On April 18th 1951, six European nations signed the Treaty of Paris establishing the European Coal and Steel Community in order to resolve the thorny German Question. By putting the European coal and steel production under a single supranational authority, countries could enjoy economic development, while a High Authority would ensure that no military purposes would be served by this industry.
The Treaty sparked of one of the most successful cooperative projects among nations ever, but by allowing the Member States sovereign representation, it also enshrined a dichotomy that would overshadow the integration process for many decades to come, namely between intergovernmental cooperation and supranational integration. For a long time, the dominant view on integration focussed on a rigid division of power between Member States and European institutions, insisting that the EU must conform to one overall conceptual model.
But such rigidity is not in the true nature of the EU. European integration stands at the fluctuating junction of national preferences, institutional leadership and prevailing global and regional conditions. Indeed, flexibility lies at the very heart of the integration project and today is pushed forward as the principal method of cooperation in Europe. Yet it took the Member States way into the 1990s, more than five decades since the Paris Treaty, to formally enshrine it in the treaties – and only because they were pushed by the prospect of enlarging the Union with a massive amount of Eastern European nations.
Although today flexibility is thus officially accepted in many variations, such as in the procedures for enhanced cooperation or the open method of cooperation, people still aren’t sure whether it is actually helping the Union or not. Some would even go so far as to say that “the European Union is dying”, or think of flexible cooperation as a “fashionable red herring” that has yet to prove its use. So can flexibility really be seen as Europe’s future, or will it lead to the demise of the Union?
Observing recent developments in the EU, it is clear that decision-making processes are neither efficient nor effective and that a new balance between flexibility and efficacy has to be sought. In his latest State of the Union, Commission President Barroso has made a stand that a revision of the balance of power between institutions and Member States is necessary for the future endurance of the Union. Likewise, former German Foreign Affairs Minister Joshka Fisher only recently suggested that a two-tier EU – a German proposal that already in 1994 sparked an intense debate – is the only way out of the current deadlock. Also current British Prime Minister David Cameron urged the Union to become more flexible, indicating that his country would prefer a Union “with the flexibility of a network, not the rigidity of a bloc”.
Ever since the 1990s flexibility has been subject to intense debate, but to this day there is no consensus whether increased flexibility is a good or a bad thing for Europe. The critical problem arising from flexibility is that differentiation needs to take into account participants’ preferences, while ensuring the overall EU structures and the interests of abstainers remain unaffected. So although the goal of flexibility might be to tackle threats of deadlock and dissolution, the actual effect can be quite the opposite. One must only look at the outcome of the Lisbon Strategy – which, as is widely agreed, failed rather miserably – to see that widespread use of flexible mechanisms is not a guarantee for success.
However, before judging too harshly, one must acknowledged that flexibility, however widely used, is still only in its early phase and answers are still scarce. Indeed, the current handling of flexibility in Europe resembles more a “yoga for dummies” class than high-level politics. Nonetheless, whichever way one wishes to look at it, it cannot be denied that flexibility has been a major factor in past integration efforts and possibly has an even greater role to play in the future. Europe stands at a crossroads and our current leaders are anxiously searching for a future for Europe, but it is till unclear just how “European” that future will be.
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