The German Foreign Minister has predicted that the EU will become a federation of independent nation-states after 2004. Speaking to the Financial Times Deutschland yesterday, Mr Joschka Fischer appeared to distance himself from the more federalist vision outlined recently by the Social Democrats of the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schroder.
"We have three possibilities - intergovernmentalism, federalism or a federation of nationstates. In the light of experience it would seem advisable to seek the third option as our next step even if the second has my full sympathy," he said.
Mr Schroder has proposed transforming the Council of Ministers, the decision-making body representing the 15 EU member-states, into a second chamber of parliament. But Mr Fischer suggested that the Council of Ministers could share power with the Commission, creating a strong European executive. The council's legislative function would pass to the European Parliament.
"There are already executives made up of two elements, such as in France with the government and the president," he said.
Mr Schroder's blueprint foresaw a structure for the EU similar to Germany's federal system, with the 15 member-states represented in an upper chamber similar to the Bundesrat. Mr Fischer acknowledged yesterday that this federal vision was unacceptable to countries such as France and Britain.
He said he sympathised with the idea of a federal Europe on the German model but did not believe it was achievable. A recent visit to Westminster had brought home to him the depth of Britain's attachment to the sovereignty of the House of Commons.
"How must an integrated Union be constructed so that even England can cross this bridge? Or France, where the nation cannot be separated from the state?" he asked.
Mr Fischer expressed support for Mr Tony Blair's idea of a second parliamentary chamber of members drawn from national parliaments and warned that, if the EU did not agree to radical reforms along the lines he proposed, the alternative could be the emergence of an advance guard of member-states committed to deeper integration.
This he described as "a second-best solution" which could alienate member-states left out of the core group.
He expressed qualified support for a Belgian proposal to raise a direct EU tax to pay for the work of the European institutions.
France's ruling Socialist party recently rejected this idea.
"If we are thinking of the EU having its own resources, the Belgian idea shouldn't be brushed to one side immediately," he said.