Autumn 2000

MEP Esko Seppänen at the GUE/NGL group Seminar in Tallinn 24.8.2000

We are living in the middle of a crucial period in the history of the EU. During this autumn it will be decided in what kind of EU the member states are engaged in the 2000’s. This autumn specifies how sovereign a nation in its own matters Finland really is. The traditional characteristics of an independent state are its own laws, own currency and own army.

The EU is becoming a federation. In many fields the federation’s common institutions will substitute the member states’ own decision-making.

If we describe the EU construction with three pillars, the EU (Commission) has an exclusive competence over the matters of the first pillar (for instance agriculture, regional and competition policies). In addition, the EMU countries have a common monetary policy and in 2002 the currencies of the member states will be replaced by common federation money. In the matters belonging to the first pillar and which are under the EU jurisdiction, its laws are superior to those of the member states.

Above all, the federalization process is manifested in the fransfer of power from the institutions of the member states to the community organs. When decisions are made by supranational institutions, using a qualified majority so that member states are not able to resort to the right of veto, it means federalization.

The most problematic among the EU institutions is the European Parliament on which the maximum amount of members (700) will be imposed. In other words, the enlargement of the Union means that the number of the Finnish MEPs is going to decrease while the power of the Parliament increases. It will become dominantly a legislative institution. Its increased power correlates to the increase of qualified majority decisions made by the Council in the way that the matters are at the same time dealt with in the co-decision making proceedings with the Parliament. In matters of co- decision-making, also the Parliament is a legislative organ.

There is a plan to fill some of the seats according to a quota out of supranational lists, and this would also reduce the number of representatives from Finland and other small countries. To these lists the European parties nominate candidates in the order they would be elected.

Both the reduction of the number of national representatives and the supranational list election would lead to the bleakening of the spectrum of views. This means that the general legitimacy of the decisions made by the federalizing EU would get threatened.

In the actual legislative organs, i.e. Councils, the number of votes at the disposal of the Ministers of the big countries is to be raised and possibly double majorities will be adopted: the laws must be passed by both a qualified majority of votes and inhabitants of the member states. The new numbers of votes may lead to the formation of qualified minorities so that it becomes easier for big countries to prevent undesired decisions.

As a growing part of matters will be decided on the basis of a qualified majority instead of unanimity, the right of veto of the member states will shrink. It is uncertain whether the regulation issued by the Court of Justice of the European Communities is valid in the new situation, according to which a member state is not obliged to enforce a decision that might endanger its vital interest.

The communalization of politicians

The second pillar of the EU construction has included foreign and security policies and nowadays also matters concerning defence policy.

In their foreign relations the member states have been quite independent. One reason is that the EU has not been legally competent. Under these circumstances international treaties have been approved either on behalf of the EC or the member states. Federalists want to turn the EU also into a judicial organ, and the communalization always involves the intention to make the EU a legally competent actor.

National decision-making in matters of foreign policy is detoriated by the decisions which do not look like distinctive decisions. For instance, the Defence Ministers of the EU countries have casaully started to organize councils of Defence Ministers, and in addition to that, they are allowed - unlike previously - to take part in the meetings of the Council of General Affairs.

When a common policy for the EU is defined, the possibilities of the member states to carry out their own policies become limited. For instance, the common Russia policy prevents Finland, the only member country with a common border with Russia, from practising its own policy with the neighbouring country.

At the moment, the EU is given a new functioning sector, i.e. security and defence policy without any amendments to the basic treaties (so that these matters are not ratified by the Parliaments of the member countries). The common foreign and security policy approved in the Treaty of Amsterdam have been changed by the Cologne and Helsinki summit decisions ( without the member states’ respective Parliament readings) into the common security and defence policy. The summit held in Feira ratified this commitment to create a common security and defence policy.

This is how the EU obtains communalized competence in matters that earlier belonged to the exclusive competence of the member states. Moreover, it is evident that decisions based on a qualified majority will be introduced also in matters belonging to the second pillar, because it was decided at the Feira summit that flexibility will be applied also to the second pillar, instead of former restraint. In this way the possibility to create for the EU a military dimension of its own is being prepared.

