H:\Munka\02 COF\04 Az EU jovoje\00 osszefoglalok\EuCET The Future of Europe.doc 1 ◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙ European Union Civil Cooperation Council ◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙◙ THE FUTURE OF EUROPE OUR VIEW DRAFT Content The idea uniting Europe 3 The Convention 5 Four alternatives 9 Europe as a federal state 9 European empire 10 Europe as a free trade area 11 Confederation of sovereign nation states 11 Other ideas 13 Flexible cooperation 13 Localisation 14 A poll about the political form of the union 15 Identity forming elements 16 Common language 16 Common history 16 Common culture 17 Common values 17 Common foreign policy interest 18 Common ground 19 Eurobarometer survey on European and national identity 20 Conference on the future of Europe 21 The euro and its controversies 25 Eroding the welfare state 28 Foreign, security and defence policy 30 Immigration and asylum policy 38 The demographic challenge 41 Literature 44 H:\Munka\02 COF\04 Az EU jovoje\00 osszefoglalok\EuCET The Future of Europe.doc 2 March, 2021 H:\Munka\02 COF\04 Az EU jovoje\00 osszefoglalok\EuCET The Future of Europe.doc 3 H:\Munka\02 COF\04 Az EU jovoje\00 osszefoglalok\EuCET The Future of Europe.doc 4 THE IDEA UNITING EUROPE The idea of uniting Europe is not new. In its history, smaller regional empires and alliances have been successful, such as the Danish Empire in Scandinavia (13th-15th centuries), the Habsburg Empire in Central Europe, the Lithuanian-Polish Empire in Eastern Europe, and the Association of Hanseatic Cities, which was essentially a free trade agreement between the Baltic cities, or the Union of Kalmar. These empires or alliances were able to survive for centuries, until they eventually disintegrated as a result of changes in political power or in the interests that formed the alliance. However, the desire for the unification of Europe has not died down. We can list such aspirations from almost every century, but from the point of view of today's European Union we can perhaps mention Victor Hugo, who raised the idea of a United Europe at the 1849 Paris Peace Conference. The true European dream, inspired by Goethe or Victor Hugo, only really took shape with the Pan-European League of Count Coudenhove-Kalergi in 1929, the Congress of The Hague in 1948 and the first European Coal and Steel Community of Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman in 1950, of which the European Union is the direct heir. But all these projects were articulated around sovereign and free nations that amalgamated for the common good. Even the 1957 Treaty of Rome respected the principle of unanimous voting so that every nation, however small, would be respected and not dominated. The High Authority, which had become the European Commission, had to play a role as an inspiration for a step-by-step construction of Europe that respected sovereignties. It had not been designed to become, over the years, that technocratic monster who had arrogated the right to dictate to each and every one his own conduct. The implications came afterwards. General de Gaulle had seen them well, he who had fought against the tendency to replace votes by unanimity with votes by majority. He was suspicious of the European Commission’s claim to extend its prerogatives. He had sent Christian Fouchet in 1961 to draw up another European Treaty, with the ambition of making a more political Europe but dependent on the states and not on this “Aéropage of stateless officials.” In the field of foreign policy, he proposed replacing the European Commission with a Political Affairs Committee under the Council’s supervision. In the course of the Treaties, what was a Community of sovereign nations and became a Union that interfered with everything. The two pages of the 1950 Schuman-Monnet Declaration became the three hundred pages of the Treaty of Lisbon. The European Commission has become a bureaucratic octopus in the everyday lives of Europeans, from the size of pickles to the manufacturing standards for bathtubs. It has both a monopoly on legislative proposals, a plethora of more than 50,000 officials and equivalent to administer them, jurisdictional powers as guardian of the Treaties and a police role in competition policy. It is even given powers without real controls in areas where it exercises exclusive powers, such as external trade policy or the internal market, where it has the right to adopt delegated acts without a framework. It has just been given the responsibility to determine what economic activities are “acceptable” from the point of view of climate and environmental protection, with the consequence for non-virtuous activities being the suspension of aid and the difficulty of accessing bank loans! A kind of right to life or death on economic activities, including those of small and medium-sized enterprises and craftsmen, without any recourse for states or