Notes on next steps in developing our policies for EU reform, treaty amendment and renegotiation, network Europe and alternative paths the integrationist orthodoxy.



1. Forward thinking Europeans, in contrast to knee-jerk supporters of Brussels, the Euro and more crude integration have talked a good deal about the vision of ‘a network’ Europe, implying that they have in mind some new model of governance for the EU and a different distribution of powers and procedures from the present ‘Community method’

2. Meanwhile the European Commission itself is supposedly having ‘a debate’ on EU governance and promising a White Paper this summer. Britain’s real Europeans and policy thinkers should join eagerly in this debate and offer some detailed and positive views , so as to ensure that the reforms go their way and are in line with enlightened concepts of how Europe should develop. 

3. In the real world a lot is already happening to undermine the traditional Community method, with its paraphernalia of regulations and directives handed down with minimum democratic participation, except for the pantomime co-legislative procedure. Policy initiatives are increasingly with the Council (which remains secretive). ‘Soft legislation’ instruments are replacing the old stream old directives and a new breed of committees, drawing from both national governments ands Commission officials, is proliferating and calling the shots. 

4. It is dawning on Brussels that enlargement strikes far more fundamentally at the way the Community and Union work than earlier realized and raises far wider implications than mere machinery jiggling of the kind offered at Nice.

5. Enlightened Europeans, as opposed to EU-fanatics, have used the concept of a network to describe a better Europe, an alternative European vision. But in practice there is probably no single model to describe the way in which many issues are now being handled simultaneously at Community and national level. Certainly, the present multi-level ,hierarchical system is finished. In fact may no longer be appropriate to think in terms of separate layers and channels , or of policy issues (viz agriculture) being handled at one level (nation state) or another (the Community). In practice the whole debate between bilateralism, intergovernmentalism and the Community ‘ever closer’ method has become blurred and unattached to actual events. 

6. This means that conventional machinery for exercising accountability just does not work – at any level. The EP and Ministers are dealing with matters which should be under national parliamentary scrutiny, while national parliaments are struggling with issues which need a coordinated approach – both with other Parliaments and at Europe-wide level.

7. Power is being redistributed in Europe away from specific layers of government (Community or national) and towards a confused pattern in which all kinds of independent agencies and ngos are also involved. In these conditions clear demarcations break down and it becomes nonsense to think in terms of allocating and freezing precise responsibilities at this level or that. The attempt to draw up ‘ a catalogue of competences’, or a fixed, old style, constitution or consolidation of the treaties, to ‘settle’ what should be done at Community level’ is doomed before it starts. Subsidiarity is a hopelessly static concept trying to deal with a fluid and ever-changing scene.

8. In practice the Commission is already losing its pivotal role in this new scene. It is no longer the ‘motor’ driving EU integration. That phase is over. It just becomes one agency amongst several operating in the European network. The mantra of ‘ever closer union’ ought to be, and to some extent is being, replaced by the need for new and innovative institutions with coordinating powers and a flexible mandate. This transformation should be helped along. 

9. With activities and decisions spread far more randomly across the different ‘layers’ of Europe, and a more diffuse pattern of mission-based groupings and alliances, it will also be necessary to have democratic accountability spreading across conventional demarcation lines and boundaries. National Parliaments must now forge a far more commanding role ,in conjunction with the EP where necessary but becoming the source of PRIMARY legislation and initiative, rather than always running along behind looking at secondary legislation after the event and rubber stamping EU decisions. The Commission and other EU institutions have to surrender their top-down, command, role and become co-ordinators and facilitators with other equal bodies – notably the member state legislatures.

10. Britain should now be putting forward detailed proposals to create a far more careful and open legislative process in the EU, to replace the sort of knee-jerk, cavalier, law-making we saw, for example, when Brussels proposed withholding tax reforms which it turned out would crucify the City of London and made no overall sense. Even when we repatriate major policy areas like farm support we are going to find all sorts of left-overs which have to be handled Europe-wide, and both machinery and scrutiny will have to be shaped to handle this criss-cross pattern. 

11. In terms of ACTIONS the need is not just to define areas of policy and public concern which need to be opened out and decentralized or repatriated, but to outline the principles and measures needed to make this new sort of Europe a working reality. It has to be shown convincingly that the ratchet of Brussels centralization both can and must be reversed.

12. This implies: a) making open coordination – between the reformed Council and member state parliaments – the formal method of proceeding.
b) putting new initiative-proposing and filtering 
mechanisms in place a Council level to do this.
c) amending the treaties so as to bring the Council 
Secretariat and the Commission under one roof, with powers of 
initiative passing to the new entity.
d) requiring the Council of Ministers to report directly and openly to national parliaments.
e) amending the treaties so that national legislatures and their committees have direct joint involvement with EP committees in pre-legislative scrutiny, in primary EU legislation and in giving joint opinions on proposals long before they start crystallizing in law form.
f) building a far greater role for performance audit (on a coordinated basis between member states) into Community procedures, and into both pre-legislative and post-legislative processes.
g) securing full participation by the applicant states in this detailed new thinking – both through party machinery and through invigorating some of our rather right-of-centre think tanks – who have been feeble in this area -to get into action. Trans-atlantic opinion must also be mobilized in favour of the new approach.


D.H. 1.4.01