Orchestrating Europe (Text Only)

COPYRIGHT

William Collins

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Copyright © Keith Middlemas, 1995

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Version: 2017-01-06

DEDICATION

To my grandchildren:Hugo, Georgia, Fabian, Isabella

EPIGRAPH

It is the duty of the patriot to prefer and promote the exclusive interest and glory of his native country: but a philosopher may be permitted to enlarge his views and to consider Europe as one great republic, whose various inhabitants have attained almost the same level of politeness and cultivation. The balance of power will continue to fluctuate, and the prosperity of our own, or the neighbouring kingdoms, may be alternately exalted or depressed; but these partial events cannot essentially injure our general state of happiness, the system of arts, and laws, and manners, which so advantageously distinguish, above the rest of mankind, the Europeans …

Edward Gibbon, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol VI, chapter XXXVIII, p. 402 (1818 edition)

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

Presidencies and principal Commissioners, relevant to the main themes, since 1981

Presidencies of the Council of Ministers and Meetings of the European Council

The European Integration Experience

by Richard T. Griffiths

1. 1945–58

2. 1958–73

Part I: History

3. The Stagnant Decade, 1973–83

4. Making the Market: The Single European Act, 1980–88

5. Maastricht and After, 1988–93

Post Script

Part II: Forces

6. The Commission

7. The Member States

8. Institutions: The Parliament and the Court of Justice

9. The Regions

Part III: Players

10. Firms and Federations

11. Players in Action

12. Policy-Making: Industry and Trade

Part IV: State without a Country

13. Unity and Diversity

14. Conclusion

Notes

Glossary of Abbreviations and Acronyms

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Books By

About the Publisher

INTRODUCTION

The late 1980s brought a sense of quickening tempo to the European Community after a decade of stagnation. Two landmark Treaties, the Single European Act of 1986 and the Treaty of Union at Maastricht stood out in that optimistic period. Now that the wave of euphoria has broken, and the tide receded – though not nearly to its pre-1985 level – it is worth asking what were the permanent achievements and the quality of change that each brought about. As EEC, EC or EU, the European Community has habitually moved through troughs and hollows, punctuated by much shorter bursts of energy: neither can be explained without asking what all the relevant forces – governments, Community institutions and the array of interested outside players – were doing at each point in the cycle.

How member state governments and EU bodies relate is similar enough to what goes on in national political systems to be comprehensible, and open enough to be readily accessible. Community institutions are in most cases much the less secretive of the two. But the task of weaving the influence of non-governmental players (industrial firms, financial institutions, trades unions, regions and distinct state organs such as central banks) into the recent history of a subject extending over twelve or more nation states requires a different format, almost an alternative kind of history. Robert Brenner did this for seventeenth-century England in Merchants and Revolution,1 with the benefit of access to all surviving archives. But the EU, like its member governments, restricts access at every point after 1965.

Yet without a complete picture of how influence is exercised and who moves whom, we have only half the story. Present day comment lacks essential connections to the recent past, to the trends which may not be obvious today but remain latent, like nationalism in eastern Europe before 1989. Without contemporary history, studies of the contemporary world – by political scientists, lawyers, economists, or specialists in international relations – rest on a dangerously relative foundation, and students are faced with a blind spot for the ‘years not taught’.

The contemporary historian (like any other), ought to contribute a distinct sort of understanding of three connected phenomena: processes as they change over time; the continuous interchange of many players; and the mutation of institutions, and the beliefs and behaviour patterns of those who work in them. These were my own concerns in a series of studies of British government during the twentieth century which developed the concept of a long and continuous game between an increasing number of players of different power, status and interests, a game in which all of them used the needs that the modem state had for their participation to draw it and its component parts into an informal framework, from which there could subsequently be no retreat to a pristine minimal state.

Their continual rivalry in the political marketplace focused on a range of goals, from naked self-interest to bargaining a consensus about what the common or national interest might be. Each one’s willingness to accept a measure of interdependence ensured that the others would be more inclined to recognize some of its own claims, if only as the price of general social harmony (for which, in turn, governments and political parties were prepared to pay). As a descriptive device, I called this a ‘competitive symposium’ – to signify a prolonged discourse, not between equal partners but ones which recognized each other’s claims and followed, voluntarily but as a precondition of membership, a code of political language and conventions of behaviour in pursuit of rational self-interest.

