Treaty Tinkered With, Not Amended

BRUSSELS, Oct 19 (IPS) - Bleary-eyed European Union leaders agreed a 'reform treaty' for the 27-country bloc after a working dinner in Lisbon continued until the early hours of the morning Oct. 19. Yet despite suggestions that governments like those of Poland and Britain had driven a hard bargain, sizeable chunks of the text they signed up to are identical to the EU constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005.

Provisions that would give the Union the trappings of a state -- such as a common flag and anthem -- may have been removed, yet those on transferring 105 powers from national level to the Brussels bureaucracy have not been tinkered with to any significant degree. Voting rules for taking EU decisions and the composition of the European Commission, the Union's executive arm, and the European Parliament, its only directly elected body, remain for the most part unchanged.

More ominously perhaps, principles that will commit EU governments to increasing military expenditure and to zealously promoting free trade will be enshrined into the Union's law once the treaty enters into force.

The treaty commits all members of the Union to "undertake progressively to improve their military capabilities." The European Defence Agency (EDA), a body established by the Union in 2004, is to identify the "operational requirements" for the Union's military, "identifying and where appropriate implementing any measure needed to strengthen the industrial and technological base of the defence sector."

The EDA makes no secret of its desire to see defence budgets rising. In a December 2006, 'vision' statement it stated that if Europe is "to preserve a broadly based and globally competitive" defence industry, it "must take to heart" how the U.S. is "outspending Europe six to one in defence R&D (research and development), that it devotes some 35 percent of its defence expenditure to investment (from a budget more than two times as large as that of Europe's combined), as against the European level of about 20 percent, and that it is increasingly dominant in global export markets."

Differences with the U.S. notwithstanding, military spending in Europe is already considerable. The EDA has calculated that in 2005, the 24 countries then attached to it spent 193 billion euros (276 billion dollars) on defence -- the equivalent of 1.8 percent of their combined gross domestic product.

By contrast, only four EU countries -- Sweden, Denmark, Luxembourg and the Netherlands -- have honoured a decades-old commitment to allocate at least 0.7 percent of their national incomes in aid to the world's poor.

Martina Weitsch from the Quaker Council for European Affairs, an anti-war organisation, feels that the new treaty could be out of step with views expressed recently by leading EU politicians.

Earlier this month, for example, the Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana acknowledged that the prevention of crises "cannot be exclusively based on security." After pointing out that Western countries shower 1,000 billion dollars each year on the military and the arms industry, yet less than 100 billion dollars on development aid, he asked: "Is there not a margin there for a certain rebalancing?"

"Many threats today are not purely military and there might be a chink of light that things are moving on and policy makers are recognising this," Weitsch told IPS. "So having an article in the treaty that commits (EU) member states to continually improve military capabilities is a seriously bad step. Once you have it in the treaty, it is going to be very difficult to get it out again."

Some of the treaty's supporters have argued that the inclusion of a Charter of Fundamental Rights in the text weds Europe to social protection. But Susan George, a Paris-based writer and former head of Greenpeace, has pointed out that the provisions on workers' rights and equality in the charter go no further than those already guaranteed at national level in many EU states. In any event, the United Kingdom has secured an opt-out from the charter -- at the behest of the Confederation of British Industry which argued that it "would pose an unacceptable risk to the UK's flexible labour market."

"This appears to mean that while competition and market freedom are compulsory for all EU member states, even the most meagre social rights are optional," said George.

She is perturbed, too, by how the treaty seems to stipulate that the Union should push countries in the wider world -- including impoverished ones -- to abandon any measures that protect their own industries from import of European goods. A clause on commercial policy says the Union should contribute to "the progressive abolition of restrictions on international trade and on foreign direct investment and the lowering of customs and other barriers."

According to George, this will require that the Union vigorously opposes any environmental and consumer protection standards in other countries that it perceives as a hindrance to European exporters.

"Free trade has an iconic status," said George. "The new treaty retains most of the rejected constitution. It is uniquely neo-liberal in letter and in spirit. It has been put on the table with unseemly haste and no public debate has been nor will be allowed on a text of supreme complexity."

The treaty will have to be ratified by all 27 EU countries before it can have legal effect.

Ireland is the only country to have stated that it will hold a referendum on the treaty. France and the Netherlands have opted to avoid asking their voters for their views, lest they torpedo the treaty, as they did with the constitution.

This is despite how an opinion poll in The Financial Times this week found that 70 percent of those surveyed in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Britain stated that they wished to have a referendum.

Erik Wesselius, one of the leading figures in the Dutch 'No' campaign ahead of the 2005 vote, said the lack of public consultation on the treaty does not bode well for democracy. While he describes himself as pro-European, Wesselius suggests the treaty is skewed more in favour of business interests than those of society.

"Of course, the economy is very important," he told IPS. "Everybody agrees with that. But it should not be the case that the economy and the competitiveness of Europe are overriding principles.

"In the Netherlands, the Prime Minister has been saying: 'the idea of a European superstate has been dropped; the hymn is gone and the flag is gone', suggesting that Dutch citizens considered these minor symbolic issues the main problems in the rejected constitution. That's misleading when the substance of the reform treaty is the same as the rejected constitution.

"A majority of Dutch citizens is in favour of a referendum on the reform treaty. Unfortunately our government and a majority in parliament are denying us a second referendum. They will thereby undermine support for the European Union in our country." (END/2007)