FINDING THE BEST WAY TO EUROPEAN UNION
This Thursday, the EU’s top leaders – presidents and prime ministers – meet at Hampton Court palace, for what’s being called an “informal summit”, to cogitate about the very future of Europe. In contrast to the usual regimented “formal summits”, where leaders sit around a huge negotiating table and hammer out the wording of communiqués and directives, Tony Blair envisaged the Hampton Court get-together as more of a fireside chat – shirt-sleeves, cigars, a glass of wine – where the continent’s leaders could toss around a few ideas and think big thoughts.
But in an expanded EU of 25, it’ll have to be a very big fireplace. (It would be politically incorrect to suggest that the five or six leaders whose views actually matter could quite easily sit around a fondue set together and then just tell the others what had been decided.)
The British presidency has been much criticised for achieving very little. True, talks on Turkey’s accession to the EU were finally launched, a success that Jack Straw clutched from the jaws of Austrian efforts to scupper them. But one major issue facing the European Union – the need for speedy agreement on a budget for the next seven years – has been put on the back burner, for the simple reason that Britain is refusing to make any concessions on its budget rebate unless the French also agree to slash farm subsidies. Eurocrats wandering in the corridors of power in Brussels grumble darkly about an “invisible presidency” and six wasted months. But an even bigger cloud hangs over Hampton Court. Following the rejection by French and Dutch voters of the EU’s constitution, which took two years and zillions of euro braincells to write, the process of ratifying it has been stopped in its tracks. Plucky Luxembourg bucked the trend by voting in favour of the constitution, but everywhere else it’s been quietly buried, and the EU has entered what has been dubbed a “period of reflection”.
This debacle is merely a symptom of a much greater problem: the EU has lost its way and hasn’t the faintest idea where to go next.
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