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# After Laeken: the need for courage
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/article-354jsp/
- Published: 2002-01-16T00:01:00.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:45:26.000Z
- Author: Michel Barnier
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 18:59

With their Laeken declaration in December, the recent summit of European leaders launched a large and wide-ranging debate on the future of the European Union – a process that may lead to a new policy framework for Europe and to a European constitution. As European Commissioner for regional policy and institutional reform, [Michel Barnier](http://europa.eu.int/comm/commissioners/barnier/index%5Fen.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net) has his work cut out on this. But he has a clear and detailed political strategy and philosophy, which he expounds with an energetic mixture of intellectual rigour and political pragmatism.

This lifelong pro-European Gaullist certainly has the credentials for tackling the tasks that lie ahead: as Minister for European Affairs in the mid-Nineties he was the French representative in the negotiations leading up to the Amsterdam Treaty, and he represented the European Commission in the negotiations leading up to the much criticised Nice Treaty.

But despite – or because of – this experience, he is not in favour of a Europe built by the elites: “For 50 years we have built Europe for the citizens, but without them,” he says. “The way we have constructed Europe is one part of the problem of democratic legitimacy. We cannot really say there was an effort to consult, explain and listen to European citizens.” So he is “happy, even a little surprised” with the ambitions of the Laeken declaration and the new process it launches: “It is very open and dynamic and will allow us to go to the heart of things”.

**“Europe must be more than a supermarket”**

Barnier believes that this new debate can make up for the lack of effective political consultation of Europe’s citizens at earlier stages: “Bringing together in a single \[convention\] framework all the institutional actors – national parliaments, the European Parliament, governments, the Commission – and consulting with civil society, is both an innovation and an opportunity”. This new way of preparing the heads of state’s choices at the intergovernmental conference (IGC) of 2003/4, he argues, will lead to bolder and more legitimate decisions framed in a transparent and political perspective: “We have got to do it differently from the past. One part of the timidity and inadequacy of the Treaty of Nice is that the questions were too mechanical and not political. After Laeken, we can now do what we should have done before – put the institutional questions in a political perspective”.

This debate, then, should not start with a technocratic focus on institutions and tools. For Barnier, the basic issues are fundamental political questions: “The convention must start with the question of what we want to do together? What does each country expect from the European construction? It is a kind of political verification: do we want to stay where we are, with a well-organised internal market and a single currency? Do we want to go backwards, detach certain policies – for instance competition or regional policy? Or do we want to go further – in areas such as justice, internal security, foreign policy, defence, social policy? And are we all going forward together, or in smaller groups?”. In other words, a new effort to build real agreement and understanding on what Europe does and how it does it.

Which of these choices does Barnier himself prefer? “We have already done a lot – the internal market, environment, health, food safety, the European social model – and we have done it well. But we must explain, reassure and perhaps simplify. Europe must be more than a supermarket. It must be a political community which takes decisions together on policies of interest to the citizen – environment, security, food security, the fight against crime, the social model. For effective action, there needs now to be at least a European response, not an isolated, national one.”

For Barnier, more cooperation is also vital in economic policy after the arrival of the euro: “We need to go further in the coordination of budgetary, fiscal and economic policies. I would not say we need an economic government, but the European economy must be governed”, he says, showing alert political antennae to Anglo-Saxon sensitivities. He also views constructively the much-debated possibility of one or more avant-garde groups of countries moving ahead in policy areas where the fifteen (or after enlargement, the twenty-five or more) cannot agree: “It is a type of flexibility, where the advance guard can light the path for the others to follow in developing areas such as justice and home affairs, foreign policy and defence”.

**A time for courage**

Despite his clear preference for stronger European policies across a wide range of policy areas, he insists that the final outcome will not be a federal European state: “Europe is not a state. This is what I say to the English who fear a superstate. It is and will remain a unique construction. We will remain a unique political community, with a certain complexity. That complexity is the price we have to pay so that each nation can guard its diversity and preserve its differences. We work in a united not a uniform Europe”. To reinforce this point, he gets up and takes from his desk a thick plastic square embedded with the twelve different one euro coins in a circle: “Look”, he says, “there are twelve identical faces, and twelve different faces \[each with their own national symbol\]. A united Europe – to be stronger together and preserve our diversity”.

But what about the possibility of a European constitution? “The EU is about sharing sovereignty. But we do not need to speak about a constitution because it embodies and implies a separate layer of sovereignty. Rather, we should look at having a constitutional text or Treaty, a simplified basic Treaty, which includes fundamental rights, so that everybody can read and understand the EU’s values, what it stands for and its basic institutional structures.” Such a division of the current impenetrable, lengthy set of treaties into a basic Treaty and other texts with less essential provisions, also raises the perennial issue of the national veto, with the possibility of retaining the veto only for the basic Treaty and moving to majority voting elsewhere.

On one other idea already under discussion – election of the President of the European Commission – Barnier is noticeably reluctant to be drawn, though he insists it should be on the convention agenda. But on the veto, he is firm on the need for future decisions on the current set of Community policies to be taken by majority voting: “Once there are almost thirty countries round the table, the national veto will no longer be a source just of weakness, it will be a source of collective powerlessness. I hope that the governments will have the collective courage and lucidity to see that”.

