Towards a European supranational state?
The European Union faces a major challenge: creating a unit powerful enough to play a major role in the global economic conflict. This means harmonising the contradictions between the continent's leading imperialist countries, and crossing the threshold towards a new supranational state of some kind. It is against this final goal that we should measure the Maastricht Treaty and its possible revisions.
By François Vercammen At the end of the 19th Century, far sighted observers lie the Marxists like Parvus, Luxemburg, Hilferding, and liberals like Hobson, realised that the national framework was becoming too tight for capitalist productive forces. The great paradox of European capitalist unification is that the factors which push, objectively, towards unification, at the same time reveal the obstacles to effective union which lie ahead. They predicted that the new "imperialist" stage of capitalism would generate explosive economic, social, political and military contradictions. Indeed, Marxists argued that this tendency in capitalism was a powerful argument for a socialist society, which would be internationalist by definition.
One hundred years later, these "classic" observations are as relevant as ever. Modern capitalism urgently needs international coercive state-style structures, so as to contain the chaotic, violent and disruptive path of this mode of production. Half a century of failure
This objective necessity for capitalism emerged in Europe earlier, and more forcefully than in any of the planet's other major regions.! Its long history is a demonstration of this and has not been contradicted by the 20th century. But history demonstrates the paradox that impulsions towards continental unification are also signals of the very real obstacles to effective unity.
Don't forget that this century has already seen two practical solutions to the problem of European unification. Both were the result of a major, historic event. The first was the proletarian revolution in Russia between 1917 and 1923. These events opened the possibility of an united Europe. Unfortunately, the defeat of the German revolution stopped the Russian-German convergence and thus socialism Europe-wide.2
Fifteen years later, Hitler attempted to solve the contradictions of inter-imperialist relations using fascism and war to unify capitalist Europe under the hegemony of one national bourgeoisie.3
The European Union of today traces its roots to a more modest historic moment, the post-war compromise between Britain, France and Germany, under the supervision of the United States.
Europe had been devastated, decimated and impoverished by a conflict which, among other things, resulted from the strong rivalry between the continent's three major capitalist powers. The statesmen and industrialists who organised the reconstruction of Western Europe were drawn to the idea of peaceful co-operation. And the United States, the liberator' of the Western part of the continent, had made such institutionalised state co-operation a precondition for its material and financial aid. The US also demanded the creation of an unified, open European market, replacing the national protectionism of the pre-war period.
Reconstruction took place on the basis of re-established nation states, still inpregnated with wartime nationalism, and mobilised under US leadership in the new struggle against the "communist bloc".4
The protagonists of European unification in the early 1950s recognised the difficulties of advancing en bloc. They opted for a strategy of European political convergence through the creation of a series of partial economic accords.
But even this "re-dimensioned" strategy, proposed by politicians like Monnet, Schuman and Spaak, soon revealed its limits.
The European Coal and Steel Communities,5 created in 1952, was a brilliant success. This structure allowed the reconciliation of France and Germany. It provided a framework for production in the two key economic sectors which were considered the "causes of the war". And it created, for the first time, super-national institutions, with real powers in a specifically delimited area of the economy.
Inspired by this success, the partisans of unification tried to extend the
Communities into a mini-state apparatus, through the creation of an European Army (the European Defence Community). It was a total disaster, and the trauma was longlasting. From now on,. the Europhiles hoped that the spontaneous play of market forces would provide the necessary harmonisation. The perspective of a "political " alongside the "economic Europe" was not abandoned but relegated to the final stages of a long process in which, it was hoped, the objective conditions of union would ripen.? State without nation
The failure of these early attempts reveals the size of the problem. Europe certainly has elements of common experience and common destiny. But history has not created an European national consciousness among any significant number of people. There is no slowly-forming European nation.
