Whatever the outcomes in today’s Italian referendum and the Austrian election for president, there is a sense of restlessness and unease abroad in the western democracies.
It can be argued that the Italian referendum is not of any inherent international significance save for the fact that Matteo Renzi, the master of silly political gestures, indicated that he would resign if he was defeated. That crude piece of theatrics was, we presume, to try to inject consequence into an inconsequential event. Like many of his stunts, Renzi has come to regret that particular piece of political flamboyance.
Likewise, the Austrian presidency is a matter of little inherent significance; their presidency, like ours, is largely ceremonial. But their election has been elevated into a political contest between the “far right” and the conventional. It now stands invested with a media significance far beyond its likely practical consequences.
A defeat for Renzi and a win for the Austrian Freedom Party candidate, Norbert Hofer, we are told, would be a portent of growing political disintegration across the EU.
The Italian referendum outcome, we are also told, could imperil their fragile banking system, with knock-on consequences for the Euro.
In truth, the only issue is whether Renzi should compound his reckless promise to resign if the people vote “No” today by an equally reckless adherence to that promise.
If he has a titter of wit (and “the jury is out” on that one), he would, in the event of a No vote, just eat a little humble pie and save Italy from the prospect of being governed by Beppe Grillo’s Five-Star party, – remaining in office and turning down his “flamboyance button”.
Can we depend on Renzi to show a little common sense and to stop acting the eejit?
This is the man who told us that he would use the recent 6-month Italian presidency of the EU to start building a federal United States of Europe. He completely failed in that respect.
This is also the man who then made a commitment to provide leadership (with Francois Hollande!) in charting a new future for the post-Brexit EU at the risible mini-summit at Ventotene this summer.
Hollande has imploded completely in the meantime. His patriotic reasoning for bowing out of the French presidential race (in which his support stood at 7%) this week was a masterpiece of self-regarding nonsense.
The third participant at the Ventotene photo-shoot, Angela Merkel, has signalled her intention to seek a fourth term as German Chancellor. Unlike Renzi and Hollande, she is still firmly in the saddle. But her misguided posturing on migration into the EU has created an opening for far-right politicians right across Central Europe.
Even in Germany the far-right AfD party could easily hold the balance of power after next year’s election. If that happens, the CDU/CSU will most likely be forced into another grand coalition with the Social Democrats – further stoking the fires of political cynicism and frustration.
You may recall that I have mentioned another European figure, Guy Verhofstadt, in these columns from time to time. Well, he has been busy recently in his capacity as rapporteur for the European Parliament’s Committee on Constitutional Affairs.
He has cooked up a draft European Parliament resolution “on possible evolutions of and adjustments to the current institutional set-up of the European Union”. That bland and indigestible title will not deter or disappoint connoisseurs of euro-babble.
Unsurprisingly, the arch-federalist’s draft resolution, having meandered through pages of tendentious recitals,concludes that “the time of crisis management by means of ad-hoc and incremental decisions has passed”. Now is the time, it states, to undertake a “comprehensive reform of the Lisbon Treaty”. What else?
To that end, he proposes yet another Convention to “end Europe a la carte”.
That involves the creation of an EU with no opt-outs or opt-ins, with QMV on all major issues; where a “Finance Minister” will be given “proportionate powers to intervene in the setting of national economic and fiscal policies”; where EU agencies will be given the power to prosecute; where member states will lose control over migration policy; that the EU should have an autonomous military arm to engage in “operations abroad, mainly with a view to stabilising its neighbourhood”; where the Commission will be slimmed down and made into the “government “ of the EU; where the EU Council becomes the second chamber of the EU parliament.
The EU would, naturally, also be given power to amend all its own treaties by a super-majority, giving it the capacity to decide its own powers – what the German constitutional court describes as the kompetenz kompetenz.
Member states that do not like this EU super-state and who wish to keep opt-outs would, the resolution proposes, be accorded “associate status” as “states on the periphery that only want to participate on the sideline”.
Needless to say, the resolution calls for the re-affirmation of “ever closer union” and for clarification of the “moral, political and historical purpose, and constitutional status of the European Union”.
Well, there you have it- the super-state on cue. My prediction here that Brexit would be used to attempt a federalist constitutionalist putsch has come true.
Is Verhofstadt an isolated, extremist nutjob? No! He is the man who was chosen by the European Parliament to serve as rapporteur of its committee on constitutional affairs. He is also their chosen representative in the Brexit negotiations.
These MEPs seem to live in a goldfish bowl and to have the memories and imaginations of goldfish.
Donald Tusk, the EU Council president, has repeatedly warned the federalists that these types of proposals would alienate the peoples of the member states. Do the federalists pay him a blind bit of attention? No. They seem to be affected with the political equivalent of Asperger’s syndrome. They don’t pick up subtle signals. They don’t sense that their obsession is not merely “not shared” by the great majority of Europeans – it is a repugnant, dangerous obsession for most people.
Most Europeans, including myself, wish the EU to be a partnership of independent sovereign states.
Just as integrationist proposals on migrancy created an opportunity for Norbert Hofer, Marine Le Pen and Brexit, the irony is that the EU federalists cannot understand that forcing integration leads to disintegration.
The greatest threat to the EU is, by the same irony, to be found not among its opponents but among its governing elite. If EU insiders pursue the federal super-state idea, the EU will simply disintegrate like the biblical Tower of Babel.