If Europe is not simply to be run by bureaucrats, it will have to take seriously the question of how it can create an open political class on a continental scale. For such a class is the only real alternative to government by civil servants.
The neglect of this matter is symptomatic of what has been happening in Europe, especially since the acceleration of economic and political integration began with the Single European Act. More than any other EU member, it is France which has put its foot down on the accelerator - moving away from de Gaulle's preference for a Europe des patries to a more centralised model. Sometimes the French refer to it as an "economic government" for Europe, though recently President Chirac has called for a Europe of United States rather than a United States of Europe.
Just what the French have in mind is puzzling from a constitutional angle. What is clear, however, is the implication of French calls for the "harmonising" of policies in spheres such as taxation, defence and foreign policy. Such harmonisation must involve a wider remit for decision-making at the centre, even if that decision-making is achieved by way of governmental consensus.
At times the French seem to have stepped into the shoes traditionally worn by Britain. They emphasise that they want to be pragmatic, to take one thing at a time and not be seduced by grand visions of Europe's future. Evidently the French today are not seeking and perhaps would not welcome a great debate about Europe's constitutional destination.
Yet it is hard to avoid the conclusion that French proposals do point to one particular outcome for Europe - a Europe ruled by an inter-governmental bureaucracy.
That French preference reveals something important about the French political class itself. Under the Third and Fourth Republics it was often remarked that France was administered rather than governed - with weak political control opening the way to civil service power. The advent of the Fifth Republic, with the considerable increase in executive power which it consecrated, has led to important changes in the composition of the French political class. Civil servants have increasingly infiltrated the French political class - led by the extraordinarily well-educated and ambitious Enarques, graduates of the Ecole Nationale d'Administration.
Now it would be more accurate to say that France is governed by administrators.
In many ways France has Europe's most impressive political class. It has transformed France, pulling a pre-modern economy and society into the world's front rank. So the Enarques have much to be proud of. But their virtues carry with them a kind of vice. For in their concern with ambitious public projects the French emphasise ends rather than means. They insist on the coherence and "rationality" of policies rather than the need to build consent for those policies.
The instincts of the French political class are evidently technocratic rather than constitutional. Their ambitions - first for France, and now for Europe - require a concentration of power rather than the separation of powers or checks and balances. Yet the latter are at the heart of any liberal constitutional system.
These instincts of the French political class help to explain why Europe has not faced up to the question of how to create an open political class on a continental scale - for arguing about the formation of such a class will inevitably open up constitutional issues.
Such argument will, above all, raise a fundamental question: how can Europe begin to find a consensus about what should be decided at the centre and what should be left to member-states or even regions?
Such questions of jurisdiction are intimately bound up with the role of a political class across Europe. That is one reason why a debate about federalism in Europe - without prejudging the outcome - is now indispensable. Exploring federalism as one possible outcome for Europe would focus attention on the issue of relations between centre and periphery.
THE US can be instructive for Europeans today because of the nature of the political class shaped by American federalism. On the one hand, it is a political class dominated by lawyers. On the other hand, the ease of acquiring a legal education in the US had made entry into the political class relatively easy. So the American political class combines two things in a remarkable way. It brings a legal cast of mind to bear on the potential conflicts of jurisdiction which are inherent in anything like a federal system. At the same time it serves as a symbol of social mobility in the US, offering a permanent invitation to people to join the class which is giving a lead to the American polity.
If Europe is to develop an adequate political class, it will have to resemble the American political class in these two respects.
For these qualities of the American political class have helped to shape the culture of consent which has sustained American federalism. In my book, Democracy in Europe, I try to show how a European Senate indirectly elected by national parliaments from their own leading members could begin the fusion of national political classes into a Europewide political class.
Still another analogy occurs to me. During the Middle Ages, the Catholic clergy remained an open class in what was otherwise an aristocratic society of castes. By advertising the possibility of social mobility, the clergy held out hope. In a democratic society, a new European political class must do the same thing even more emphatically.