As the European Union struggles to resolve one of its worst ever crises,
the country presiding over the efforts to get European integration
back on track in the months ahead will be Britain,
traditionally one of the least enthusiastic supporters of the Union’s
goals of political union. In such circumstances, it might not be surprising
if the UK government regarded its six-month stint in the EU presidential
chair with distaste. And yet British Prime Minister Tony Blair is throwing
himself into the presidency with newfound enthusiasm, believing that
the crisis presents him with a unique opportunity to steer the future
of the European project in a direction much more to British liking.
It will not be easy.
As Britain took over the reins from Luxembourg on July 1, the debate
in Brussels was not so much over whether European integration was in
crisis as over the seriousness of the crisis and how long it would
last. Plans approved by all 25 member states for a new EU constitutional
treaty have been brought to an uncertain halt by voters in France and
the Netherlands, and EU leaders are locked in a bitter dispute over
the future financing of an ever-enlarging Union. The most recent summit
meeting of leaders in the European Council ended in recriminations
and mutual suspicion.
Britain’s task is rendered even harder in that Mr. Blair will
have to overcome deep-seated suspicions of its intentions, especially
in France. It is not as if Britain is neutral in the disputes that
are feeding the crisis. British voters, if given their chance, would
also almost certainly
reject the constitution, and the failure of the European Council in
Brussels in mid-June was widely blamed on the
narrow and intransigent stands taken by Mr. Blair and French President
Jacques Chirac in defense of their national
interests over the EU budget.
What’s more, for most of the past 30 years, the UK has been regarded
by many continental leaders as a somewhat “semi-detached” member
of the European Union. Britain has stayed out of the euro and the Schengen
agreement abolishing EU internal borders, and fought
frequent battles in Brussels against
the cherished European social model.
Successive British governments have been at odds with their European
partners over Europe’s political future,
culminating in the damaging split with France and Germany over Mr.
Blair’s support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Despite all this, Mr. Blair is latching onto the Presidency as something
of a godsend. He hopes to use it not only to advance his own conception
of Europe, but also to gain the lasting reputation for European statesmanship
to which he has always aspired. In his pre-Presidency
address to the European Parliament in Brussels on June 24, Mr. Blair
displayed
a positive zeal for what he sees as his new missionno less than
the modernization of the European economy and root-and- branch reform
of one of its most important “common” policies, agriculture.
“At the heart of
Mr. Blair’s approach
is acceptance of globalization and the need to adapt to it”
Mr. Blair acknowledges the depth of the crisis in the European Union.
But he insists that, “In every crisis there is an opportunity.
There is one here for
Europe now, if we have the courage to take it.” Looking to the
future, he told the Parliament, “if we agreed on real progress
on economic reform, if we demonstrated real seriousness on structural
change, then people would perceive reform of macro policy as sensible
and rational, not a product of fiscal laxity but of commonsense. And
we need such
reform urgently if Europe is to grow.”
At the heart of Mr. Blair’s approach is acceptance of the reality
of globalization and the need to adapt to it rather than to seek protection
from its impact. His theme has been expressed even more bluntly by
his arch political rival
and likely successor, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, who
recently told bankers in the City of London, “Here in Britain,
we have had to make and continue to make hard, long-term choices to
achieve stability, growth and flexibility. Now to be globally competitive,
the European Union must make these long-term choices too.”
Of course, in preaching this gospel, Mr. Blair is fully aware of the
serious economic difficulties in France,
Germany and Italy in part because
of their failure to take the very steps he recommends to improve competitiveness,
free up labor markets and abandon outmoded protectionist policies.
He also knows that in large measure because of slow economic
growth and unacceptably high levels of unemployment his key
critics over the Iraq war, Mr. Chirac
in France and Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Germany, are in dire
political straits. This is also true, however,
for Mr. Blair’s Iraq war allies, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi
in Italy and Dutch conservative premier Jan Peter Balkenende.
