THE BIRTH, PASSION, DEATH, AND RESURRECTION OF THE EU CONSTITUTION

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MIAMI, Apr 1 2004 (IPS) - Last December, Spain and Poland sent the EU constitution project into collapse by rejecting a revised vote-weighing calculation for the EU Council and insisting on retaining the more advantageous system from the 2002 Nice Treaty, writes Joaquin Roy, Jean Monnet professor and the director of the Centre for the European Union of the University of Miami. Thus began what was feared would be an excruciating passion for the text of the constitution, the author writes in this analysis. Thrice the Italian presidency refused to cooperate. Some, like Judas, seemed to be bargaining for money. The Spanish and Polish governments transformed themselves, as if under Mel Gibson\’s direction, into Roman soldiers on the road to Golgotha. Blair like Pilate washed his hands. All stood by silently and no one intervened to prevent the death of the project, as one of the largest crises in the history of the EU settled on a horizon heavy with thunder and darkness. Then, suddenly, as a result of the legislative elections in Spain, the main obstacle disappeared. Spain returned to the bosom of \’\’old Europe\’\’, and in a display of the art of late repentance the Polish government expressed its doubts about its alliance with the US in Iraq. After a death foretold came the resurrection, as a final prelude to the ecclesiastic cycle. Brussels now sighs with relief.

By the end of the Cold War, Europe had been divided by the Iron Curtain for almost half a century. Those fortunate countries situated on the Atlantic side had found themselves under the protection of two umbrellas.

The first was an economic area, the fledgling European Coal and Steel Community, which would grow from its original six members to its current twenty-five as the European Union. The other was nuclear and essentially military, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), which today has 26 members, a few of which were satellites of the USSR just over twelve years ago.

Intuiting the changes that were in store for Europe, in the mid- 80s the leaders of the European Community took the first of two daring steps that would transform it into today’s EU. Rather than continue the tradition of approving one law after another, it was resolved that in order to complete a real common market (unfinished since the 60s) the Single European Act of 1986 was needed, a sort of treaty-level macro-law. This instrument prepared the way for the Treaty for the European Union, better known as the Maastricht Treaty (1993), which was later strengthened and corrected as the Amsterdam Treaty (1996).

With the adoption of the euro as the common currency for twelve of the fifteen EU members, the division of Europe became unworkable. What followed was the most ambitious broadening in the union’s history, adding ten new members, leaving Rumania and Bulgaria on the waiting list and Turkey, the eternal candidate, watching for a better occasion.

However, the rules written for a house with six members are hardly sufficient for the administration of 30 sharing a complex, supranational sovereignty in what is the world’s only real example of true economic and political integration. Institutional reform could not wait. The EU thus resolved to come up with a workable text for a constitution, though it would have the form of an international treaty. The decision was made at the Laeken Counsel to entrust the drafting of a constitution to a convention, which subsequently met for over a year and a half under the leadership of former French president Valery Giscard D’Estaing. The hundred or so representatives of governments and national and European parliaments submitted the much awaited document in July 2003.

The draft, an elaborate text that incorporated as a Charter of Fundamental Rights a series of guarantees which the Court of Justice had already enshrined as the irrevocable legacy of all citizens, addressed among other matters the need to simplify voting procedures in the Council, the EU’s legislative body. But after a semester of debate in the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC), which is composed entirely of state representatives, the project collapsed.

There was no agreement on the weighing of votes in calculating the majority required to pass new legislation or the minority sufficient to block it. This failure in turn raised doubts about the creation of a more permanent presidency that would replace the current semestral rotation system as well as the fusion of the two foreign relations positions (admirably filled until now by Chris Pater and Javier Solana) into a single minister of foreign affairs.

Spain and Poland, apparently with the consent of other governments, insisted on retaining the more advantageous system set out in the 2002 Nice Treaty, which gave them virtually the same voting status as France and Germany, rejecting a newer, simplifying formula.

Thus began what was feared would be an excruciating passion for the text of the constitution, attacked and maligned by many sides. Thrice the Italian presidency refused to cooperate. Some, like Judas, seemed to be bargaining for money. The Spanish and Polish governments transformed themselves, as if under Mel Gibson’s direction, into Roman soldiers on the road to Golgotha. Blair like Pilate washed his hands. All stood by silently and no one intervened to prevent the death of the project, as one of the largest crises in the history of the EU settled on a horizon heavy with thunder and darkness.

Then, suddenly, as a result of the legislative elections in Spain, the main obstacle disappeared. Spain returned to the bosom of ”old Europe”, and in a display of the art of late repentance the Polish government expressed its doubts about its alliance with the US in Iraq. After a death foretold came the resurrection, as a final prelude to the ecclesiastic cycle. Brussels now sighs with relief. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)