| Unfortunately, the Islamacists among them don't suffer from the same limitation. |
This autumn promises to bring tough budget negotiations, grandstanding at summits and continued uncertainty at the heart of the European project. Although speaking mostly on condition of anonymity, the gloomy admissions of Eurocrats in Brussels last week - some in a series of briefings for Irish journalists - were mostly statements of the obvious.
What was more striking was the sense of pessimism that appears to be overtaking the European Commission, headed by president Jose Manuel Barroso. For the first time in decades, the engine that drove forward the European project appears to be spluttering.
On the surface, life goes on as before. The food is still excellent and the wines are still fine in the many restaurants throughout the massive modernist buildings that house thousands of Brussels officials, diplomats, lobbyists and public representatives. The Belgian beer flows freely in the bars around the magnificent Berlaymont building. But the mountains of langoustines and rivers of vin de pays are being consumed by increasingly worried men and women.
Less than a year after he assumed power, Barroso's leadership is now being openly questioned. The Lisbon Agenda - a package of ambitious economic targets which the former Portuguese prime minister chose as the benchmark to judge him - looks ever more remote. In the press room, Portuguese journalists have begun to whisper to their European colleagues that they never really rated Barroso.
| He's lost the press! Oh no! |
The subject will come up for debate again when the time is right, but in the meanwhile we must not succumb to paralysis.â
The translation was carried simultaneously into the earphones of the polyglot press corps. The real translation was this: We are paralysed.
After the social Europe of Jacques Delors and the enlargement of Romano Prodi, Barroso chose to make the Lisbon Agenda his principal task. It was a bold decision which began to look foolhardy a long time ago and is now beginning to look suicidal. âFrom the moment the Lisbon strategy was announced, GDP growth took off on a downward curve, from 3 per cent to 1 per cent,â said one senior economic official in the Berlaymont last week. âInvestment growth turned negative.â
The dilemma for Barroso - and for the European Commission - is that shifting the European economy on its axis is not something that Brussels can do. The economic reforms that are needed to kick-start the German and French economies can only be implemented by national governments. âUnless Barroso can get the co-operation of key member states' leaders, we will not deliver the Lisbon Agenda,â said a senior official.
But Barroso's fate is out of his own hands and events in Germany, France and Italy indicate economic reforms are as far away as ever.
The current political and economic climate is the most difficult that Europe has ever faced, according to one source. Weak economies are crying out for structural reform. Politically, everyone is screaming for leadership. âThe commission is going through a collective heart attack,â blurted British MEP Caroline Jackson before correcting herself: âWell, er, it's more of a stumble, really.â
âPeople are asking, what is the purpose of Europe?â says a senior bureaucrat. But what has really changed in Brussels is that the high and mighty in the European Commission are now asking âWhat is the purpose of Europe?â
| Start a new world war? |
âWe are being called upon to provide leadership,â complained one senior bureaucrat, âat a time of such weak leadership in some key member states.â
Last week, the commissioners gathered in a country retreat outside Brussels to consider these and other pressing questions. While the corpse of the treaty and the need for Europe to communicate better were on the agenda, continuing economic stasis in many members states is still the great underlying problem.
The causes are structural, certainly, but there is a willingness among some - including commissioner Charlie McCreevy - to look at the problem from different perspectives, from cultural ones, for instance. âThere is a lack of dynamism, a lack of willingness to become entrepreneurs,â complained one longtime bureaucrat last week.
These are more than sociological questions. In the words of one commission official, âThe problem now is we are faced with the question of how to finance the European social model.â Others are thinking the unthinkable - what if the existence of the social model is now one of the factors inhibiting growth. Can Europe square that circle? As one senior official remarked ruefully, âIf this is true, there is no way out of this'â.
| Couple this realization to the demographic bomb -- negative fertility rate for European women and high fertility rate for immigrant women -- and Eurabia is looking more likely all the time. |
But does any of this matter to us in Ireland. It all seems remote, opaque even.
If Europe was really in crisis, this would be a matter for the gravest of concern for Ireland. But it's not, really. There is - or shortly will be - a crisis of confidence in the leadership of the chief Eurocrat. There is a crisis among those for whom Europe is the commission, the institutions. But it's far from universally accepted that to be a good European, you must be dedicated to âever closer union'â - particularly to political union. This vision of Europe has previously been in the ascendant in Brussels but it has been shattered by events of the past few years, and by the French and Dutch votes. This is the Europe that is in crisis; these are the death throes of federalism.
There are other visions of Europe, such as the Irish one.
Despite having access to the grotesquely deformed British debate on Europe, the Irish remain committed to a European Union, but one of nation states. Some powers should be devolved to Brussels, while others - such as tax - should remain firmly at home. This appears to be the vision shared - if not by Brussels - by most of Europe.
Unlikely as it may seem, in the great debate about Europe's future, the Irish appear to be the winners.