Transcripts
"Power struggles shape the E.U's way forward"
by Jill Winfield
The European Union's summit meeting in Nice last December was quite the reverse from the Common Market's founding purpose 45 years ago--to prevent France and Germany from going to war again, and to provide economic reinforcement to the military security provided by NATO. This meant Western prosperity would increase the divide with Eastern Europe--yet, as the Financial Times put it, the aim of the 15-nation summit at Nice was 'to extend prosperity' to eastern Europe through the 'post-war unification of the continent.'
To allow for enlargement from 15 nations to 27, the Nice summit chiefly discussed the redistribution of power through changes in decision-making in three areas: the composition of the European Commission (the driving force of the E.U., initiating and enforcing legislation and representing it in international agreements), the reweighting of votes in the E.U.'s Council of Ministers and the further removal of the national veto to be replaced by a Qualified Majority Voting (QMV).
The struggle to retain power was seen in the determination of the E.U.'s smaller nations, which bargained with their votes to secure representation in the Commission. In contrast, the larger nations which have more votes have abandoned their right to a second Commissioner, which will allow representation on the Commission for every country by 2005--but in exchange for this, the larger nations will get more votes in the Council of Ministers to avoid being outvoted by a group of small nations and new entrants.
The replacement of the veto with QMV allows quick decision-making at the expense of accountability as the power of nations to block decisions is lost. A price worth paying, thought Pascal Lamy, the European Commissioner for trade: 'Efficient function must come before accountability. That is a fact of life,' the FT quoted him as saying.
The most contentious area where the national veto was negotiated for QMV involved trade in services. Lamy stated that 'We have to ensure that negotiations on services, intellectual property and investment are handled in the same way as negotiations on trade in goods, by QMV.' This QMV, which followed 10 years of campaigning from the Commission, gives it much greater control in international negotiations in trade in services, yet it still has concerns at the remaining extent of unanimous voting in trade in educational, social and health services as well as cultural areas (where France insisted on keeping its veto on audio-visual services, stating concerns that it would otherwise be impossible to get ratification in the French National Assembly).
The Commission's drive towards QMV in trade in services parallels the sentiments of the E.U.'s official website, www.europa.org, which notes the General Agreement on Trade in Services 'established a set of rules and obligations regarding world trade in services which is crucial for businesses to operate on a level playing field in the services sector. There is still room for improvement in the new world trade round which the E.U. believes should create even greater market opening, enable developing countries to participate more and cover important new sectors.'
Among the initiatives taken by the E.U. is to track member countries' implementation on on public procurement. The European Commission is also pursuing infringement procedures against France, the U.K., Luxembourg and Spain for failure to implement, or incorrect application of, E.U. rules on open and competitive public procurement procedures. The Commission may decide to bring cases to the European Court of Justice.
The U.K. government claims that the public sector will not be included in the GATS. However, GATS covers any tradeable service except those supplied 'in the exercise of government authority which is supplied neither on a commercial basis, nor in competition with one or more service suppliers.' In practice, most 'public' services in the U.K. (including health and education) compete with private suppliers; in many cases, users are charged (i.e. tuition fees) and hence these services would come under GATS guidelines.
It would appear that the nations represented through Parliament and the Council are battling out the implementation of decisions largely made by the Commission, whose objectives include increasing market access through breaking down barriers to both public procurement and trade in Eastern Europe, and to increase their control in international trade negotiations. The outcomes would be the success of the euro and competitiveness in international trade to attract foreign investment.
Nice was, therefore, chiefly about the further loss of the remaining 20% of accountability as power shifted further to the unelected Commission with their market access agenda.
Current member states also obviously lost power to the new entrants, and the power struggles between France and the new emerging strong power, Germany, are well documented. Enlargement will also see a slight shift in power as the divide between net contributors and beneficiaries of the Brussels budget changes; encompassing new entrants will result in all current 15 nations being net contributors. Disagreements emerged when negotiating countries loss of control in their specific pet areas.
Notwithstanding conflicting interests, compromises were inevitable; if reform for enlargement failed at Nice, stated Philip Stephens in the FT, it 'would be an open invitation to international investors to sell as many euros as they could lay their hands on.'
Despite long hours of discussions and decisions born out of exhaustion, with tactics like all-night talks and deadlines forcing deals out of unwilling parties, Tony Blair and other leaders still managed to keep up appearances and proclaimed success. It would appear that the total number of votes available was increased to give the pretense that every nation can say it has more voting power, according to the FT. This allowed every leader to go home claiming to have fought ferociously to preserve their position. I don't doubt that they fought ferociously.
Jill Winfield
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