No matter how hard Europe’s leaders look to the future, they can’t seem to shake off fights of the past.
EU leaders Friday dove into a debate over the bloc’s future, aiming to use a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome later this month as the pivot to a more dynamic, multispeed alliance.
But leaders were also on a collision course over two age-old policy fights that must be resolved before the festivities in Rome: the timeless quarrel between right and left over social policy, and a classic dispute over how to calibrate the EU’s current position on new members.
Statements about the EU’s so-called social pillar and about enlargement of the bloc are to be included in the formal declaration commemorating the Treaty of Rome and charting the course ahead, but at the moment there is still no consensus on those points.
Italy, the host of the Rome celebration, and other countries with deep socialist political traditions are pushing for a more robust statement on the EU’s traditional and future role in social welfare policy, while conservative-leaning countries are more reticent. And Croatia, in particular, would like a restatement of the EU’s plan to welcome new members — an issue of great importance to its Western Balkan neighbors — while Western European countries see a risk of giving new ammunition to populists.
“The real threat for consensus when it comes to the Rome declaration is not the multispeed issue,” said a senior EU official. “I am relatively sure we will manage this problem.”
“The real problem is the social Europe because here the division is clear, very traditional and a little bit ideological,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “This will be for me the real challenge to find the common language on the social dimension. And on enlargement: As you know some countries want to at least to mention that Europe is still interested in enlargement and some of them are very, very skeptical to this idea.”
Wrangling over the language in the Rome declaration underscores the extent to which leaders have plunged headlong into a discussion about the how members of the bloc will work with each other going forward, but have yet to forge agreement on an overall policy vision for the EU in the 21st Century.
“This is about delivering more effectively,” another senior EU official said, noting that average citizens are not interested in wonkish policy debates. But delivering what? That question has yet to be answered.
It was clear on Friday that Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and his senior aides had succeeded in having an impact on the discussion among EU leaders by pushing out a white paper outlining five scenarios for the bloc’s future several weeks ahead of schedule.
In a moment of feigned modesty, Juncker, at a news conference Friday, said he had not expected the white paper to be a part of the leaders’ conversation but since it had come up it was important to note that neither he nor the Commission had endorsed any particular path forward.
“I didn’t expect us to discuss the white paper, nevertheless some of our colleagues made a reference,” he said. “The five scenarios the Commission has proposed in its white paper are not the preferred scenarios by the Commission but are the ideas which are floating around and which are debated and discussed in all our member states, in our civil society, in the press rooms.”
Pre-election positions
Some officials said that the discussion the leaders had now undertaken in earnest would ultimately serve as the framework for EU elections in 2019, including the contest to replace Juncker, who has said he will step down then, at the end of his first five-year term. By this thinking, candidates to lead the EU’s executive body going forward would be compelled to stake out a preferred scenario or combination of paths.
At the same time, the accelerating discussion about a multispeed EU has already shifted the strategic thinking of some leaders.
Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, which together form a sort of middle-weight clique called the Benelux countries, said Friday they would join forces with the Visegrád Group — Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic — and the tiny Baltics — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — in an effort to counterbalance the influence of larger powers, such as the “Formidable 4” of Germany, France, Italy and Spain whose leaders gathered last week in Versailles to endorse the multispeed concept.
To highlight their solidarity, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel and Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel arrived together at the meeting Friday.
At a briefing later, Michel said that leaders should strive to issue a declaration in Rome in plain language, without any footnotes or EU jargon, that presents a clear message to the citizens they serve.
“This message should be lucid and positive about the future,” Michel said.
The task of drafting the Rome declaration ultimately falls to Juncker, European Council President Donald Tusk, Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, as the host, and Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union.
Officials said that leaders, including Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydło had expressed a desire for leaders to jointly sign the Rome declaration — though some might wonder if Szydło was preparing an ambush given her refusal to support the joint conclusions of the European Council summit meeting on Thursday.
At his news conference with Juncker Friday, Tusk said that his goal was to stress unity over the variable speed model, particularly with formal Brexit negotiations expected to begin within a few weeks.
“Our last meeting in Malta, subsequent opinions voiced by some member states as well as the European Commission’s White Paper leave us in no doubt that the idea of a multispeed Europe will be one of the discussions ahead of the Rome anniversary,” Tusk said.
But, with regard to Brexit, he said: “It is clear from the debate that the unity of the 27 will be our most precious asset.”
Colleagues described Tusk as exhausted by the run-up to the formal triggering of Article 50 by the U.K. Still, Tusk said he remains upbeat. “After today’s debate, I can openly say that all 27 leaders agree with this objective,” he said. “This was an optimistic conversation about our common future.”
Jacopo Barigazzi and Quentin Ariès contributed reporting.
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