Belgium's sleepy royal palace at Laeken is uncharacteristically buzzing with activity these days as officials and workmen prepare for next week's meeting of EU leaders. The agenda could not be loftier because the leaders will spend most of their time discussing the future of Europe itself. The politicians' dilemma over Europe brings to mind W.H. Auden's short poem, Brussels in the Winter:
Wandering through cold streets tangled like old string,
Coming on fountains rigid in the frost,
Its formula escapes you; it has lost
The certainty that constitutes a thing.
The leaders are expected to acknowledge in a joint declaration that many European citizens have lost the plot where the EU is concerned. They no longer understand what the European institutions are for and they have forgotten the purpose of the entire project of European integration.
At Laeken, the leaders will launch a process aimed at making the EU more coherent and bridging the gap between the institutions and Europe's citizens. As the Taoiseach suggested in a speech in Monaghan last week, the politicians hope to put an end to the permanent process of renegotiating EU treaties.
"The citizens of the member-states want to see a Europe that works and that settles down with some degree of permanence and stability. It is only in this way that our citizens can really have any hope of better understanding the Union and how it works," he said.
Mr Ahern elaborated the European problem eloquently but he struck a cautious note in considering possible remedies.
And his lukewarm reference to the idea of a European constitution was in sharp contrast to the enthusiastic backing given to the idea by the Health Commissioner, Mr David Byrne.
In his speech to the Seanad last month, Mr Byrne said the endless succession of Inter-Governmental Conferences (IGC) had left Europe's citizens confused and alienated.
"The time has now come to put the procession of IGCs behind us once and for all. The post-Laeken process now gives us all the chance to do that. Perhaps we will see emerging within a couple of years proposals for some sort of constitution for Europe. Perhaps such a constitution, such a treaty, would fix the broad issues of major importance for all of us. This would give us our guiding light, our beacon of certainty, our unifying force. "This kind of development would then leave subsidiary issues to be dealt with through the normal process of legislation," he said.
A number of member-states, including Britain and Spain, are wary of the prospect of a European constitution, which they fear could give the EU the appearance of a super-state. Mr Byrne referred to this perception in his Seanad speech and warned that any new arrangements for European governance must respect the institutional uniqueness of the EU.
"Europe is not a state. Everyone in Europe is in agreement in condemning the prospect, or rather the myth, of a European 'super-state'. Let us therefore avoid proposing for the European Union models copied from the practice of federal states, whereas the building of Europe is actually a sort of hybrid community of peoples and states committed to diversity and the identity of their nations," he said.
A convention to be set up next year will discuss a number of issues concerning European governance, including the division of responsibilities between Brussels and the member-states. But the reform of the Commission, traditionally a guarantor of smaller states' interests, is not on the agenda.
In a lecture delivered at Stockholm University last week, Dr John Temple Lang, Ireland's leading expert on European law, argued that change to the Commission's composition agreed at Nice could undermine the institution's legitimacy. The Nice Treaty says that, once the number of member-states reaches 27, the Commission will no longer have a representative from each state.
"This solution, whatever details may be suggested, is open to serious criticism. It would make the Commission, for the first time, not fully representative. The Commission could not claim to speak for the whole European Union."
Dr Temple Lang is dismissive of proposals to make the Commission president directly elected and is scathing about Mr Romano Prodi's Commission, warning that it appears to have lost sight of its role as an independent check on the Council of Ministers that effectively limits the power of the bigger states.
"The Commission is not sufficiently aware of its own raison d'etre."
