Brain-dead Europe?
9/12/20 19:43![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsIs France doing to the EU what Macron earlier defined as NATO's diagnosis?
What I mean by this. Macron recently caused some uproar on both sides of the Pond when he said NATO was becoming brain-dead. But what about the EU? Isn't France and some others trying to do the same to the EU?
First, some context. His remarks were at The Economist, and were caused by Turkey's unilateral intervention in Syria and Libya. Today Hungary and Poland are vetoing a 7-year EU budget that's unprecedented both in terms of size and way of funding, and the recovery plan attached to it, a total worth of 1.83 trillion euro. Europe relies on the money to get back to its feet after the Covid shock.
But no. The two conservative Central European governments don't agree with the funding of the next EU budget, particularly the proposal to tie funding to member states to their adherence to fundamental EU principles like the supremacy of law. And they've got a good reason.
Hungary and Poland are concerned they'd be among the first targets of such a mechanism, since there's been a procedure for freezing their membership rights for two years now, exactly for supposedly violating this principle. Slovenia also sides with these two. The conflict is about to create even deeper rifts among the 27 members, and possibly another Brexit of some sorts. And this, at a time when the EU badly needs consolidation.
Things are set up so in the EU that they need consensus for adopting the budget. Poland and Hungary are hoping the EU would quit the supremacy of law requirement since it urgently needs a new recovery budget right now.
France, one of the proponents of this mechanism, doesn't want to budge. They're suggesting that the EU should bypass the Polish-Hungarian veto through what they're calling an "enhanced cooperation". That's a form of deeper integration between a group of 9+ member states, a coalition of the willing so to speak, who'd work closer together in case some renegades appear like is the case now.
The budget and the recovery plan could probably be accepted by the remaining 25 members through this enhanced cooperation, along with the coveted supremacy of law principle, and this could leave Hungary and Poland isolated and stripped of access to these precious Euro funds.
This enhanced cooperation case is no precedent, by the way. It's what helped create the central EU prosecution. The EU base agreement also includes another similar form of cooperation (the permanently structured cooperation, another fancy name), which helped start building the EU defense alliance. There are other similar forms of enhanced cooperation, for example the one about family law, etc.
Still, so far the EU has never adopted a budget in such an exotic manner, and neither has it tried to strip some of its members of access to its funds. The EU budget is the main instrument for social and economic cohesion, and along with the shared market and the four fundamental freedoms it's the very foundation of the EU that keeps peace and stability in Europe.
Although it's part of the Treaty of Lisbon, enhanced cooperation is not exactly part of the alliance. It's more like a back-door toward bilateral inter-governmental agreements outside the explicit stipulations of the EU agreement, and provides ways for deeper integration between member states so that they don't become hostage to dissenting minorities.
The EU, as Frans Timmermans says, is a company of countries sharing a common direction but going at different speeds, and the slower ones shouldn't be hindering the faster ones from going. To avoid conflicts between them, Europe sometimes resorts to inter-government agreements outside the enhanced cooperation, too. This is how the Schengen agreement was initially conceived; it's also how the so called fiscal compact was created, placing ceilings for the public debt and deficit which then became part of the constitutions and other fundamental laws of the member states.
Every use of the inter-governmental method rather than the union one, however, brings the question: Why do we need this Union at all, if the most important agreements between its members have to be sought outside its legal framework?
France's pressure for more integration within a narrower circle of members, its drive for a smaller, deeper Europe so to speak, means isolating the unwilling and dissenting members, and it brings the message: We don't need this wider, paralyzed, divided, slow Europe, which is full of dissenters. And that's not a good thing for the Union in the long run.
It's rather easy to blame the purported euroskeptic, xenophobic, authoritarian governments in Warsaw and Budapest for the EU's state of affairs. But that would be neither fair nor helpful. Because, given EU's current legal framework, no member state is in the position to judge any of the rest. The attempt to tie funding with the supremacy of law is a maneuver that aims to bypass the existing EU treaty.
