Battle for EU’s future looms
Scarred by Brexit and spooked by populism, European Union leaders are launching a huge public consultation in all 27 member states to ask their people what they want from Brussels.
The question ‘‘What kind of Europe do you want to live in?’’ is being posed by EU leaders meeting in Portugal this weekend, and at the European parliament’s Strasbourg seat, with flags, fanfare, and orchestras playing the EU anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy.
Beneath the theatrics is a battle over the bloc’s future. Presiding over the ceremony is French President Emmanuel Macron, who has pushed for a ‘‘future of Europe’’ project.
A key question is whether the EU can reform without triggering membership referendums. Some leaders want to rule out losing another member after the United Kingdom’s departure in January 2020, following the Brexit referendum in 2016.
Many European countries have constitutional conventions that can require referendums when new EU treaties centralise powers further in Brussels or face populist opposition movements.
A text circulated by 12 countries at the leaders’ summit is asking for commitments ruling out new EU powers.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Macron have not ruled out treaty changes, but neither wants to risk a divisive constitutional debate or a referendum.
French and Dutch rejection of
Europe’s constitution in 2005, the delay of the Lisbon Treaty because of a failed Irish vote, and Brexit all illustrate the political dangers.
MEPs are angry because Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, is reneging on a pledge to scrap national vetoes over EU sanctions policy. Her proposal to introduce majority voting on a key foreign policy would almost certainly trigger a referendum in Ireland and calls for one in Denmark and
the Netherlands.
The row is in danger of symbolising a loss of Europe’s sense of mission after one of the longest periods without treaty change in the EU’s history.
EU leaders and their large following of diplomats and advisers meeting in Portugal for two days of in-person talks have signalled their belief that the threat from Covid-19 on the continent is waning amid a quickening vaccine rollout.
The pandemic has been a constant presence at the summit
in the Atlantic coast city of Porto, however.
‘‘The (pandemic) recovery is still in an early stage,’’ von der Leyen conceded. ‘‘We’re still having a difficult time.’’
The summit hopes to repair some of the economic damage the pandemic has wreaked in the bloc. EU leaders will also discuss proposals to share Covid-19 vaccine technology to help speed the end of the pandemic for the entire world.
Despite a slow start to its vaccination drive, the EU has passed the milestone of 150 million vaccinations, and reckons it can reach what it calls ‘‘sufficient community immunity’’ in two months. The European Commission has proposed relaxing restrictions on travel to the bloc this northern summer.
Yet who can travel, and when and where, remain sensitive questions for Europeans.
Pandemic improvements have been uneven across the continent, and many EU citizens remain subject to restrictions. In a political nod to those concerns, Merkel and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte did not travel to Portugal. Maltese Prime Minister Robert Abela is also not attending in person, because he is in quarantine after his wife tested positive.
With the pandemic exposing inequalities and bringing greater hardship in the bloc, the talks will also look at how to ensure that the rights of EU citizens are protected in employment support, gender equality and social services.
The EU yesterday called on the United States to start boosting its vaccine exports to contain the global Covid-19 crisis, and said that US backing of patent waivers would provide only a long-term solution at best.
While the US has kept a tight lid on exports of American-made vaccines so it can inoculate its own population first, the EU has become the world’s leading provider, allowing about as many doses – 200 million – to go outside the bloc as are kept for its 446 million inhabitants. Many EU nations, however, have demanded a stop to vaccine nationalism and export bans.