Europe Scales Back Unified Agenda

With Constitution on Hold, Some Nations Move Ahead, With or Without the Rest

By Brandon Mitchener

BRUSSELS -- With a European Union constitution on the back burner and quickly in danger of getting cold, some countries are warming up a Plan B: forging more unions within the union to advance integration among the willing without waiting for those who aren't.

Most EU governments have toned down talk of a "multispeed" Europe since failing last weekend to approve a first-ever constitution for the soon-to-be-25-nation union. All say they eventually hope to salvage the constitution, thereby creating a more coherent economic and political counterpart to the U.S. "Having less than 25 members moving forward is a less optimum model than moving forward together," said Brian Cowen, foreign minister of Ireland, which takes over the EU's rotating six-month presidency in January. "It's a question of when rather than if," he told reporters Thursday, referring to the constitution.

Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller, for one, warns that talk of a European vanguard could further divide a union already at odds over the constitution. "I don't exclude Poland joining such an initiative, but for the moment it's just a fuzzy idea, or maybe a warning shot," Mr. Miller said Thursday.

But dividing -- and potentially conquering -- is the whole idea of a multispeed Europe. Despite Mr. Miller's skepticism, several governments, along with academics and influential think-tanks, are preparing plans for smaller groups of EU member-states to undertake joint initiatives without waiting for EU governments to sign off on the constitution. That process could take until "the end of 2004 or beginning of 2005," and ratification would take even longer, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president who oversaw the constitution's drafting, said Thursday. Independent initiatives in the area of defense, police and judicial cooperation or immigration, on the other hand, could be put in place long before the constitution is finished.

Germany, France, Belgium and a number of other countries have already discussed plans for a wide-ranging European defense initiative, parts of which could be implemented as soon as next year. Already, in the margins of the constitution talks, they agreed to establish an independent defense-planning office to enable participating member-states to conduct some military operations independently of the U.S.-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Details of further plans remain elusive, but Claus Giering, Europe project leader at the University of Munich's Center for Applied Policy Research, says, "If nothing happens in the next year with the constitution, I think we'll see another initiative next year instead."

That in turn could put pressure on countries holding up the constitution to fall in line. Mr. Giering said he expects an initiative to take off even before the next EU summit in March so that it could be "used as leverage" in talks with Spain and Poland, the two countries that most adamantly refused to accept the terms of a draft EU constitution.

Such ad-hoc arrangements "would permit Europe to go faster, further, better," French President Jacques Chirac told a summit news conference on Saturday. Eric Philippart, an official with the European Commission's task force on the future of Europe, earlier this year penned a widely read report in which he said EU leaders could take and push ahead other parts of the constitution that they agree are parallel to ongoing constitution talks.

This "quick and easy" approach could extend to education, professional training, culture, public health, tourism, energy, civil protection, banking surveillance, business taxation and other areas, he said, turning the union into a "multistage rocket" of integration.

It wouldn't be the first time cooperation-minded EU member-states had plowed on ahead in hopes that others would follow. In fact, Europe already works at multiple speeds -- a situation the new constitution wouldn't change. Switzerland, Norway and Iceland aren't EU members at all, for example, but they often live by its rules. Only 12 of the union's 15 members use the euro as their currency.