business support organisations. H:\Munka\02 COF\04 Az EU jovoje\00 osszefoglalok\EuCET The Future of Europe.doc 5 The Maastricht Treaty on monetary matters, the Treaty of Nice and the Treaty of Lisbon on migration, movement of persons and justice have considerably increased European constraints. With the €uro, the states have passed under the control of an “Economic Constable”, functions performed jointly by the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) that control their economic policies, distributing good and bad points with serious consequences on their “ratings” (notation for obtaining loans) and possible sanctions. The reference model for the economic policies of the Eurozone has been engraved in the marble of the Maastricht Treaty as being that of the wealthy states of northern Europe, geared towards globalisation and with the cheaper labour force of the neighbouring countries. .Criteria that are not at all adapted to the economic conditions of the countries of the South but that EU intend to impose on them. With Schengen, borders have been removed without any effective coordination of police forces, leaving a golden opportunity for organised crime and Islamist terrorism to spread throughout Europe. On the day of the attacks on the Bataclan in Paris a Friday evening of November 2015, the Europol service for the European coordination of the fight against terrorism was closed for the weekend. The terrorists had arrived from Belgium and some were even able to cross the border back the same day without any difficulty. This Union, increasingly restrictive and unpopular, has failed to cope with the 3 major crises that have hit European countries over the last ten years: - the financial crisis marked by the rout of Greece and the suffocating austerity cure administered to that country against its will; - the migration crisis that has seen Europe overwhelmed open its borders to millions of migrants in total disarray, for which public safety is still paying the price. - the epidemic crisis that took European leaders by surprise and demonstrated the ineffectiveness of one incapable of coordinating its policies and ensuring supplies of essential masks and tests. H:\Munka\02 COF\04 Az EU jovoje\00 osszefoglalok\EuCET The Future of Europe.doc 6 THE CONVENTION ON THE FUTURE OF EUROPE In 2002, a so-called European Convention was convened to take the integration process forward. The Convention on the Future of Europe was a provisional institution, set up following the Laeken European Council in December 2001. It began its work on 28 February 2002. It was initially scheduled to conclude in spring 2003, at the time of the Thessaloniki European Council meeting (20, 21 June 2003). The Convention consisted of 105 members: 3 per EU member country (therefore the 10 new members from 2004 have changed status) + the 3 candidate countries still recognised in 2004 Romania, Bulgaria and even Turkey! Each country had to appoint two deputies or senators plus one person chosen by its government;16 members of the European Parliament;2 members of the European Commission: Michel Barnier and António Vitorino. To these 102 members are added the President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and the two Vice-Presidents Giuliano Amato, former President of the Italian Council and Jean-Luc Dehaene, former Prime Minister of Belgium. Formally, of these 105 members, only the representatives of the already Member States and the institutions of the European Union had the right to vote. But the presence of three Turkish representatives is noteworthy when we know that the right to vote in the Convention was entirely formal and never actually used. As incredible as it may seem, Turkey has therefore participated in the work of the European Convention!! Representatives of the Consultative Institutions, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) and the Committee of the Regions (CoR) as well as the social partners at European level were also present as observers. Pompously inspired by the Philadelphia Convention that led to the adoption of the United States Constitution, it was charged with initiating a debate on the future of the European Union, with a view to convening an Intergovernmental Conference to reform the Treaties. In principle, the Convention was meant to answer questions such as what the Europe of the future should look like, whether it had a federal structure, or it is rather the cooperation of nation-states. However, it soon became clear that a large majority of those who had been in favor of a federal Europe had been invited to the Convention from the outset outset and, in that spirit, had finally drafted a European constitution which, as we mentioned, had been rejected by two Member States. However, it is worth highlighting some of the speeches made at the convention to show that many leading politicians have advocated a more realistic, nation-state cooperation.