HOW EUROPE IS STARTING TO SET GLOBAL RULES

The European Union is a success story. Europe’s achievements have to be seen not as a single act or chain of spectacular consecutive EU summits, but as a historical process. Almost 50 years ago, the political scientist Karl Deutsch defined a concept of a pluralistic security community based on: the sovereignty and legal independence of states; the compatibility of core values derived from common institutions;
mutual responsiveness, identity and loyalty; integration to the point that states entertain “dependable expectations of peaceful change” and communication cementing political communities. As it turns out, the EU today reflects these elements. For the past two decades, institutional reforms have worked better than they are given credit for. The EU has enhanced its decision-making mechanisms by moving more areas to qualified majority voting (QMV), and by streamlining its institutions. New mechanisms have emerged in such areas as a common foreign and security policy (CFSP). Failures have had more to do with inadequate political leadership and the lack of determination, as well as the EU’s dilemma over how to close its distance from the citizen.
Now we have the Reform Treaty signed in Lisbon. This is the rejected constitutional treaty minus, but the minus isn’t very big. The treaty aims to transform the Union into an international organisation and grant it legal personality. In my view, the Union is much more than a classical international organisation; It is a new animal that is more than an organisation and less than a state. The treaty says that the Union will act only within the limits conferred upon it by member states. The Union has always acted on the basis of conferred competence, and stating that obvious fact more explicitly reflects the continuing unease in some states over the very principle of supranational integration. The role of national parliaments is enhanced, the subsidiarity mechanism reinforced, and the double majority voting system is being implemented. The title “Minister of Foreign Affairs” in the rejected constitution has been dropped, so the CFSP is still in charge of the “high representative”.
That still leaves the question of how the EU’s common and security policy will shift from rhetoric to action? Karl von Wogau, president of the European Parliament’s sub-committee on defence, has rightly noted: “The main challenge we face is not to rewrite the European security strategy, but to implement what we have already agreed.” Looking ahead, governance issues are likely to be subject of review as the innovations of the Reform Treaty are tested in practice. The double-hatted high representative of the Union for foreign affairs and security policy could be a model for use elsewhere in the institutional architecture. Interaction between the new permanent president of the Council and the member state presidencies is another area where improvements might be needed. The composition of the Commission will attract attention. Governance inside the Eurozone will also be the subject of further discussions if, as seems likely, it offers a basis for more advanced integration. Reducing the scope of qualified majority voting will remain a major objective. The procedure for amending a treaty, at present requiring ratification by all member states, will also need to be explored further.
The Union is likely to be spared a new wave of reform in the near future, but from 2010 onwards the pressures will grow for reviewing the existing provisions. New revision treaties could deal with selected issues, and hence be easier to agree on and ratify. Constructing a new international order based on multilateralism is neither a choice nor an alternative, but a necessity. Henry Kissinger believes that the United States should act as if it were functioning in a world where security depends on numerous other centres of power. “In such a world,” Kissinger has written, “the United States will find partners not only for sharing the psychological burdens of leadership, but also for shaping an international order consistent with freedom and democracy”. Such a new centre of power is constituted by the EU. But it is an open question whether the values shared by NATO and the EU, along with the concept of soft power, are compatible with the ambitions of the United States.