If the UK stays it may be joined in an outer circle by other EU states, writes Vernon Bogdanor
On June 23 British voters decide whether to remain in the EU. But first they must ask: what kind of organisation is it and how will it develop?
“Voting to remain,” Gisela Stuart, a pro-Brexit MP from the opposition Labour party, has declared, “is not just about staying in the EU as it is today, but also about staying in as it will look in 2025 or 2035.” Last year’s report of the five presidents of EU institutions advocated strengthening of the monetary union by 2025, a eurozone treasury and ultimate political union. That, Ms Stuart insists, means “an EU where the priorities of the eurozone will gradually and inevitably take over Brussels institutions”. The union, warns Michael Gove, UK justice secretary, “wants more power over our taxes and our banks”.
This view is outdated. The real development of the EU is in a different direction, as shown by the package Prime Minister David Cameron has negotiated with the other member states — a package whose significance it is easy to underestimate.
In 1993 the Copenhagen criteria laid down that EU members were committed to “political, economic and monetary union”. Britain was already exempt from the last two; Mr Cameron secured exemption from ever-closer political union. These exemptions could not, presumably, be denied to others. In addition, it has been confirmed that a member state cannot be discriminated against because it is not in the eurozone.
Mr Cameron’s negotiation made explicit what has long been implicit: the EU is flexible enough to accommodate diversity and has no wish to force member states to adopt policies contrary to vital national interests. Flexibility has been shown in the opt-outs granted to Britain, Denmark, Ireland and Poland.
Core member states, such as Germany and France, might opt to move towards tighter integration. But any core would probably be a small one. Britain, meanwhile, may well be joined by other nations, freeing themselves from what they see as a monetary and fiscal straitjacket, in a larger outer circle. Not all central European states will wish to join the eurozone any time soon. One Polish leader says privately that Poland is five years from joining the eurozone — and always will be. Greece, and other Mediterranean states, may leave the eurozone. The right of departure is now tacitly accepted.
The truth is that the five presidents report, far from offering a signpost to the future, is a relic of a moribund conception of a supranational Europe. Even in 1990 — when Jacques Delors, then European Commission president, told the European Parliament he wanted the union to have a “true federation” by the end of the millennium — François Mitterrand, watching on television, burst out: “No one in Europe will ever want that.” The French president added: “By playing the extremist, he’s going to wreck what’s achievable.”
In her 2010 Bruges lecture, as significant as Margaret Thatcher’s in 1988, German Chancellor Angela Merkel emphasised the “union method” of co-ordinated action by national governments, as opposed to the “community method” of automatic supranationalism. The eurozone crisis and the migration crisis have been confronted primarily by the governments of the member states in the European Council, with the commission and the parliament playing a distinctly subordinate role. The EU has been attempting to rescue the nation state, therefore, not subvert it.
So the EU is moving towards what Charles de Gaulle called a “Europe des Etats”. But it is an intergovernmental body with a difference, since member states consider not only their own interests but those of Europe as a whole. The continent has suffered in the past from the absence of such a perspective.
Of course, the EU needs radical change if it is to become more effective and more accountable. The Cameron package, as I suspect the prime minister would agree, must be the start not the end of reform. But, with the EU moving in a “British” direction, the UK is in a strong position to help shape its future — unless, of course, it decides on June 23 to cut itself off from the continent.
The writer is professor of government at King’s College London