Two speed Europe

Variable geometry, which some call a two speed Europe, could be coming into vogue again, judging by predictions from a number of grand figures at an EPC think tank conference held in Brussels just after the new reform treaty was agreed by leaders.
What two-speed Europe means is that a core group of countries forge ahead with legislation that ties their countries ever closer together. The outer ring meanwhile lives with the policies it has signed up to in the extant EU but goes no farther. Participation in core Europe will remain voluntary.
What’s not to like? Well, the British don’t like it, fearing that they will be in the outer ring and therefore lose influence. But it’s actually deeply un-British to complain about this: it is one thing not to want a “superstate” to dictate terms to you; quite another to interfere with other countries’ wish to decide their own arrangements, if that’s what they want to do – and Britain isn’t being excluded. Countries, like individuals, have freedom of association too.
The European Policy Centre is a bellwether of Brussels opinion, and it’s interesting that several speakers, Peter Sutherland, chairman of BP and regular Brussels commentators, Antonio Vitorino, a former commissioner and Portuguese prime minister, and Antonio Missiroli, the director of research at the EPC, all predicted the variable geometry would be coming into more frequent play. Last time it was on the cards was after the failed summit in December 2003, when – as at the summit two weeks ago – the issue was a squabble over voting weights. Soon-to-join Poland didn’t want to give up its favourable position in the council of ministers earnt at Nice in 2000. (It finally agreed to a change 2 weeks ago) Talks were deadlocked; the summit collapsed and out of a general sense one feels of the morass faced by future European decision-making, Jacques Chirac, the president, wheeled out his plan B, the idea of a two speed Europe led by a pioneer group with Germany and France at its heart. The requirement for this as I then remember was that eight countries had to sign up for Chirac’s plan-B to become reality, and I remember doing the arithmetic with a young Czech girl journalist over a cigarette break outside the Czech delegation’s room in the Justus Lipsus building. Luxembourg and Belgium were givens, of course; but Hungary and Greece had just announced they would agree to sign up, and Austria. And the Czech republic she added, relying on inside information from the Czech camp. I remembered my sense of disappointment, but she shrugged and said; “You know, we like England. But we just don’t want to be on the outside.”
The Chirac plan, which was soon abandoned, was heavily criticised by British commentators who said the threat amounted to bullying tactics and that the Berlin Wall, which had just come down, was about to be re-erected between new and old – an argument that examplified unreasonable British huffing and puffing, since no exclusion of new members would be taking place.
So what’s the new deal about? Here is research director Missiroli: “Some degree of “variable geometry” will be inevitable in an expanding EU. While this would not necessarily result in a ‘two-speed Europe’, there would be a centre of gravity, with ‘core’ members participating in all key common policies and varying groups of countries involved in only some of them. The planned new treaty is deliberately permissive in this respect as it includes considerable possibilities for both opting in or out and implementing enhanced cooperation.”
In fact, a lot of this is happening already, and to an extent it ‘s only being given a name. Already, some EU countries opt out of the euro, the Schengen agreement or EU defence policy.
In the new treaty Britain has an opt-out on justice and home affairs, and the charter for fundamental rights. Possible future examples of variable geometry include giving new members such as Turkey long derogations before being allowed to enter the common labour market; in fact it might be the only way to keep enlargement, one of the EU’s most lauded achievements, on track, since France is committed to a referendum on the subject of Turkey and will probably say no unless the country is kept at some sort of arms length. The Turks will probably rather settle for an attenuated membership than none at all.
So far so relatively uncontroversial. But there is an ambiguity in discussions in Brussels on whether variable geometry as is happening and will continue to do so, and a two speed Europe as posed by Chirac and subject to the eight nation minimum vote, are quite the same thing. What I suspect Chirac really painted was a grand vision of a single, core framework of shared and psychology and intent, not about opting in or out a la carte this policy or that. And that, once a two speed Europe is in place, insiders could move at a much more rapid clip than currently, totally changing the face of Europe as we know it: a core Europe shorn of annoying dilettante latecomers who, since entry, are forver upsetting the original federal vision of the core Six’s founders. Britain will almost certainly be outside, for better or for worse, and maybe that’s the way the country wants it.