The competitive element was always present but was limited by the need not to risk the whole delicate balance through outright conflict. The game was therefore a continuous one, many-headed and usually peaceable, with regular prizes but no final victories, open to generally acceptable players bound by agreed rules and a shared belief that negotiated results, though never entirely binding or satisfactory, were preferable to dictation by a higher power.

Having reached a point in 1990 where a contemporary historian could not reasonably go further forward in a British context, I have tried to apply the same method on the European scale, by looking not only at the Community’s history over the last twenty years but at the interchanges between a much broader range of players or constellations than is usual in the approaches of other disciplines. To borrow a phrase of Andrew Shonfield’s, I hoped to study a great theme from a single standpoint, to discover an underlying coherence in the idea that the arena where these players meet could be described as informal politics, part of the overall system whose more obvious features are of course formal.

Living in a country which, more than any other member of the Community, has difficulty with the concept of being European, yet which I firmly believe has no special role and hardly any living space outside it, I am disturbed by the distorted and frequently trivial way the Community is portrayed in the press and on television by all but a handful of commentators. Apart from the brief period in 1972–4, and during the 1975 referendum, British governments have done little in their public discourse to make clear what is at stake, so that stereotypes are used habitually which provoke incomprehension if not derision across the Channel.

What is said here is meant therefore also as a contribution to perceptions: as Rudyard Kipling put it in Something of Myself in 1891, ‘trying to tell the English something of the world outside England – not directly, but by implication … a vast conspectus of the whole sweep and meaning of things …’. (Kipling of course wrote ‘Empire’ not Europe.) To start with, the Community is not just Brussels, the Council of Ministers and the Commission, but fifteen member states of varying size, importance and interests, some of which are very much more effective than others (insofar as their games lie within Europe). Beyond them, but in overlapping circles, range other players at national or regional level, of different status operating from different standpoints. There is no ideal Europe, no single picture, outside the emptiness of political rhetoric; just as there is no one centre. The centre is wherever the players meet. Those from ‘above’ may be formally superior, but informally, when they meet as a matter of common interest, it is each one’s effectiveness that counts.

The question to ask here is not ‘what is Europe?’, because in this dimension Europe is whatever you see, but how, informally, does the Community function, how do governments and non-governmental players act and what do they try to achieve? Does informal politics help to ameliorate the deep-rooted discords between north and south, core and periphery, small states and large, Anglo-Saxon and continental mentalities? Does it facilitate the entry of new players? Does it reduce rigidities and friction which would otherwise make the Community a less efficient mechanism for what its members want?

The Europe which questions like these throws into focus is one of interests, elites and powerful groups. It is vital to study these as they are: Europe as it is, not as people might wish it to be, as a preliminary to changing it. Players in the informal sector of a system are those who choose to enter out of self-interest, who have the willpower and resources to stay in and the capacity to make themselves heard in that highly competitive arena. Lack of resources or inability to form stable alliances condemns the rest to marginal status or, like small companies, to reliance on whatever support they can get at national or regional level. There is no democratic bias here.

But not all roads in the EU’s history lead to the same outcome. The narrative from 1973 to the present given in chapters 3 to 5 is intended to make clear how the European project revived after a long stagnation, and why the Single Act led on to the Treaty of Union at Maastricht – in the context of a Europe which had been fundamentally altered by the collapse of the Soviet Union after 1989. There are other ways of telling the story because the Community’s development is not teleological, not precisely delimited by the Treaties. How it evolves and what new legal texts it produces are for the players to decide.

