longing for peace, “ever closer union” expressed not just the meaning of the Rome Treaty, but also the essence of what became the EU.
It also encapsulates the EU’s “bothness.” For the supranationalists, “ever closer union” captures better than any other formula their fervent adherence to the ideal of a unifying supranational governance. On the other hand, the phrase lacks clear objective content – and therein lies the key to its success. It is broad and open-ended. It means something, and yet it means nothing. And a key to understanding the EU project as a whole is understanding how the broadness and ambiguity of the phrase “ever closer union” function within the EU, and what these attributes tell us about the EU and the European idea.
Exemplifying the Monnet method at its finest, “ever closer union” leaves open what must for now be left open, namely, exactly what it will ultimately mean. Will it mean political union? Will it mean a common economic governance, but without political union? Will it mean developing as much political and economic cooperation as possible while retaining the distinct member states? Does it mean Luuk van Middelaar’s “in-between-ness,” in which EU elites act in a space “between” the member states and the EU itself, a space apart from both poles?3 It could mean any of these. Anyone can interpret it in any way.
“Ever closer union,” again, leaves room for the “bothness” of the EU – togetherness and separateness, dependence and independence. If one takes the larger phrase, “ever closer union among the European peoples,” one sees the paradox at its heart. Joseph Weiler, one of the most brilliant academic experts on the EU, writes that “one of Europe’s articles of faith” is that “the Community and Union were about ‘lay[ing] the foundations of an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe.’ Not the creation of one people, but the union of many.”4
Another expression of this “union of many” is the slogan “unity in diversity,” which has become a catchphrase for what EU elites believe is the heart of European identity.5 Contrasting “unity in diversity,” In uno plures, with the U.S. motto E pluribus unum, “out of many, one,” a 1993 experts’ report states: “We are Europeans, and are proud of it. What is happening is that we are realizing our identity. . . . We are many in one: In uno plures, and we want to keep and nurture our diverse cultures that together make us the envied focus of culture, civilization, intellectual life and savoirvivre in the world.”6
So where does the balance fall between unity and diversity? Is one more important than the other? Can both be equally important? In an insightful analysis of EU cultural policy, Cris Shore comments, “From the EU’s perspective, ‘unity in diversity’ is intended to project the idea that the EU seeks to celebrate and promote cultural pluralism. . . . But it also suggests that the EU offers a new layer of identity under which the regions and nations can unite.”7 Shore goes on to assert that the underlying purpose is not safeguarding cultural diversity, but promoting “Europe’s overarching unity.”8 That is probably correct, but no one really knows. And no one is supposed to know. The ambiguity wraps the agenda in the warm fuzziness of a noble-sounding phrase that means nothing and thus threatens nothing. A clearer definition of “ever closer union among the European peoples” would generate much more opposition because there are no unqualified “Europeans.” The Dutch remain Dutch, the Czechs Czech and the Poles Polish. The primary allegiance of the overwhelming majority of Europeans is not to Europe, but to their home country and to their separate linguistic and cultural identities.
But the ambiguity is also for EU elites, among whom there is no consensus on the EU’s ultimate form. “Ever closer union” is vague enough to be put aside by those who are busy keeping the day-to-day machinery of the EU in working order. Many of them are trapped in the EU agenda and need a way to avoid thinking that they might be eroding their own nation’s sovereignty by their daily participation in the EU project. The average national minister from an EU member state spends overwhelming amounts of time attending EU meetings in Brussels, then transposing EU regulation into national law, and finally enforcing laws and regulations that originated in Brussels. In fact, EU and national jurisdiction in virtually every policy area are so hopelessly intertwined that the British government took more than two years and spent around 5 million pounds (7.7 million dollars) on a “Balance of Competences Review” meant to clarify how and where EU powers affect Britain and British sovereignty. When the review was finished in December 2014, the British government did not offer an overall assessment of the results. The conclusions to be drawn remained in dispute, and adding an official governmental evaluation would probably have been politically too explosive.
In such a predicament, it is very important to EU elites – both the sovereigntists and the integrationists – that there is no common definition of “ever closer union.” The phrase has performed quite a service. It has proved open-ended enough to keep the supranationalists, such as Schuman, Kohl and Barroso, together with the nationalists such as de Gaulle and Thatcher.
THE WORLDVIEW AND DIRECTION OF EVER CLOSER UNION
“Ever closer union” is not only a way of keeping the EU project going despite a lack of agreement on ultimate goals. It also expresses a worldview. Whatever its meanings when the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957, “ever closer union” has by now come to reflect a postmodern, relativistic worldview in which nothing is fixed or certain. Everything is constantly moving, constantly changing. The EU is like an amoeba continuously changing shape as the fluctuating currents push its outer membrane in all directions. “Ever closer union” has become the animating idea behind this state of constant change, because it can be reinterpreted at whim to fit every shape and every current, expressing an aspiration vague enough that everyone can implicitly share in it.
The haziness is deceptive, though. Underneath the soothing flux of postmodernity lurks a steely determination to achieve supranational governance. After all, while ever closer union is ambiguous, it is inspirational enough to serve as a rallying cry for the supranationalists, spurring them on to further European integration. Upon closer reflection, if one resists being lulled to intellectual sleep by the vaguely noble-sounding “ever closer union,” the phrase aims at more than merely a free-trade area or a traditional international organization of sovereign member states.
The framework for relations between sovereign members of traditional international organizations is fixed, decided by a mutually understood balance between members’ national sovereignty and their cooperation within the organization. In contrast, “ever closer union” entails fluid, undecided, evolving relations among the EU member states as they move toward some sort of political union. The British prime minister David Cameron seems to understand this. In an important speech in January 2013, he called for a stop to the push for ever closer union, advocating instead a flexible EU of cooperating, sovereign member states. (More on Cameron’s speech in Chapter 17.) And Cameron is not alone in this view. Even the Netherlands, a core member state, shows signs of pulling back decidedly from the supranationalist model. In a press release in June 2013 after its own review of EU vs. national powers, the Dutch government said, “The Netherlands is convinced that the time of an ‘ever closer union’ in every possible policy area is behind us.”9
As European integration has unfolded in the real world over the past sixty-five years, the EU’s striving toward “ever closer union” has taken on a distinctly postdemocratic coloring, as we will see in the next section. And in the final analysis, despite the attempts of the British and the Dutch and others to push back, “ever closer union” symbolizes the victory of the visionaries over the pragmatists. Lost in their focus on hard facts, the pragmatists are too complacent. They seriously underestimate the power of ideas, dreams and worldviews, especially if they seem unrealistic or logically incoherent. Meanwhile, the supranationalists have it in black-and-white: “ever closer union” is the declared purpose of the Rome Treaty, and every member state has signed up for it.
