Where is Europe in the French presidential campaign?
The French presidential campaign is mainly about domestic issues. But we start hearing the various candidates giving their views on the future of Europe, and more precisely on what should be done to revive the process of EU’s integration after the French and Dutch “No” to the European constitutional treaty.
Here are the basics about Sarkozy, Royal and Bayrou stances on the issue.
On the conservative/Sarkozy’s side, the line could be: “go small, go fast.” The idea is to have the newly elected French President re-launching the process by putting on the table a “mini treaty,” i.e a very minimal version of the European constitutional treaty which would retain only innovative mechanisms (foreign policy dispositions, qualifies majority votes procedures) and would leave aside all the rest. Negotiating such an “ordinary” treaty with European partners should be done by the end of 2007, and then the ratification process would start again. We should forget about approval by referendum, and go for the Parliament way. Such a small but concise treaty would then be ready for implementation in 2009.
On the center-right/Bayrou’s line, the song is different: an almost entirely new treaty should be drafted, which should answer the questions which have been poisonning the EU since the fall of the Berlin wall. The issues at stake are: how do we manage enlargement? What is it that we want to handle at EU’s level and what do we want to leave in the hands of nation states? Do we go for a more federalist approach or do we consolidate intergovernmental decision making process? According to Jean-Louis Bourlanges (MEP, Vice-President of Bayrou’s party and most of all a convinced European..), current euro-scepticism has been fuelled over the past 15 years by the fuzzy picture the EU gave of itself : half way between a truly integrated structure (the Commission mainly) and a purely intergovernmental decision making process (the European council). As a result, no one knows and understands who does what. If we stay there, the EU will survive, but will never develop into the political “animal” it could become. A new ambitious treaty should be drafted and negotiated, and should be approved by referendum : you can’t simply bypass citizens on this one.
What about the socialists/Royal then? Well, one could say they stand half way between those two very different approaches. According to Pierre Moscovici, former Minister for European affairs and currently Vice-President of the European Parliament, going for “small and fast” would be dangerous: we need to be ambitious to revive the EU’s process; if we negotiate starting with a “mini basket,” we take the risk of ending with even less, meaning nothing; avoiding the referendum would be a very negative and dangerous signal. As far as Bayrou’s position is concerned, Moscovici and others do not believe drafting an entirely new treaty is either realistic or appropriate : we should take the existing European constitutional treaty as the basis for a new approach, and improve it by addressing real issues such as economic governance, social rights (in consultation with the rest of the EU..), immigration, and even energy or climate change policies. Moscovici called it a “selective redrafting” of Parts III and IV of the current treaty. We need a strong and improved treaty, approved by referendum.
These three positions make sense I guess, but the following questions remain to be answered : what is the time frame for this? Sarkozy’s speedy approach may be totally irrealistic; the two other candidates argue for a more cautious time frame but do not specifically address the issue. And most of all: what will be the answer of those who actually approved the current Treaty? Which room of manoeuver do France and the Netherlands actually have when it comes to convince their EU’s partners? One has to recognize that all the French presidential candidates acknowledge France can simply not expect her partners to wait for her and go her way. But the next French President will be confronted with two tricky challenges: proposing to the country a convincing “plan for European renewal” at a time where anti-EU and anti-globalization forces are still very strong in France ; convincing European partners that France has a fair-for-all solution to current European deadlocks.
Good luck to them all..