WorldView: The possibility of a "grand bargain" to settle issues arising from the failure to ratify the European Union's constitutional treaty and its continuing enlargement is floated by the conclusions of the European Council in Brussels yesterday, writes Paul Gillespie.
The two-track roadmap agreed upon combines utilitarian projects designed to show that the EU works for the benefit of citizens with an incremental approach to finding agreement on the constitution. The document cannot survive intact, but will be reformulated, repackaged and renamed before a new European Parliament is elected in 2009 and a new EU Commission appointed.
It is a realistic effort to tackle an exceedingly tricky and complex problem. Over the course of European integration since the first enlargement to take in Ireland, Britain and Denmark in 1973, there has been a continuing relationship between this widening of membership and deepening of its structures. The Common Agricultural Policy was agreed ahead of that first round; cohesion and structural funds roughly coincided with Greek, Spanish and Portuguese membership in the 1980s; while the single market, economic and political union were laid down ahead of Sweden, Finland and Austria joining in 1995.
The constitutional treaty agreed in 2004 is intended to adapt the EU to the jumbo enlargement from 15 to 25 of that year and then to take in Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia and other Balkan states. More contentious by far is Turkey's prospective membership. That plays a significant part in the French debate on the constitution and French hostility resonates somewhat differently in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. But the commitment to negotiate its membership has been made, even if everyone involved knows it will not be likely or possible until 2020 or so.
The task facing EU leaders now is to select which portions of the constitutional treaty are absolutely necessary, should survive and can find favour with parliaments, citizens and voters. Little can be done politically until the French elections next year. And even if those prove decisive for the treaty's fate, the German EU presidency would have only a few weeks to find solutions before passing on the task. Solutions will probably have to be found during France's presidency at the end of 2008.
In the meantime, internal and external pressures will accumulate, pointing up the need for change and adaptation if effective solutions are to be found. These issues are addressed in part by the 30 projects agreed, ranging from roving charges for mobile phones to energy and climate change.
The summit's conclusions on foreign policy underline the role that the EU can play and the need for its structures to be adapted for this. The unfolding negotiations with Iran led by Germany, Britain and France on behalf of the EU are looking more and more constructive. They should set precedents for future engagement with the United States, Israel and the Palestinians, going beyond the mishandling of relations with the Hamas government over recent months.
Similarly, the initiative on energy resonates with contemporary international realities and citizen concerns. But it could run up against particular state interests, such as the German deal with Russia on a pipeline. These are ongoing tensions which require political leadership to tackle effectively. They encounter structural and resource constraints as well as those based on national interest. An EU agreement with Russia would have to take account of Ukraine's role and be related to a strategy distinct from offering a perspective of eventual EU membership to those two countries.
The intermediate relationship between membership and outsider is meant to be addressed by the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). It could be increasingly relevant in managing the EU's relations with adjacent regions. But to be effective it would have to offer more selective pooling of sovereignty and shared resources than any of the EU's current crop of leaders envisages. Neither the carrots nor the sticks are attractive enough to divert Ukraine, Georgia or Azerbaijan from seeking EU membership. That makes the NPA less than credible, contradicting its ambition to modulate relations with surrounding regions.
It may be that those opposed to Turkey joining will see the merit of fashioning a stronger ENP in the hope this would satisfy it. There has been much talk by the Austrian EU presidency of how the EU could "absorb" such a large and supposedly incompatible neighbour as a member. Such tension goes back many centuries. It reminds us that EU enlargement, having dealt with the legacy of the Russian and Soviet empires since 1989, is now having to deal with that of the Ottoman empire.
The notion of absorption (derived from the Latin sorbere, to suck in) has an essentialist ring, speaking to Europe as a Christian civilisation incompatible with Islamic Turkey. It is a code for saying no. A different gloss on the issue arises from geographical boundaries rather than cultural ones. This informs the French debate particularly, where boundedness and political identity are strongly associated intellectually and politically.
But Turkey, too, is part and parcel of European history. The problem is that Europe does not have cut and dried geographical boundaries, but open and contingent ones. Successive public opinion surveys show this distinction between civilisational and civic identities is widely understood. Russia is part of the former, by virtue of its historical and cultural engagement, if not of the political structures set up by European integration. It is time this distinction was applied more effectively by Europe's political leaders.
A grand bargain would link revision of the treaty to future perspectives on the EU's enlargement and possibly to the review of its budget due in 2007-08. There is not a great deal of room for manoeuvre, since many of the elements involved have already been defined and agreed. It could be dangerous to draw in the budget, since previous compromises would unravel. The same applies to the treaty. Irish negotiators continue to favour it remaining intact and resist cherry picking, for fear it too could unravel.
pgillespie@irish-times.ie