The history of the 18th and 19th centuries will not repeat itself at the continental level at the end of the 20th century. In the previous two centuries, the formation of nation states in Europe drew on a widespread national identity. With the state institutions of the old order in chaos as a result of the capitalist and anti-feudal revolutions, a new politics established itself by mobilising the masses in a struggle for self determination, personal liberties, material progress, and for an end to obscurantism, absolutism and arbitrary state behaviour. "People", "nation" and "state" were increasingly identified with each other:&
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Not today
Today there is, of course, a certain layer of European consciousness, linked to fundamental ideological elements like democracy/liberty, prosperity/living standards, peace/fear of another war, and social gains, like full employment, and widespread social protection. The existence of a large workers' movement, mobilisable public opinion, endemic and institutionalised conflict, and strong cultural diversity all provided practical support to this protoconsciousness. It was, however, rather negative. It expressed itself in distinction to misery and dictatorship 'out there' in the third world, in distinction to the 'American way of life' and Japan, and, to a lesser extent, through anti-communism (accepting the division of Europe and the cold war).
This situation persisted at least until 1985. But meanwhile, important changes had taken place. In particular, economic, social, cultural, military, and media life was ever more internationalised. This trend showed us a future, with all the dangers that could threaten if internationalisation happened under an exploitative and
In other words, there is a clear rationalism in going beyond nation states. And an urgent need to think and act at the international level. This has had an effect on people's thinking, especially among the younger generations.
The European Union, which is of course only one, specific institutional construction, has tried to give itself an universal legitimacy by drawing on elements of this ideological atmosphere.
The Common market has been established. Its survival was never automatic. But it resisted the recession of 1974-5, which could be considered the point of no return.? The 1985 Single Market Act built on this success, creating the (deeper) Single Market, and fixing the date of 1 January 1993 for the opening of internal frontiers to the goods and services of the other member states.
The Single Market amplifies and accelerates economic exchanges, and favours the concentration and interpenetration of big capital. It makes the European Union into the world's densest economic region. This is the decisive material force which is pushing in favour of an united Europe. The big industrial, commercial and financial groups have immense interests at stake.
This immense material interest explains the pro-European political will of the governments of most of the member states, and the impressive guiding power of the much-criticised "Brussels" European Commission. So the train is going forward. But it is travelling through the mist. Attempts to implement the Maastricht Treaty (1991-2) have resulted in crises, ruptures,
Among the population of the European Union, there is growing difficulty. the social gains which helped create the European proto-consciousness are threatened. The more "European social model". The cumpean, Union, Train the bai European bourgeoisie is carrying out a major offensive against social gains, while wrapping its attacks in the banner of European Union. This is, obviously, incompatible with any strategy of winning the population of Europe to a position of support for the European Union.
The structure of the European Union is an insult to the "typical" European parliamentary structure. Logically enough, everything possible was done to prevent, or retard as much as possible, the development of a pan-European civil society to complement the civil society which exists in the member states. In fact, the European Union flees from political debate and public control. It is opposed to the creation of a European parliament elected by universal suffrage, and enjoying legislative powers. Instead, the population is kept as far as possible from the centre of a "democratic deficit" would be a euphemism.
The European Union offers no new historic perspective. Despite its pretentious of modernity, it is neither emancipatory nor socially generous. The EU is, rightly, perceived as a tool for the defence of the vested interests of the ruling class (the "strongest" and "richest"). It has not been able to incarnate, in the minds of the population, the values of "neutrality" and *the common interest, above and beyond the interests of social classes and nation states". And every state structure must find such ideological supports if it is to ensure its legitimacy.
In fact, the European Union is deepening and sharpening the national question in Europe. There is no internationalist /European solution on offer. So, in reaction, imperialist nationalism develops in the existing member states. The EU effectively stimulates egotistic regionalisms, in Lombardy, Flanders, Bavaria and elsewhere. In these regions, there is a demand for the right to self-determination, and threats to separate from the nation state, so as to better integrate in the coming European supernational state. Progress nevertheless
Despite all this, the European Union is going forward, in the direction of a supernational state. 10 The main pressure is the various normative activities linked to the (still incomplete) establishment of the Single Market. This project occupies most of the time and energy of the EU civil servants in Brussels. It is also the crucible where economic legislation is formed, along with a structure of qualified community civil servants, and links between the EU administration and the administration of the member states. As work continues, there is a constant coming and going between the Community and the national level.
In essence the Single Market requires the supranational application of decisions negotiated between governments, but elaborated, applied and sanctioned by the Commission, which has an important capacity for autonomous action in this area.
