A Third Way for the European Union

By Professor Anthony Giddens

Overview

Anthony Giddens has been Director of the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) since 1997. He has helped to popularise the idea of the 'Third Way'. The Third Way represents the renewal of social democracy in a world where the views of the old left have become obsolete, while those of the new right are inadequate and contradictory. Professor Giddens contributed this article to the book, 'The Future Shape of Europe', edited by Mark Leonard.

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Joshka Fischer's speech attracted so much attention not because he said anything particularly new, but because of the context in which he delivered it. Here was a German foreign minister proclaiming the need for greater federalism in Europe, speaking in a historic setting in the new capital of a reunified Germany. Fischer insisted that he was talking in a personal capacity, not an official one. Yet this fact gave what he had to say even greater weight, because he was "speaking frankly."

Fischer set out his stall in a cogent and effective way. With the coming of the Euro, the economic integration of Europe is more or less complete. What remains is to complement it with greater political integration. How else in the longer run can the European Union tackle its problems? Enlargement might eventually double the current EU membership. The EU is marked by its notorious democratic deficit, which seems to be producing declining levels of public support in member countries for its aims and policies. Monnet, Schumann and the other early founders of the EU dreamed of a society that would overcome the divisions that had led to two world wars. As Fischer points out, they foresaw that such developments should encompass East as well as Western Europe. The time has come to move towards making that vision a reality.

Progress towards a federal Europe, Fischer made clear, should depend in the future, as it has in the past, upon Franco-German collaboration. France and Germany have been the vanguard through each of the main phases of development of the Union. The next stage, enlargement and political integration, will in his words also "depend decisively on France and Germany". After all, it was largely the enmity of these two countries that sparked the great wars.

I write as someone strongly committed to the EU. Yet I don't believe that we should be thinking along the lines Fischer advocates. We need a different model of the future of Europe today from the federalist one, for reasons I shall try to spell out in what follows. Neither of the two main models of the EU - federalism or a minimalist free-market - offer appropriate means of thinking about either what the EU is or what it should become.

I think British intellectuals and policy-makers could make some contribution to working out what such a future for Europe might involve. At first sight this looks an unlikely proposition. The British famously have been the 'reluctant Europeans'. The UK has not as yet adopted the Euro and the majority of the population is at best indifferent towards Europe.

Yet Britain has been the source of some of the most lively thinking in politics in recent years, at least so far as the centre-left is concerned. Effective analysis of the big changes affecting our lives, such as globalisation and the advent of the new economy, began earlier in the UK than in most other countries. So also did the attempt to create a framework of policy response to these transformations, in the shape of third way politics. The term 'third way' has by no means been universally adopted. But the basic ideas and policies which that term subsumes have been taken up by left of centre parties almost everywhere.

Ideas about the likely development of the EU, of course, do not break down cleanly along a left-right dimension. Thus, federalist views have been supported by Continental politicians and parties from both left and right. However a 'third way view' of Europe should stem from the same considerations that underlie the wider political debate - the need to respond to far-reaching processes of social and economic change.

Fischer said he looked for an alternative term to 'federalism', but in the end used it because he couldn't find one. The main reason he seemed to give for seeking a different concept is that talk of a 'federal Europe' doesn't go down too well in some countries - most notably, Britain. However, there are much more important reasons why 'federalism' is an inappropriate term:

1. It implies that further political integration in EU should move Europe in the direction of forming a state, with the institutions appropriate to such a political order. But one doesn't have to be a Eurosceptic to see that the EU is not a state at all, and will never become one. It is (or should now be seen as) a new form of supranational authority, characterised by a voluntary sharing of aspects of sovereignty.
   
   
2. Talk of federalism always encourages comparison with the US. In a widely-syndicated debate with Jean-Pierre Chevenèment, which followed on from his Berlin speech, Fischer cites the US as his basis for thinking about the future of Europe. Larry Siedentop's influential recent book, Democracy in Europe, does much the same. But there are no close parallels. James Madison and his fellow constitution-builders were creating a sovereign state, whereas the EU is seeking to help transform sovereignty in a newly interdependent world.
   
