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Principles must guide the EU

ILLUSTRATION: MOUNTAIN PEOPLE

When EU political leaders meet for their summer summit tomorrow, some of them are bound to recall an earlier summit.

The clear rejection of the EU constitution delivered by French and Dutch voters, rampant euro-skepticism in Britain and even growing doubt in Luxembourg, traditionally a pro-EU bastion, have sent an unmistakable message that the ordinary citizens are turning away.

This is exactly what the EU heads of state and government noted in the Laeken declaration of December 2001.

"What counts is more results, better responses to practical issues and not a European superstate or European institutions inveigling their way into every nook and cranny," it said.

The declaration, named for the part of Brussels where it took place, is surprisingly frank about EU shortcomings.

It notes that EU citizens see its institutions as taking decisions over their heads and demand greater democratic control of EU decision-making bodies.

At Laeken, the leaders asked how they could bring the European project closer to EU citizens, in particular its youth.

`The Dutch `Nee' earlier this month and the French `Non' days earlier have brought the politicians down to earth with a bang.'

"The union needs to become more democratic, more transparent and more efficient," the declaration says.

"It also has to resolve three basic challenges: how to bring citizens, and primarily the young, closer to the European design and the European institutions, how to organize politics and the European political area in an enlarged union and how to develop the union into a stabilizing factor and a model in the new, multipolar world."

The answers were to come from the convention set up immediately after Laeken which reported back in 2003 in the form of the first EU constitution. This calls for mere democracy and transparency and simplified decision-making.

It also outlines greater unity in the most important political areas, while at the same time reducing interference by Brussels in other areas.

But the citizens of the EU clearly do not see it this way.

In the Netherlands, the reason given by more than half of those rejecting the constitution was that they feared the loss of their own cultural identity and resented decisions being taken by remote EU institutions.

Although every household received an abbreviated version of the constitution, almost half of those asked said they felt ill-informed about the main issues.

The Dutch "Nee" earlier this month and the French "Non" days earlier have brought the politicians down to earth with a bang.

Either the questions posed at Laeken must receive a new set of answers or the citizens of the EU have to be convinced that the constitution is a sound and necessary one.

Moreover the reforms urgently needed, but now on ice as a result of the negative referendums, have to be implemented somehow if the enlarged union is to continue to function.

EU bureaucrats are agreed that the union can scarcely continue the way it is.

The question for many is not whether the lengthy constitution is past revival, but whether the ideas that underpin it still have any force for Europe's citizens.

Those citizens are still, as Laeken put it, waiting for a concept for "developing a Europe which points the way ahead for the world."
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