Hobson's Choice

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New European Constitution signed

October 30, 2004

The title is a gratuitous pun on the physical condition of your humble correspondent. I really don't want to be posting at the moment, and I feel by rights I've been conscientious to a fault—but what is to be done? The EU Constitutional Committee has a new constitution, and the leaders of 25 member states signed it in Rome Friday (EUpolitix). The Constitution must then be ratified; this is not usually a problem in European countries since the foreign minister comes from the ruling coalition in parliament, but 11 countries plan to have referendums on the constitution; in Poland, the UK, and France this will be a serious question, since all three countries have powerful anti-Brussels groupings.

Fistful of Euros has posted but briefly on the matter; the meat is in the comments thread. Evidently the analysts whom I trust (viz., Scott Martens) believes this is not at all important; the question is what will survive negotiations (Jacques Delors, for example, said he offered a "combative yes" to the new Constitution). The web log facetiously known as "Europhobia" has posted by far the best entry on the subject. Indeed, so impressed am I that I feel I really can go to bed now... No, wait...

A few days ago I left my readers tormented with a cliffhanger featuring a bizarre Buttiglione (nominated to the EU Justice, Freedom and Security Commission by Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi) and a defiant Barroso (EU Commission President—different from the EU President, an unelected rotating post). Well, if you were sitting on the edge of your seats, be advised that Scott MacMillan (Fistful of Euros) has a summary of events. The summary of the summary? Oh, sorry, that was editorializing.

Following up on Tobias’s point below, why is it that when the U.S. President vetoes a bill or Congress blocks a bill’s passage with a philibuster, it’s considered business as usual, yet when European Parliament refuses to approve a slate of candidates for the Commission, it plunges the EU into “institutional crisis”? Aren’t Europeans getting a bit weary of one so-called “institutional crisis” after another? I recall something about a boy and a wolf… Do we not run the risk of one day waking up with a real institutional crisis on our hands — one that is met with a collective yawn?

My ears are burning, but I think I can answer that. You see, Maastricht Treaty or no, the EU is not so much a federal union as a cooperative one. That means the member states have an association based on an exchange of rights and responsibilities; that's different from a federation, in which member states have a contractual relationship with the union, and that contract assigns not only rights and responsibilities, it largely defines the structure of rights and responsibilities of citizens toward the union, the states, and other nations. This latter arrangement allows a foreign policy, however awful (and awful it is). The former does not, which in some respects is worse.

So institutionally the EU is vulnerable. But good question.

All right, Buttiglione's nomination has been withdrawn (BBC). Mario Monti's name has been proposed as an alternative; I'm exceptionally partial to him, as he really did render a service to the USA when, as EU Competition Commissioner (the equivalent of the late FTC in the USA), he blocked the merger of GE and Honeywell.