On the EU Constitution

So France has voted no, and Belgium looks likely to follow tomorrow. I have to say, I'm not terribly surprised, so I find it hard to work up the "EU in Crisis?" panic that so many seem to have. If Belgium does in fact reject the proposed constitution, then it looks like the EU will be back to the drawing board. This isn't to say that expansion will stop, or that the constitution will be abandoned entirely. But I do think this vote really puts the issue of the EU's future in the spotlight. The Constitution, aside from some small changes (a President and a foreign minister, who despite their titles probably wouldn't have any real power) was not a document about the future. Rather, it was most of all a way of entrenching the present. This is fine, I suppose, but it doesn't really motivate any passion, even in EU supporters like me.

(I've spent a lot of time re-writing what follows, and I'm having a difficult time really clarifying my thoughts on all this. So apologies if it sounds kind of half-baked.)

So where we are now is a moment to consider the future of the EU. Of course, the primary choice for the EU is still the same: Either more or the same. That is, a more powerful, "federal" Europe - at the very least, an EU that is less beholden to the member states - or an EU that is essentially what it is today, but with some additional ruffles. The EU today has some of the bodies of a national government, but it's still essentially 2/3 bureaucracy. The "Bureaucratic" EU has been a resounding success, in the sense that a great deal of pan-European policy is decided in Brussels, without too much input from the European Parliament. This is, of course, one of the lasting complaints of the EU - if it had to meet it's own criteria for democracy, it couldn't.

The choice for the people of the European member states is both a very simple one, and a very complex one. It is quite conceivable that the EU could continue in something close to it's present form, in to the indefinite future. So the idea that somehow the EU is going to fall apart because of this is absurd. The reaction of the markets, and the plunge of the Euro, is typical overreaction. Europe is hardly tearing itself apart - it's just stopped to think for a moment. The EU could simply choose to abandon the idea of a "federal" Europe, and proceed along the current path - with an ad hoc collection of treaties between the member states. There's no inherent reason why this process should fail - it's cumbersome and unfair to new entrants to the Union, but it has the political advantage of not upsetting the status quo.

Now, I personally think that would be a bad idea, and this is where we have to start thinking about the future. Gwynne Dyer has argued that, within the next few decades, in order to compete in the international arena (economically, politically, presumably militarily) a "major power" will need a population of at least a half billion people, and a large or fast-growing economy to draw from. By 2050, this list will definitely include India, China, Brazil, and the United States. In the economic sense, the EU is already one of the world's largest economies. Politically and militarily, however, the EU is still a midget. If europeans want a voice on the world stage - and that's a question, isn't it? - then some degree of serious political integration is necessary. One of the major absences in the Constitution was the lack of taxation powers - the EU was explicitly forbidden from raising revenue, the basic function of any government. In already heavily taxed European states, this makes sense. But it also is a major roadblock to serious integration.

Nosemonkey at Europhobia has an interesting post positing that the new phase of European integration will abandon the Constitution's one-size-fits-all model, and instead will probably occur between a core of integrationist states, leaving out perennial troublemakers like the UK. Members who didn't want to become even more closely bound would probably stay within the old EU structure, until or unless they became convinced of further integration. I think this would probably be a good idea, and I imagine we'll see Germany propose something like this. But the interesting wrinkle to all this is that Italy, France and Germany are all headed for elections within the next two years, so it's difficult to say which way Europe will turn next.