Rebuilding Europe's edifice: French plans for closer co-operation may make the EU more bureaucratic and less responsive to democratic control Europe edition, London edition, USA edition

• Published in: The Financial times (London ed.)
• Main Author: Peel, Quentin
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: London (UK) The Financial Times Limited 26.06.2000
• Subjects: Common Foreign and Security Policy; European Union Government; Federalism; Flexibility; Government News; Mediterranean; European Union; Europe; France; Western Europe
• ISSN: 0307-1766

The fact is that the EU is already the subject of "variable geometry". Fifteen members are signed up to the internal market, competition policy and the like in the traditional "first pillar" of the EU treaty. But only 11, soon to be 12 with Greece, are members of the euro. The second pillar - common foreign and security policy - has different rules, although all 15 subscribe. And the third pillar - justice and home affairs - is different again. The Schengen agreement on open borders also applies to some, but not to all. EU defence co-operation is going to be yet another example of different rules and a different set of national combinations. Although everyone will sign up in principle, they can pick and choose which operations they take part in, so that neutral EU members can opt out. And non-EU members of Nato, such as Turkey and Norway, are being invited to join in. At the EU summit last week, Jacques Chirac, the president of France, made a remarkable speech. He declared that flexibility was the only way forward for the EU. But it should not be hidebound by the institutions of the past. It should flourish in a multiplicity of forms. The slogan, he declared, was decommunautarisation -de-communitising, if such a dreadful word really exists.