As an historian I have tried not to confine myself to any one interpretation, whether federal, functional or intergovernmental, and to proceed empirically, taking account of all the significant players. The project assumes no hierarchy of players, no measured evolution: it examines ‘punctuated equilibrium’, change rather than progress, short bursts of energy interrupted by longer troughs (usually associated with recession). Of these, the economic and financial crisis of 1973–5 profoundly altered the balance between industry and labour, while that of 1981–3 had a direct effect on the behaviour of large firms and their federations towards the Community. The more recent 1990–93 recession ran parallel to a political cleavage between governments and elites on one side, publics and media on the other, in all member states, which severely impaired the Union (as the Community had by then become) and delayed completion of the internal market. Deep discontent with Community institutions seemed to be a sort of retribution for pre-Maastricht euphoria, as the last vestiges of post-War settlements disappeared, to be replaced by anguish at the threats to welfare systems and national identities, the latter at least being one long consequence of 1989.

There is a difficulty with this approach to incremental change. Existing studies of the Community and its processes take for granted a sense of progress and seek general conclusions, which the detailed evidence of what large numbers of players do does not always substantiate. Self-interest and bargaining, as Richard Griffiths shows in his historical introduction, written from the EU’s own archives, bulk much larger than earlier accounts, written by committed Europeans, allowed.

At best these concentrated on peak organizations or federations. But the primary actors were not usually federations but their members, for whom central bodies served mainly to correlate the varying opinions within them. A group study of such bodies gives an illusory impression of continuity. Likewise, most large firms or banks had a presence in the Community from the 1970s onwards. But generally their interest increased substantially and in a qualitative way in the 1980s, so that they appear to be now fully engaged as players; yet the intensity and scope of their involvement differs according to what is at stake, and may diminish (as many companies’ efforts did, once the internal market legislation was in place).

Either way, corporate players helped to create the Community’s informal political infrastructure, as they did nation states’ systems rather earlier during the twentieth century. In the European Union, however, they operated in greater freedom from the constraints of the past, because the Community is only an imperfect or quasi-state, some thirty-seven years old. Its system is different from those of nation states and the degree of informality greater, because of its institutional heterodoxy.

All this makes it necessary to examine the links and networks that have grown up, and to look at how similar informal politics operate in the European Court, the Parliament, the regions and among financial players or central banks, in their context rather than in isolation. Networks in the 1990s are growing fastest in the recently colonized commercial or financial spheres. They have always crossed borders, but here borders have ceased to count. The increase by volume is perhaps the most noticeable feature of the last decade; but the fact that major players can no longer ignore less relevant areas, for fear that their competitors will establish bridgeheads there, suggests that the quality of change is more important.

As the competitive symposium extends itself, a sort of interdependence becomes established. Bargaining through networks in a densely structured game reduces friction and produces results for which the formal system may be ill attuned, even on ostensibly formal matters such as easier implementation and enforcement of laws. It allows for wide, flexible participation; it reduces inconsistencies; it gives rise to conventions, rather than formal rules, which can be adapted more easily over time. But it is not protective of weaker interests and it privileges the more efficient ones.

Like the dusty engagements in a ‘soldier’s battle’ spread over a huge terrain, it is hard to see results. Even business participants are often unclear who is winning at any one time or what constitutes success. They might reflect with William Morris ‘how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat; and when it comes, it turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.’

Appreciating the game’s totality is vital: without it, it is impossible fully to understand EU processes and the behaviour of players or individual practitioners; the informal constitutes the ‘dark side of the moon’, without which that sphere is only a disc.

It is impossible even to think of including here more than a brief selection of the sorts of cases where informal politics proliferate. But space should be made for all the players or the sense of totality is lost. Each one, whatever its size, effectiveness, status or resources, has some influence on the outcome. Until it has proved unimportant or marginal, therefore, it should be given historical space. The Community contains large numbers of games which are distinct, as well as ‘nested boxes’, and a group powerful in one may be outplayed in another – which is not the case in the formal system between legal entities of equivalent status.

Power of this kind is also a function of how much the EU’s institutions need what players have to offer. Commission officials’ willingness to consult peak organizations from particular industries and their component firms is well known; and so is their propensity to take on experts from member states or those same firms as advisers (which is ascribed reasonably enough to shortages of staff in the Directorates and the need to take account of what exists in national or local markets). Very complex forms of diplomacy govern the subsequent transactions of information and influence.

Early in the EU’s history, individuals carried great clout, as befitted a relatively small Brussels elite. Today, the keys to sustained influence lie much less in personal linkages, more in tightly argued dossiers and presenting the most up-to-date information at the initial stages of policy evolution. The professionals have taken over, flanked by cohorts who constitute their own distinct groups: technical experts, lawyers or journalists.

