"The time has come to put a face to European democracy." The words are those of the important declaration this week issued by the former Commission President, Jacques Delors on behalf of a group of European political heavyweights, including our own Peter Sutherland. Their concern about the yawning democratic deficit in Europe is a particularly timely contribution to the Irish debate on the Amsterdam Treaty - to Ireland's critics of the EU comes a clear answer from the heart of the beast that they are not alone in critiquing the EU's distance from its people. The Delors initiative also offers an alternative approach to engaging the public in a debate about Europe's future to the stultifying narrowness and technicality of Ireland's Amsterdam debate. The significance of the Delors declaration is that it responds to the counsel of despair by taking as a starting point the Treaty of Amsterdam with all its limitations and explores means of invigorating it. "As in the past periods of its history," writes Tommaso Padoa Schioppa, the Italian author of the proposal, "the Union will have to be strengthened by working with the treaties after working on them. Ingenuity and determination will be required to discover and fully exploit the potential offered by the present constitution."
The essence of the proposal is that Europe's political parties should each put forward the name of their nominee for the presidency of the Commission ahead of the European Parliament elections in June 1999. Voters would then be asked to vote for a manifesto, MEPs, and give general approval to the approach taken by their party's nominee.
The treaty provision that the President is appointed by heads of government would still be respected, but the Delors group's bet is that they would find it difficult to resist the pressure to appoint a candidate with a strong democratic mandate. Or, more probably, they would be offered the choice of two candidates with similar, strong mandates reflecting the two main strands of European political thought, social democracy and Christian democracy.
And the proposal is fully compatible with the treaty's enhanced role for the President of the Commission and the logic of synchronising the end of a parliamentary term with that of the Commission, Padoa Schioppa argues.
Why not recognise, Delors asks, the reality that modern national elections are about personalities - Blair-Major, Chirac-Jospin, Kohl-Schroeder - and inject the same personality contest into the European elections? Such an approach could, he argues, drag the debate away from the narrow national preoccupations all too often evident in Euro-polls.
Yet, why would a head of government willingly subscribe in advance to such a dilution of his currently unfettered power? Delors's answer is that "this is not a putsch". National leaders are also leaders of political parties, and most of them are within the two main political groups of the Socialists and the European People's Party. They would continue to wield the major influence in determining the name of the candidate to be put up by their party. The change would be that such a candidate would then get a form of democratic mandate.
The reality is that the two men seen as the most probable successors to Jacques Santer, Spain's former Prime Minister, Felipe Gonzalez, and Italy's Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, both yet undeclared, would have little difficulty getting the Socialist and EPP imprimatur respectively. Indeed, in the absence of Prodi from the fray, Sutherland, still a major player behind the scenes, might well be prevailed upon to stand. The dilemma that such a nomination would create for Bertie Ahern reflects one of the real political weaknesses of the proposal - neither Ahern nor France's President Chirac are members of the two parties and are likely to take a dim view of the choice being taken out of their hands, not just once but in reality for good. Their party, the Union for Europe, would be unable to mount a serious Europe-wide challenger of their own.
In theory, however, the Delors proposal would not require the prior consent of all heads of government - indeed there is no reason why any single party should not trailblaze this course alone.
But ultimately Delors has put down a challenge to leaders that they cannot shy away from.
