VARIOUS: After 50 years of the European Union former European Comission President Jacques Delors reviews prospects for the future

As the European Union turns 50 this month, some analysts say it must reform itself or risk collapsing for ever. The European Union turns 50 later this month . It's come a long way from the original six-nation European Economic Community created by the Treaty of Rome signed on March 25, 1957 and grew into the European Union . Now a 27-nation union, it is the world's biggest trading bloc and covers most of the continent. A perpetual work in progress, the EU is as torn as ever between wider enlargement and deeper integration, between political unification and economic union, and between being more open to the world and protecting its manufacturers and farmers. After countless treaties, hard negotiations, laws and welcome ceremonies one of the commission's greatest elders fears the EU could unravel within 20 years if it does not reform itself further and make its decision-making process more efficient. Former European Commission President Jacques Delors spoke with Reuters to mark the 50th anniversary. The man who headed the EU executive in 1985-94 warned that the bloc's achievements risk being taken for granted and its fragility underrated. "From a purely pragmatic point of view, our system of preparing decisions, of decisions and actions, is not adapted, neither to the fact that we are 27 nor to the reality of the world and therefore we need to find solutions to enable us to do that. Secondly, we need to set ourselves common projects which everyone can accept, even if they are difficult to put into action," he said. The 81-year-old was speaking in a building that bears his name as one of the architects of European integration. Asked what would happen if EU leaders are unable to salvage the key reforms in a draft constitution rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005, the former French finance minister said: "Well, Europe will unravel" and bemoaned the fact that the art of compromise seemed to have been lost. He was there to promote a new book entitled 'The New Social Europe' in which he suggests drafting a new "social protocol" enshrining the EU's common social objectives to go alongside a treaty reforming the 27-nation bloc's creaking institutions. "You know, the only thing I did, in my time, was to negotiate and make compromises. It should be in everyone's power do that (Q: and if we don't succeed to reform institutions) Well then Europe will fall apart. And in 20 years, I will no longer be alive, in 20 years the British will say this is no good: we have lost, we have lost our financial position, our services exports have suffered, our influence has come to an end or has been diminished and so on. Even the British will say that, sadly. But I hope it will not be so and that we will find good compromises so as to go on in the area where union makes us strong," Delors said. EU leaders meeting at the German summit on March 24-25 to mark the anniversary will put forward a Berlin Declaration which is meant to re-launch the European constitution. Yet they will be unable to utter the word "constitution" in their solemn Berlin Declaration or give a firm date for reforming their institutions. Nor will they be able to say how much further the bloc should expand, due to divisions over whether Turkey, Ukraine and Belarus should ever be offered full membership. Eighteen countries have ratified the constitution that would give the EU a long-term president and foreign minister, a fairer decision-making system with more policies subject to majority voting, and a greater say for European and national parliaments. But aside from France and the Netherlands, Eurosceptical Britain, Poland and the Czech Republic have failed to ratify the treaty and want it slimmed down or unpicked in ways that could upset the delicate balance on which it was built. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has emerged as Europe's most influential deal-maker, faces a tough challenge in trying to revive negotiations on reform at a summit in June. The European Policy Centre (EPC) in Brussels fears that this anniversary date could further disenchant European citizens who rejected the constitution in 2005 when France and the Netherlands were asked to vote on it in a seminal referendum which threw the EU into crisis. Enlargement is one of the reasons some European citizens began to openly object to the European Union perceiving that too many nations were entering the club too quickly and damaging their chances of economic survival and giving free reign to globalisation without a solid social programme and safety net. The EPC's Jackie Davis says the leaders need to use the 50th anniversary celebrations as a means to reassure EU citizens with a simple message of unity. She agrees with Delors in saying that the institutions need to be reformed so as to accommodate 27 countries. "The key difficulty I think for the public is in understanding why the EU has to keep having these treaties, why it has to keep reforming its own rules. It does because its now a club of 27 and those rules simply will not work in the long term for a club of 27. But politicians, because they keep arguing themselves about whether we need this or not, a clear message is not getting across to the public about what this treaty was designed to do. And that all goes back to how national politicians talk about Europe and particularly how they have thought about the constitution." Davies said. Delors worries that too many of Europe's 490 million citizens, especially in the "old" western member states, take the EU's benefits for granted, while their political leaders avoid thrashing out difficult issues when they meet in Brussels. He reminds us that the younger generation forgets how difficult it was to set up the European bloc at the Treaty of Rome in 1957 and suffer from 'fatigue'. He describes people's fear of enlargement and globalisation as "unjustified". "The glass is half full because we have peace and not only peace but a better understanding amongst ourselves, that is undeniable, we have rules of law so that instead of classical diplomatic conflicts of interests every day, most of them are sorted out through law, and law after all is democracy and furthermore what we can say is that this European union, this european construction rather since it began with 6 countries, really helped them to modernise, even if there remains a lot to be done. But it represented an undeniable economic stimulus," Delors said. Davies says there are more challenges ahead which European forefathers could never have envisaged such as global climate change, an integrated transport policy, communications and more. But none of that can move ahead according to the EPC without a solid constitutional treaty. In fact failure to agree on a new constitution would lead the EU to "grind to a halt" she says. "We have a lot of new challenges like climate change, like globalisation, issues which do not stop at borders. We live in an increasingly mobile world and therefore the European Union is actually more relevant than it ever was. We are not talking now about preventing war between us because, thanks God that is now unthinkable, but it is entirely relevant and therefore, to answer your question directly, do we need a constitutional treaty? In the long term we certainly do need some new rules of the game that make it possible to function with 27 member states and so that the whole thing doesn't grind to a halt," Davies said. Delors also warned of not making hard political choices for closer integration, "(Q: Is europe in crisis?) Yes, it is in crisis at first I had underestimated but now really we are in a light coma if I may borrow from medical language. It will be hard to get out of it. We will need for everyone to move and that there is, as we did in my time, or even before, people who find a concensus." However, Delors believes the EU can regain momentum through practical initiatives such as last week's agreement on a green energy policy to fight climate change and a greater social dimension to counter perceptions that Europe is dominated by capitalists with short-term profit interests.

ITN Source | March 21, 2007

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