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After the winged debate about its future carried on in May, June and
July, Europe got back to deal with routine: inter-governmental conferences,
fiscal systems harmonization, and agricultural policy. But the problem
arisen first by the German minister of foreign affairs, Fischer, through
his speech at Berlin on May 21st surely did not faded in the summer
broil.
Therefore
at Brussels it has established a new and very sophisticated parlour
game: that is trying to guess how it will be the European Union into
ten years, when probably it would have passed from 15 to 30 members.
Questions
to which it must be answered are so many: the European Union will be
a Federal State, a Confederation of Sovereign States, and a simple customs
Union? Will there be or not a president elected by population? Which
will be the powers of the Parliament of Strasbourg? Any answer is- evidently-
related to others, since the European building is so complex and so
anomalous that putting order means solving a giant puzzle of which,
at the current state of affairs, some pieces even lack. Europe pays
for, today, its entering the “phase two” and needs to decide about its
future, the lack of method in building, the casual way it grew and mainly
the different long term targets of the countries as they adhered. Schumann,
Adenauer and De Gasperi, deemed, as Jean Monnet the founder fathers
of the community, aimed mainly to overcome the historical hostilities
that in the past provoked so many mourning in our continent and to get
to a strict collaboration among countries that must rebirth from the
ruins of war.
Only
after the defeat, suffered at the hands of the French Parliament, of
the Defence European Community in 1954, the Six decided to privilege
the economic integration way, that found less opposition, national level,
and that could be a flywheel in the run to welfare. Advances toward
a greater integration were instead blocked first by the coming to power
of general De Gaulle, strenuous supporter of the “Europe of countries”,
than by the admittance in the community of Great Britain, historically
adverse to any cession of sovereignty and more interested to a big customs
unit than to the rise of a political body.
Neither the enactment of an European Parliament directly elected by
population, in 1979, succeeded in changing things, since its powers
were, at least till the early Treaty of Amsterdam, rather limited, and
the habit to fill it with second range politicians surely did not contributed
to its authority. Instead it has acquired progressively weight - special
during the ten-year presidency Delors- the European Committee, great
promoter first of the sole market then of the Treaty of Maastricht in
1991, leading to the establishment of the Euro and, earlier, to the
enactment of the common foreign and security policies.
The result, institutional level, is a kind of two-faced monster without
neither background nor equal that often finds serious troubles in running.
The first head is represented by the European Council, composed by fifteen
heads of government of the member States and sided by nearly ten Council
of other ministries (Foreign Affairs, Economy, Transports, Agriculture
etc.), charged to take all the important decisions. Many of them must
be still taken by unanimity, leading to the result of conferring each
single State a right to the veto.
The
day the member States would become 21 (likely in 2005), or even 30,
whenever all candidates were admitted, councils will become unmanageable.
That's for the fifteen must pass within a year a substantial reformation
of this matter. The second head of the Union is represented by the European
Committee, today presided over the Italian Romano Prodi, and who is
an expression of national governments that designate both the president
and each commissioner.
These
have the double function of community “ministers” and representatives
of the corresponding nations at Brussels, and that puts them sometimes
in conflict of interests. The primary function of the Committee is that
to provide for the enforcement of the European treaties, to repress
infractions and make themselves promoters of new initiatives.
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