Let’s try to cut through all the spin on the Reform Treaty which was put on the IGC rails on Saturday morning 23 June.

First of all, the compromise reached is no more and no less than the draft Constitution brought in through the backdoor. In a mockery of the two no-referenda in France and the Netherlands, EU leaders have cynically undone any citizens’ reluctance to continue with the current European project. Even if they will manage to prevent future referenda on the Reform Treaty, this contempt for European citizens will come back to haunt the EU. At least, the “elitist” leaders of the past had the guts to defend their elitism, whereas the current generation preaches “better communication” (try to read the compromise text) and “reconnecting to citizens”.

Secondly and more important, what happened in Brussels in the last three days confirms that European leaders are not interested in a long-term vision for the continent but more in bringing something home that they can sell as “their” victory (be it the Polish victory on the double majority voting, the British opt-out of the Charter, the French surprise attack on “free and undistored competition”, or the German “Merkel does it again” triumph).

What the summit has proved is that the two-speed Europe is already a reality, as Belgian former Commissioner Karel Van Miert underlined to his country’s press. French journalist Jean Quatremer makes the same evaluation in the Libération article “L’ébauche d’une Europe à deux vitesses“.

Now it is time to move on from a two-speed Europe to a “two-vision Europe” because behind all the obvious European politicking, there are two different visions on the future of the European project (which political leaders do not dare to pronounce or politicise openly). The first vision is based on the 20th century liberal competitiveness-economic growth ideology which aims to have Europe win the “battle of globalisation” without understanding that globalisation means increasing interconnectedness where there is no winning without losing in some other respect.

The second vision is one of ecological industrial modernisation of Europe which recognises the interconnectedness of globalisation and the “new scarcity” as expressed in the recent urgency of climate change and energy security policies.

The problem with the two-speed Europe or the concept of “enhanced cooperation” is that it splits up EU member states in “leaders” and “laggards” or “avant-garde” and “arrière-garde”. Maybe the two-vision Europe could overcome this problem. A Europe consisting of two groups of countries each developing cooperation along their vision might also remobilise citizens’ interest. And may the best vision win!

More interesting reading on the Reform Treaty summit:

• EurActiv: Summit seals mandate for EU ‘Reform Treaty’
• BBC News: At-a-glance: EU treaty proposals
• EU Referendum blog: The European Council “mandate” analysed
• Federal Union: The new EU Reform Treaty

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.

It is amazing what media attention can do. Now that all of them have seen the green light (or is it the “inconventient truth”?), politicians are trying to compete for becoming the climate champion of the year, the “EU Al Gore”. If ever the thesis about our “spectacle” democracy needed any confirmation, we can find it in the “spectacular” way climate change (an issue known since the beginning of the 90s) has fired itself onto the political agenda.

Who would have thought one year ago that new French President Sarkozy would have a superminister for ecology? Why is even Brown becoming green?

And of course, our respected members of the European Parliament just had to wake up to the climate heat too. So, let’s create a 60-members big special committee which is going to find THE solution by travelling around the world to talk to other parliaments.

Ah, and another good idea: let’s make the European Parliament “carbon-neutral”, that will show them. So the EP Bureau is to decide on 18 June to commission some “independent external experts” to evaluate the Parliament’s carbon footprint in order to later define an action plan to reduce greenhouse gas reductions of the Brussels and Strasbourg activities.

Oops, but small problem there. The issue of the two seats is kind of a taboo and, for sure, not the competence of the MEPs themselves but of the 27 governments of the EU. So we will not measure the carbon footprint of the fact of having two seats (a study by the way which was commissioned by Green MEPs Caroline Lucas and Jean Lambert last month).

My recommendation to all my dear MEP friends: maybe the next European Parliament (the one chosen by probably one third of our voters in 2009) should declare a five-year moratorium on its normal activities and focus itself on defining a new European eco-vision? Now, wouldn’t that be something?

