Speech Lamy: "Hoe kunnen we een Unie van 25 lidstaten laten werken?" (en)

Introduction

Minister (Dick Roche), ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for inviting me back to the Centre for European Policy Stucies this evening. I would like to begin with a message for your International Advisory Council. You are a brave lot. First you face a tough, but excellent, set of questions to address tomorrow. CEPS is not an organisation which specialises in ducking difficult issues. Second, you showed up at the starting event featuring an after dinner speech by Pascal Lamy. I fear I am not renowned for wit and repartee. And indeed I was brutally reminded of this by the organisers. "Whatever you do, Pascal" I was told, "get right into the policy stuff. You're not here for jokes or amusing stories. We couldn't get Bill Clinton. We couldn't even get Pat Cox. We got you."

OK. So I'll jump straight in. The theme of this conference is about enlargement, about how we can make it work. But I would like to put to you that the real debate is now less about how to make enlargement work, and more how we can make the EU work. Less a question of the humble mechanics of the different institutions, and more a question of what we could and should do together. That will be the focus of my talk this evening.

But nonetheless, it must be said that this enlargement is an extraordinary achievement, and arguably Europe's most important ever. It is nearly geopolitical in scale. In business speak, we are about to merge our fifteen existing member states with ten countries to our east and south. To extend the business metaphor a little further, it is important to remember that this merger is a friendly, voluntary act. Indeed, many of our new member states have experienced hostile takeovers, sometimes more than one, in the last century, despite brave "shareholder" opposition.

So. New share-holders. New client base. If this is a friendly merger, how does the EU proceed ? Look for a consultant with a decent track record to give straight advice, and in particular a serious check up on strategy, organisation and image. And let me also pose for you this evening as just such a consultant.

Europe in troubled waters

First thing all consultants need is a market study. Well, we have the numbers, in the latest Eurobarometer poll. We must not become simply poll-driven, a slave to focus groups. But with findings this clear, Europe had better pay attention.

At the end of last year, just 41% of European citizens polled by Eurobarometer declared confidence in the European Union. Worse, less than one citizen in two believes that it is a good thing that their country belongs to the EU. And just to show that the current trend is downwards, no fewer than 25 million European citizens have switched from essentially "positive" on Europe to "negative" (or "don't know") in just the last six months. I could soften the blow for my own institution, citing evidence that the Commission engenders more trust than national governments. But I won't. We are all in this together.

Even enlargement, which ought to amount to an expression of confidence in a European future, is not overwhelmingly popular. France, Austria, Belgium and Germany, for example, all have worrying low levels of support for enlargement indeed as low as 45% in one case.

How serious is this ? Just the latest revenge of a skittish electorate on political leaders ? the political equivalent of Attention Deficit Syndrome ? Again, I don't think so_I fear we have very serious challenges that are unique to Europe that we have to face up to. So let us review, as we should, strategy, organisation, and image.

A clearer strategy

The reason a clearer strategy is needed is obvious. Europe's sense of purpose has become blurred at the edges. Europe has succeeded in the past when we have established a clear focus on key priorities, and stuck to them. Europe is currently trying to ride too many horses at the same time. We need to re-focus on our core business, to pick up on my earlier metaphor. Let us consider again, what our citizens want, because they are remarkably consistent. Again, Eurobarometer gives us a good pointer.

(1) First, our citizens demand that we find a means to address Europe's own version of twin deficits in growth and competitiveness. Economic growth is stagnant now, and the long term pointers are ominous: an aging population, and declining research spending leading to a lower level of innovation in industry. We need a sustained effort to raise the endogenous level of growth, as the Sapir report made clear.

En passant, that may mean confronting unpalatable truths. We may need to recognise that Lisbon has not worked. That we have simply talked up the Lisbon agenda, hoping against hope. But we have neither delivered the resources, nor the political focus and ambition for these vital targets to be reached. As is sometimes the case in politics, we have oversold expectations. We have underinvested in results.

So we need a new Lisbon. Dick [Roche], perhaps it is a "Dublin". And we need to create the same level of urgency, interest, even political hype as we did in the 1992 project to create a single European market.

(2) Secondly, let's not be afraid to use an unfashionable word. Solidarity. That means in the first instance, measures to create real, well-paying jobs in Europe, and I hope that a re-launched competitiveness and growth package will focus on that in the short term. This is the single most important priority, if we are to deliver results which matter to people. But it also means closing the gap between the richer and poorer regions of the continent, and notably between the current and new members of the EU. Of course we can't and won't instantly cut off the regions which currently benefit, but the focus of structural funds must shift to the east.

(3) Europe needs to be more secure and free. The right to move freely within a borderless Union is a useless freedom if we cannot ensure security and justice. So we need a common asylum policy, a common policy on immigration (and let's not confuse the two, by the way), and improved policies on integration into society. 6000 kms of land border and 85 000 kms of sea borders will need managing: and not just by those Member States who, as a result of their specific geography, have more to do than others.