But whoever acts, the questions remain the same: who manipulates? Who controls whom? What are effective transactions rather than ritual ones? The gains made by either side may not have obvious market connotations, especially once players have committed themselves to a long-term involvement: positional gains often outweigh monetary ones. In such circumstances it is hard to ascribe a balance of advantage, or to portray influence as a one-way process. Both sets of participants tend to shape each other, whether at the Commission/Council level, or at that of the firm and Directorate official.

It is clear from the interviews on which this book is based that the game begins surprisingly low down among relatively junior Commission officials; and that what matters is the cumulative weight of such bargaining (governed as it is by its own system of filters, access mechanisms, rules and conventions) by the time that decisions, whose basis rests on joint agreement, have become EU law or policy. This is no longer – if it ever was – a matter merely of lobbying, but of degree of commitment, indicated by when a player finds it expedient to set up an office in Brussels or to develop a department of EU affairs with a direct link to its main board.2 The index of commitment is to be measured in terms of resources (for example, the cost of lobbying in the European Parliament), the quality of personnel involved, and the extent to which the player develops internal mechanisms for dealing with the EU in its corporate structures.

If one selects only certain categories of players, the game’s totality is lost, not least because such studies tend to ignore the variety of modes of action open to all those players, ranging from direct pressures in Brussels or use of MEPs (a multinational corporation might have a minimum of fifty MEPs on its contact list at any one time, including the total membership of some key Strasbourg committees), to leverage via its own member state government’s European Affairs Coordinating committees, or with its Permanent Representation in Brussels. The sheer volume of new entrants, the number of corporate offices set up in Brussels in the late 1980s, the numbers of lobbyists who, like Renaissance mercenaries, did well at Strasbourg out of the legislative boom, have done more than clutter the EU’s political marketplace. They have changed it, probably irreversibly, because all the serious players (which does not include those who work sporadically or primarily through lobbyists) have engaged themselves permanently, on a large scale and with substantial resources, to the evolution of means of influence at every level. A firm cannot ignore any of these approaches, not because all means are equal, or have a commercial or even viable return, but because competitors might gain advantage there.

It is sometimes argued that players are more concerned with relative than collective advantage. My impression is that, in the more coherent industrial sectors like chemicals and pharmaceuticals, this is not so and may not even be true for the less coherent such as motorcars and consumer electronics, firstly because it is almost impossible for a large firm not to play in the EU market, secondly because the extensive range of modes available ensures that relative advantage can be defended on other levels – for example by utilizing group pressures on those perceived as playing only for their own interests, or deprecating what they do to Commission officials in order to ensure their partial exclusion or downgrading.

Given such a plethora of activities, there are substantial problems not only in deciding who influences whom but in discriminating between significant and unimportant activity. It is not much use measuring the numbers of lobbyists employed, the size of federation memberships, or the numbers of MEPs’ signatures on proposed amendments; it would be better to ask what is their quality, how coherent is their representation, on which committees do they sit? Few players, from member states to SMEs, focus all their existence in the Community context; we need to know if they have changed emphasis in the spectrum running from national capitals through Europe to global markets; whether the man in Brussels reports direct to the managing director, whether players with widely different interests are adopting similar tactics.3

Formality and informality are not part of a syllogism, thesis and antithesis because, like ying and yang, they complement each other. All social scientists understand what informal politics is, but find its essence hard to define formally. But if they too often reduce it to formal abstractions, historians tend to avoid it altogether for lack of proper documentation. Logically, it does not constitute a system, because that would mark its clear separation from the formal: it can only be part of a system.

Two assumptions can be made about formal mechanisms: firstly, that they rely on their operators’ continual good behaviour; secondly that, without informal processes, they become more rigid or unworkable the more pressures build up in the societies which originated them. No mechanism is so perfect that it cannot be disturbed by dissidents or outsiders. None can be designed to alter itself over time to meet the challenges of which the originators can have had no conception, unless it has latitude built in. Combinations of the two have a better chance of preventing systemic failure than tight legal prescription does on its own.