What kind of Europe?

A couple of weeks ago I tried to lay out what the future of Europe could look like, given that some member states want to create an ever-closer Union while others prefer to remain in a looser kind of club. I wrote that the EU might end up evolving into a much more asymmetric arrangement, with a small group of European states integrating in some areas, while other states remain outside. Later I called this new arrangement the trade the ‘EF’, the European Framework, as opposed to the more integrative EU of today.
 
Now others have begun offering their ideas. Michael van Hulten, a former Dutch MEP, has gone further than anyone in detailing what a two-layer Europe might look like:

‘The outer layer would be an overarching, less intrusive and more inclusive framework for European cooperation: a European Area of Freedom, Security and Prosperity (EFSP). This would comprise all EU and EFTA member states, as well as all existing EU candidate countries including Turkey. It could be expanded eastward to all European countries, one day even up to and including Russia, if and when the Copenhagen accession criteria (or similar) are met.   EFSP would be a free trade area with a common foreign and security policy. It would operate on the basis of the existing internal market rules, although the creation of EFSP would be used as an opportunity to review and if necessary amend existing rules. It would co-operate on physical cross-border issues such as transport and the environment, but it would have no role in policy areas where public resistance to EU co-operation and fear of further enlargement is greatest, such as education, social and taxation policy and justice and home affairs.   All decisions in this area would be taken by unanimity, under the control of national parliaments, in recognition of the fact that many European countries aren’t ready to give up their veto or their policy-making powers in areas perceived to be of vital national or political importance. This will reduce the area’s firepower but enhance its legitimacy. EFSP would eventually be merged with the Council of Europe and would take over the role of the OSCE. The European Court of Human Rights would be modernised to increase its legitimacy.   The inner core would be a European Political and Economic Union (EPEU), comprising a smaller group of member states without internal borders, all members of EFSP, a single market with a single currency and an integrated system of economic governance, with full political and fiscal union and democratic accountability at the EPEU level for decisions taken at that level. Schengen would be subsumed into this inner core.’

Van Hulten’s EPEU may have to be smaller than he realises if an ‘integrated system of economic governance’ is going to work and remain legitimate. Extending the EFSP too far will also not be easy. But the thinking is welcome – and better than the simplistic ideas emerging from Berlin and Paris about fiscal union.