A part of communalization - and in that way federalization - are the decisions made at the Tampere summit to increase cooperation in the so called third pillar matters: there is an aim to make the EU a common security and legal area. It would mean common security and immigration policy, federalized police force (EUROPOL) and common prosecuting authorities and even harmonization of criminal law.

The control machinery is being communalized away from the exclusive competence of the member states.

The processes going on during the autumn

All the amendements to the treaties of the EU are prepared at the Intergovernmental Conferences (IGC). Their decisions must be ratified by the national parliaments of the member states. A single state can prevent an amendement to the basic treaties.

The agenda of the present Intergovernmental conference is rather narrow. It includes only the so called left-overs from Amsterdam: 1) sectors which will be transferred to be decided by qualified majorities and thus eliminating the right of veto of the member states and 2) the composition of the EU institutions and the way of decision making in the circumstances of enlargement.

The pressures to widen the agenda became stronger during Finland’s presidency as the federalists wanted to add into the agenda also the security and defence policy and defence matters, such as the eventual fusion of the WEY into the EU. At the Helsinki summit the decision of widening the agenda was left to be decided later, and in Lisboa the preparation of the defence dimension was included in the agenda.

At the same time, alongside the Intergovernmental conference, the process of preparing a specific Charter of fundamental rights is going on. The federalists are trying to get the EU its own constitution, and this paper is making way to this target. The preparation takes place in a new kind of communalized organ in which the governments of the member states, their parliaments and the European Parliament are represented.

The federalists wish to include this new document in the basic treaties of the EU already in the proceeding Intergovernmental conference, but at the Nice summit in December the issue will probably remain on the status of a joint declaration

Negotiations concerning enlargement are continued during the autumn, and they have a great impact on the power relationships of the EU. The Commission has set too tight a schedule for the negotiations: the decisions concerning the new candidates should be concluded as early as in 2002. As the old member states want to create in this new situation an insitutuional structure for the EU in which the small and new countries are unable to make decisions against "the founder fathers’"will, the enlargement is used as an excuse to hasten the decisions concerning the institutions.

During the autumn the militarization of the EU will proceed. During the French presidency a specific conference on resource commitments is going to be arranged in November. At the conference each member country will announce its commitment to the disposal of the EU and also the commitment concerning the crisis management forces for the NATO’s/EU’s command. These forces can be used in combat duties, unspecified at this stage (including peace enforcement), from 2003 onwards also outside Europe.

There is a military-industrial complex under construction, and this is why the Western European defence industry is merging. The first joint projects include new radar airplanes, transport helicopters and space cooperation also for espionage and intelligence purposes.

European army

At the Helsinki summit the decision was made concerning the militarization of the EU. In that respect the summit was a "success".

When the Finnish Commander-in-chief of the Defence Forces, General Gustav Hägglund says that "the EU will not substitute the NATO", he is right. The basis of the European military cooperation lies on the NATO and the presence of the USA (with its nuclear weapons) in Europe. The eventual European army will, nevertheless, be compatible with the NATO, and it will be based on the collective crisis management forces allocated to its competence.

The decision was made at the Feira summit that flexibility can be extended to the second pillar: the development of the EU into a military alliance, lead by the fastest, the rest following slower. So the flexibility of the second pillar introduces military affairs into the EU decision-making.

In Helsinki it was decided that the EU structures should include a standing committee on political and security matters, a defence committee and military headquarters. They are being prepared by interim organs. The defence committee is an organ of the Commaders-in-chiefs of the Defence Forces and they have permanent representatives working at the EU premises (in the case of the NATO countries, possibly the representatives of the NATO).

The basis of the decision to militarize the EU is the strategic concept accepted at the NATO summit in Washington in April 1999, according to which the NATO is not only a defence alliance but it is also allowed to attack. It is allowed to do so without the decisions of the international community, i.e. the Security Council of the UN or the OSCE.

The military dimension of the EU federation is created behind a smoke screen of crisis management. The smoke hides the secret preparing of matters: the NATO requires a principle of total secrecy to be applied when military documents are delivered to the EU in the extent that - from the Scandinavian point of view - not even a useless principle of publicity is realized.

The starting point at this stage is that the development of the European army needs no new treaties which ouhgt to be discussed in the IGC. Thus turning the unallied Finland into a politically NATO-compatible country is not a legal process but it can be described in the way that "the military forces are joining the NATO, the government remains unallied".

