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November 26, 2003
Europe Emancipates Itself
By Guy Verhofstadt
BRUSSELS -- On May 1 next year, the unification of Europe will become a political fact. Enlargement comes with deeper integration and a constitution. It will be the end of a process that began 12
years ago in Maastricht and which will now be completed with the acceptance of an ambitious and coherent constitutional treaty.
It would be an historical error if the result of the convention's draft was
watered down. That would mean we had to begin from the start. The convention has a lot of legitimacy, particularly due to its composition: representatives from governments, national parliaments, the European
Parliament and the EU Commission worked together to write the draft. Over 16 months, the convention drew its authority from the transparency in which the deliberations were conducted. It also drew its authority from
the result it produced. The convention discussed and judged all options and considered no less than 5,000 motions. The Inter-Governmental Conference can't ignore the convention's work.
There are, however,
some points that need to be negotiated until the very end. This applies in particular to the expansion of qualified majority voting. This may, in fact, be the most important part of all. Our union must remain able
to act. The convention suggests expanding the use of qualified majority voting to new areas such as justice, home policy and the medium-term financial planning. We must ensure that this is not prevented. I would
even like to go further and apply qualified majority voting to tax and social policies as well as in the Common Foreign and Security Policy.
The convention also made progress in coordinating European policy
by creating a European minister of foreign affairs. He would have to be both a vice-president of the EU Commission as well as a chairman of the council of foreign ministers. This will also make possible having an
enhanced and more structured defense cooperation. The roles of the president of the European Commission and the European Parliament will also be strengthened. The convention could even have gone further, above all
by better synchronizing monetary and economic policies. That would be beneficial for growth in the euro-zone and for the competitiveness of the European economy.
Ever since the Maastricht Treaty was signed,
we have been witnessing a development toward a federal Europe. This is quite a term. But the development can't be misjudged, even if it doesn't occur on a straight-line. The powers of the European Union are being
expanded continuously. We have created a common market, removed internal borders, embarked on an economic and monetary union, coined a common currency. At the Amsterdam summit, we laid the foundation for a common
foreign policy. We began with a common justice and home policy. Now we want to achieve a European defense policy.
The next step will be common financing. This is absolutely necessary in order to avoid having
the union paralyze itself in a crippling debate among net suppliers and net receivers of financing. That would jeopardize cohesion within the enlarged union. Therefore I suggest replacing the current system of
national financial contributions at least partly by a common financing of the union.
In all these initiatives we observe that the European Union acquires all the instruments of a federal state -- a federal
state that respects the member states through the principle of subsidiarity and the demarcation of the powers of EU and its member states. The capstone is the Constitutional Treaty, which must grow to become a
genuine constitution.
This European Union, whose powers and territory are expanding, wants to take its place on the world stage and wants to have its voice heard. This will have consequences for the world
order as it emerged after World War II. The bipolar world became unipolar after the implosion of the Soviet Union. The emancipation of the European Union will invert this world order.
The international
emancipation of the European Union is both inevitable and desirable. It means that the European Union develops a credible international policy, which is based on a European defense.
The U.S. sees the European
defense plans as a threat. This distrust means a break with the U.S. policies of the first four decades of European integration. Ever since the emergence of the European Community for Coal and Steel up to the
beginning of the 1990s, the U.S. used to encourage Europe to integrate. Washington was rightfully convinced that this would also serve its own interests, since we defended the same values.
This attitude has
changed over the past decade. To my regret, I've noticed that the U.S. all too often considers the integration as running counter to its own position of power. Just like the U.S. considers the euro mainly as a
competitor to the dollar rather than a great instrument for integration, the U.S. also considers the European defense policy as a threat to its own power position, not as an instrument of European emancipation.
This distrust is unfounded. For us Europeans, European defense is not a strategic step against the U.S. or NATO. On the contrary: a common defense will make Europe an adequate and powerful partner of the U.S. It
will complement NATO with a strong European pillar; it will guarantee the equilibrium within NATO and ensure that Europe takes over a larger part of the efforts -- something the U.S. has been demanding for 20 years.
It opens the way to a new trans-Atlantic relationship of equal partners defending the same values.
There remains little time for the inter-governmental conference. What we can't accomplish in December will
not be much easier in February. If the conference fails this year, there won't be a new chance soon. In this case we will be heading toward a two-speed Europe.
But this will not happen. We call on the
optimism and visionary strength that prevailed during the final weeks of the convention. Only then will we succeed in accomplishing more than just the addition of national interests. And only then will we fulfill
the order, which we gave ourselves on the Laeken Summit: a new "Rome Treaty" for a united Europe.
Mr. Verhofstadt is prime minister of Belgium.
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