Countering the forces of fragmentation in Europe

In the wake of the Scottish referendum Cornelius Adebahr explores how Europe must reform itself to remain fit for purpose.

After the Scottish referendum, commentators detected a new fault line in Europe, that of regional independence or, more broadly, a resurgent nationalism. Yet this is only one of at least three forces testing the continent’s internal cohesion. The others are an emerging split between “the elites” and “the people”, as evidenced by the success of populist parties in the last European elections throughout all member states; and the ramifications of the economic and financial divide, exposing different business models (competitiveness!) and fiscal approaches (austerity!) in Europe’s North and South, respectively.

While there can be no panacea to these trends, there are two very fundamental approaches that the European Union and its member states should promote simultaneously to counter them. First, the EU should look at a radical overhaul of its internal construction to accommodate the widespread frustration of citizens. This goes beyond laudable management decisions such as those by the new Commission President, Jean-Claude Juncker, who asked his team to be big and ambitious on big things, and small and modest on small ones. Rather, it aims at the core of the unwieldy word of “subsidiarity”, EU speak for (supposedly) taking decisions at the lowest level possible. It has been a general principle of EU law for more than two decades but has so far not been imbued with tangible meaning beyond the relation between the EU level and its member states. This is, not least due to its incorporation into the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, how subsidiarity came to be understood, i.e. as a means to claim national over European competency. Its (European political) origins, however, is the European Charter of Local Self-Government, passed by the Council of Europe in 1985.

This highlights the fact that efforts such as by the UK government to “repatriate” certain powers from Brussels fall far too short, as they fail to consider the levels of decision-making within member states. Without prescribing in detail how the latter have to be organized internally, an overall rebalancing of the relationship between Brussels and member states’ capitals, the subnational (regional and local) levels as well as Europe’s citizens is needed. The further decentralization of the UK after the Scottish referendum could take place in this context.

Obviously, a broad “revision of competences” would have to result in a Treaty change with all the imponderables this would imply. However, planning this process carefully is certainly more advisable than to jump into it on last minute promises to avoid a British exit from the Union.

Once having begun to think about a Treaty revision and in the spirit of “thinking big”, the case can be made for the EU to become a “Pan-European Union” and encompass all the continent’s sovereign countries – currently 50 (but maybe soon more) – based on different forms of internal integration. The idea is simple: Rather than fortify the wall around its current exclusivity, which makes entry increasingly difficult and exit a political emergency, the EU should broaden its membership to the entire continent based on different forms of internal integration.

The most basic level of integration would be about “rights and democracy”, as currently embodied in the Council of Europe, an independent international organization based in Strasbourg. It counts Russia (though not Belarus) among its 47 members, who have all signed the European Convention on Human Rights. Fusing this body’s work in the name of 800 million Europeans with the EU’s own mechanisms can give human rights and democracy promotion a much-needed boost. The next level of integration would be the “economy”, as currently enshrined in the EU’s Single Market and the European Economic Area (Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway) as well as Switzerland. This is also the level of integration that the UK presumably would want to keep.

Higher levels of integration – economic-monetary as in the Eurozone or political-internal as in the Schengen area – can be reached according to clearly defined internal rules. However, they would be an “enhancement” of a country’s membership status rather than an “enlargement” of the EU as a whole. Ideally, this would enable the UK and others to choose a level of integration that better fits their likings, while considerably improving the prospects for countries in the Western Balkans, in Eastern Europe, or even the South Caucasus to advance within the EU rather than outside of it (with no perspective for when they would be ‘good enough’ to join).

The forces of fragmentation have slowly crept upon Europe. Halting their advance requires a bold and symbolic move: calling for a Congress of Europe that institutionalizes a “Europe whole and free” by creating a Pan-European Union for all European states, with internal mechanisms for a new distribution of competences between all levels of government. This symbolically and politically powerful move would not only help pre-empt the ripple effects of a post-Scotland ‘secessionist wave’ or the potential of a ‘Brexit’ in 2017, but also impact on the stalled enlargement debate as well as on the protracted conflict in Ukraine. If this is what four million voting Scots will have contributed to bringing about, then all of Europe can cherish a “Braveheart” moment.