   
3. The EU, as Fischer accepts, is founded upon "a rejection of the European balance of power principle" that used to prevail. In the age of globalisation, cosmopolitan cooperation has to be the prime force in the world order. However, talk of federalism can easily imply readmitting power politics by the back door - creating a balance of power on a larger scale. The point of the EU should not be to counter the dominance of the US, but to help tie the United States into a wider cosmopolitan order.

We need a vision of the future of the EU that stresses Europe's wider role in a world that is being transformed by globalisation; places an emphasis upon pluralism and the decentralisation of power; responds to the demands of the new economy; and sits comfortably with the need to find a renewed role for the nation in the global age. I don't think a federalist model fits any of these requirements particularly well.

Fischer says 'we are at the start of the age of globalisation', and this is something I agree with. But he doesn't follow through this thought properly. The new global era isn't just an extension of the past. It is in many respects a break with it - nowhere more obviously so than in the case of the dissolution of Soviet communism and the ending of the Cold War period. The EU was strongly shaped by the Cold War - it was constructed in a Western Europe that was a buffer zone between the US and USSR. The fact that the the EU can or has to 'expand towards the East', is not just a contingency of history, as Fischer makes it appear. The events of 1989 both reflected globalisation and contributed to its further advance. The issue of enlargement hence has to be seen in the context of these transformations, which mean that the EU today faces a very different world from that in which it was originally shaped.

What matters about the European Union today is not primarily that it is European, but that it forms a bridgehead towards global governance. If we think of the EU as spanning a territory worth calling 'Europe', or as representing some distinctive 'European past', we face intractable difficulties. There is no 'natural' border of Europe to the East. It is a positive step to propose that Turkey, as a 'non-European', Islamic nation, should be a serious medium-term contender for membership. In the longer-term the involvement of Russia should also be considered.

Fischer says that we have 'put into place the last building block' of economic integration of the EU, and now we should do the same politically. But this isn't a valid way of looking at things. The troubles of the Euro indicate, among other things, that there has been too little structural reform in the core European economies. The way to defend the 'European social model' is not through encouraging developments which will protect existing welfare institutions, capital and labour markets. We need a reformed European social model today, of the sort signalled in the Lisbon declaration - one geared again to the demands of globalisation. Countries like the UK, Denmark, Holland and Spain are showing the way forward here, rather than France and Germany.

France and Germany were the dominant countries driving the EU project during its Cold War days. Against the background in which the EU was established this was understandable, as was the need to 'contain' Germany. However, in the contemporary world these factors have lost most of their relevance. The chance of war between nations in Europe are virtually non-existent, and the same can be said for nations in many other parts of the world too.

The threat of 'old wars' is diminishing massively. It is the 'new wars' that are going to dominate the future. They will often be extremely difficult to prevent or manage, as Europe has found to its cost in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. The new wars, however, concern fragmenting nations, not nations whose power is too strong. 'Containing Germany' is no longer an issue. The Franco-German relationship, important although it is because of the size of the two countries, no longer needs to have a privileged position.

To the question 'what is the EU?', if it is neither merely a marketplace or a stage on the way to federalism, I would say the following. The EU (today) is above all an experiment in transnational governance, of great consequence to the rest of the world, not just to Europe itself, and capable of being emulated elsewhere. Given the diversity of nations and cultures involved, the EU is inherently diverse, and its institutions must reflect that.

This position suggests a fairly clear architecture for the future development of the Union. The European Council should have a core directive role, something that is happening anyway. A strong Commission and Parliament are needed to provide stabilising influences. Enlargement will only happen in a progressive way, which gives time to adapt decision-making processes in the Council and in other bodies. The identity of the Union, as Jhrgan Habermas argues - and Fischer also agrees - should be developed around civic values, not around attempts to find a common heritage. It makes sense, as Fischer suggests, to think of a second chamber for the European Parliament, but this has no necessary connection to federalism. Such a chamber could allow national parliaments greater involvement in EU policy formulation. However, for reasons already given, the European Parliament will contribute more to horizontal than to vertical democracy.

In its relations with its member nations, the Union is (should be) concerned neither merely to defend the nation, nor to supersede it in a federal system. Rather the EU should contribute to the restructuring of nations, as they become less concerned with territory and more with peaceful collaboration. It isn't a coincidence that - again not just in Europe but almost everywhere - nations are busy rethinking their identities and reinterpreting their past. The reason is that the factors which shaped nations in earlier periods, including the bipolar world, have become altered or transformed with the intensifying of globalisation. Most found their identities in opposition to others. 'Nations without enemies' must necessarily be different from those of the past they can't define themselves through hostility to 'the other'.

