| European Union: after the reform treaty |
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by George Schöpflin Jul.10.- The reformed treaty on which the European Union agreed in Brussels in the early hours of 23 June 2007 is both a compromise and an improvement on the two years of uncertainty that followed the French and Dutch rejections of the projected constitution in 2005. Nevertheless, the treaty raises a number of key issues that are likely to haunt the EU in the years to come, basically because as with many compromises, serious issues are unresolved. At British and Dutch instigation, the reformed treaty stipulates that the EU is to lose its symbols, such as the flag, the anthem and "Europe day". These losses may not appear significant at first sight, because symbolic elements tend to be dismissed as marginal. In reality they are a way to promote identification, in this case to strengthen the identification of the citizens of Europe with the EU, something that is currently weak. Not for nothing did the British and Dutch, the most Eurosceptic governments, focus on the symbols. If they were as irrelevant as people often think then their removal would not have been seen as important. But they were understood to be what they are - the underpinning of a state-like identity, of the EU as a political entity with its own autonomous political existence. In a democratic world, this autonomous political field should have its own direct access to legitimation by those affected by the EU's power - the citizens. Intuitively or consciously, the anti-integrationist member-states recognised that the symbols would enhance the relationship of the citizens of Europe with the EU - and saw this as weakening their own power over their citizens. Whether these relationships were really quite as zero-sum as this, these states did not want to take the risk of finding out whether establishing a stronger political relationship between the EU and the putative European demos would weaken the cohesiveness of the nation-state. The nation: from danger to redoubt The relationship between the EU and its member-states is and has always been an uneven one, in that integration can move forward only if the states agree on this. In effect, despite the EU possessing its own autonomous field of power, it lacks the capacity to enlarge this without the member-states's consent. The member-states will only do this if they think it is in their interest ... [ full text ] |
