The European Union beyond Amsterdam

New Concepts of European Integration

Martin Westlake

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781134702480
• Subtopic: Constitutions
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Introduced with a preface by Jacques Delors, this volume offers new insights and develops generalised theories about the nature of European integration. The contributors step back from the detail of the latest intergovernmental conference and budgetary negotiations to generate conclusions of enduring value. The issues dealt with include the following: * Britain and integration * intergovernmental conferences * the rule of law * making foreign policy work * the democratic deficit.

1
The book and the man

Martin Westlake

THE BOOK

This book is intended to honour the work of Jacques Vandamme, a Belgian federalist, whose varied career I shall describe below. Such Festschrifts frequently consist of collections of re-cycled articles and essays whose only common theme, it sometimes seems, is the relationship between their authors and the person in whose honour the work is published. I should therefore stress at the outset that this book consists of original contributions, published nowhere else, written specifically to the editor’s instructions and addressing a common theme. In editing this work, my first guiding principle has been that the best way to honour an individual is to produce something of high and lasting quality. I am convinced that the analyses in this book will be of enduring relevance.

The book brings together a number of highly experienced individuals, all acknowledged experts in their fields. Most of them are members of the Trans-European Policy Studies Association, a Brussels-based think-tank which Jacques Vandamme helped found. Jacques Vandamme has worked with all of the contributors in the furtherance of the European ideal. My second guiding principle as editor was therefore that the work should somehow address the central theme of furthering the European ideal.

The bulk of the book was written during the closing stages of the Amsterdam Intergovernmental Conference, but I wanted the contributors to look beyond the IGC and to address themselves to lasting themes. My third and last guiding editorial principle was therefore that the contributors should not concentrate on the impending issues— enlargement, Economic and Monetary Union, the financial perspectives—which we all know are just around the corner. Rather, I wanted them to concentrate on problems or issues—democratising the Union, establishing a common foreign policy, the rule of law, to take but a few examples—which will still be the focus of debate ten or fifteen years hence.

In his foreword, Jacques Delors identifies the central theme of this book. He points out that soon it will be time to look beyond the pressing issues of the next few years to the relative calm which awaits us on the other side. In the foreseeable future, the Union will have reached its maximum size and some sort of stable equilibrium will have been reached with those European states which cannot or will not participate. What would that Union look like? And how will we get there? Whatever the answer to these questions, Delors feels that we should already be able to say what values the Union will embody, and what traditions it will uphold.

In my chapter I use the parallel of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory to show, first, how the Union is an organic constitutional arrangement and, second, how its evolution is influenced by what I term the Union’s ‘blueprint draftsmen’. Much dissatisfaction has been expressed at the ‘diplomatic method’ which resulted in the Amsterdam Treaty, but there was never any initiative during the IGC to alter the rules of the game and we could in any case expect them to remain the same for the foreseeable future. In practical terms, this means that constitutional change will continue to require the unanimity of all of the member states, with all that this implies for the negotiating process. All the more need, then, for Europe’s blueprint drafters to keep a weather eye on proceedings and to make sure that the European Union’s constitutional development is kept to a reasonably coherent course.

That course is decided primarily by the member states, acting together. In recent years, the United Kingdom has seemed to act more like a sheet anchor than a helmsman. In the first part of his chapter, Andrew Duff casts a critical eye over the problem of Britain and its traditionally troubled relations with Europe. He identifies the idiosyncratic British electoral system as one of the principal villains of the piece; it distorts results and, by exaggerating swings, creates inconsistency in government policy. By exaggerating the importance of short-term electoral advantage, it puts the accent on tactics at the expense of longer-term strategy. By excessively penalising parties which do not retain a critical mass, it has obliged the two major political parties to absorb contradictory elements (particularly on European issues) which, under another system, would exist separately: Eurosceptical ‘tails’ cannot wag broadly Euro-sympathetic ‘dogs’ if they have been severed from them. Duff goes on to examine the development of the concept of flexibility which, as he points out, has accompanied European integration since the inception of the EEC, but which has taken on increasing importance as the integration process has deepened. Perhaps crucially, the ‘British problem’ resurfaced during the Amsterdam negotiations on the flexibility theme, and the resulting treaty amendments can be seen very much as a response to it. The European Union seems condemned to live with a ‘double indemnity’; the ‘British problem’ and the cumulative effect of the responses to it.

John Pinder (like Andrew Duff, one of the United Kingdom’s front-ranking federalists) chooses to focus not on the states, but on their peoples. He lucidly describes today’s European Union as a combination of federal powers and pre-federal institutions. He confronts the federalists’ dilemma—should the aim be a federal union or a federal state?—and pragmatically concludes that the best solution would be a fully democratic federal union, accompanied by partial integration in the field of security. But the Union’s institutions can only be democratically reformed with the support and the involvement of the European people. Pinder suggests that the European Parliament could use its assent powers in relation to the next waves of enlargement to force a constitutional conference which would involve representatives not only of the member state governments but also of national parliaments and the European Parliament. He points out that opinion polling has consistently demonstrated generalised majority support among the public at large for continued integration (levels of support which, incidentally, go up with levels of knowledge) and urges the Parliament to use its powers and the strength of its convictions to force the issue before the next wave of accessions can occur.