To specify, its Article 7 explicitly says when and how the EU can punish a member state with freezing its membership. The other members should be unanimous that it systematically and severely violates the fundamental principles of the Union, as stated in Article 2 of its agreement that deals with the issues of the supremacy of law.
Of course, total consensus is not hard, even impossible, thus the attempts to use the so called "nuclear" Article 7 have always been unsuccessful. But the high threshold for its implementation shows a clear purpose: the founding member states have deliberately limited the powers of their union, and made sure it doesn't become an almighty tribunal that could punish anybody through simple (or qualified) majority. After all, the democratically elected governments of the sovereign member states are the true employers of the EU bureaucratic machine, not vice versa.
The federalists, whom I mostly support, could be required to do something else, but you'd first need another type of European agreement. One way to achieve this is to seek consensus instead of creating enemies. Another is to try to isolate their opponents, and remain in a tighter circle of like-minded allies. Unfortunately, those who are calling the shots seem to have chosen the latter, since it seemingly requires less time and effort - but that's the destructive option in the long run, and the Union will suffer hugely because of it.
If today, a group of governments are looking for ways to impose heavy sanctions outside Article 7, this means they want to add power to the EU that it was never meant to have. Hence the reaction from Poland, Hungary and Slovenia.
Not to mention that the institution that's supposed to decide if the governments are following EU's fundamental principles, are neither the member states represented at the European Council, nor the European Parliament, nor the European Commission - it's the European Court and none else.
Even in the violation procedures (which some erroneously call "punitive procedures"), the European Commission is put at an equal footing with the judged member state, and in case of insurmountable disagreements between the two, the case should be brought to the European Court. Contrary to some cynical misrepresentations by some euroskeptics, the European Commission doesn't have the power to "punish" the governments who actually appoint its chairperson and nominate its commissaries. Rather, the opposite is more likely if the EC oversteps its boundaries. Whether there's a violation, and what sort of sanction a member state should get, is solely the prerogative of the European Court.
Former French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine once said that the push for "more Europe" (which is what this effort to tie Euro funding to the primacy of law basically is), actually leads to less Europe, as it generates push-back at a national(istic) level.
The more important question today is not if France would prevail against Poland and Hungary. The outcome of this stand-off does look pre-determined because of the balance of powers and the conformism of the smaller and mid-sized members forming the majority in the EU. The real question is who would gain what if France prevails.
Maybe the escalation of the conflict around the so called supremacy of law (which, by the way, is not precisely defined in any single document, and has no clear criteria set up) wants to achieve a rift that would produce a geographically and mathematically smaller EU-1 that'd be more manageable, and then an EU-2 that'd have fewer responsibilities, fewer rights, and less money? An Europe of two speeds, as has long been professed? I mean, Macron and his fellow neo-liberals have been blabbering about this for ages.
The pressure for a narrower, deeper Europe in the place of the wider, shallower Europe that we have now, is an indirect admission that the expansion process has been a failure. But to reverse the EU's expansion is like trying to push the squeezed tooth-paste back into the tube. Instead of the smaller and cozier home that the European elite members want for themselves, they'll get a wreck that's prone to further and more uncontrollable disintegration. Those harboring the illusion of a smaller Europe designed after their taste, don't seem to have understood that the Brexit is not part of the past - it's an open wound right now, one that the EU is supposed to be healing, not duplicating and inflaming even more.
What I mean by this. Macron recently caused some uproar on both sides of the Pond when he said NATO was becoming brain-dead. But what about the EU? Isn't France and some others trying to do the same to the EU?
First, some context. His remarks were at The Economist, and were caused by Turkey's unilateral intervention in Syria and Libya. Today Hungary and Poland are vetoing a 7-year EU budget that's unprecedented both in terms of size and way of funding, and the recovery plan attached to it, a total worth of 1.83 trillion euro. Europe relies on the money to get back to its feet after the Covid shock.
But no. The two conservative Central European governments don't agree with the funding of the next EU budget, particularly the proposal to tie funding to member states to their adherence to fundamental EU principles like the supremacy of law. And they've got a good reason.