With intensifying globalisation, nations have to face problems, and embrace opportunities, that demand collaborative action. The EU can help supply the goods without which a self-governing society is difficult or impossible to sustain in the global era. Moving towards a federal model would exacerbate the problems of political legitimacy which most nations now face - manifest in voter apathy, volatility of political support and the declining influence of parliaments. The democratic deficit of the EU cannot be addressed by further draining the democratic capacities of member countries through channelling more power to the EU level. We should tackle the issue by recognising that (a) the means of reducing the democratic failings of the EU and its constituent nations are directly parallel and (b) mechanisms of democracy appropriate at the national level can be no more than partially relevant at a supranational one.

The democratisation of the EU in some key respects needs to be the same as nations have to deploy. Within nations, as in the EU, we need a 'second wave' of democratisation, or what I call the democratising of democracy. Existing political structures, including orthodox national parliamentary systems, even the most democratic of them, are not democratic enough in a globalising information age. Poor transparency of public institutions, the undue influence of corporate power, 'media politics', back-stage deals, old-boy networks, straightforward corruption, lack of representation of women and ethnic minorities - these are found even in the most democratic of countries. Most are very evident in EU institutions too. While some progress has been made in confronting them, there is a great deal of scope for further improvement.

Governance in a global age of course must continue to feature parliamentary mechanisms and electoral democracy. This applies on the level of the EU as well as nationally, even if there are reasons why the European parliament is never likely directly to reflect the concerns of electorates. But 'vertical democracy' needs to be complemented, and in principle enhanced, by 'horizontal democracy', taking the form of discourse democracy and pluralism. The proponents of 'new governance theory' have pointed out that we are experiencing a transition towards governance by network, and away from governance by hierarchy. Horizontal democracy depends upon the making of decisions through negotiation between different bodies and agencies. Rather than receiving a direct democratic mandate, and after that having the power to enact decisions, decisions must be reached through open processes of negotiation. The separation of powers helps prevent oligarchy, while the demand to negotiate stops any one agent or set of agents from achieving a dominant position. As Christopher Lord puts it 'EU institutions should be read as a supranational version of deliberatist ideals and interpreted with a view to compensating some of the shortcomings of the constitutional nation-state'.

Devolution is a crucial part of an active response to globalisation. As one of its influences, globalisation exerts a 'push-down' effect, creating strong pressures for local autonomy. How far EU institutions can effectively be connected with local and regional government will be fundamental in defending, or enhancing, the popular legitimacy of the EU. Yet this issue is barely touched upon in Fischer's speech. And more generally it must be said that the concepts of subsidiarity and a 'Europe of the Regions' remain poorly implemented. A transfer of authority downwards, including the handing back of some powers to nations or localities, should surely be basic to the future evolution of the EU. Right at the end of his dialogue with ChevPnement, Fischer says that he 'can well envisage that certain competencies would be given back to member states'. But this appears as an after-thought, not as generic to how he sees the development of the Union.

It is now generally accepted in the EU that there has to be flexibility in how far nations adopt some forms of policies rather than others. However, we should say firmly that there should be no avant-garde. The very idea of having an avant-garde, 'moving ahead' of the rest, only makes sense if there is a unilinear path that the EU is going to follow, towards federalism. Europe will certainly look more diverse in the future than it does now, but this should best be understood as 'bounded pluralism' rather than a few 'in front' while others 'lag behind'.

The prime basis of the legitimacy of the EU has to be achieved in the nation, since nations will continue to be the main source of both identity and citizenship. How far the Union commands popular support will depend primarily upon whether citizenries are convinced that it benefits national communities, in terms of democracy, security and economic development. But this cannot be the traditional nation, built around geopolitical imperatives. We need to construct 'cosmopolitan nations', which find their identity in mutual collaboration.

The American political scientist, Joseph Nye, has remarked that the EU is more about the 'pooling and sharing' of sovereignty than its transfer to a higher level. I think this is correct, and such a conception, not a federalist one, should be the guiding thread of our thinking about the Union's future.

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