One of the policy areas in which the European Union has clearly fallen short of public expectations is foreign policy. Gianni Bonvicini examines why it is proving so difficult to get a genuine European foreign policy up and running. He rejects traditional arguments about foreign policy being a vital component of national sovereignty—surely no more so than economic and monetary policy—and describes how, for a variety of historical reasons, European foreign policy has fallen into a particular ideological context. Thus it has become, he writes, ‘the involuntary object of the battle over the type of Europe to be built that has divided entire generations of politicians and intellectuals’. Bonvicini argues that it is this political and ideological context which accounts for the structural differences between the highly successful Community method and the hybrid ‘second pillar’ created at Maastricht. Amsterdam showed that the intergovernmental approach and sensitivities about national sovereignty are still so deeply ingrained that a decisive ‘Communitarisation’ of the European Union’s foreign policy remains unlikely in the foreseeable future. As Bonvicini points out, the great paradox is that, at the outset of the IGC, virtually all of the member states were agreed on the need for fundamental improvements to be made. Worse, the imbalance is destined to grow, as the introduction of the euro will have unavoidable repercussions on the Union’s foreign policy. In turn, the existence of an economic ‘government’ and the absence of a ‘government’ for foreign policy means that, in Bonvicini’s expressive metaphor, the two main pillars of the Union will support a ‘dangerously inclined roof’. What should be done? He argues that another Amsterdam is needed to focus on the creation of clear mechanisms between the two pillars.

One of the problems which renders the realisation of a common foreign policy so difficult is the difference in the stances of the member states with regard to the pace of integration. Some wish to move forward faster than others. Should they do so? Wolfgang Wessels focuses his analysis on the concepts of flexibility and differentiated integration, together with their logical corollary, closer cooperation. He examines critically the outcome at Amsterdam in the light of the recommendations of the 1974 Tindemans Report on European Union (an exercise in which Jacques Vandamme was deeply involved). It was in the Tindemans Report that a ‘new approach’ was first explicitly outlined, according to which ‘those states which are able to progress have the duty to forge ahead’. In the Tindemans approach, as revisited by Amsterdam, Wessels identifies three fundamental dilemmas: first, the uneasy dialectic between progress and solidarity; second, the contradiction between the politically necessary complexity of the Amsterdam outcome and the constitutional necessity for transparency and effectiveness; third, the fact that the very existence of the provisions for closer cooperation will almost certainly lead to them not being applied. Wessels predicts that member states’ cost-benefit analyses will continue to lead them to seek the broadest possible consensus even at the cost of policy satisfaction—a sort of rolling application of the prisoners’ dilemma. Ultimately, Wessels argues, the ‘second best options’ negotiated by the Amsterdam draftsmen will only be rendered superfluous by further, and far more fundamental, constitutional reform.

The primacy of the rule of Community law has been considered one of the mainstays of the European integration process so far, but can such a universal principle continue to survive in a differentiated system? With a lawyer’s eye, Jean-Victor Louis first assesses the implications for the rule of law of the flexibility provisions created at Maastricht and Amsterdam. Critical of their existence, sceptical of their practicability, he argues that they will be difficult to implement and will prove short-lived. But he underlines the need for the Court of Justice to be vigilant, particularly in regard to the attribution of competences and the obligations deriving from the so-called loyalty clause (Article 5(10) in the Treaty). Louis argues forcefully that failure to ensure the rule of law as it has existed until now would lead, slowly but inexorably, to a decline into purely intergovernmental cooperation. With or without flexibility clauses, the law will have to be applied in an increasingly large and complex Union. Arguing strongly that the basic features of Community law should be maintained, Louis calls for in-depth reflection on how the work capacity of the Courts can be enhanced in a Union of twenty or more member states. He calls for a reflection procedure which would involve the participation of the Courts, as well as of the member state governments. Expedient solutions for cutting the Courts’ workloads, such as limiting the rights for national courts to seek preliminary rulings or the access of private parties, are to be avoided, but organisational reforms will be required if the system is not to collapse.

The consequences of the 1992 Danish ‘no’ are still reverberating around the European Union and its institutions. The citizen, benignly forgotten for so long, is climbing back into the saddle. Robert Toulemon argues that a major reduction in the democratic deficit is vital if the European Union is to progress further. He articulates his argument around three observations: the European Union can only be of substance if it involves some sort of transfer of sovereignty; democratisation of the European Union’s institutions will inevitably lead to the creation of a European political class; last but not least, the European Union can no longer advance or even consolidate its role if it does not respond to the needs and expectations of its citizens. Toulemon goes on to list a series of reforms which would democratise the institutions and hence the Union. He argues that a true citizens’ Europe must be created, with the entrenchment of moral and economic rights. Europe, he concludes, cannot be a panacea for all our ailments, but it does provide a framework for problem solving which has worked remarkably well in the past, and which is increasingly seen as a model by nascent groupings of states elsewhere in the world. Europe’s traditional democratic values must be reflected in that model.

