Europe - [07/12/2007]

“The agreement that Merkel achieved is almost a miracle, and may lead us forward to a better Europe”

Jan Zielonka, Professor of European Policy at OxfordUniversity, has claimed that the agreement reached at the EU heads of state summit meeting by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel “is almost a miracle and may lead us toward a better Europe”. Zielonka was speaking at a conference organised by the Europe Programme of the CIDOB Foundation and the Secretariat for the European Union of the Generalitat of Catalonia, during which an assessment was made of the German presidency of the EU, which ended on 30 June. The event was presented by Anna Terrón, from the Secretariat for the European Union of the Generalitat.

Even though France and Holland’s refusal to approve the European Constitution seemed ominous, in Zielonka's opinion, Angela Merkel and the German presidency achieved results that were beyond all expectations, contrary to what tends to happen with the presidencies of large countries, and especially in the case of Germany.

This is why, the Polish academic believes, the EU’s institutional deadlock is on the way to being resolved. However, Zielonka showed himself to be even more optimistic, when he pointed out that the new treaty “will help the EU to face the problems (…) of immigration, climate change, energy, pension systems and education; these being the challenges of the moment.”

To contextualise the institutional reforms, Zielonka pointed out that external events − such as the fall of the Berlin Wall and large-scale terrorist attacks − have had greater effects on European integration than the successive reforms. The Polish professor also mentioned that his country's diplomatic inexperience and its lack of enthusiasm for Europe had not isolated the Kaczynski brothers. “All the Polish parties gave their support to their government, even the Communists, who had initially been critical of them. This resulted from a generalised fear among the public that we would be swapping one EU for another, replacing Moscow with Brussels”.

Zielonka stressed that citizens are confused by a body which has a political aim that is not clearly identified. Furthermore, though figures such as Joschka Fischer and Guy Verhofstadt have said that the final aim is the creation of a European Federation, the Polish academic suspects that in fact we are moving in the opposite direction, toward “a neo-mediaeval empire that is increasingly diverse and unequal, with variable integration structures and a growing institutional differentiation. While Norway and Iceland − which are not member states − are in the Schengen area, other member states such as Ireland and Slovenia are not”.

According to Zielonka, Europe is condemned to keep enlarging itself, as this is the only way of stabilising its borders. “When the geopolitical situation gets worse, it will be impossible to refuse membership to the Turks, or to withdraw from the Balkans without integrating them”.

Zielonka also said that “we can't have an EU which, in the face of global problems such as climate change, acts like a 19th century power”. In the Polish professor's opinion, there is no point in trying to find symbols and structures of a state for something which will never become one.

Later on, during an open debate, the participants stressed the importance that the weight of history still bears, as was partly demonstrated by the Polish attitude to Germany. Anna Terrón, from the Secretariat for the European Union of the Generalitat, pointed out that democracy on a European level suffers from many of the problems borne by national democracies, such as the fact that many NGOs depend on public funds, even though this does not call into question the actual democratic structure of the Unionon a permanent basis.

In his final comments, Zielonka acknowledged that with respect to issues such as the protection of fundamental rights, intervention by European institutions can and should be much greater. “We have created an empire whose neighbours do not fear this growing power, they are not trying to act as a counterweight, they are not trying to dissuade us, and very often they want to join us”. As far as the Polish academic is concerned, if that is not a success story, then what is?