European Constitution: what
is it all about?
MME CLAUDIE HAIGNERE, MINISTER DELEGATE FOR
EUROPEAN AFFAIRS, FRANCE
In France, the debate on the draft
Constitution for Europe has got off to a very fast start. Perhaps too fast, judging by the
sometimes incomprehensible errors revealed by some commentaries. The 13 June election was
another missed opportunity to talk at last about Europe, instead of making it, to
paraphrase Clausewitz, the continuation of the States’ petty political wars by other
means. Let’s ensure that the Constitutional Treaty, the fruit of ten years of debate
and of half-failed attempts, in Amsterdam and Nice, is at last the opportunity to engage
in serious discussion on what Europe is and what we want to make it.
So let’s go back to the text. This
Constitution, which seemed utopian even five years ago, is firstly a major reform of the
institutions so that the enlarged Europe can function. The European Council will have a
full-time President so that the EU can have a strategy and a vision. The size of the
Commission will be reduced, so that the EU is governed efficiently without being held
hostage by the particular interests of twenty-five States. The new voting rules in the
Council of Ministers will make it much easier for it to take decisions, while taking
fairer account of the demographic weight of large States, like ours. There will also be
some forty areas in which decisions will no longer be taken unanimously but by qualified
majority, allowing Europe to build new common policies. The European Parliament will
become the EU’s co-legislator, on an equal footing with the Council. And last, but
not least, the EU will have a foreign minister to make its voice heard in the world.
The Constitution also contains detailed
concrete fundamental rights which every EU citizen can now invoke. Of these, social rights
are the most significant. The strong resistance aroused in Britain to incorporating the
Charter of Fundamental Rights into the Treaty proves its importance: by giving them
binding force, the Constitution now places at the top of the European legal order the
right to education, the right of workers to information and consultation within the
undertaking, protection in the event of unjustified dismissal, and the right to negotiate
and take collective action, to take just these examples.
The Treaty also endorses the role of the
public services and gives the EU the means to define the principles and conditions of
their implementation: this is an important victory for the model we have always championed
in Europe. The Constitution therefore marks an important milestone on the pathtowards a
Social Europe which won’t be built in a day. There’s nothing surprising in this:
it’s one of the most recent and most difficult areas of EU action since it affects
societal choices in member States, and thus national identities. The EU has just welcomed
ten new countries which are far less rich than ours, which can’t allow themselves
eitherour level of social protection or labour law requirements: it’s naive, or even
irresponsible to want today to impose our French standards, with a minimum wage and
35-hour week, especially since the latter is highly controversial in France. We won’t
build Europe with fantasies; indeed, deceiving them on what they can legitimately hope for
from a Europe which we aren’t building on our own is a sure way of putting them off
it.
But we’re told that the problem
isn’t here, that people are criticizing this Constitution not so much for not being
social enough, but because it precludes any future progress since the unanimity rule would
make any revision impossible. My answer: read the Constitution before commenting on it if
you want to be sure of not deceiving the French. On social matters, unanimity remains the
rule because a large number of our partners aren’t ready to give up their veto in
this area; the Constitution takes formal note of this. On the other hand, and this is the
fundamental point which I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere, it gives us a new
instrument which will allow us to make headway in the socialsphere as well as in all the
others: the European Council, unanimously, will now be able to decide at any time to move
to qualified majority voting in a specific area. If, in future, member States agree to
take decisions in the social or fiscal spheres by qualified majority, they can do so
without the need for any revision of the Constitution. So nothing is set in stone in the
Treaty, as people are wrongly saying: on the contrary, the Constitution facilitates
changes in policy. Moreover, there is nothing to prevent several member States from
choosing spheres in which to move forward together in the "enhanced cooperation"
framework: that’s how the euro was born and it’s probably how we shall build
fiscal Europe. This will also be possible in defence, since the Constitution at last opens
up the enhanced cooperation mechanism to this area.
On the other hand, what will happen if, on
the pretext that it isn’t good enough, we reject this Constitution as some people
want? As regards EU policies, we shall regress where the Constitution would have allowed
us to make progress, on, for example, asylum, immigration, judicial cooperation and
defence. Everywhere else, we shall retain the same
inadequacies, especially in the social
sphere, while depriving ourselves of the possibilities of progress for the future the
Constitutional Treaty gives us. Finally, we shall have to invent the means of operating
with twenty-five, perhaps twenty-eight members in an EU handicapped byour present rules,
with an oversized Commission and without a European
foreign minister. Those who want this whilst saying they are
Europeans haven’t understood what they are saying, or don’t want Europe and
haven’t got the courage to say so. |