The second main area of work is monetary union. This is where we are closest to a
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24 International Viewpoint power. Meanwhile, the employers vigorously oppose the creation at a European level of the 'national" model of social partnership (between employers, trade unions and the state), which they consider to be a costly burden. prevented the birth of a social Europe to complement the monetary and merchandise Europe. To say that the Union has supranational state structure. As the most advanced point of co-operation between the member states, the monetary union project is also the point where all the contradictions and latent conflicts of the entire project risk emerging, as happened over the European Defence Community in 1952-4
Monetary union has a direct influence on the monetary, economic, fiscal, financial and social policies of all the national governments. But this is a super-national influence which the national governments
actively support. And they collaborate with the Commission, in their diligent application of the neo-liberal, monetarist convergence criteria of the monetary union project.
The supranational character of the monetary union project is symbolised by the "automatic" and irreversible nature of the scenario. This was specified in the Maastricht Treaty, and refined at the Madrid summit in December 1995. The mechanism is crystallised in Ecofin, the Council of Finance Ministers of the member states. In principle, this is an intergovernmental body. In reality, it already functions as a supranational "department", in synergy with the European Monetary Institute (the body which will develop into the European Central Bank) and the national banks of the member countries. These national banks (Bundesbank, Bank of England, etc.), have been given new statutes which free them from the control of their national governments, considered "too sensitive" to social and democratic pressure. Here, then, is one wall of the super-national European state: a wall firmly rooted in the state apparatus of
And then there is the question of pressure at the frontiers of the European Union. Throughout history, external pressure has always played a strong role in the formation of states. This is particularly true today, due to the strong instability, including military instability, to the East and the South, the Mediterranean basin. EU reaction is differentiated. In both cases there is an important police and military element. Within the EU there are laws and agreements against refugees and immigrants, development of Europol. And outside, there are military "rapid intervention' forces. Concerning the East, the empire faces another necessity: stabilising an immense continent which has been convulsed by its transition to capitalism, which is the EU's priority in the
The result is complex: social and humanitarian programmes, support for market mechanisms, the struggle for control over the market sectors which are emerging. Then there is the whole question of adhesion to the EU, with all its financial, budget questions. And what about adhesion to NATO? and the West European Union?
The leap to super-nationality (in other words, the abandon of national prerogative is particularly difficult, because of the sensitivity of the national state bureaucracies, the rivalries and competition of the major capitalist groups, and the tradition and strategies of the major powers within the
This is also true in the fourth domain, the need for a common foreign policy, and the establishment of institutions which are capable of implementing it. This is a fundamental element for any imperialist state. Grand capital needs a state force (diplomatic, political and military), active externally, to protect its investments, guarantee access to raw materials, help win new markets, ensure profits, and provide financial support for its operations and reorganisations. If necessary, by direct political or military intervention. This state force needs continuity, incarnated by diplomatic personnel. The weight of history and the strong internal conflicts of the EU have made the member states very jealous of their autonomy. To the point where intergovernmental co-operation is difficult, even faced with the problem of competition with Japan and the US. At this level, the EU is a real cacophony. Germany insists that the EU priorities its East-European policies. The Anglo-Saxons have united against the French in Rwanda, French President Chirac has his own nuclear policy, and, all together, the EU has made a particular contribution to Yugoslavia's death.
The European state structure needs to find enough coherence to be effective. This means a common doctrine, central apparatuses which function, and the controlled application of measures which are decided upon. And this in a generalised, global market economy, which is already chaotic enough. The EU's problem is that there is no dominant, national power at its core, like the USA or Japan in the zones they dominate (though neither country has the ambition of establishing a semi-state structure to consolidate their regional
The increasing powers of the European Union, its organic enlargement to other European countries in Eastern Europe, and the difficult implementation of its policies in the turbulent world: all these factors are arguments in favour of a small, concentrated, powerful executive power. We can expect the EU to try short term "forcing' on this
A full-blown European state is out of the question. The bourgeoisie's current struggle is for the establishment of a more modest, "made to measure" state, with limited, but real powers. The leading spheres of the European bourgeoisie are well aware of the historical, economic, political, psychological and international factors which make their task so difficult. Their strategy is therefore twofold. The constant application of neoliberalism, and pragmatic functionalism in the development of European unification. This means concentrating on the creation of a few state structures, which can become solid, and which can bring results in the pursuit of the major politico-economic goals of the EU.
