Europe after Lisbon
On Friday the 13th (of June), the news came through: The Irish had rejected the EU’s Lisbon Treaty. Prophets of doom were quick to emerge, predicting that the demise of the treaty would mean the end of civilization — or at least of the EU — as we know it. Particular concerns were voiced about the Union’s international ambitions. Lisbon, after all, was designed largely as a means of enhancing the effectiveness of its security and defense policies. Such fears are misinformed and misplaced. Lisbon’s demise will have relatively little direct impact on the Union’s ability to play a role on the world stage.
So what, then, have we lost? In terms of foreign policy, the treaty contained several modifications to existing EU structures. The creation of a permanent "President" of the European Council (which brings together the heads of state and government of all 27 member states) was intended to provide leadership and strategic direction. A new "High Representative" straddling the Council and the European Commission was meant to give the Union some much-needed coherence in foreign affairs. Additional provisions were aimed at strengthening the military elements of European integration.
For all the hype, however, it is hard to see what these institutional innovations could have achieved. Many of the changes the treaty was due to usher in — such as a mutual defense clause — were largely symbolic in nature. The roles of the various foreign-policy representatives were ill-defined and potentially contradictory. The long sought-after "phone number for Europe" would not have been created. As for the new high representative, how he or she would have managed the bureaucracies of both the Council and the Commission is anyone’s guess.
The EU is a complex institution, fragmented between different actors and between the various member states and Brussels. A new institutional configuration would have served merely to reshape such fragmentation, introducing new turf wars between, for instance, the European Council president and the high representative. What’s more, it would have done nothing to alter the simple fact that the international effectiveness of the Union depends, ultimately, on its member states rather than any new institutional theology in Brussels. As a result, there are limits to what we can rightly expect from the EU.
Still, we have every reason to be impressed by what it has achieved to date. In areas such as international trade and environmental negotiations, the Union has emerged as a leader and standard setter. This will continue absent any new treaty. In international security, the Union acts to complement member states that reserve the right to act as they see fit, whether this be unilaterally, through other institutions such as NATO, or through the Union itself. However limited and limiting this conception might sound, the EU has managed to carve out an impressive role for itself in conflict prevention, post-conflict reconstruction and dealing with minor military contingencies in places ranging from the Balkans to Indonesia to sub-Saharan Africa.
Those who want more should look not to Brussels but to the 27 national capitals. Europe’s real shortcomings when it comes to international security are national. They relate not to arguments about the possibility for "permanent structured cooperation" among member states (one of the provisions in the Lisbon Treaty), but to a lack of military hardware. It is not the lack of a high representative or Council president, but a chronic lack of troops and helicopters that explains the woeful inadequacy of the European contribution to the conflict in Afghanistan.
The EU itself can manage just fine without the Lisbon Treaty. It has, after all, been doing so quite happily for some time now, and there is no reason to think that its weaknesses would have been satisfactorily addressed by the new text. If member states are really concerned about beefing up the Union’s international role, they should think about their own willingness to fund greater capabilities rather than their ingenuity when it comes to thinking up new institutional structures.
Member states will doubtless not see things this way. Despite the Irish result, several of them have declared their intention to continue with their own ratification processes. There is talk of trying to persuade the Irish to hold another vote, or of introducing the new arrangements via procedural reforms short of formal treaty change. Whatever the outcome of such machinations, the danger is that we are in for a long period of introspection. This would deflect attention away from the urgent policy problems confronting Europe and serve as a pretext for a period of intense naval-gazing.
Attempts to resurrect the treaty would also exacerbate what are already deep-seated and bitter divisions among the member states. There is some evidence to suggest that one of the reasons for the Irish vote was a perception that smaller member states would benefit less from the Lisbon Treaty than would their larger partners. This cleavage between the "bigs" and "smalls" is particularly important when it comes to security policy. There are already signs of tension when it comes to the self-professed right of large member states to take the lead on issues such as negotiations with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. Simply to ignore the Irish result and press ahead with a treaty they had rejected would further a perception of unwarranted bullying by the larger states. And such sentiments could easily spill over into an unwillingness to allow them to take the lead when it comes to security.
In an ideal world, member states would respect the Irish result and get on with making the best of existing EU provisions for cooperation in external policy. After all, even had Lisbon been ratified, the Union would have remained a fragmented political actor, incapable of decisive action in times of international crisis or of wielding significant military force. Equally, it would have retained capacity for small-scale missions and important interventions in areas of crisis.
The danger now is that even these roles will prove difficult to sustain. Debates about the EU have often given the impression that institutions and process were more important than practical policy outcomes. Let us hope that Europe’s political leaders are too aware of the myriad challenges confronting them in world politics to waste their time and energies once again on institution building and introversion.
Mr. Menon is professor of West European politics at the University of Birmingham and author of "Europe: The State of the Union" (Atlantic Books, 2008).