For Barnier, increased involvement of national parliaments in the process of European integration is “perhaps one of the most important questions”. Pooling sovereignty, as with the euro, makes the EU much stronger, he believes, and so helps each member state to have more power and influence. As the EU develops its policies in areas such as justice and internal affairs, foreign policy, and defence, “the national parliaments are the guardians in these areas of national sovereignty. So the next steps cannot be taken without the national parliaments. They must be really present at each stage, not simply presented with *faits accomplis*”. Here he has a proposal to put forward: why not bring all European legislative decisions made by ministers together into one Council of European Ministers’ Brussels meeting every two weeks, open to the public and the media, with two national MPs attending together with each minister?

**Not US strength, but European weakness**

One of the fundamental challenges outlined by the Laeken declaration was the question of how Europe, as a “power wanting to change the course of world affairs in such a way as to benefit not just the rich countries but also the poorest” could “shoulder its responsibilities in the governance of globalisation”. Barnier is clear that “Europe has a role to play in the world and must be a political power” but he says this must also be part of the political verification at the start of the debate: “Do member states want Europe to play a global role?”

He underscores the many changes brought by 11 September: “The US understood that it was not invulnerable. These terrible attacks showed there are new threats and risks in the post-Cold War world and that we must all adapt in the face of them… The US has made it their fight, but the fight against terrorism cannot be done just by the US. They have need of us and we have need of them”.

But he does not think that 11 September implies that the EU must adopt the same positions as the US: “The Americans cannot be the only ones to have a role in dialogue between civilisations and cultures. Europe is a point of balance, notably around the Mediterranean, where there are so many risks of explosion, religious conflicts, the conflict between Israel and Palestine. We are a stabilising pole between different regions of the world. We cannot leave all these big countries and continents such as Russia, China, India and Africa in a bilateral *tête-à-tête* with the US – we need a pluralist, multipolar dialogue”. He insists that the problem here is not the Americans, but the Europeans: “I do not reproach the US for their power or their force: I do reproach the Europeans for their weakness”.

Barnier gives added emphasis to the separate role that Europe must play, relative to the US: “I am not a partisan of the idea that Europe has to choose its policy and destiny in relation to the US. It must do it according to its own identity, its own interests and its place on the geographical map”. He refers to Kyoto, as an example that shows Europe going ahead separately from the US, involving other parts of the world in a meeting of interests with Europe, even if a partnership with the US would have been desirable.

“We are allies” he says, “but we do not have to wait until the US takes up its positions before the EU defines its own policies. Because of our history and our geography, it seems to me we can facilitate the chances of peace and stability in the world. But to do that, we have to have a willingness to play this role and be organised for it”. He adds that “if the US sometimes see themselves as the only superpower, it is for the EU to demonstrate that it is not exactly like that, and that there is another power in the world – an economic, commercial, monetary, political power – that expects to play its part”.

But for the EU to play a role as a power in the world it has to build a much stronger common – but not unique – foreign, security and defence policy. Barnier takes what he calls a pragmatic approach here: “To go forward in the areas of defence and foreign policy, we will have for a certain time to use intergovernmental cooperation just as we did in the area of justice and home affairs for fifteen years, before realising that we needed to use the Community \[supranational\] method”. He is full of praise for Javier Solana, the EU’s High Representative, and emphasises the importance of him having the confidence of all the EU’s foreign ministers. Barnier personally supports the idea of ultimately merging the two jobs of the Council’s High Representative and the European Commissioner for external affairs, currently Chris Patten’s post, but recognises that this could take some years.

Overall, he stresses the need for the EU to continue to move in the direction of a more coherent external policy – from foreign policy, to development to trade and economics: “We cannot become a political power without a real common defence and without a coherent external policy”.

**Enlarging without pain**

Barnier, with his two portfolios, has a double interest in enlargement. One key question for the convention is how to ensure the effective functioning of the EU when its members almost double. And one of the most sensitive issues left for the enlargement negotiations this year is agreement on structural funds for the candidate countries.

Barnier supports ambitious changes for running an EU of almost thirty member states, including reducing the use of the veto: “The problem is not who the new members are, it is the numbers. The risks of blockage, of paralysis are twice as large”. He also emphasises the importance of explaining enlargement to the public both in the current member states and in the candidate countries: “I think we underestimate the anxieties and fears and questions posed by such immense changes. We cannot impose this change, we must explain it and show its value. We must recall the basic aims of the European project – peace, stability and democracy. And we must show that it is in the interests of all citizens and enterprises that these countries next to us in Europe have the same standards, and rules, for conditions of work, for the environment, for production and so on”.

Enlargement, he points out, will create more not less need for structural and cohesion funds. But again, he insists that this can be shown to be in the interests of all member states, since once the candidate countries develop, they will provide markets for the existing member states, and employment opportunities at home to off-set any risks and pressures from migration. He is already drawing up his position in the difficult budget battles that are to come, arguing for an increase in the structural and cohesion funds: “I think 0.45 per cent of EU GDP is realistic, it is the threshold of credibility”. This is a big increase over the current figure of 0.32 per cent, a figure he gets to by adding in the pre-accession funds the candidates already get, together with the funding already put aside by the heads of state for the first accessions.

**Engaging civil society**

For Barnier it is vital that there is a large and dynamic debate around the convention. The convention he says, will be like an echo chamber, and the media will have an important role to play in ensuring the dissemination of comprehensible and intelligent information. But the media is only one actor: “All parts of society should be engaged” – from NGOs to churches.

Crucially, this debate is important to him, not only to ensure the real participation of the public in the construction of Europe, but also to apply strong pressure on the heads of state and governments to take a bold approach: “If governments see, in and around the convention, strong interest and public views, then they will be obliged to take this pressure into account. The debate must call for this audacity and courage from our governments”.