There is still a voluntaristic thread, which forms the guideline of the project. These leading circles clearly want to see a more advanced degree of supranationality, and inter-state co-ordination.
For the moment, effort is concentrated on political-military and economic-monetary co-operation. Each national government is still responsible for "managing" the local
Pragmatic gradualism can still be combined with audacious initiatives, as Jacques Delors demonstrated during his period as President of the European Commission. And we could still experience a more forceful initiative, if a moment of crisis presents itself.
The European Union is constantly expanding its "constitution". The appropriate organs adopt norms and laws, and new institutions and structures are created to meet specific needs. These structures develop and evolve. The constitution is being established!
This is a careful process: they have to balance the contradictions between the bourgeoisie and their states, and take into account the existing balance of forces between capital and labour, so as to avoid greater crisis and stumbling blocks. The best method is secret diplomacy. The rule in the EU Is that the real objectives, the various points of view, the content of discussions, the conclusions and the decisions are hidden, except for the part they want us to see.
This is a tightly controlled process. There is a very small core in each government, particularly in the French, German and British governments, which has de facto veto powers. Then there is the political presentation: the "summits" , the intergovernmental conferences, a session at the European Parliament, publication of "White Books", and so on.
It is "unthinkable" that the elaboration of a European constitution be left to a constituent assembly, elected directly and simultaneously in each of the countries of the EU. And it is "irresponsible" to trust a legislative
- a parliament - with the elaboration and adoption of European laws.
This lack of democracy is where the method and the objective of the constitutional process come together. This is a return to "enlightened despotism" of the 18th century, just before the great bourgeois revolutions in England and France. "Soft tyranny", as it has been called. Triangle of power
This might look like a confused process, with its spectacular failures, and its hysterical crises, like the mad cow business. But we shouldn't underestimate what has already been achieved, and what is being planned. We should recognise the real will within the bourgeoisie to meet the EU's limited objectives.
The EU is still run on an intergovernmental basis. Nothing important is
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decided without inter-governmental coordination, except where the governments have agreed to forego consultation.
It is time to destroy the Euro-myth that the Union is controlled by a triangular structure: Council of Ministers, 1 Parliament and European Commission. The governments, the people, and the incarnation of the European spirit? Far from it. Europe is run by the Council of Ministers, the European Court of Justice, and the emerging financial government of the EU, represented by EcoFin (the Council of Economic and Finance Ministers of the member states), and the European Monetary Institute, the prototype of the central European bank.
This inter-state government is not a supranational structures. The Commission, which likes to drape itself in anti-nationalist colours, lives, on a day to day basis, with the diplomatic representatives of the member states. A spirit of opposition-complicity runs through all the European structures. The governments might have limited the powers of the European institutions. But they have also allowed these bodies to exceed their powers, so as to better nurture the "Community spirit".
The same is true for the Commission (Article 235). And even more so for the Court of Justice. This is appointed by the member states, but relatively autonomous. Its role is to ensure the impartial operation of the other bodies of the EU, on behalf of the member states. This gives the court a key role in the development of the constitutional and legislative system. The accumulation of norms (linked to the Single Market and the preparation of the common currency) and the jurisprudence of the Court are generating the new European proto-state's structures and procedures. This has caused a kind of alchemy between the community, interThis process has created an experienced LAUNCH // BATE 1199g 26 International Viewpoint bureaucracy, relatively independent of the national governments, and linked (through ideology, privilege and career) to the EU
Over the last 40 years, solid links have been built with the state bureaucracies at the national level. Many "European" civil servants return to their national base before the end of their career. And, of course, the multiple contacts between the European bureaucracy and the national bureaucracy has generated a strong pro-EU core within the civil service of the member states. Ideological links are being made, not just practical ones. Brussels is not floating somewhere up there, whereas the national civil servants. are "rooted" and devoted to their
This group is re-organising national government structures in a authoritarian direction. It uses its European authority to paralyse or defeat opposition within the state, or from the national parliament. And, within each member state, it is those ministers with the European links: the Prime Minister, Foreign Affairs, Interior/Home Affairs, Finance, Economics, Defence, which have the real power. A remarkable return to the way governments looked in the 19th century!!?