Hungary and Poland are concerned they'd be among the first targets of such a mechanism, since there's been a procedure for freezing their membership rights for two years now, exactly for supposedly violating this principle. Slovenia also sides with these two. The conflict is about to create even deeper rifts among the 27 members, and possibly another Brexit of some sorts. And this, at a time when the EU badly needs consolidation.
Things are set up so in the EU that they need consensus for adopting the budget. Poland and Hungary are hoping the EU would quit the supremacy of law requirement since it urgently needs a new recovery budget right now.
France, one of the proponents of this mechanism, doesn't want to budge. They're suggesting that the EU should bypass the Polish-Hungarian veto through what they're calling an "enhanced cooperation". That's a form of deeper integration between a group of 9+ member states, a coalition of the willing so to speak, who'd work closer together in case some renegades appear like is the case now.
The budget and the recovery plan could probably be accepted by the remaining 25 members through this enhanced cooperation, along with the coveted supremacy of law principle, and this could leave Hungary and Poland isolated and stripped of access to these precious Euro funds.
This enhanced cooperation case is no precedent, by the way. It's what helped create the central EU prosecution. The EU base agreement also includes another similar form of cooperation (the permanently structured cooperation, another fancy name), which helped start building the EU defense alliance. There are other similar forms of enhanced cooperation, for example the one about family law, etc.
Still, so far the EU has never adopted a budget in such an exotic manner, and neither has it tried to strip some of its members of access to its funds. The EU budget is the main instrument for social and economic cohesion, and along with the shared market and the four fundamental freedoms it's the very foundation of the EU that keeps peace and stability in Europe.
Although it's part of the Treaty of Lisbon, enhanced cooperation is not exactly part of the alliance. It's more like a back-door toward bilateral inter-governmental agreements outside the explicit stipulations of the EU agreement, and provides ways for deeper integration between member states so that they don't become hostage to dissenting minorities.
The EU, as Frans Timmermans says, is a company of countries sharing a common direction but going at different speeds, and the slower ones shouldn't be hindering the faster ones from going. To avoid conflicts between them, Europe sometimes resorts to inter-government agreements outside the enhanced cooperation, too. This is how the Schengen agreement was initially conceived; it's also how the so called fiscal compact was created, placing ceilings for the public debt and deficit which then became part of the constitutions and other fundamental laws of the member states.
Every use of the inter-governmental method rather than the union one, however, brings the question: Why do we need this Union at all, if the most important agreements between its members have to be sought outside its legal framework?
France's pressure for more integration within a narrower circle of members, its drive for a smaller, deeper Europe so to speak, means isolating the unwilling and dissenting members, and it brings the message: We don't need this wider, paralyzed, divided, slow Europe, which is full of dissenters. And that's not a good thing for the Union in the long run.
It's rather easy to blame the purported euroskeptic, xenophobic, authoritarian governments in Warsaw and Budapest for the EU's state of affairs. But that would be neither fair nor helpful. Because, given EU's current legal framework, no member state is in the position to judge any of the rest. The attempt to tie funding with the supremacy of law is a maneuver that aims to bypass the existing EU treaty.
To specify, its Article 7 explicitly says when and how the EU can punish a member state with freezing its membership. The other members should be unanimous that it systematically and severely violates the fundamental principles of the Union, as stated in Article 2 of its agreement that deals with the issues of the supremacy of law.
Of course, total consensus is not hard, even impossible, thus the attempts to use the so called "nuclear" Article 7 have always been unsuccessful. But the high threshold for its implementation shows a clear purpose: the founding member states have deliberately limited the powers of their union, and made sure it doesn't become an almighty tribunal that could punish anybody through simple (or qualified) majority. After all, the democratically elected governments of the sovereign member states are the true employers of the EU bureaucratic machine, not vice versa.
The federalists, whom I mostly support, could be required to do something else, but you'd first need another type of European agreement. One way to achieve this is to seek consensus instead of creating enemies. Another is to try to isolate their opponents, and remain in a tighter circle of like-minded allies. Unfortunately, those who are calling the shots seem to have chosen the latter, since it seemingly requires less time and effort - but that's the destructive option in the long run, and the Union will suffer hugely because of it.
