CIAO DATE: 11/04

The State of the European Union

The Hon. Richard Duqué
Consul General of France in New York

Occasional Paper Series No. 40

January 16, 2001

European Union Studies Center

Thank you Professor Kaufman.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the French Consulate. I thank you for coming this evening to attend this traditional conference on the State of the European Union. I am delighted to see my colleagues and friends Consuls Generals from Spain, Germany, and Luxembourg. I understand that the Spanish government will be in charge of the EU presidency in 2002 and that you are already preparing for this big task. The State of the European Union is a very ambitious topic. The French presidency, if I may say so, was rather productive. The EU made significant progress in various fields and it is not easy to sum up what we have achieved during the second semester of the year 2000. It's a difficult task for another reason which is the great confusion introduced after the Nice Summit by many comments and press articles, mainly in Europe but also in the US press. This comments, as you have seen , were most of the time critical, biased and often contradictory about what had happened at the Nice Summit. In my view, they did not address the real issues. Most of them focused their analysis or criticism on three main themes.

First, the reform of the EU institutions decided in Nice was too complicated, impossible to understand, and would not work. It was bound to fail, and the EU would soon collapse. The answer to this is rather easy. In Nice, we achieved the best possible agreement among EU members given the constraints which the Heads of State and government had to face during this meeting. We reached a compromise. It is true that it is a complex one, but the system was already complex. It is a compromise between representativity and efficiency. I think that the new system will probably work better than the present one because it is more balanced in terms of voting rights, and a larger number of issues will be decided by qualified majority vote.

The second issue which was overestimated by the press is the issue of parity between Germany and France. If you read some articles, you have the impression that the whole summit was devoted to this question. It was of course not the case. Parity with Germany was not only relevant for France, but also for the UK and Italy. Anyway, it was not the main issue. The idea in Nice was to find a new balance between the so-called smaller and the so-called bigger countries of the Union, not a new balance among the biggest countries of the Union. And finally as President Chirac said after the summit "there was no winner and no looser in Nice" and the "European spirit prevailed" during this meeting.

The third issue which is also dealt with in many comments is the alleged lack of ambition: in Nice there was no breakthrough about the future of Europe, no scheme for the final shape of the Union. It is true but the main goal in Nice was not to design the ideal Europe of the 21st century. The main goal was to agree on a reform of the present EU institutions in order to make the enlargement of the Union possible. You have to remember that the Union had not been able to reach an agreement four years ago in Amsterdam. But finally in Nice, we managed to agree on a reform and the doors can open for new members. So we should not underestimate the results of the Nice Summit. Many comments, as I said, introduced more confusion than clarity in the debate, and did not do justice to the achievements of the EU during the French Presidency. In order to set the record straight and make an objective assessment, we have to recall what our main goals were.

Our main goals were threefold:

1. First, to reach an agreement on the institutional reform in order to allow new members in the EU. Let me describe briefly the main features of this reform. I will not go into details but I think I have to highlight the most important points of this reform. As you know, a significant re-weighting of votes among member states was adopted. Countries will be divided into nine groups instead of the present six. The four big countries will have twenty nine votes in the new system. So parity is maintained among them. Spain like Poland will have twenty seven votes. The Netherlands gets thirteen votes, twelve votes for the next group of states which includes Belgium. Austria and Sweden ten votes. Luxembourg four, etc. You can see all these figures in the chart that the European Commission in New York has prepared for you. A qualified majority will be attained in principle with 258 votes out of 345, i.e. 76.64% of the votes in the 27-member Union. To take into account the population of Germany a demographic verification clause of 62% of the population was introduced. This rule means that no decision can be taken by a coalition representing less than 62% of the population of the Union. You should also note that, in response to the request of countries with smaller populations, a majority of fourteen states in the 27-member Union will be required to confirm a qualified majority.

Starting in 2005 the Commission will be composed of one representative per state until the EU has 27 members. The Commission will then be limited to a number fewer than 27, with the implementation of an egalitarian rotating system. This decision to cap the number of commissioners will be made unanimously.

The range of issues to be settled by qualified majority vote has been extended to about 30 new policy areas, including high level appointments. This means that 90% of the policy areas within the EU will now be decided by qualified majority vote. For instance the extension of qualified majority to some aspects of international trade negotiations in the area of services will help the interests of European businessmen. But at our request this was coupled with guarantees to protect cultural identity. Some fields are still out of qualified majority voting and will still require an unanimous vote, like for instance social issues and also some matters related to immigration and asylum.

Another important point is the "enhanced cooperation" arrangement which will become more flexible and will allow eight countries or more to go further in their cooperation in various policy areas. This is one of the major achievements in the institutional field: the new arrangement to promote and enhance cooperation between member states.

The European Parliament will be enlarged to 732 members to welcome representatives from the new candidate countries.

We should also note that a statement annexed to the treaty states that a new conference will be convened in 2004 to decide among other things the allocation of powers between the Union and member states, the simplification of treaties and the integration of the Charter of Fundamental Rights into them. So, the larger debate on the future of Europe that I mentioned at the beginning of this presentation will take place in 2004 when the conference will be convened. Fundamental issues will be discussed. French leaders have, for instance, put forward the idea of a constitution for the EU. A constitution would be more understandable than the numerous treaties we have now in the EU.

