SP International :: Goals

A better Europe starts now

Chapter 1

European cooperation: a good idea

A good idea…

Europe is the part of the world where democracy, human rights and environmental protection were first conceived and where they are now most developed. It was the first part of the world to abolish the death penalty. That is something of which we can be proud.

The European Convention on Human Rights, binding on all forty-six member states of the Council of Europe, contains important provisions, creating rights which can be enforced by the recourse which citizens have to the European Court of Human Rights. Following the demise of communism in central and eastern Europe, the division of the continent came to an end and all of the former communist states acceded to the Council of Europe, signing the European Convention on Human Rights. This treaty offers visible proof of the enormous importance of European cooperation. The same goes for the European Social Charter, also instituted by the Council of Europe, in which minimum social rights are laid down. This latter treaty, however, remains to be ratified by a number of European countries, including the Netherlands.

The treaties which, from 1957 onwards, led to the creation of the European Union, have been of great importance for European cooperation, primarily in the area of economics. The original six member states have increased by stages to fifteen and now twenty-five, a figure which will grow to twenty-seven with the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007. Within the European Union the guiding rules establish the free movement of goods, capital, services and labour, with the frontiers between member states becoming internal borders. Economic cooperation, set in motion after the Second World War, has contributed to the prosperity of the participating countries and their citizens. In addition, these countries have been able in this way to reduce political differences to such a degree that armed conflict has not recurred.

The Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), in which the United States and Canada also participate, is now the biggest regional security organisation in the world and is primarily concerned with 'early warning', conflict prevention and crisis management.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), following the end of a Cold War which divided Europe for fifty years, has now grown into an Atlantic-European alliance in which most of the former member states of the Warsaw Pact now participate and with which Russia is linked under a 'Partnership for Peace' agreement.

These various cooperation agreements have created numerous possibilities for countries and their citizens to learn from each others' experiences, so that we are not all obliged to keep reinventing the wheel. Through the sharing of knowledge, making use of each other's capacities and finding in each other an ongoing source of inspiration, Europe is able more rapidly and better to develop, allowing the rest of the world to benefit from this.

…but not self-evidently so

But none of this is self-evident. For cooperation to be effective it must be based on political will and the availability of necessary material resources. Despite all the guarantees of human rights, in reality many people in Europe continue to suffer discrimination. People attempting to bring a case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg discover that tens of thousands are in the queue in front of them. Many countries which have signed the European Social Charter have failed to achieve the minimum social rights which it establishes. While NATO has indeed brought former enemies in Europe together, it has now declared the whole world to be an area of possible intervention, involving itself in dubious wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And despite economic cooperation within the EU, far from every region of every country belonging to the Union has achieved prosperity, and conflicts over a number of points are becoming greater rather than smaller. People in some member states feel their interests to be played off against those of people in other member states and since the Maastricht Treaty of 1991 the European Union has gone increasingly in the direction of an inadvisable European superstate, with one flag, one anthem, one currency, one monetary policy and the ambition to have one constitution, one foreign and defence policy and a leading role in the world economy and global politics.

Persistent criticism

European cooperation may be a necessity – no country in Europe can get away from the realities of its geographic location, and each needs to have good relations with other European countries – but this does not mean that all forms of cooperation are by definition good. The goals and performances of cooperation must be subject to persistent critical analysis, in order to forestall the pursuit through cooperation of the wrong goals, or to curtail cooperation which leads to inflexible institutionalisation by which goals which may themselves be worthy are no longer effectively pursued. Such analysis must be present at all levels, from local councils to national parliaments and the European Parliament and other forms of parliamentary monitoring. Governments and the Councils of Ministers of both the European Union and the Council of Europe should in all cases be required to give an account of themselves, of their efforts and achievements in negotiations within European structures of cooperation. European cooperation must not be allowed to avoid democratic monitoring, for to do so is to place decision-making processes beyond supervision, with consequences which are often undesirable.

This paper is directed towards the most extensive form of European cooperation, the European Union. Within the EU over the years ambition and achievement have become estranged. Monetary cooperation is good, but the overhasty introduction of the euro was not. Transparent agreements as to how cooperation should proceed are urgently needed, but the European Constitution offered little to citizens. Freedom of movement within the European Union for people, capital and labour is a worthy goal, but the introduction of a Services Directive which takes its inspiration from neoliberalism, or the unregulated migration of workers from eastern to western Europe is far from such. The removal of internal borders was a step forward, but its exploitation by international organised crime and by terrorists is a step back. This goes equally for the transformation of the European Union into a Fortress Europe increasingly inaccessible to people from other parts of the world fleeing from violence, exploitation and poverty, who find themselves to an ever greater extent confronted by walls, barbed wire and armed patrols at the external frontiers of the EU.

Disappointment

An important justification for the creation of what is now the European Union was the argument that it would offer a solution to the many problems which respect no borders. Within the trade union movement, the environmentalist movement and international solidarity organisations, the expectation has long existed that 'more Europe' would be a guarantee of progress and solidarity. European cooperation should therefore be much more than simply economic cooperation. For those who thought along these lines, the reality has become a major disappointment. The EU has not concerned itself with such problems, but instead interfered increasingly in member states' domestic political decisions. Energy providers, rail and postal services in the different EU member states are not being more effectively tuned to one another but instead played off against each other. The Services Directive, brainchild of ex-Commissioner Frits Bolkestein, even attempts to put different countries in competition with each other over such matters as social legislation and collective labour agreements.

Because of the fact that in the EU all sorts of decisions are pushed through at a central level distant from the people, strikers, demonstrators and other active citizens can have much less influence than they can within their national capitals, while the lobbies of multinational corporations have all the more. These lobbies constantly bombard officials, the European Commission and the European Parliament with information from which it invariably appears that protection of workers or the environment or the international fight for human rights increase costs and put a brake on economic growth. On the basis of such arguments they demand European regulations which reduce the influence of the member states and force them into deregulation, for which read: getting rid of rules which were once introduced after careful deliberation.

It is no wonder that an ever-growing number of people, while they agree that European cooperation is necessary, find the European Union in its present form of little worth. The results of the referenda on the European Constitution, in particular, in both the Netherlands and France, demonstrated that when the political system does not take them seriously, they will react. How this can be put right forms the subject of the following chapters.

[ Summary - The debate on Europe is on its way! - European cooperation – a good idea - A more democratic Europe - A slimmed-down Europe - The size of the European Union - A fruitful agricultural policy - An affordable European Union ]