This article first appeared in Reformer magazine in Summer 2001.

In Britain it often seems very difficult to have any discussion about the future of Europe outside the narrow parameters of an intricate domestic debate about whether, how and why the UK might eventually decide to join the euro. And our overwhelming focus on this is right – plainly we are not going to be able to fulfil anyone’s vision of being “at the heart of Europe” without achieving at least that.

But beyond these shores, where the Euro is literally a done deal, eyes are freer to focus on some rather further horizons.

The summit of Nice undoubtedly did provide for a few days some good news about Europe to the British press, and as pro-Europeans for this at least we must be grateful. This was surely a welcome (and literal) “spin-off”. But we must not let it mask the rather truer reality that Nice was actually the acme of organisational collapse of the existing Union. There were bigger debates than just British concerns under discussion. It was not – as the British press would have you believe - because fifteen heads of Government were hunched in conference until the early hours tortuously agreeing to the British notion of a Rapid Reaction Force, that the summit ran to twice its planned length.

For there is a very real debate going on about the future direction of the Union in what is already referred to on the continent as “Europe after the
Euro”. It was kicked off most vociferously by German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer a year ago, and contributed to prominently by Chirac, Havel, Blair and German and Italian Presidents Rau and Ciampi, and of course most recently Gerhard Schröder.

The next few years will be crucial in deciding the future of the Union. The next major revision of how European structures are working, and how they can be improved, will take place under the German Presidency in 2004. The concluding summit of the Belgian Presidency in Laeken in December this year will be crucial in setting down the ground rules for how it will be approached. If the British are not to fail yet again in having our political ideas considered in creating the future of Europe, this deserves some of our attention.

The first and over-riding priority for the European Union must be finally to get serious about Enlargement. More than a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall no longer can genial rhetoric substitute for genuine political will. Serious enlargement is not an additional political privilege which the west can choose to extend (or not) to its poor relations in the east. A serious political block on our eastern border, opposed to the EU, is most certainly not in the interest of western Europe. And anyone who thinks that securing peace in western Europe is only about tying France and Germany together needs to look at European history in a rather longer perspective than just back to 1945.

To some on the continent the next step in integration can only be achieved by creating a closer system of operation known variously as a “two-speed Europe”, or a “Federal” or “Hard Core”. To support such a system, in blind pursuit of a particular ideal institutional model for the Union, at the expense of unity in Europe, is to forget the reason that we think it is a good idea to work together in the first place. While plainly not every country in Europe can have a veto on every project engaged by all the others, the route of, for example, the original six countries going ahead alone, merely creates division rather than unity.

What should we be trying to achieve in Europe over the next few years?

Firstly, Liberal Democrats have always understood better than anyone else the importance of dividing powers between different levels of Government, and of setting this division out clearly. As the European level of Government gains importance it must have a Constitution, setting which should and which should not be its competencies, an idea that gathers pace.

Secondly, we must not be afraid to continue campaigning for democratic reforms to the Union. The Council of Ministers remains the only legislature in Europe to meet in secret – the old joke is still true that if the EU applied to join itself it would be rejected as not meeting the necessary criteria for transparency. And we need a strong role within the Union for the democratically-elected Institution, the European Parliament, including control of the European Commission.

Thirdly, it is clear that the Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) process itself needs radical review. Alongside the signal achievement of producing for decision-making by the Council what is possibly the most complicated voting system ever devised, one of the Nice summit’s few achievements was to highlight the sheer lunacy of attempting to decide the future governance of our continent by Prime Ministers personally spending three days and nights horse-trading with each other in secret. And if this produced gridlock with 15 leaders, achieving progress with up to 27 countries will most certainly not be a picnic.

There is an alternative way. The European Union’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, signed off at Nice, broke new ground by being put together not just by diplomats in secret, but by a Convention made up of national and European Parliamentarians, national Governments, and a range of other citizens’ representatives. This method is a useful model - more open, more accountable, and more sensibly paced - for arriving at future constitutional arrangements for Europe.

And only if the Union reforms to become a more democratic and effective institution will it be able to meet the needs of its citizens. The new combination of isolationism and confrontation of George Bush’s USA, the remaining superpower, highlights further the importance of Europe being an effective global player.

Does any of this involve the revocation of much-cherished national institutions, the end of a thousand years of British history? No: if liberal democracy is about anything, it is about creating institutions and systems of Government which can provide effective responses to the challenges facing its citizens, and which are democratically accountable to the people. British institutions must remain, but we must recognise that whether we like it or not, that in a globalised world of globalised forces, national patriotism really is no longer enough.