Mr. Blair is being careful not to name names in his critique of the
European Union’s failures. He has gone out of his way to insist
that he remains “a passionate pro-European,” dismissing
the fears of integrationists that he wants to reduce the European Union
to a mere free trade area, and declaring his faith in the “political
project” of closer European unity. After his speech to the European
Parliament, some European politicians and important sections of the
European media praised the energy and sense of strategic vision he
displayed, and some even wondered whether a new political Messiah might
have arisen from the ruins of Europe’s collective political leadership.
Much of the British Presidency’s program will appeal to the dominant
center right in EU countries. Among
the UK’s priorities are getting “the best possible result” with
regard to the Doha round of trade negotiations at the Hong Kong ministerial
meeting of the World Trade Organization in December,
putting Africa at the center of global
development policies, pushing through more radical world action on
climate change, reform of the common agricultural policy (CAP) and
especially its
controversial sugar regime, structural economic reform, progress toward
a
single EU market in services, and
cooperation among EU member states in the fight against terrorism and
international crime.
But in pursuing his European objectives, Mr. Blair must perform a difficult
balancing act to maintain political
backing at home, where his position has been severely weakened by a
sharp fall
in support for his leadership in
Parliamentary elections in May. The
unabashedly pro-European tone of Mr. Blair’s speech to the European
Parliament raised eyebrows in Britain, where the largely euroskeptic
media questioned his apparent commitment to EU institutional reform
despite the derailing of the constitutional treaty. Indeed a Kremlinological
reading of the Blair text suggests that he might be willing to have
many of the treaty proposals reexamined and presented again for ratification
in the member states at a future date perhaps after the 2007
French Presidential
election. In this he may face the opposition of the more euroskeptic
Gordon Brown, who might even have succeeded him as Prime Minister by
then.
As far as Mr. Blair’s EU leadership claims are concerned, however,
could it be a case of “cometh the hour, cometh the man?” Is
it possible to imagine Mr. Blair as a sort of latter-day John the
Baptist preparing the way for the
gradual “Anglo-Saxonization” of the European Union? There
are signs that
political developments in other EU countries may be moving in Mr. Blair’s
direction. If, as expected, the Socialist Mr. Schroeder goes down in
defeat in the German general election in September, his Christian Democratic
successor,
Angela Merkel, may prove a more
sympathetic partner for the UK. She wants to put more stress on improving
Transatlantic relations, favors structural economic reform and has
even talked about cutting spending on the CAP.
“Mr. Chirac will be seeking to regain
political points at home by obstructionist
tactics in Brussels”
A win by Ms. Merkel could
certainly help Mr. Blair in the remaining months of the British EU
Presidency, which lasts until December 31. It will not, however, remove
the greatest single obstacle to a successful British turn
at the EU helm, which is likely to be
inveterate opposition to British initiatives by Mr. Chirac, whose term
does not expire until 2007. Not only are Mr. Chirac and Mr. Blair openly
antagonistic in their personal relations, but Mr. Chirac has been deeply
wounded by his defeat in the French constitutional referendum and will
be seeking to regain
political points at home by obstructionist tactics in Brussels. That
is another reason, in addition to the difficulty of the task, why Mr.
Blair’s plans for EU
reform must inevitably have a longer term perspective than the current
British presidency.
“Among the biggest beneficiaries of EU farm spending are
British royalty, aristocrats and the landed gentry”
In London there are those who hope that Nicolas Sarkozy, the rising
star of the French center right, may succeed Mr. Chirac in 2007. Like
Ms. Merkel and Mr. Blair, Mr. Sarkozy is something of an economic liberal.
In a recent interview he said it was an “absolute and urgent
priority’’ to create jobs and push down unemployment from
a five-year high in order to boost growth in France,
Europe’s third-largest economy after Germany and Britain. “There
is not enough work in France and that is mainly because it is not rewarded,
valued and heralded enough,’’ Mr. Sarkozy said. “Rewarding
and encouraging, there is nothing more important to revive the French
economy.’’