In a comment to the first post of this blog, Raymond van Ermen wrote the following:
“The Berlin Declaration celebrating the EU’s 50th anniversary is very disappointing for two reasons :
o In January 2007, President Barroso named sustainability as one of the EU’s five key values, to be enshrined in the Berlin Declaration celebrating the EU’s 50th anniversary. However, the reference was restricted to figthing climate change.
o The Declaration has not been signed by all the Member States.

Today the risks have for name resource scarcity and war for resources. The opportunities have for name a resource efficient and low carbon economy and a well being society for all. The challenge is also to be sure that this vision is shared by the EU 27 Member States.
Contrary to what thinks the Czech President these new urgencies are neither a “Western” or a “Green” agenda against the rights to development of “new member states” and “developing countries or against “business” nor “a communist plot cooked up by the losers of the cold war”. It is a mankind imperative shared at global level by public authorities, the religious, scientific, business communities, It is – as any crisis – a risk and an opportunity (including to make profit and enhance competitiveness). It it the necessary path to help emerging economies and developing countries to “leapfrog”.

I could not agree more with Raymond. The Berlin Declaration is no more and no less than the failure of the old European elite, which is not able and willing to define the real risks to global and European prosperity.

I attended two citizens’s debates on the EU’s constitutional crisis in the last few days and got ample confirmation that we are just whistling in the dark when confronted with what is probably one of the EU’s most serious crises.
The first debate on the June 2007 roadmap (taking place in the European Parliament on 9 May) was totally dominated by two MEP “elephants” of the Constitutional debate, Jens-Peter Bonde and Inigo Mendez de Vigo. Both these “anciens” are so “locked” into the technicalities of the Constitution debate that they can no longer see beyond the horizon of their institutional logic. Their interventions, although entertaining, left me certainly on my hunger for a visionary counter-medicine to the “future-of-the-EU paralysis” that I see everywhere in Brussels and other capitals.
Fortunately, the panel also included Raymond van Ermen whose vision for a “way out of the constitutional crisis” comes close to my own ideas as set out in a recent article I wrote for Diplomatic World. But Raymond’s plea for a new “sustainability” vision of Europe did not get any serious reaction from both MEPs.
What most speakers agreed on, though, was that the German Presidency has returned to “methods of the past”, namely intergovenmental talks behind closed doors to revive the dead constitution. Did Frau Merkel ever read Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein”?
The willingness (or lack of it) of European political leaders was also raised during a “European Citizens’ Consultations” meeting on 10 May. During that event, a representation of European citizens handed over the results of a Europe-wide consultation of citizens on future priorities for the EU to Commissioner Wallström and two MEPs. With her usual flair, Margot Wallström tried to keep up appearances and promised that the commission will take the “citizens report” seriously. I know that she means it but do her fellow commissioners? And does the German Presidency? It seemed to me significant that no representative of Presidency was present during the handover event.
My conclusion and recommendation: if political leaders ignore us, let’s ignore them in return. Let’s work on a new vision for Europe with a strong participatory dimension and forget about the petty institutional tinkering which they try to sell as the “future of the EU”.

Europe is at a historical crossroads. The European Union, which has been a unique and by and large successful project, has reached its final destination and needs a fundamental visionary as well as institutional redesign if it is to find answers to the overwhelming global challenges of the 21st century.
Neither the latest EU enlargement nor the failed Constitutional process are at the heart of the EU’s crisis. The current crisis is more existential as it is determined by the failure of the EU’s policies, players and institutions to produce effective answers to globalisation, to the new resource scarcity and to climate change.
The current EU is the child of the short period of abundance after two humbling world wars. Its policies, institutions and even its politicians have been shaped by the belief in endless economic growth. Now that new resource scarcity and climate change are redefining global politics, the EU needs new architects to build the new Eco-Europe.
This blog aims to bring people together who are willing to brainstorm and gradually define the new Europe.