed to fold on its earlier objections to a European arrest-warrant, Berlusconi argued it ought now to be sweetened with a separate prize, awarded at the expense of the Finns.

There is nothing very new

in this kind of bazaar-stall haggling. It is to the credit of Finland’s own Paavo Lipponen that he did not let himself get provoked into descending to his colleague’s level. The German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine drew attention to a very interesting aspect of Mr Berlusconi’s behaviour at the summit. Does Italy plan to abandon its traditional integrationist stance in favour of narrow national self-interest? Has a new Margaret Thatcher emerged in the ranks of the EU leaders?

This will be an important question next March, too, when the EU Convention that was agreed upon in Laeken starts its year-long programme to steer the reform of the Union. The thoroughgoing reassessment of the EU’s operations, “without taboo areas” will only be fruitful if boldness and realism can this time be combined, and if no individual member takes it upon itself to sacrifice the overall benefits through selfish stonewalling.

By and large, the declaration on Europe’s future accepted at Laeken augurs well for the Convention’s work, but the choice of its chairman did prompt some doubts. The former French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing should nevertheless not be condemned as a yesterday’s man before he has even taken his seat. If the 75-year-old leader is lacking in dynamism, each of the members is free to make up the shortfall.

The Laeken Declaration

goes through those questions that the Convention is expected to come up with an answer for. As yet it hardly makes for light reading for the man in the European street, but the drafters have managed to avoid the worst excesses of lofty idealism - and conversely also the nastiest potholes of technical details.

It points the way towards a Union that is clearer on its power structures and the distribution of tasks, but which is not so federalist by nature that it will scare off the nation-state advocates. It paves the way for a European constitution that will not replace the existing agreements so much as condensing their most important aspects.

The Convention and the Intergovernmental Conference that follows it in 2003 or 2004 cannot be allowed to fail; if they do, the European Union could run into irreversible difficulties when it expands.

We can fairly expect the Convention to offer

proposals on two matters above all: the clarification of the boundaries of executive authority between the Union and its member-states and a more precise delineation between legislative and executive powers in common Union bodies. If we can get movement on these, the EU would immediately become noticeably more democratic, more transparent, and also easier to administer. The Laeken Declaration grasps both these thorns and that is a good thing.

If the results are practical and viable, they need not be radically new. Some might complain about the loss of the visionary element, but people will manage without it. The reality of the European Union corresponds to the mentality of its citizens, which is mundane, localist, and pretty materialistic in tone. We have precisely the EU that we deserve.

The task of the Convention is to gain us something just a little better and more workable, and that is where we should be concentrating our efforts.

In the meantime, Finland still doesn’t have a European Food Safety Agency, but we do have Schengen and the removal of internal border controls, and we’ll have the Euro in a day or two. Who says things aren’t moving forward in the EU?

Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 18.12.2001