Any institution born in acrimony and wrangling stands little chance of winning respect or general acclaim. The European Union constitution has suffered a confused genesis, a protracted negotiation and a bitter dénouement that has left it without authority, coherence or meaning. Although agreement amongst the leaders was struck last night, the thought that an ill-considered jumble of incoherent philosophical pretentiousness and mindless micro-managing should define British and European identities is absurd.
Few would dispute the need for new rules to accommodate the entry of ten extra nations into a union that was already finding difficulty in coping with 15 existing members. The constitution was mooted as a short declaration of principles and sold, especially in Britain, as a “tidying up” exercise. Whatever claims were made for it under that heading by Tony Blair in his attempt to ward off criticism, the constitution now has gone far beyond any such exercise. Under it, Britain will lose more national vetoes over more areas of policy than were removed by the Maastricht treaty.
Worse than that, the months of negotiation have so freighted the document with addenda, footnotes, interpolated paragraphs and additional clauses that it has become monstrously cumbersome: the very opposite of the short, clear statement of basic values and principles that lies at the heart of most democratic nations’ constitutions. Indeed, it is this lack of clarity that is its most vexing and unacceptable aspect. There is a dangerous ambiguity over the fundamental issue of where power lies and will lie. This ambiguity is not the result of oversight or drafting carelessness: it has been crafted in order to produce a false consensus among EU leaders who each believe that their mutually contradictory interpretation is correct. The result is predictable: at the first clash of meaning, the wording will be referred to the European Court of Justice, which will therefore become the de facto supreme court of Europe and routinely find in favour of “Europe”.
That would be unacceptable not only to Britain but to many other countries, especially those in Central and Eastern Europe which have only just begun enjoying sovereignty outside the Soviet orbit. Within Britain, ambiguity also arises over the status of the EU constitution. Does it take precedence over Britain’s own unwritten constitution? The Government asserts that it does not; senior lawyers insist that it does. From its proponents there has been no effort to explain the ambiguities; instead, they have merely lambasted as Europhobic those who have queried the impenetrable wording.
The fundamental objection to the document is that it is pointing in the wrong direction. The peoples of Europe want lighter regulation, especially from Brussels, and a less intrusive EU presence in their personal lives, in their businesses and in the practice of their democratic freedoms. That was the striking message from the cacophony of results in the recent European elections. The 2001 Laeken Declaration, which set in train the negotiations, envisaged a constitution that would bring the EU closer to its peoples and transfer some powers back to its members, which this constitution has utterly failed to do. The opposite has occurred. The confusion between defining values and laying down workplace regulations has left a document with a built-in bias towards a creeping federalism. This document offers not a roadmap to the future but gives an opportunity for discredited ideologies and government intervention to make a grand return. It is not designed to secure and enhance individuals ’ rights, but to enshrine the right of a self-interested, self-serving bureaucracy to meddle at will.