Warming-up exercises before the German presidency
Commentary from demosEUROPA – Centre for European Strategy
December 13, 2006
The December 2006 European Council will end the picking up of the pieces after the failed French and the Dutch referenda. It will also make the opening shots for the “moment of truth” about the future of Europe which will be played out during the German EU presidency.
The regrouping of the troops is already obvious. Spain has proposed for January a conference of Member States who have ratified the Constitutional Treaty. There are signals about a possible declaration of support for the Treaty on the part of the new Swedish government. It is beyond doubt that France, irrespective of the results of the Spring presidential elections, will want to solve quickly the problem of the failed ratification attempt which weighs heavily on its European policy. The issue will be more complicated in the Netherlands where euro-skeptical parties have strengthened their position in the parliament. May and June 2007 will be devoted to searching for the miraculous solution. However, the real grand design of the future agreement is emerging already in the dozens of informal talks and negotiations. The German Permanent Representative to the EU Wilhelm Schönfelder has spoken in favour of a speedy Intergovernmental Conference which would agree a new treaty before the end of 2007. This means that the Polish government should be dynamically communicating to partners its own point of view on the future of the Treaty.
In the course of the forthcoming summit, the Finnish PM Matti Vanhanen will inform his colleagues about the bilateral talks conducted with the Member States on the fate of the Constitutional Treaty. This will be an oral information and not a report of the presidency which will help to control the temperature in the room. PM Vanhanen will inform even more thoroughly the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The two sherpas for the Treaty talks have already been nominated on the part of the incoming German presidency. They are Uwe Corsepius, chief European policy advisor to Chancellor Merkel and Reinhard Silberberg, state secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and former European policy advisor to Chancellor Schroeder. They are both old hands in the business, the closest that EU policy experts come to the grand Flemish masters in the world of painting. They are also supporters of the deepening of the integration process.
In his 12 December letter to heads of state and government, PM Matti Vanhanen proposed that the discussion at the summit starts with improving the efficiency of the decision-making process in the field of justice and home affairs. At stake here is the so-called passerelle clause envisaged in article 42 of the Treaty on the European Union by which the area of police cooperation and judicial cooperation in penal matters can be transferred to the community regime which may – but does not have to – be accompanied by a change from unanimity to qualified majority in the voting method. The decision of the Finnish Prime Minister to open the summit with this issue is a slightly risky one, given that a majority of the Member States are opposed to making the passerelle operational given that it requires fully-fledged national ratification procedures. On the other hand, the inability of putting passerelle to any sensible use will place emphasis on a comprehensive Treaty as the only method of improving the efficiency of the decision-making system in the EU. This may well be a significant value-added of the summit. It would also be in line with the spirit of the decision by the Finnish parliament, the Eduskunta, which has recently ratified the Constitutional Treaty. In this way, although not scoring very highly with the summit results themselves, the Finnish presidency could be helping to restore the necessary internal vigour in the EU for the next year. This would be a worthy cause.
A “strategic debate” on further EU enlargement is also planned for the Brussels summit. It promises not be very emotional given that the most important issues have been addressed in the enlargement strategy of the European Commission of 8 November and in the decisions of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of 11 December concerning above all the freezing of accession negotiations with Turkey in eight chapters as a results of its insufficient implementation of the customs union with the EU. Member States which aimed at making the enlargement process more stringent had succeeded to make their point in their close work with the European Commission and the Finnish presidency. In the draft European Council conclusions there are therefore provisions which will make the EU even more scrupulously review the progress of countries aspiring to membership.
The European Commission is to be tasked with analyzing the impact of the process of enlargement on key EU policies at different stages of the accession process, especially in the opinions on applications to join of the prospective candidates. If this provision remains in the text of the conclusions, this will be an important success of the advocates of making a “pause” in the process of enlargement. One ought to remember that the methodology of enlargement has been successively improved in the recent years. Croatia and Turkey have new hurdles to overcome which had not been there when Poland and other 2004 entrants negotiated their accession. The suggested decisions will not stop the process of enlargement but will create a possibility for the skeptical Member States to control it more closely and slow down the pace if necessary.
The December European Council will also draw conclusions from the review of the Hague Programme. It will take decisions about the comprehensive European migration policy, including by means of international cooperation and dialogue with third countries, cooperation among Member States in the fight against illegal immigration, management of the EU’s external border, development of legal migration, promotion of integration and realizing the Common European Asylum System by 2010.
Conclusions of the European Council will also feature provisions about innovation policy, energy policy, climate change and the most important external issues. They are, however, not expected to be discussed.
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