to found a new political “city on a hill” in Europe.
Again, language was manipulated in order to serve the cause of supranational European governance, with the treaty being sold to the public as a constitution. But the tactic backfired. Introducing a “constitution” for Europe was too big a step, violating Monnet’s rule of incrementalism. Europeans already had their own national constitutions. They didn’t want an EU constitution. In national referenda in 2005, the French and the Dutch rejected the European Constitution.
“A CONSTITUTION THROUGH THE BACK DOOR”
After getting hammered by French and Dutch voters, EU leaders beat a tactical retreat. They fell back on the legacy of Monnet and the strategy of deception. They made cosmetic amendments to the European Constitution and renamed it the Reform Treaty initially, before settling on Treaty of Lisbon. According to the European Commission website, the Lisbon Treaty, which entered into force on December 1, 2009, “reforms the EU institutions and improves the EU decision-making process; strengthens the democratic dimension of the EU; reforms the internal policies of the EU; [and] strengthens the external policies of the EU.”8 No mention is made of the fact that the Lisbon Treaty is, for all intents and purposes, the EU constitution with new clothing.
Jens-Peter Bonde, a leading Euroskeptic, effectively brought this reality to light. A longtime member of the European Parliament from Denmark and a member of the European Convention, Bonde undertook an exhaustive comparison of the Lisbon Treaty and the failed European Constitution.9 He found that there was virtually no difference between the two, except that the Lisbon Treaty was packaged as a set of amendments to the existing EU treaties in order to obscure that fact. The Lisbon Treaty, he concluded, was “a constitution through the back door.”10 Bonde further characterized the European Constitution / Lisbon Treaty as a “Constitution without democracy,” explaining, “A constitution usually protects citizens from politicians. It sets limits to what those elected may decide on between elections. The EU Constitution and the Lisbon treaty are different in this respect. They protect bureaucrats and politicians from the normal democratic influence of voters.”11 Furthermore, the Lisbon Treaty represents a massive transfer of power from member states to the EU. Bonde’s analysis showed a “power shift from voters to Brussels in 113 points. There was and is not a single instance of power going the other way.”12
The Lisbon Treaty brought a myriad of structural changes to the EU. For example, the EU now has two “presidents.” In addition to the president of the European Commission, a post that has existed since 1958, there is now a president of the European Council, who presides over the summit meetings of the EU member states’ heads of government and of state. Lisbon created the post of high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, basically a de facto EU foreign minister, and an EU-level diplomatic corps, the European External Action Service (EEAS), under the leadership of the high representative. Lisbon also increased EU power in justice and policing.
Another important innovation of the Lisbon Treaty is that it conferred upon the EU a legal personality. This made the EU into a real actor in international affairs, completely distinct from the member states, and thus enabled the EU, among other things, to negotiate and be a party to international treaties. Significantly, Lisbon also incorporated the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, thereby making it legally binding. In that way, Lisbon has established a stronger legal basis – or at least a legal pretext – for the pursuit of a supranational human rights policy at EU level, a topic we will examine in Part Four of this book.
The symbolism of Lisbon is just as important as its transfer of considerable powers from the member states to the EU. Lisbon made the EU look more like a sovereign entity, endowing it with many of the characteristics of state sovereignty. An EU-level president of the European Council now “presides” over the EU national heads of government, at least symbolically. The EU now has a proto–foreign minister, its own diplomatic service, and a sovereign state–like legal personality. In enshrining the Charter of Fundamental Rights in the Lisbon Treaty, the EU has given itself its own “bill of rights.” Perhaps most fraught with implications is Lisbon’s elaboration – both explicit and implicit – on the rights and privileges conferred by the common EU citizenship of all member-state citizens, the “citizenship of the Union” that was first introduced in the Maastricht Treaty. EU citizenship exists over and above the national citizenships and, in case of conflict, trumps the privileges and duties of national citizenship.
These new attributes of sovereignty join two symbols adopted in 1985: the official anthem of the EU, Beethoven’s setting of Friedrich Schiller’s Ode to Joy, and the EU flag, a circle of twelve golden stars against a blue background, which is now the featured emblem on more automobile license plates throughout the EU than any national flag. The importance of this accumulation of symbols is difficult to exaggerate. In the EU universe, such symbols mean more than they do elsewhere. Taken all together, they vest the EU with the readily recognizable trappings of state sovereignty. In this context, it should not be forgotten either that the European Parliament has been a directly elected parliament since 1979.
How is all this best to be understood? The road from the ECSC to the EU of today has been long and winding, with many twists and turns and several switchbacks. But somewhere along the way, Europe truly was transformed. A continent of sovereign nation-states has become a continent of EU member states. And the governments of these member states have ceded, step by step over more than six decades, an incalculable magnitude of sovereignty to Brussels. This drawn-out, elite-driven process has largely escaped the notice of average Europeans. Certainly, in its bureaucratic obfuscation, its rarefied, legalistic complexity and its self-contained universe of insider jargon, the EU has developed in a way that most people have not had the time or energy to comprehend. The institutional growth of what is now the EU has come about through an unbending and dogged pursuit of “ever closer union,” imposed from the top down, by a process shrouded in obscurity and crowned with a series of significant triumphs. In the next chapter we will examine the role that this key three-word phrase, “ever closer union,” has played in the history of European integration.
THE CLOAK OF CONSTRUCTIVE AMBIGUITY
As we have seen, the EU and its institutional predecessors have been undergoing virtually continuous change. This includes tremendous growth in size and membership since the ECSC was launched with six founding members. Since the first new member states joined in the 1970s, the EU has reached the point where now, with twenty-eight members, it stands on the cusp of becoming almost pan-European. Just as importantly, though, the EU has steadily been changing institutionally over the course of six decades. Ever more power has been transferred, step by step, from national capitals to Brussels. According to best estimates, anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of the laws affecting the average Swede or Italian or Spaniard or Dane have their origin in Brussels.1 And almost all of this has happened not in a straight line of logical progression, but along a curvy, sometimes broken path on which reality differs from language, practice diverges from law and regulation, and the European Union (like the ten different “configurations” of the supposedly one Council of Ministers) can appear to be all or none of the very different things that people of various nationalities and diverse ideologies want it to be.
But through all of the postmodern flux, one key foundational phrase has remained. It appeared at the very beginning of the 1957 Treaty of Rome establishing the European Economic Community, encapsulating the meaning of the entire treaty in three words: the determination of the signatories “to establish the foundations of an ever closer union among the European peoples . . . .”2
HOW “EVER CLOSER UNION” HOLDS THE PROJECT TOGETHER
In
