Munchau's Blog: Amato's proposals are good, but do not go far enough

 

 

Giuliano Amato is one of the great wise men of modern European politics. A former prime minister, and current interior minister, he was vice-president of the Constitutional Convention that gave rise to the present draft. He is also president of the Action Committee for European Democracy, whose name speaks for itself. What is perhaps less known, is that Amato is also one of the sharpest constitutional lawyers in the EU.

 

Whatever Amato says about the European Constitution deserves to be taken seriously. In an article in Le Monde on January 25, he made a concrete proposal. First, he said that under no circumstances will it be possible to present France and the Netherlands with the same text. This would be an insult to the voters. This was, until recently, the position of Germany, and also of Romano Prodi. Amato is right on this. You cannot ask the French and the Dutch to vote on the same text twice. It would be worse than an insult. They would almost certainly vote No again, possibly with an even bigger margin.

 

Amato does not go into the mini-treaty debate, which began last autumn with a proposal by Nicolas Sarkozy. I would not be surprised if Amato dismissed this idea as unworkable. He was in the hot seat during the convention. Nobody was better placed to witness the innumerable compromises that led to the final draft. You cannot pick out a small number of your favourite elements, as Sarkozy did, and then expect to have a Treaty that 27 countries can sign up to. Unlike Amato, Sarkozy was not at the Convention.

 

Amato proposes something different. He argues that the last time the Europeans had a consensus about what needed to be done was during the Laeken summit of 2001. The Laeken Declaration called for the European Union to be more democratic, more transparent and more efficient, which might take the form of a constitutional treaty. Amato argues that the Laeken declaration called for simplification first, and for a constitution second. As a first consequence of this analysis, he proposes to scrap the name.

 

Furthermore, he also proposes a number of other changes: leave part I of the Constitution in place - the bit that deals with the EU's institutions and voting rights. Part II - the charter on fundamental rights - should also remain, but could be relegated to a protocol, but with full legal force. Part III is the longest, the one that contains most of the simplification of the existing treaties. He proposes to cut part III down to size. Everything that is excluded would fall under the old existing treaties. The end result is a much smaller, more readable and possibly a less controversial constitution.

 

Of course, nothing will change in reality. Amato is not proposing a single political change. The EU under the Amato treaty will not be any different than the EU would have been under old constitution. Amato's Treaty is the old Constitution in drag.

 

This is why I do not think it will fly. His proposal is, as the British would call it, too clever by half. The French and the Dutch had political grievances, with which I would mostly disagree, but which need to be addressed in some form or other. The French problem with the Constitution was not that it was too large, or that the name was offensive. They did not see how this Constitution would solve what the French perceive as Europe's problems in the 21st century. While I wholly reject the French establishment's answer to this question - which boils down to protectionism in various guises - I have to acknowledge that we cannot solve this particular problem through a clever selection of words, be it in the form of a new name, or in the form of easier-to-read text.

 

The reason why this document carries the name of a constitutional Treaty is because it is a constitutional Treaty. The Treaty of Rome, and all successor treaties, also contained strong constitutional elements. The Maastricht Treaty, for example, established a European citizenship. If this is not a Constitutional right, then what else is?

 

So let us call a spade a spade. And let us also not forget that part III is the old treaty put together in a simpler form, plus the stuff necessary to make part I work. There is no problem with putting part III, or most of it, into a mezzanine layer in the legal hierarchy. But if we want to solve the non-ratification problem, we also need to change some of the substance, not just the form.

 

For example, the article on enhanced co-operation, which allows a group of countries to form a core group of an integrationist vanguard in specific areas, could be significantly strengthened. We may go one step further and formerly establish the euro area as one such core area. This would be a much more constructive answer to our collective action problem in economic policy than to bash the ECB. Since France and the Netherlands are also part of the Schengen group, this may offer another possibility for enhanced co-operation.

 

Amato's proposals are nevertheless useful, for they show us what needs to be done technically to prevent the process from sliding into technical and legal chaos. But this is not enough. The discussion on European future constitution needs a political dimension, or else it will fail.

 

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