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The report of the Future of Europe Group makes no claim to represent the views of governments but just the “personal thoughts” of 11 foreign ministers. It has not been unanimously agreed, line by line. Instead, the ministers were content to declare at the outset that: “not all participating ministers agree with all proposals that have been put forward”. This is a liberating let-out clause.
The sense of liberation seems to have contributed to more adventurous thinking. The result is provocative. This discussion paper, unlike so many others, should genuinely trigger discussion.
There is an understandable preoccupation with economic union (because of the eurozone crisis), and with foreign and security policy (their own areas of responsibility). But what the foreign ministers should be particularly applauded for are their remarks on the visibility and legitimacy of the European Union. In the last paragraph of their report, they observe that in the longer term: “We need a streamlined and efficient system for the separation of powers in Europe which has full democratic legitimacy”.
It is potentially a highly significant statement – arguably more significant than anything in Commission President José Manuel Barroso's state of the Union speech last week (12 September). Could it be a recognition that the existing distribution of powers between the European Commission, the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament is impossible for European citizens to understand, accustomed as they are in their domestic political set-ups to a different distribution of legislative and executive functions? If that argument takes hold, then it will detonate a depth-charge under the European Union as the founding fathers fashioned it.
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