Again, this institutional reform I just described has one purpose. This purpose is to make the enlargement possible and if you look at the positive reactions to Nice in the candidate countries, you will see that these countries have the feeling that the EU did what was necessary to reform itself in order to open its doors to new members. The enlargement process, during the French presidency has also made very significant progress. The European council adopted conclusions that gives us a comprehensive picture of the negotiations as well as ambitious directions for the next stage. If you want some details, I will point out that, in quantitative terms, after twelve ministerial accession conferences, thirty new chapters were completed under the French Presidency and nearly a hundred new negotiating positions presented to the candidates. So, I think we also made good progress in these negotiations and the timetable which was agreed at the Helsinki Summit was reaffirmed: the EU will welcome new countries that are ready to join by January 1st 2003.

2. The second main goal of our presidency after the institutional reform and the enlargement which are linked, was to foster the Common Foreign and Security Policy. Decisive steps were taken in order to give the EU its own crisis management capability. One of the major decision is to set up permanent structures for effective crisis management. The documents adopted in Nice complete the construction phase of European security and defense policy: creation of standing political-military bodies (political and security committee, military committee, military staff), approval of the commitments pledged at the November 20th conference to build a European military force of 60000 men by 2003, arrangements with allies which are not in the EU and with the candidates countries, arrangements with NATO. Now the Swedish presidency that took over on January 1st, and then the Belgium Presidency will take the necessary measures to implement these crisis management arrangements and continue talks with NATO on final arrangements between the two organizations. This is a very significant step in my view, and I don't say that because, as professor Kaufman mentioned in his introduction, I used to be the French Representative to Western European Union. I say that because the field of security and crisis management is really very promising for the EU. I think that thanks to all our partners we have made good progress in this direction with the idea of creating a EU rapid reaction force by 2003.

3. The third main objective we had during our presidency was to address the material concerns of European citizens and to get our citizens closer to the EU. Sometimes, in Europe, people say that the European Union is something very abstract, that citizens cannot understand it, that the EU does not help them in their daily life etc. That is why it is important for the EU to address direct concerns of European citizens. I will not enter into many details, but I would like to mention a few achievements or steps taken during our presidency.

The first one is the proclamation of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in Nice on December 7th. This represents a major political step forward. The Charter embraces in a text accessible to all the values on which our social model is based. Admittedly, this charter lacks juridical scope as a result of the opposition from several states, but it has been decided that we should follow up and include the status of the Charter as one of the issues to be addressed in the next intergovernmental conference.

Another important result is the launch of the European Social Agenda, a five-year working program which includes the fight against poverty, working conditions, modernization of social protection etc. The social agenda is indeed a very important achievement.

The Council in Nice underlined the importance of what we call in our European jargon "services of general economic interests", i.e. what we call in France "les services publics" ("public utilities and services"). The Union reaffirmed their role in maintaining social cohesion in Europe. I could mention other decisions to improve mobility though a comprehensive plan which is intended to eliminate all the remaining obstacles to the mobility of students, teachers and researchers. We also took measures to enhance maritime safety. This is a very strong environmental concern after the latest catastrophies near our coasts. We also addressed food safety. The Union decided a ban on meat-based feed in Europe and started a comprehensive programme to fight the mad cow disease. There was also a decision which was pending, for I think, over two decades about the juridical status of European companies. We also managed to find an agreement on an issue which was also pending for many years, i.e. the taxation of savings within the EU. This may look a bit detailed but it is very important, since it opens the way to a unified savings market without prejudicial competition on taxation. I could go on, but I will stop here.

My final comment will be this one: is the Union in better shape than it was 6 months ago? My answer, you will not be surprised, is yes. Why ? First, we have paved the way for the enlargement of the EU. Second, we improved the efficiency and the legitimacy of the decision making process within the Union. Third, we agreed to build a significant European military capability. Fourth, we are enjoying in Europe now a much better economic situation which adds credibility to our social agenda. And fifth we have planned an in-depth reflexion on the future of the EU which will lead eventually to durable institutions.

We still, of course, have challenges to meet. This will be the task of the Swedish presidency. You may have seen that the government of Sweden has already indicated what will be his main priorities during this semester. Swedish officials described what they call the "three Es". E for employment, they want to go further in the direction of improving the labour market situation. The second E is E for enlargement: they would like to move the negotiations forward. And the third E is E for environment which is, of course, one of the main concerns of our citizens. I wish the Swedish presidency the best.

I would not conclude my presentation without mentioning a big challenge: the introduction of the Euro. The Euro is already a working currency but European citizens will have Euros, banknotes and coins in their pockets starting January 1st 2002. It is not easy to adapt to a new currency. We did that in France in the early sixties, but it was easy to divide by a hundred (one thousand old francs became ten new francs). The change with euro will be a bit more difficult but our governments have prepared comprehensive plans in order to insure a smooth transition to the new currency.

Thank you very much for your attention.