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Europe

NEW WAYS TOWARDS A NEW EUROPE A EUROPEAN UNION OF VALUES AND A EUROPEAN CONSTITUTION

by Elmar Brok

Since 1980, Elmar Brok is a Member of the European Parliament. Among other things, he was in the Committee of Foreign Relations and representative of the EP for contracts of Amsterdam and Nice. Since 1999, Elmar Brok is the Head of Committee of Foreign Relations.

In 2004, Europe has seen a very turbulent, a historic year. Europe has moved on to a new future, though it is not always clear yet, what this future will look like. Will the enlargement to an EU of 25 meet the expectations of the old and new member states? Will the EU stretch out to Turkey, the Balkans and the Ukraine? Will the agreed Constitution be ratified? Will the EU win the hearts and minds of the people it is serving? What will hold the EU together? In all briefness I shall try to answer these fundamental questions and draw a picture of the crossroads we are facing.

Europe shares common values, values that the EU-15 sought to bring to its very front door. Freedom and prosperity have been absent for too long in the ex-soviet states. It was their own effort that freed them, their will to gain back those common values. The EU seized the historic moment to offer the now new members a perspective of permanently securing those values.

Today that decision has proven right, as the democratic systems in those countries are stable, economic growth is way above that of the old members, ensuring a levelling out of the standards of living. The latter in return helps the old member states to deliver to stable and growing new markets. The first analyses of the recent months not surprisingly show that trade between old and new member states has increased dramatically - both ways.

So where are we heading? Does this strategy, an export of freedom and prosperity through enlargement, work everywhere? Surely not. The current enlargement has served Europe well, but it has also stretched the EU to the brink of its binding powers. The danger of overstretching is high. A consolidation is necessary. With the planned accessions of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 both, the funds and the political structures of the EU will be strained to the edge. An EU that was originally built for six evidently will not work well with 27 or more. Historically, all great state-constructions failed on the peak of their geographic extension. Modern technology might help us today, but there is no doubt that the political structures must keep up with enlargements and that the binding powers of the EU, our common values, remain vivid and visible to the individual citizen. For me, this has two consequences: First, we need to offer a third option to the interested neighbours, a European perspective stronger than a mere association but below a full membership. Second, we need the Constitution to be ratified.

Agreement on the Constitution Treaty was possible because our common values visibly could not have been saved in the medium and long term otherwise. It was when the heads of states realised that the Irish EU-presidency clinched the breakthrough.

Just not to be misunderstood, the Constitution is not perfect. But it is much better than the Treaty of Nice. It has renewed the decision making processes to be workable with 25 or more states, with more qualified majority voting. It has ensured that neither small nor large countries lose out. It has given more power to the European Parliament and with that strengthened the democratic value of EU decisions. It has given the EU a face, the EU‘s Foreign Minister, and common structures for representing its common values in foreign and security policies.

But our common values are also directly reflected in the Constitution Treaty. The Charta of Fundamental Rights has been included into the text and is now law. This Charta is based on the European values, religiously and historically established in all regions of the EU. It secures human dignity and addresses some of the worst contradiction against this dignity, for example by prohibiting death penalties or reproductive cloning. Most directly, those values are reflected in the preamble, speaking of the cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe and of the universal values of the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law in the very first paragraph.

The future of Europe could look dim should this Constitution not be ratified in some member states and thus not come into force. It could also look dim, if quick enlargements are considered the panacea for all problems on our continent, regardless of the effects on the present members. But no matter what happens, in the history of the past 50 years of European integration there have been slow downs but there has never been a stall. People have always seen and will see that closer cooperation is the only answer to the high expectations and the increasingly complicated international problems we face. I hope the needed closer cooperation will be achieved through the Constitution Treaty. If not, we would soon see a huge but politically increasingly loose EU on the one hand and a core of European states with stronger cooperation on the other. This would not help our common values to be defended stronger, in Europe and in the world. Also, an EU without the Constitution would never win the hearts of its citizens; it does not have the means to overcome the barely transparent but bureaucratic remoteness of EU politics. But I have seen the most national representatives, the heads of states and governments, unite behind that Constitution Treaty in order to promote our common values. I believe the European peoples can do that too, if they know the options and what is at stake. We will soon know.