Will the European Council meeting of 21-22 June go down in history as a “new beginning” after the draft Constitution failure in France and the Netherlands? I am sure it will not.

Even if, on Friday, EU leaders manage to strike a deal on a “roadmap” to a new Treaty, what the summit will be remembered for is the unshameful politicking of men and women pretending to be “political leaders” in an effort to undo the first citizens’ resistance to an elite-led European project. The way Chancellor Merkel and her spin doctors have been trying to revive the Constitution without daring to speak its name and to make sure that never again people will be asked in referenda to express their feelings about the EU project, is likely to go into history as the “great constitution swindle”.

And then again, whatever happens, I do not think it will bring the Union much relief. Within the negotiating process, so many differences of opinion and of values have turned up that this EU can hardly be called a “Europe of values” anymore. It is only a matter of months or years before the new deal will also be unravelled.

As we have said in earlier posts, this EU is at its end and needs to re-engineer itself. Of course this will not happen with 27 members. Some of them are not ready for the new big vision. But those who really believe that the 21st century challenges need more global cooperation will have to find ways of getting out under the old ruins and start building the new eco-house. Who takes the lead? My money is on the Dutch

More interesting comments on the summit:

• EU Referendum: A gigantic, ocean-going con
• EU Referendum: We aren’t idiots

The Times has published the “full text of Mrs Merkel’s Blueprint for Europe”

This week’s Economist has an excellent analysis of think tanks and political debates in Brussels. Its main message: “the level and quality of public debate in the EU capital are depressingly low”. I could not agree more having attended and sometimes moderated lots of the conferences or seminars where these debates should take place.

The article blames funding of the Brussels think tanks by EU institutions and corporate sponsors for the poor quality of debate and also rightly points to the fact that Brussels is a rather closed system where “the same folk must deal with each other for years, haggling their way towards policy deals”. I have once called this the “Brussels incest”, a system where anyone wanting to be influential needs to be loved by the consensus leaders in order to be taken seriously. Anyone daring to ask provocative questions during these conferences immediately risks becoming an “outsider” who needs to be shunned for the future.

As the Economist reports, Commissioner Margot Wallström (who is aware of the problem) will be proposing a plan to fund pan-European foundations to foster more political debate. The problem, says the Economist, is that these foundations will be linked to the European political parties, which are “imperfect vehicles for pushing forward debate”. Here I only agree partially. I think using these transnational political party federations could be a good idea because they are less chained by the immediate day-to-day political agenda and could therefore work on finding “the next big idea”.

The real danger lies in spreading these new foundation funds over all European political parties. Why not use the money to set up one European Debate Foundation, which could be run by representatives from all European party formations and which would organise two big events per year (just before the European Council meetings in March and December) where the “next big ideas” can be discussed? One of the “big ideas” that I would like to push (as you can expect when you read this blog) is the ecological re-engineering of the EU.