MONDAY, JUNE 13, 2005
After the referendums in France and the Netherlands, the leaders of Europe stand at a loss before the ruins of what they had been working eagerly to build since the Maastricht treaty: their visionary drafts, their castles in the sky, their bottomless expansion policies.
The constitution was supposed to provide clarity to some of our organizational problems, but since this version at least is a dead letter, our many pre-existing treaties, with their countless amendments and additions, are still valid. And not one of the 25 foreign ministers and 25 heads of government today has a complete grasp of these texts, running to many hundreds of printed pages. They are an exemplary illustration of bureaucratic chaos.
Political leadership can only be provided by people. Judgment, drive, courage and a sense of responsibility cannot be replaced by more and more new documents.
A large majority of European states and their economies are suffering from several ailments at the same time. The constitutional crisis is yet another component of the overall illness, but it will have no decisive significance on individual member states, old or new. It is the deeper roots of the sickness that must be diagnosed and treated.
In the longer term, European states see the dramatic drop in birth rates and the resulting aging of the population as the most important cause of Europe's sickness. There have been few attempts to find a treatment because the issue has not yet penetrated public consciousness, despite all its threats to the financing of the welfare states. For fear of their voters, most politicians are wary.
Currently, the most important aspect of the illness is clearly high unemployment. Anyone who examines its origins will see that it is only in the smallest part due to any failings in the EU, in no way due to the euro and hardly at all to globalization, but rather to failures within the member states. That applies for employment-market and wage policies, for some extravagances in welfare and social policy, and for economic overregulation. Member states themselves need to get their unhealthy budgets into better order.
While many motives lay behind the "no" votes in France and the Netherlands, the most important were denial and a fear of changes whose consequences cannot be foreseen. With competition from new EU members and from countries like China and India, if we don't make new discoveries, we will be unable to offer new products and services. That's why research and development are so much more important to us than labor-market gimmicks. It is not possible to separate the European economy from the global market and competition. In fact, our wealth has been dependent on our success in the world's markets for decades.
Abandon the euro? No one could be that foolish, certainly not the Council of Ministers or the EU Commission, even if long-term thinking has not been their strength up to now. Renewed, several national currencies, without links to a European currency system, would become objects of the speculators.
The EU institutions cannot heal the social and economic ills of the member states. And the Union cannot even remotely help new members financially as it once did Ireland, Spain or Greece. Instead, all the member states must identify their own ailments and draw their own consequences.
There will be no Europe euphoria for the foreseeable future. But that is no reason for pessimism. Europe is nowhere near the end of the road. The fact that so many diverse citizens and cultures have combined to create a union of their own free will and free of violence is a unique achievement in world history. The referendums' failure will not change that.
A variety of further developments are conceivable. It is possible that the additional expansions currently under way may have to cease. It is unfortunately possible that the EU may shrink into an institutionally enriched free-trade zone; the British would certainly be happy with that. It is possible that the European Parliament may force at least the urgently needed parliamentarization of all Brussels decisions, even without a constitution. But it is also possible that in a few years time, negotiations could lead to the formation of an inner core of Europe from several governments and their nations.
Because Europeans can look back on more than a millennium of national development, the Union cannot be brought to completion in just a few decades by ministers and diplomats: The EU needs the consent and will of its citizens. The coming experience of increasing helplessness of smaller and medium-sized nations acting alone will increasingly convince their citizens of the need for the Union, but that will take time and perseverance.
Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Jacques Delors, many of the old guard knew: We can repress the historically created egocentric nationalism of Europeans only gradually. Today's statesmen and the overzealous Brussels commissioners should follow this example.
(Helmut Schmidt is the former chancellor of Germany. A version of this article first appeared in Die Zeit. Translated from the German by Planet Translation and the International Herald Tribune.)
After the referendums in France and the Netherlands, the leaders of Europe stand at a loss before the ruins of what they had been working eagerly to build since the Maastricht treaty: their visionary drafts, their castles in the sky, their bottomless expansion policies.
The constitution was supposed to provide clarity to some of our organizational problems, but since this version at least is a dead letter, our many pre-existing treaties, with their countless amendments and additions, are still valid. And not one of the 25 foreign ministers and 25 heads of government today has a complete grasp of these texts, running to many hundreds of printed pages. They are an exemplary illustration of bureaucratic chaos.
Political leadership can only be provided by people. Judgment, drive, courage and a sense of responsibility cannot be replaced by more and more new documents.
A large majority of European states and their economies are suffering from several ailments at the same time. The constitutional crisis is yet another component of the overall illness, but it will have no decisive significance on individual member states, old or new. It is the deeper roots of the sickness that must be diagnosed and treated.
In the longer term, European states see the dramatic drop in birth rates and the resulting aging of the population as the most important cause of Europe's sickness. There have been few attempts to find a treatment because the issue has not yet penetrated public consciousness, despite all its threats to the financing of the welfare states. For fear of their voters, most politicians are wary.
Currently, the most important aspect of the illness is clearly high unemployment. Anyone who examines its origins will see that it is only in the smallest part due to any failings in the EU, in no way due to the euro and hardly at all to globalization, but rather to failures within the member states. That applies for employment-market and wage policies, for some extravagances in welfare and social policy, and for economic overregulation. Member states themselves need to get their unhealthy budgets into better order.
While many motives lay behind the "no" votes in France and the Netherlands, the most important were denial and a fear of changes whose consequences cannot be foreseen. With competition from new EU members and from countries like China and India, if we don't make new discoveries, we will be unable to offer new products and services. That's why research and development are so much more important to us than labor-market gimmicks. It is not possible to separate the European economy from the global market and competition. In fact, our wealth has been dependent on our success in the world's markets for decades.
Abandon the euro? No one could be that foolish, certainly not the Council of Ministers or the EU Commission, even if long-term thinking has not been their strength up to now. Renewed, several national currencies, without links to a European currency system, would become objects of the speculators.
The EU institutions cannot heal the social and economic ills of the member states. And the Union cannot even remotely help new members financially as it once did Ireland, Spain or Greece. Instead, all the member states must identify their own ailments and draw their own consequences.
There will be no Europe euphoria for the foreseeable future. But that is no reason for pessimism. Europe is nowhere near the end of the road. The fact that so many diverse citizens and cultures have combined to create a union of their own free will and free of violence is a unique achievement in world history. The referendums' failure will not change that.
A variety of further developments are conceivable. It is possible that the additional expansions currently under way may have to cease. It is unfortunately possible that the EU may shrink into an institutionally enriched free-trade zone; the British would certainly be happy with that. It is possible that the European Parliament may force at least the urgently needed parliamentarization of all Brussels decisions, even without a constitution. But it is also possible that in a few years time, negotiations could lead to the formation of an inner core of Europe from several governments and their nations.
Because Europeans can look back on more than a millennium of national development, the Union cannot be brought to completion in just a few decades by ministers and diplomats: The EU needs the consent and will of its citizens. The coming experience of increasing helplessness of smaller and medium-sized nations acting alone will increasingly convince their citizens of the need for the Union, but that will take time and perseverance.
Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, Jacques Delors, many of the old guard knew: We can repress the historically created egocentric nationalism of Europeans only gradually. Today's statesmen and the overzealous Brussels commissioners should follow this example.
(Helmut Schmidt is the former chancellor of Germany. A version of this article first appeared in Die Zeit. Translated from the German by Planet Translation and the International Herald Tribune.)