(4) And finally, Europe needs to develop more weight in the international arena. Of course, I will leave it to braver men than me to draw lessons from the conflict in, and over, Iraq. The only clear thing that emerges is that Europe didn't exist in this whole debate. Fine for the likes of me, to avoid awkward questions by saying: "no comment: the EU has no policy." But hopelessly inadequate for the future. Of course, now there is some rather distant light in the tunnel in the form of a European foreign minister, and a distant rumble in the December decision on defence. But in the current planning phase, we have to run before we can walk. And that means sharpening our focus on development and international governance where we have to reorganise so we are more coherent and more consistent. Coherent in that we have to bring spending on the European Development Fund within the overall budget, and not leave it out on a limb. Consistent in that we cannot work in isolation from our Member States or indeed other international organisations like the IMF or World Bank. Europe can and should be "bigger" in this area.

So much for what we want. But for this consultant to earn his fee, or at least his dinner, remember that priorities mean less, as well as more. What does this mean less of ?

One example has to be agriculture. Not because we don't care about our farmers far from it - but because successive waves of reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, the latest only last June, have meant that the share of agriculture as a percentage of our total spending has declined and will continue to decline. Moreover, enlargement brings in ten new Member States, adding 4 million farmers to our existing 7 million, while reducing expenditure in real terms. So the CAP is capped. And the CAP is not only smaller, but smarter: better focused on quality rather than quantity / more oriented towards rural development than boosting production.

So that's the key set of strategic objectives: mapping priorities, with deliverables, onto the wishes of the European citizens, where we have failed to deliver in the past. And the mechanism is the current discussion on financial perspectives. For this vital exercise of long term budget planning is of course really about priorities, not who pays what. Sometimes I feel that we haven't had a really good European level discussion on priorities at all since Agenda 2000. The enlargement process could have been such an occasion, or indeed the Constitutional Convention. But neither turned out that way. So the debate on Financial Perspectives must be that discussion. And if so, when we agree it sometime next year it will mean a de facto political contract at European level between the constituent parts of the European Union, and that is of fundamental importance.

Organisational questions: clearer decision-making and management of the engine

Putting my consultant's hat on again, when talking about delivery of results, where better next to turn than institutional reforms? Europe's organisation has to be updated and improved. And I recall here another clear pointer from Eurobarometer is that voters also want a clearer idea of what Europe does and what Europe does not do. Here, the Constitution should help (although I wish it was a more readable document) in clarifying responsibilities within the system.

The fact is that we are long due for a fundamental overhaul of our procedures, and the Constitutional Convention was a good idea in this respect. For too long, the European debate has been dominated by a false debate between two ideological extremes.

On the one hand, the eurosceptics, who because they believe that the nation state is the only level at which political accountability can or should be exercised, therefore also believe that any European construction must by definition be illegitimate and anti-democratic. And on the other hand, the federalists, who press nervelessly forward for a federal executive uniquely responsible before a genuinely powerful European Parliament.

Whatever we think of these two poles in terms of ideology, they both fail to address the current needs of European citizens. The Eurosceptics are calling on us all to commit economic, and perhaps political, suicide in a globalised world. And the Eurodreamers are determined to sacrifice improvements in today's Europe for a politically unrealistic Europe of tomorrow, or probably the day after tomorrow.

And if we clear away the two poles, we are left with a broader and probably more nuanced debate on the question of addressing Europe's democratic deficit. The key single fix, in my view, is make each of Europe's institutions more receptive to its citizens. The Commission ought to be more accountable than it already is to the Council as well to the Parliament, for instance. Even more pressingly, the Council needs to sort out its decision-making procedures, and here the obvious answer is a simple double majority: i.e., agreement would require 60% of the votes in the Council, together with a simple majority of Europe's population. This would seem to me to be to be the only way to find a compromise between the bigger and smaller countries.

Obvious conclusion: the IGC must deliver an agreement on this issues as soon as possible. And I stress: as soon as possible, given the open, wounds left in Brussels in December. I am glad the Irish Presidency has not rushed this issue, to allow some time for reflection and further thought. But if we want to avoid citizens turning their backs on Europe, we have to see these institutional decisions taken this year and if possible this semester. I hear a deal may be in the works, and that is obviously highly desirable a great feather in the cap of the Irish Presidency.

And one last point: whatever we do, we have to ensure that the final document is simpler, clearer to understand, clearer to use. Everyone agrees on this, usually accompanied by sanctimonious statements about transparency, the rights of citizens to know how they are governed, etc. Well, I agree with all that, that's vital. But please, let's not have the IGC take the rather good work of the Convention and render the text illegible, just in the interests of finding dirty deals. Clarity has to be a key priority.

Communication: Europe and its capacity to entertain / towards a vigourous political life

Which leads me, to a key word in any consultant's presentation: communication, a terribly difficult area for the European Union. I see you have Larry Siedentop on your agenda tomorrow, and there is one area, or perhaps I should say at least one, where I am strongly in agreement with him. The European system of today entirely lacks any sense of political animation. The machine exists, but it lacks soul, as James Brown would say. There is a total absence of real or meaningful debate to get over to citizens what the issues are all about. For want of a better way of describing it, Europe does not entertain its citizens, and therefore it does not involve them.

