Friday, July 01, 2005

www.rockfordinstitute.org

BRITAIN ASSUMES EU PRESIDENCY

by Srdja Trifkovic

On July 1, Great Britain assumed the Presidency of the European Union. For the next six months Tony Blair and his ministers will preside over the EU as it faces the gravest crisis in its history.

That crisis has three key aspects. The rejection of the Constitution by the voters in France and the Netherlands has marked a decisive defeat for the proponents of a single European super-state. The EU's budget crisis was not resolved at a rancorous summit in Brussels ten days ago, with Britain's own rebate providing a major bone of contention. The Sueddeutsche Zeitung saw that summit as "the nervous breakdown of an overstretched political system":

Under Britain's presidency we'll see the ideological clash between the spirit of "old Europe" epitomized by France and Germany that seeks to uphold the 1960s dirigiste "social model," and the demand for a meaner, leaner, more flexible and more competitive EU. Blair believes that the "reality check" initiated by the defeat of the Constitution will help him prevail. The British presidency will be marked by the demand for reduced interference from Brussels and the insistence that increased competitiveness is the only way for the Old Continent to avoid being left behind in the global economy. Blair has a rare opportunity to use the moment of weakness and dismay in Paris and London to induce long-overdue change. As France's Liberation has noted, the proponents of the old "social model" have neither a plan nor a strategy to resist Blair's intention "to reduce Brussels to the role of a bursar serving the states."

Blair's advocacy of an essentially liberal-capitalist model indicates just how far his "New Labour" has moved from its Socialist roots. He is now hoping for the defeat of Germany's Social-Democratic government next September, as Angela Merkel's CDU-CSU of government in Germany would be likely to support his agenda. Germany's conservatives are not Euro-skeptics but they are in favor of reform. Die Welt of Berlin thus noted on June 20 that the EU is not just in turmoil, we see cracks in its construction:

"A pragmatic economic community has turned into an opaque and complex edifice . . . The solution will not be to pursue more and more integration policies. On contrary, Europe consists of functioning states, which are interested in the rule of law, peace, trade and growth. Why should they be dissolved into an overstretched structure? Those who call for a deeper integration are wrong. Europe's goal must be a free trade area of sovereign states, not a completely harmonized giant region."

This view is light years away from the federalist rhetoric that had prevailed in Brussels, Paris, and Berlin until but a few weeks ago. It is now echoed all over Europe. Italy's pro-government, center-right Il Foglio thus editorialized (June 17) that Tony Blair can now seize the opportunity of the constitutional stalemate to offer a clear prospect to Europeans on what interests them the most: employment, economy, globalization, organized crime and immigration: "Blair defeated Brussels' Eurocrats, who wanted to pretend that nothing happened the day after the French and Dutch referendums."

In a brilliant analysis in the Times (June 30), Anatole Kaletsky insists that Blair should now do something unthinkable to Europe's political classes, but blindingly obvious to voters: demanding the return of powers to nation governments from Brussels:

"In diplomatic jargon, he must start to unravel the acquis communautaire. The acquis is a convention that asserts that any responsibility transferred to Brussels can never be renationalised. It guarantees an irreversible accretion of power to the EU. Mr Blair should, as a matter of principle, announce his opposition to this anti-democratic juggernaut. He should show what he means in practice by proposing repatriation of specific policies, starting with issues such as regulations on working time and consumer protection, but aiming eventually for the biggest and most expensive policy-agriculture."

He should also emphasize the diversity of Europe, Kaletsky insists, by rejecting the concept of a single economic model to be followed by every EU country, because Europe is not a single economy. It is a single market; a community of democratic nations, whose citizens choose different economic and social priorities:

"Exhortations from Brussels will not make European nations more efficient. Far more effective is national policy independence, reinforced by competition and awareness of what works or fails in other countries. Britain cannot force France or Germany to adopt an Anglo-Saxon model, but it can teach them about privatisation and financial reform. Britain, in turn, has much to learn from France on health, energy and transport or from Germany on training, export-promotion and research. In other areas, such as labour law and taxes, the nations of Europe can agree to differ, continuing to follow the different social traditions their voters want to preserve."

In the aftermath of yet another election victory at home, Blair's self-reinvention as the exponent of revived national identity and Euro-diversity would drive the Tories even deeper into despair. Ineptly led by William Hague, Iain Duncan-Smith and Michael Howard, and demoralized by an uninterrupted string of electoral defeats starting with the general election of 1997, the Conservatives would be left with no ideas and no policies that are distinguishable from Blair's.

A year ago I noted that a sustained Tory recovery is possible, but it would have required Howard to develop a message more openly critical of Brussels, to rekindle the patriotic spirit traditionally associated with Toryism. His failure to do so is indicative of the continuing crisis of British conservatism, which is the legacy of Margaret Thatcher. She won in 1979, proclaiming that the Conservative Party was no longer a non-ideological national institution-in the tradition of One-Nation Toryism-but a force for radical change. From the upholders of understated respect for the limits of human reason the Tories were to become the New Model Army of the Right.

In the end she was all smoke and little fire. Far from reasserting national sovereignty and re-defining Britain's role in the European Community (as it was then)-or, failing that, leaving it altogether-one year after another Mrs. Thatcher went through the embarrassing ritual of haggling and horse-trading with the assorted Eurocrats and continental political leaders. They did not argue over Westminster's role in matters constitutional, or over sovereignty or identity. They quarreled over the Common Agricultural Policy, and Britain's contributions, and the subsidies it was getting back. Mrs. Thatcher's failure to understand and defend true conservative principles two decades ago made it possible for millions of her supporters to vote for Blair without blinking in the 1990s. The possibility that Tony Blair has over the next six months to present himself as the rescuer of the politics of identity and national diversity may provide a further proof of his shrewdness and his political opponents' lack of vision and energy.

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