All three leaders also believe that
nation states should remain the dominant forces in the European Union
and share a distaste for anything resembling federal-style European
political integration. Might these developments create a new economically
liberal, more inter-governmental, less pro-integrationist European
Union led by a British/
French/German troika? Such a troika might expect support on at least
some contentious issues of EU reform from the new member states in
central and eastern Europe and from the Nordic and Baltic countries.
Some skepticism is in order here. Claims that the UK, France and
Germany may soon be on converging strategic paths can be overstated.
In the EU budget debate, Ms. Merkel has
already had to dilute her commitment to farm policy reform mindful
of the
importance of rural lobbies to the
German Christian Democrats. Mr. Sarkozy has declared he supports Mr.
Chirac in the stand-off in which Mr. Chirac is demanding an end to
Britain’s EU budget rebate and Mr. Blair is
insisting that the rebate can only be
discussed if the CAP is reformed to
ensure big cuts in farm spending. This may explain why Mr. Blair has
already started to tone down his assault on the CAP, saying that he
is only looking for gradual change, to be decided at some point during
the budget period 2007-2013.
There may be another reason why Mr. Blair is approaching CAP reform
with care. There is growing support for a ceiling to be put on the
compensation farmers are paid in recompense for the loss of production
subsidies. At present, however, by far the largest beneficiaries of
CAP payments are the biggest landowners prominent among them
British royalty, aristocrats and the landed gentry. That was one reason
why Britain, not France, blocked a European Commission proposal to
limit such payments last year.
Ms. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy will probably support a measured shift
toward more liberal and flexible EU
economic policies. But they are most
unlikely to sign up for the British
approach to social and environmental regulation. In fact, the Nordic
approach has greater appeal for the French,
Germans and others than Britain’s “Anglo-Saxon model,” characterized
by what are seen as poor social and public infrastructure standards.
According to the World Economic Forum, the Nordic countries top the
world league table
for competitiveness and innovation, while maintaining very high levels
of social welfare and environmental sustainability.
As the economic debate gets under way, France, Germany and Britain,
too, may find themselves under pressure to adopt the Nordic approach.
Such a
development would be popular among many of Mr. Blair’s Labour
Party
supporters. But both Mr. Blair and Mr. Brown feel instinctively closer
to U.S. economic and social policies than they do to Nordic-style social
and environmental policies however successful the Nordic economies
may be.
There are other problems. Ms. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy are openly
hostile to admitting many more countries into the European Union a
key strategic plank in Mr. Blair’s EU policy platform. These
differences are likely to come to a head, though not immediately, over
the negotiations on Turkish EU entry due to begin in October. Both
Ms. Merkel and Mr. Sarkozy have threatened to veto full Turkish membership
of the Union, although, with the accession talks likely to last between
five and 10 years, such a prospect lies relatively far in the future.
To complicate matters further, the mainly small and medium sized
central European countries are more
integration-minded than Britain. They share with other smaller EU countries
a suspicion of anything smacking of a “
Political Directorate” of the big states running the Union.
All of this assumes that Mr. Blair will remain prime minister until
close to the next UK general election in 2009/2010. But this is very
far from assured. Mr. Blair has only managed to keep the open hostility
between himself and Mr. Brown within tolerable limits by promising,
or appearing to promise, a handover of the keys to 10 Downing Street
to Mr. Brown well before the next election. Before the crisis sparked
by the “No” votes in the French and Dutch referendums,
it seemed that the handover might come later this year. Mr. Blair’s
domestic
unpopularity partly because of his
close relations with President George
W. Bush cost Labour two thirds of
its Parliamentary majority in the May elections.
By setting out a dramatic new European reform strategy, however, Mr.
Blair may be serving notice to Mr. Brown and his supporters that he
intends to hang on much longer. In this sense, Mr. Blair is in a desperate
race against the clock. He is looking for his place in the history
books. After the traumas of the Iraq war, he now sees a chance to write
his political epitaph as the man who transformed the European Union
and finally
reconciled the British people to their
European future. But such a transformation will take a lot of time,
more time than Mr. Blair can count on.
John Palmer, a former senior editor and correspondent for The Guardian
newspaper, is Political Director of the European Policy Centre in Brussels:
www.theepc.be
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