The most essential questions concerning the European army are still unsolved: for what purpose and with what mandate the crisis management forces allocated to the EU will be used. During the autumn we will get the answer.

In November Finland hands over to the EU army so called rapid deployment forces,which have been under preparation for the past five years. During this process General Gustav Hägglund has made a suggestion that the soldiers should be paid also for the deployment period, and if this is realized, it should mean a semi-mercenary army. Conscripts are not sent to combat duties but in the rapid deployment forces they will be trained to become professional killers.

Long term processes

The key word of the autumn is flexibility. It means that member states need not do everything together. It is the development of the EU at a different speed.

Some of the most significant speeches, outlining the foundations of the future EU, openly imply the aim towards a federation. Flexibility is the implement to reach this target.

The former President of the Commission, Jacques Delors wants to divide the EU into two parts. One would be the union like the present EU and then there would be a special federation consisting of the insiders. The so called avant-garde countries would form the core, and they would have their own institutions for co-decision-making. Delors’s basic idea is that the decisions concerning the deepening of the integration are always made in the EU institutions, not in the member states.

The German Green Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joschka Fischer who thinks that there is no Green foreign policy but only German foreign policy, wants to change the EU "from the union of states into a state union". He is clearly aiming at a federation with a constitution and institutions of a federation, including a Head of Federation, elected by the EU as a whole and given strong powers. Also the President of France, Jacques Chirac wants more flexibility, in other words, development of the EU at different speed if it would take place in the leadership of the "pioneering countries". He thinks that the federation is all right if the others are riding towards it following the German-French tandem. He would increase the federation nature of the EU especially in economics (finance policy), common security and defence policy and prevention of crime. The extraordinary internal situation of France is revealed by the fact that the French Minister of Europe, Pierre Moscowici has, in the name of the government, taken a stand against the President’s view.

The Finnish Member of European Parliamnet, Paavo Väyrynen is enthusiastic about Fischer rejecting the so called Monnet method according to which the common front is progressing at stages towards a common target without expressing it aloud.

Väyrynen is in favour of flexibility in all fields, also in defence matters. He wants to give the EU countries belonging to the NATO a chance to form a military alliance within the union, keeping Finland out of it.

With this view Väyrynen is a rather lonely man in the European Parliament. The other antifederalists, Väyrynen though being one of them, are in principle against flexibility and the deepening of the integration at a different pace that inevitably follows it. More flexibility means more militarization.

Finland and the hard core

As Finns we have bad experience of our possibilities to influence in the hard core of the EU.

The Finnish representative at the European Central Bank (ECB), Sirkka Hämäläinen has had no means to prevent the value of EURO from decreasing by a quarter in relation to US Dollar. This has lead to the price increase of dollar valued oil and caused the speeding up of inflation - not caused by rise in wages. The interest rate policy of the ECB has not served the Finnish economic trends.

After Sirkka Hämäläinen’s four-year Board Membership, Finland is not for decades going to get its own representative in this organ which has the exclusive power of decision also on matters of Finland’s finance policy and where decisions are made on the terms of the economic trend developments of the big countries.

It is high time to define Finland’s position to the final goal of the EU, which is a federation. Elsewhere the issue is under discussion, and we have to do the same.

Do we want to make the EU a federation, i.e. do we want to become a constituent state within a federation? Has someone made commitments on our behalf as the programme of the Lipponen Cabinet has omitted the entry that Finland wants the EU to be developed as a union of states instead of the federation it is becoming?

It looks like that the EU is realizing a development at a different pace which is called flexibility. Along with the military dimension, the EU is becoming a military alliance even if it is not called by that name. In the same way the crisis management forces form the European army even though the documents do not call it that.

Is Finland despite the costs striving to get into the hard core of the EU, which is also the hard core of the NATO? If we together with some other countries (Sweden, Denmark, Ireland) can prevent the deepening military cooperation within the EU and want to act particularly in the matters of the second pillar according to the Monnet model, will the others anyway create their avantgardist federation with its military dimension? How do we stand in the question that the decisions made in the federation institutions are dictated to us after that as the decisions of the union institutions?

Nevertheless, flexibility is the cement of the federalistic construction work in which the member states are sand.

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