03/07/2014
Herman Van Rompuy has been speaking to his own kind in Brussels, the think-tank "wonks" at the
European Policy Centre (EPC). But what makes
his speech so remarkable is that he is one of the few politicians who is not afraid to use the word "intellectual", speaking it four times, including in his vote of thanks, where he declared:
⦠I am convinced that intellectuals and thinkers can and must play a critical role in charting our own way forward. This is why I want to congratulate you for the work done and invite you to keep working â because Europe needs you. Thank you.
EurActiv picks up
the details, retailing Van Rompuy's reference to the European Council just past, in the conclusions to which EU leaders adopted soothing words for Britain.
It was then that they said: "the concept of ever closer union allows for different paths of integration for different countries, allowing those that want to deepen integration to move ahead, while respecting the wish of those who do not want to deepen any further".
This is so obvious and so self-evident that one wonders why they bothered to say it, but Van Rompuy nevertheless went on to say that, "It is the first time we are saying this and we hope it will reassure in particular those in the UK who fear an inexorable integration logic".
The Council president then adds a little rider, effectively denying that there is "inexorable integration", slyly acknowledging that he knows "the fears are there", as if they were somehow exaggerated and out of proportion.
But this is at the launch of the "New Pact for Europe", an initiative by a consortium of eleven European foundations that has slipped completely under the wire as far as the legacy media is concerned. Yet, in its
launch publication entitled "Strategic Options for Europe's Future", it devotes 91 pages to exploring five basic options for the way ahead.
In other words, the "intellectuals" are thinking through the options, and then when they have discussed them, they will gradually synthesise firm plans, and seek to execute them.
Van Rompuy thinks that the two most extreme scenarios are highly improbable. Undoing the European Union, retrenching behind national borders and pretending that this will restore lost sovereignty and improve welfare is an empty promise, he says.
The polar opposite of this option, he ventures, is that of a great leap forward, a federal jump. While clearly preferable to European disunity, and maybe justified in a number of policy areas, Van Rompuy believes that is probably equally improbable.
Notwithstanding the vocal support for it in certain circles, this option does not seem to have sufficient support among the public at large, and it could even risk alienating the majority in the middle-ground, he says.
The man thinks that the way forward is building Europe with small steps. He knows the frustration, sometimes the anguish of each step seeming too small and too slow to address the mounting challenges that we could face far better together.
But, he says, when I look back, I can see the distance travelled and a stable sense of direction:
le cap est tenu. This is why he is "quite convinced" that this method â unspectacular but powerful â will continue to be the European method for the time to come, for better and for worse.
In fact, this is what "New Pact for Europe" is saying. As a taste of its input, it declares: "Now is not the right time to deepen integration in, for example, areas of foreign, security and defence policy. Experience has shown that EU countries are only ready to make a qualitative leap forward when confronted with a concrete challenge.
In the meantime, EU institutions and Member States should concentrate on smaller steps and more concrete policy initiatives, aiming to enhance the Union's role as an external actor and to adapt polices to the needs of multipolar global environments.
That eleven European think tanks have got together to produce this work is an object lesson to the eurosceptic community, which could not even field eleven organisations, much less get them working together. More worryingly, in the anti-intellectual ethos pervading the anti-EU movement, most would even argue against the need for any matching endeavour.
This, our opposition, though, has been embarking on a series of 50 meetings and has now set up a "reflection group" to draw on the outcome of their debates, ready to produce the final pact for presentation and discussion in different EU capitals and in Brussels with policy-makers, experts and citizens by the end of this year and early into next year.
If we ourselves pause for reflection, one might suggest that one of the reasons why the EU has been so successful, in terms of building up its own establishment, is that it has people not afraid to deal with the intellectual side of politics, contrasted with an anti-EU movement that has little if any intellectual base.
Small wonder Van Rompuy was in there thanking the intellectuals, a man Mr Farage
dismissed as having "the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk". That further contrast has to tell us something about where we are going and what we are likely to achieve.
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