And then there is the evolution of repressive apparatuses. The process is young, but we can already see a certain convergence at the European level. Decision making is still problematic, and the application of common decisions is often chaotic. We are still a long way from the transter of national sovereignty to the EU. These national bureaucratic corps are still entirely national. They are jealous of their independence and welded to their respective governments. In this respect, the EU still has a considerable comparative disadvantage, compared to American and Japanese
But where it functions, the current degree of political co-ordination between the nation states, resting on the existing level of interdependence of the national state structures, can be extremely efficient.
We should not judge the EU only in terms of the degree of supra-nationality achieved. 13 What counts is the (growing) operational coherence between the EU, intergovernmental and national levels. This is what the EU will try to assure during the revision of the Maastricht Treaty, and the drafting of a constitution for the Monetary Union. The EU will struggle hard, because the goal is worth a crisis or two. * 1. The American historian Charles Tilly illustrates this through the series of chronological tables aligning foreign wars, civil wars, revolutions and revolts in a range of major countries and sub-regions published in his book, Les révolutions europeéenes 1492-1992 (1993), Paris, Ed.Seuil. 2. Pierre Broué, La révolution allemande (1917-1923), 1971, Paris, Ed. Minuit. Leon Trotsky discussed this problem in its wider historical perspective in Europe et Amérique, 1928, Ed Anthropos, Paris, 1971, and in "Critique du programme de l'Internationale Communiste" 'Internationale Communiste après Lénine, Ed. PUF, Paris 1969, pp.88-101 3. Jean Freymond, Le III Reich et la réorganisation économique de l'Europe, 1940-32. Origins et projets, Leiden, uitg. 4. The leap in European consciousness which some people predicted did not take
"Stabilisation" took place under American supervision, with American dollars, American aid, and American military protection. The European governments only gradually regained real political autonomy. French-German antagonism remained virulent. And the defeat of the working class, by violent means in some countries, squashed social liberation, and the linkage between this liberation and a new European consciousness, based on a generous and 5. Founded in 1952, regrouping the core countries of the original EU (Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Luxemburg and Italy, and without Britain.) 6. The blockage came over the question of German rearmament, the role of NATO, and the relationship with the USA. Political struggle over this project dominated the political debate between 1950 and 1954. 7. The Treaty of Rome evoked the necessity of a common monetary policy. The idea of a single currency appeared in a Commission report in 1962. But, at that time, this was presented as a good idea, but without 8. Hagen Schulze, Etat et nation dans P'histoire de l'Europe, 1996, Paris, Seuil, 9. See chapter 9 of Ernest Mandel's La CEE et la rivalité entre l'Europe et les EtatsUnis, 1968, and La crise 1974-78, Paris, Flammarion, 1978, pp. 137-138. 10. As well as the more general factor of the increasingly "transnationalised" and centralised needs of big capital. 11. All depends on the success of monetary union, and its geographical application. But it already seems unavoidable for the core of the EU: Germany, France, Belgium, Holland 12. During the long transition from feudalism to capitalism, the absolute state emerged, characterised by the contradiction between the two exploiting classes, the landowning aristocracy, which dominated, and the new bourgeoisie. Under the pressure of the bourgeois revolution and the inextricable conflicts between "reactionaries" and "modernists", the state apparatus established itself as a far-seeing "arbitrator", with the best "global view" 13. G. Courty, G. Devin, L'Europe politique, 1996, Paris, La Découverte, Coll. Repères, Yves Salesse, Institutions européennes, déficit démocratique et intérêt général, L. Cartelier, J. Fournier, L. Monnier, Critique de la raison communautaire, 1996, Economica, pp. 3568, and Renaud Dehousse, La Cour de Justice des Communautés Européennes, 1994, Montchristien, Coll. Clefs, 155p.
Europe: supranational state? *