[Comment] 'Wise Men' group a gift to the eurosceptics
PETER SAIN LEY BERRY
16.10.2008 @ 09:23 CET
EUOBSERVER / COMMENT - It is interesting to speculate where we might be if the global credit crunch had not been occupying the front pages pretty well continuously for the past two months.
In bulletin after bulletin, in newspaper after newspaper, the reports have been of wounded titans of the global economy crashing to earth in some sort of financial Valhalla - first in the United States and then in Europe and elsewhere, with, in Iceland, a new and especially dire chapter being added to the sagas.
Only democracy can tackle the great issue of Europe's future (Photo: EUobserver)
Well, the global financial crisis - I hope I am not tempting fate - appears to have been fixed. Thanks to a series of measures devised at feverish pace in the corridors and high-ceilinged Edwardian offices of Her Majesty's Treasury and implemented first in Britain and subsequently with variations in the United States and the European Union, the wounded titans have stopped thrashing around in their death throes and are now gently recovering.
'Open again for business' signs are re-appearing like the green shoots of spring.
Certainly there are still 'open issues' to deal with - including what to do with Iceland - which, shunned by those it counted as its European friends, has resorted to leaning on Russia's arm and accepting 4 billion of Kremlin largesse.
Neither are all European leaders entirely happy with the medicine they have been given to swallow. There are grumblings from a number of quarters, eastern Europe especially. But provided these are dealt with - and surely if we have learned anything from the global financial crisis, it is that we need - in Benjamin Franklin's immortal words - "to hang together, for otherwise we shall surely all hang separately" - then it appears the antidote has been found to the poison and recovery is in sight.
A new international conference to tidy up the loose ends and to guarantee an improved system of financial regulation will then set the seal on this 2008 chapter.
That is, assuming we are not sunk by the economic tsunami that is widely predicted will follow the financial earthquake. According to some reports, recession has already arrived. Others talk about next year. There is something of a competition among the merchants of doom and gloom.
My own forecast - for what it is worth - is that provided markets do actually return to a semblance of normality, the financial crisis itself will prove to have had far less of an impact than those factors that were already causing a slowdown in the world's economies - cyclical factors, the surge in energy prices, food shortages and the cost of countering climate change.
That is not an exhaustive list by any means. We could add Europe's ageing demographic structure and the lack of a new trade deal and indeed go on adding issues to the point that one wonders how it is that we actually have an economy at all.
Lisbon Treaty
Many will be touched upon during the current mid-term European Council meeting, though whether any major decisions will be reached is another matter. It is a measure of the current climate that the Council meeting will not focus on the results of the Irish referendum on the Lisbon Treaty, other than to receive a report from the Irish premier on the findings of opinion surveys designed to elucidate the reasons for the Irish No.
No great discussion is expected on this, perhaps because it seems clear that after a decent interval and some tinkering with the Lisbon provisions, the Irish will be asked to vote again. There is blind faith that the Irish will do the sensible thing and vote Yes, especially if they are by then the only country not to have ratified and offered a settled commissioner. This I can only describe as touching.
For I am not at all sanguine that such a vote can be counted on. Who knows what may be happening in autumn 2009 (the date for a second referendum that is being mooted)? I still believe some nod towards greater democracy in the Union is necessary.
It would be sensible for the Union now to be contemplating some additional moves in this direction that would give the Irish (and, just as importantly, those equally discontented citizens in most other member states) a more positive reason to vote Yes than the mere guarantee of a permanent commissioner.
Still, as has been pointed out, the Lisbon Treaty would not have eased the resolution of the financial crisis. Nor would Lisbon fundamentally alter how we approach the other great issue of our time - climate change - the news of which seems to worsen by the day.
Wise men
We are being dragged into a vicious circle with more greenhouse gases being liberated from the seas and thawing soils of the planet without any man-made intervention. Many assumptions, certainly as regards the polar regions, appear already out of date.
That makes it vital that the targets for greenhouse gas emissions are adhered to and that leaders do not use the excuse of the financial crisis to let them slip.
The Council is also expected to confirm the appointment of a dozen 'Wise Men' (and women) to reflect on the future of the continent, including the extent of its borders and the powers with which its authority should be invested.
When the idea was originally suggested, I wrote that the future of Europe was too important to be left to Wise Men. I continue in that belief, though I see the attraction for Mr Sarkozy and other opponents of Turkish entry. The Group will effectively allow a final decision to be put off until after it has reported in 2010, and indeed for some time after that.
But surely, I ask, with the European elections looming in 2009, is not this the sort of issue that should be being debated now between the parties and with us, the voters, rather than a group of old suits having the final say? Is this not what Mr Declan Ganley and the Irish No campaign was all about?
Where are the expansionists arguing that Europe's bounds should be set ever wider? And where are those who think that the perfect must not be allowed to become the enemy of the good: that Europe must remain manageable?
Multilateral and intergovernmental solutions dreamt up by the wise may rein in a credit crunch, but only democracy can tackle the great issue of Europe's future.
The author is an independent commentator on European affairs.