Airstrip One

Taking Rumour at face value - 22nd December 2002, 18.08

Given its provenance and knack for reappearing in the media, there is a need to question the assertion that:

The convention's secret weapon is the proposal by EU Commission President Romano Prodi to require all current member states to sign up for the new Constitution or face expulsion -- a ploy that seems aimed against Britain and other Euroskeptics like Denmark.

Romano Prodi released the Commission's contribution to the 'future of Europe' debate without consulting his fellow Commissioners and lost support within the Convention for his cackhanded tactics. Nevertheless, this assertion has acquired legs and continues to be repeated more and more frequently in various articles on Europe, including the latest contribution from Martin Walker at UPI.

Who would benefit from such a strategic move in the European political scene? The federalists at the Convention could support such a proposal as it increases the political price the UK has to pay to an unacceptable level (for the Blair administration) if it begins to negotiate aggressively and, if their bluff was called, they would lose an opponent of their medium-term plans for European sovereignty. The Eurosceptics within the UK would market such a possibility since this gives an 'out' without any effort on their part proving once and for all that the UK was incompatible with the Continent.

Who would lose from such a proposal? The smaller countries, Italy and Spain who would all be unwilling to see a major power forced out to reaffirm the dominance of the Franco-German alliance. Sweden and Finland could fall on their swords if Denmark were also expelled. Such ructions would bring the fissures in the European Union to the fore and could spell its total demise.

Walker lists the defeat of British interests in the EU by Chirac-Schroeder:

The fruits of the new Chirac-Schroeder alliance have so far been unpleasant for Britain. First, they cooked up a scheme to continue the EU's indefensible Common Agricultural Policy for another decade, despite previous pious promises to reform it.

Then they proposed a new EU defense procurement system, an attempt to undermine the advantages British defense industries enjoy in the key American market. (The British get their privileged access because a) the Pentagon trusts them and b) they produce kit the Americans actually want to buy, like jump-jet fighters.)

Finally they are pushing yet again to "harmonize" EU tax rates, by which they mean forcing the British and Irish and other healthy economies to tax themselves into the same stagnation the French and German economies now suffer. Along the way, they hope to chip away at the City of London's financial dominance, to the benefit of Frankfurt and Paris.

He points out that the balancing act between the Atlantic and the Continent, maintained for sixty years, may be coming to an end.

The stakes for the future of the trans-Atlantic alliance in these three meetings are very high, and even higher for the British, who may be heading for that unwelcome moment of choice between Europe and its traditional links to America and the open sea.