If today, a group of governments are looking for ways to impose heavy sanctions outside Article 7, this means they want to add power to the EU that it was never meant to have. Hence the reaction from Poland, Hungary and Slovenia.
Not to mention that the institution that's supposed to decide if the governments are following EU's fundamental principles, are neither the member states represented at the European Council, nor the European Parliament, nor the European Commission - it's the European Court and none else.
Even in the violation procedures (which some erroneously call "punitive procedures"), the European Commission is put at an equal footing with the judged member state, and in case of insurmountable disagreements between the two, the case should be brought to the European Court. Contrary to some cynical misrepresentations by some euroskeptics, the European Commission doesn't have the power to "punish" the governments who actually appoint its chairperson and nominate its commissaries. Rather, the opposite is more likely if the EC oversteps its boundaries. Whether there's a violation, and what sort of sanction a member state should get, is solely the prerogative of the European Court.
Former French foreign minister Hubert Vedrine once said that the push for "more Europe" (which is what this effort to tie Euro funding to the primacy of law basically is), actually leads to less Europe, as it generates push-back at a national(istic) level.
The more important question today is not if France would prevail against Poland and Hungary. The outcome of this stand-off does look pre-determined because of the balance of powers and the conformism of the smaller and mid-sized members forming the majority in the EU. The real question is who would gain what if France prevails.
Maybe the escalation of the conflict around the so called supremacy of law (which, by the way, is not precisely defined in any single document, and has no clear criteria set up) wants to achieve a rift that would produce a geographically and mathematically smaller EU-1 that'd be more manageable, and then an EU-2 that'd have fewer responsibilities, fewer rights, and less money? An Europe of two speeds, as has long been professed? I mean, Macron and his fellow neo-liberals have been blabbering about this for ages.
The pressure for a narrower, deeper Europe in the place of the wider, shallower Europe that we have now, is an indirect admission that the expansion process has been a failure. But to reverse the EU's expansion is like trying to push the squeezed tooth-paste back into the tube. Instead of the smaller and cozier home that the European elite members want for themselves, they'll get a wreck that's prone to further and more uncontrollable disintegration. Those harboring the illusion of a smaller Europe designed after their taste, don't seem to have understood that the Brexit is not part of the past - it's an open wound right now, one that the EU is supposed to be healing, not duplicating and inflaming even more.
(no subject)
Date: 9/12/20 18:04 (UTC)I'm also reasonably certain that one of the goals of some of Brexit's key backers is to re-legalize such persecutions within the UK.
Brexit and the rest of the larger new fascist international should be fought, not acceded to.
(no subject)
Date: 13/12/20 07:54 (UTC)Pretty disgusting, hey?
(no subject)
Date: 10/12/20 10:28 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 15/12/20 09:41 (UTC)I would suppose that everyone would derive a salutary lesson therefrom. Europe is watching the madness of not coming to agreement; and the insanity of a culture in retrograde. Hungary and Poland also seem to be heading backwards into strange areas best left uncharted. Europe can put a bit of a brake on that process simply because of inertia; however going full-fascist will find nations excluded from the club; for which one of the founding ideas was to stop that sort of thing from ever happening again.
Even Orban can see what has happened to the UK. Before the referendum the UK was the fifth largest economy in the world. Now we are somewhere between eighth and eleventh. I suppose eleventh would be fitting for so many reasons, if we can only manage to maintain it.
The UK has become like a drummer dying in a bizarre gardening accident, or choking on someone else's vomit. Pretty sure that's all the EU leaders have to wave in front of nations trying to rock the boat to get them to reconsider and see sense. But maybe the chaps in Hungary and Poland are even madder than the British and will do something equally stupid even after such idiotic example. That would be really impressive, considering.
(no subject)
Date: 15/12/20 15:35 (UTC)It's always unwise to demonstrate disrespect and disregard for one nation or another, especially within a union of nation states.