What is European integration about? Where, ultimately, are we heading? Jacques Vandamme passes in review some of the more enduring integration theories and examines what they might tell us about the future direction of the European Union’s development. To the same end, he examines attempts to define the concept of European Union, but concludes that the term is destined to remain vague and amorphous precisely because it reflects the fluid nature of the integration process itself. Giving his own considered view of the future, he concludes that ‘we are no longer very far from a federal model adapted to European reality’. However, like Pinder, he distinguishes between the concept of a federal union and one of a federal state. Europe’s constitutional development will remain sui generis (pace Wessels’ comments below) and, whilst some are disappointed at how slow the process is, others are happy that the Union has managed to come so far so fast. Vandamme concludes with his own by-word; persevere.

THE MAN

Having written at some length about the book and its contents, it is time to turn to the man in whose honour the book has been written. I should immediately declare an interest; I am Jacques Vandamme’s son-in-law. For somebody working in and writing about the European Union institutions, this has been a privileged relationship, for Jacques is passionately interested in European affairs and has witnessed or participated in many of the developments which I can only write about. He is also extraordinarily open-minded and he adores discussion and debate, perhaps particularly, over the past decade, with his British son-in-law! I have good reason to feel affection for the man. I also admire his indefatigable enthusiasm and his optimistic resilience. As the closing sentence of Chapter 10 shows, these are characteristic qualities of the man. In the remainder of this introduction, I would like briefly to share with the reader the main themes of the life of somebody whom I consider to be a quintessentially European European. Jacques Vandamme’s life is also a case study of the good European. With Europe’s last major conflagration now so far away, we have perhaps forgotten how badly we sometimes need good Europeans.

Military antecedents

As perhaps befits a militant European, Jacques Vandamme is the scion of two military families. His paternal grandfather was a Flemish, but Francophone, captain in the Belgian Army. An independent and creative spirit, the captain would often pack his easel and paints and set off to the dunes of the Flemish coast or rural Limbourg. Captain Vandamme was married to the sister of a Belgian Army general. Jacques’ maternal grandfather was a Belgian Army colonel and a fierce patriot. Left for dead on a First World War battlefield, he was nursed back to life by Dutch nuns whence, as soon as he was able, he raced to London and from there returned to the front.

Jacques’ father, Charles Vandamme, grew up as a Francophone citizen of the city of Antwerp (in Flanders). Wanting to be a soldier like his father, he signed on at the military cadets school at Namur (in Wallonia). He was seventeen years old when Germany invaded in 1914. He walked for four days across country to reach the Belgian Free Army and saw active service on the Western Front. But by 1917, the Front was stagnating. Charles Vandamme volunteered for service in the Belgian Congo, where he served until 1919. He returned to Belgium and met and fell in love with Elsa Bouvier. The two were married in 1922.¹

Childhood

The newly-wed Vandammes were determined to do something different with their children. Jacques, their first, was born in 1923. Another son, Daniel (1929), and two daughters, Lilianne (1926) and Yolande (1941), were to follow. In those early postwar years, there was a sense abroad on the Continent of having survived Armageddon. The proportion of men in the population had been savagely reduced by four years of attritional trench warfare and the young were the object of relieved affection. Life for the young Vandamme children seemed idyllic. Jacques’ father had left the army and begun a career as a stockbroker at the Belgian bourse. He enjoyed considerable success. A town house in Brussels was complemented by a summer house at Hastière, on the banks of the Meuse. In 1929, disaster struck, with the collapse of stockmarkets throughout the world. Extraordinary as it seems, the young Jacques was kept in the dark, and his parents never admitted to the financial hurt they must have endured. Thus, the young Jacques, firstborn, an object of unlimited parental affection, shielded from the bad times, was to gain a bedrock of confidence and optimism which has never left him since, not even in his darkest hours.

Charles ...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• CONTRIBUTORS
• FOREWORD
• EDITOR’S NOTE
• 1: THE BOOK AND THE MAN
• 2: THE EUROPEAN UNION’S ‘BLIND WATCHMAKERS’: THE PROCESS OF CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
• 3: BRITAIN AND EUROPE: THE DIFFERENT RELATIONSHIP
• 4: FROM CLOSED DOORS TO EUROPEAN DEMOCRACY: BEYOND THE INTERGOVERNMENTAL CONFERENCES
• 5: MAKING EUROPEAN FOREIGN POLICY WORK
• 6: FLEXIBILITY, DIFFERENTIATION AND CLOSER COOPERATION: THE AMSTERDAM PROVISIONS IN THE LIGHT OF THE TINDEMANS REPORT
• 7: THE RULE OF LAW
• 8: FOR A DEMOCRATIC EUROPE
• 9: DREAMS COME TRUE, GRADUALLY: THE TINDEMANS REPORT A QUARTER OF A CENTURY ON
• 10: EUROPEAN FEDERALISM: OPPORTUNITY OR UTOPIA?