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Dr. Guy D. Whitten
EUCE Interim Director
Guy D. Whitten
is Associate Professor and Director of
the Graduate Program in the Department of
Political Science at Texas A&M University. He is
currently the Interim Director of the European
Union Center of Excellence (EUCE)
The
State of the Union
Guy D. Whitten
EUCE Interim Director
As the US is in
the process of going through one of the most
wide-open presidential primary seasons, the
European Union is also going through a wide-open
period of its own. All at the same time, the EU
is consolidating its largest expansion of
membership to date, considering further
expansions, and grappling with a set of
existential issues at the center of a
constitutional crisis. In this brief essay I
will discuss each of these issues and make some
suggestions about what we ought to be looking
for as observers of the European Union.
I recently had the opportunity to reflect on
many of these issues during a series of
presentations by Texas A&M Faculty at a workshop
for teachers of kindergarten to twelfth grade
from our region. The EUCE partnered with the
Office of International Outreach to sponsor this
teacher's workshop that was held at the College
Station Conference Center on January 25th. The
objective of this workshop was to present
teachers with current information on global
issues related to the European Union.
I opened my own talk with an admission that in
the late 1980s I predicted that the beginning of
the end of the European Union would occur when
the member nations attempted to merge their
currencies. By watching this process unfold and
seeing my own prediction go wrong, I learned a
lot about the way that the European Union works
and, in particular, how it overcomes difficult
obstacles. The “it” in the last sentence is an
intentionally vague term because the European
Union has so many different bodies acting on its
behalf and making crucial decisions. One
commonality across these different bodies is
something that I call the “euro-compromise.” In
every EU decision-making body, there is a strong
emphasis on decisions being made by
super-majorities and often by unanimity. This
means that minorities of any numerical magnitude
have the ability to hold up policy changes at
every juncture. But this also indicates that
experienced negotiators in EU decision-making
bodies have learned how to compromise with
stubborn holdouts and still accomplish their
major objectives in bringing about important
changes. In the case of the currency union, we
saw a classic piece of euro-compromise come out
of the decision over who would be the first head
of the new Central Bank. This decision looked
like it was possibly going to derail monetary
union in a dispute between Germany and France.
After a series of late night negotiations, it
was announced that Wim Duisenberg, a Dutchman
favored by Germany, would serve the first term
but then step down early despite there being no
legal obligation for him to do so. He then would
be succeeded by a Frenchman named Jean-Claude
Trichet. This allowed both sides to claim a
victory of sorts and the incredible process of
currency union moved forward.
New Members and the Question of Where Does the
European Union End
In the late 1990s the EU faced another crucial
juncture over the admission of new members. On
the one hand, there were strong diplomatic
reasons for the EU wanting to admit new members
into its club of politically-democratic and
economically-capitalist nations. Democracies
almost never go to war with each other and
capitalist nations are usually the most
desirable trading partners. But on the other
hand, the 13 nations being considered for
membership presented a vast array of complex
challenges. Prominent examples of this were
their less-developed economies and workers who
seemed likely to want to migrate westward,
competing for jobs with workers in the nations
that were already members of the union. A major
concern was that the progress that had been made
to bring about a closer union among the then 15
members of the EU might be slowed, stopped, or
even reversed by the admission of so many new
members. This potential tradeoff has become
known as one between “broadening” the EU
geographically versus “deepening” the EU in
terms of the areas in which the central
government of the EU has control.
In the end the enthusiasm for membership in the
EU on the part of the applicant nations and a
lot of compromising by the then-current members
of the EU meant that 10 of the 13 nations
pressing for admission were given the green
light to join in 2004. Romania and Bulgaria saw
yellow caution lights that meant their
memberships came a couple of years later. The
nation of Turkey saw a more crimson-tinted
yellow light with the final decision being put
off once again. The key to the admission of the
twelve new members to the EU, while continuing
to deepen the EU, has been their willingness to
negotiate and to proceed at different speeds in
different areas as defined by geography and
policy arenas. Slovenia, which is currently
holding the Presidency of the European Council,
was allowed to proceed more quickly, which led
to it being the first of the new member nations
to be allowed to adopt the Euro as their
currency. Other nations with less developed
economies have taken a slower path to their
adaptation to membership.
The issue of Turkish membership in the EU looms
particularly large. This is not a new issue. In
fact, Turkey’s relationship and possible
membership in the EU can be traced back to a
1964 association agreement between the two
parties (before the EU was even known as the
“European Union”). The EU’s response to Turkey’s
continued desire to join the join the club has
been “not quite yet.” When the decision was made
to allow the most recent wave of applicants into
the EU, they added about 105 million new
citizens to the EU 15’s approximately 375
million. Turkey alone has over 60 million
citizens and presents a range of cultural and
other challenges. One debate concerning Turkish
membership has been geography and whether or not
Turkey is in Europe. This part of the issue may
have become moot recently when a French
politician suggested considering EU membership
for the North African nations with Mediteranian
shorelines. It seems that even geography can be
changed by euro-compromise here and there.
Crisis and Effective Constitution
One of the most interesting cases of
euro-compromise that I have seen occurred this
fall in the aftermath of the rejection of the
proposed European Union constitution. The
constitution had been written during an 18 month
meeting between 2002 and 2003 chaired by former
French President Valery Giscard-D’Estaign of 108
delegates from all of the member nations.
Highlights from the proposed constitution
included streamlining some of the
decision-making processes, steps toward a common
foreign policy, and a number of symbolic items
such as an official anthem, flag, and
declarations about what the Union was all about.
The difficult part of the proposed constitution
was the ratification. Nations divided into two
groups for this stage—those that would attempt
to ratify the constitution by votes in their
national parliaments and those that would
attempt to ratify the constitution by
referendum. There was no room for error; all
twenty-five nations needed to ratify it or the
constitution would be dead in the water.
Referenda offered the most real danger. A wealth
of survey-based evidence has demonstrated that
referendum voters in Europe tend to vote as much
on their evaluation of the incumbent government
as they do on the specific referendum question
being posed. In France the unpopularity of
President Chirac was seen as a major factor in
the “non” votes. The French rejection by 55 per
cent of the voters was followed shortly by a
resounding 61 per cent no vote by Dutch voters.
At this juncture, we must wonder how severe a
blow this rejection will be to the future of the
European Union. In symbolic terms, there is no
doubt that this was a setback. A lot of energy
had gone into the drafting of the constitution,
and it was seen as the next logical step in the
evolution of the European Union. But beyond the
symbolism, the defeat of the constitution should
not be overestimated. The EU has made steady
progress throughout its history in terms of both
broadening and deepening without a written
constitution. What it has instead of a written
constitution is what political scientists call
an “effective constitution.” This term means how
actually a country or entity is governed. Even
in nations where there is a written
constitution, there can be substantial
differences between that constitution and the
effective constitution. In the case of the EU,
the effective constitution is determined by a
collection of treaties. In the aftermath of the
constitution’s defeat, the leaders of the EU
member nations drafted yet another treaty, known
as the Treaty of Lisbon, that brings about
almost all of the changes to the effective
constitution that were in the defeated written
constitution. The main elements that were not in
this treaty were the symbolic elements such as
the language about the EU anthem and flag. This
was euro-compromising at its absolute best.
The two main lessons that I’ve learned from my
observations of the evolution of European Union
are “don’t bet against the EU” and “keep an eye
on the compromise.”
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