Brussels and the World Cup
Although the World Cup attracts great interest in Brussels-commission spokesmen have taken to interrupting press briefings with score updates-it is also the source of some nervousness. Football matches are notorious for breeding grudges that can last a generation. As I write, there has yet to be any truly gruesome intra-European clash. Indeed the only report of nationalistic grumbling that I have come across came from Romano Prodi, the commission president. He pointed out to his British spokesman, Jonathan Faull, that while an Italian referee had awarded England their crucial penalty against Argentina, it was an English ref that disallowed two perfectly legitimate Italian goals against Croatia. I sense a directive on harmonisation of refereeing bias.
Kitty O'Shea's, a cavernous Irish pub in the middle of the European quarter in Brussels, has served as headquarters for Eurocrat football fans during the World Cup. Despite the fact that the EU is dedicated to playing down nationalist passions the atmosphere in Kitty's has been appropriately raucous. But while there is plenty of screaming and shouting, you do get a more erudite football fan in Brussels. With a minute to go in England-Argentina, an image appeared on the screens of some disconsolate-looking Argentine fans. Immediately the chant went up: "You're not solvent anymore." Presumably some of the chaps from the finance directorate?
Bigs versus littles...
Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the septuagenarian president of the EU's constitutional convention, is rumoured to have his own constitutional draft in a back-pocket. Perhaps that would be for the best-because otherwise Giscard may have to synthesise two completely opposing approaches to EU reform. One idea is to give more power to "Brussels"-meaning the commission and the parliament-by "Europeanising" foreign and security policy, as well as policing and bits of criminal law. The other idea, pushed by the British, French and Spanish is to beef up the European Council, where the nation-states do their work, and to appoint a president to supervise its work-the implication being that the commission would then become little more than a civil service. The struggle will not just be between the rival institutions-it is also an arm-wrestling match between the big and little countries. It is no accident that the British and French-who both possess nuclear weapons and seats on the UN Security Council-are keenest on keeping foreign policy out of the grasp of the commission. But many of the "littles" see the Franco-British proposal for a high-profile president of the council as an attempt to impose the dreaded "directoire"-EU-speak for a union that is run by the big countries. The littles have always seen the commission as their defender and dread the thought of a beefed-up council, run by a president who would touch base only with the bigger European capitals. But the "bigs" are also haunted by their own fears. They were alarmed by the outcry when Tony Blair tried to have dinner with his French and German counterparts after 11th September. For while the littles saw the dinner as the directoire made flesh; the bigs had a flash-forward to the days of fully Europeanised foreign policy after EU enlargement, in which it will be impossible to discuss any foreign policy crisis without having 25 prime ministers in the room. Indeed, one reason why the bigs may be anxious to lock in a council-run foreign policy now, is the sure knowledge that enlargement will greatly increase the number of small countries. The unknown factor in this debate is the biggest big of them all-Germany. When Joschka Fischer was setting the tone for German foreign policy, there would have been little doubt that the Germans would have opted for a "Europeanised" foreign policy-and would have dismissed British and French views as "19th century." But there is a strong chance that Joschka will be on the way out after Germany's elections in September. A new Schr?der government, minus Fischer, might be less communitaire. And Stoiber, the right's candidate for chancellor, makes Schr?der look like a europhile.
...And north versus south
Another basic fault-line in the EU is northerners against southerners. This dispute is on full display at the moment, as the argument over what to do about the CAP in an enlarged EU enters its final stages (see Avery page 54). In general, the northerners are keener on enlargement than the southerners-who fear that they will lose money and influence. But the northerners-in particular the Dutch, the British and the Germans-fear that once eastern farmers are put on the CAP "drug" they will become addicted That would create an in-built majority against CAP reform-and the northerners, as net payers to the union, would have to foot the bill.
The southerners, however, led by the French are all for phasing in payments to the east's farmers knowing that it will help create an alliance to protect agricultural subsidies for everyone. The French also know that they have been cast as the bad guys who want to block enlargement. How delightful then, to put those self-righteously pro-enlargement northerners in the position of blocking progress on the last crucial issue of the negotiations. The French game plan may be to put Germany in the position in which it has to choose between two of its main foreign-policy goals: enlargement and CAP reform.