Of course entertainment doesn't have to mean sex or finance scandals even if that is all that some of the press wants us to read about. For we have all the potentially entertaining accoutrements of a real European political society. To start with, we have a European Parliament, directly elected by its citizens, a unique feature in the world, and gaining strength with every decade which passes. We have enough lobbyists to start our very own K Street. We have every NGO known under the sun, plus several local Belgian branches. We have confederations of every European industry and trade union represented here. And we have here over 1000 accredited journalists from across the world, who know what news is, and know, dare I say it, how to create news where necessary to entertain its readers.

Even European political institutions have changed a lot, particularly under the Nordic influence, much more accepting of transparency in all modern senses of the word. Our web-sites are professionally run. Universities everywhere study us to death.

And still Europe lacks, as I would say in French, both lisibilité and visibilité in political terms. Why is a fascinating issue, and again I don't have time to consider this fully. But a key factor is the absence of political debate on what Europe should be and should do. It's some time now since policy makers both talked policy and politics. The first problem is that neither of the main groupings of the European Parliament the PSE and PPE are much more than distant relatives of national parties, which has not helped. Here, there may be change in the air.

Second problem, politics does not yet travel easily across national frontiers. It is still quite difficult to find consensus between a Swedish social democrat and an Italian socialist. Or between a British Tory and a Belgian Christian Democrat.

And, thirdly, and ironically, as the Economist has pointed out, European entertainment has been the victim of European consensus itself: a consensus between European social democrats and European christian democrats, particularly amongst political elites. Ironic, because it might be a result of the fact that so many "sort of" agreed for so long / on so much, that Europe's citizens never got the chance to discuss the benefits up close, or decide what they really wanted from Europe, apart from a few sporadic referendums here and there. Too easy, all too easy, as a result, to decide that the problem is simply in Brussels.

So now some of those chickens are coming home to roost, to judge from some of the surveys I cited at the start. Another conclusion I have drawn from nearly fourteen years in Brussels is that something like Europe needs a double dose of political legitimacy, a double dose of political entertainment, to really engage its citizens. And every time we argue for the one hundred and fifteenth time about the powers of the Commission against the powers of the Council, we lose more of their interest. Of course these are vital questions, I am not disputing that, and I have my pretty firm views on this type of thing as you probably know, but it's a switch off for European voters.

There is no single answer to such a complex and ephemeral problem. You can't "create" politics. But I would suggest that as a start, the new European Council, indeed perhaps the first European Council properly meeting with 25 members undertake a novel exercise. They should devote an entire day, or an entire Council meeting, as an good executive board should do, from time to time, to debating how to communicate a clearer, more political, more vibrant vision of Europe to its citizens. And how to commit the whole corporation to deliver this message.

And what is the message ? That Europe adds real value above and beyond what Member States can do on their own. European "identity" and "values" are essential, but they don't put food on the table. So as the Centre for European Reform has suggested, perhaps we should look for a fairly utilitarian mission statement for the EU: that the EU exists to ensure greater stability, security and prosperity than any one Member State can achieve alone.

Conclusion

The strange thing is that as the years go by, I find myself ever more committed not just to the notion of Europe I guess all of us here would sign up to that but to the political project of Europe.

For what we have created in the last fifty years is nothing short of a radical re-design of the paradigm of the international system. Perhaps because post Westphalian architecture did not predict or allow for either communism or fascism, we have all forgotten just how radical it is to have supra-national government existing, calmly, peacefully, democratically, across almost all of modern Europe.

In my real job as Trade Commissioner, I spend more than 50% of my time outside Europe. It's a good vantage point, like seeing the world from outer space. And I am often asked if Europe can be an effective laboratory, an effective model, for regional integration on a global scale, to those labouring towards regionalism, for a host of different reasons, in SE Asia, different parts of Latin America and Africa and the Gulf region. My answer of course is yes, as long as you are prepared to learn from our mistakes as well as our successes. In some areas, such as trade policy and no credit to me, I inherited a good system we have our strategy, our organisation, even our communications clear. In other areas, frankly speaking, our contribution to global governance is rather less clear, rather less harmonious.

And can EU-25 work, let alone work well ? Yes again. But we have now to look urgently at how we can produce tangible, measurable, concrete results which respond to the wishes of our citizens. And secondly, we need to bring to vibrant life the political challenges that confront us. Fundamental questions in Europe can no longer be swept under the carpet, or buried under mounds of written procedures or details about comitology.

Two major lessons which say the same thing. Europe has to be lit up by its debates, and at the same time, arrive at the tough compromises which come from a real political process of priority setting, from the political choices of the new Europe.

Only by doing this can we fulfill the literary - last will and testament of Jean Monnet, whose memoirs finish with the following words:

« Les nations souveraines du passé ne sont plus le cadre où peuvent se résoudre les problèmes du présent. Et la Communauté elle-même n'est qu'une étape vers les formes d'organisation du monde de demain ».