As the dust begins to settle on the European Union's Amsterdam Treaty, agreed early yesterday morning after days of haggling, it can be seen more clearly that the outcome accurately reflects the current confused state of European politics. There was not the political will at the summit to make ambitious leaps forward in European security arrangements, in grand projects of political integration, or in institutional preparations for EU enlargement.
Instead the Maastricht Treaty has been usefully refined and extended with new powers and procedures. A return visit will be required before new structures are put in place to satisfy the needs of a more diverse EU, as well as the need to engage its citizens much more readily in its affairs.
Political attention was concentrated in recent weeks rather on assessing the implications of the recent important elections in Britain and France - and the forthcoming one in Germany next year. Preparations for economic and monetary union have absorbed most of the remaining attention that might otherwise have been devoted to preparing the EU for enlargement to take in some 12 new members over the next ten years. The interplay of these political and economic events has been traumatic. It has put preparedness for EMU at centre stage and has very usefully concentrated attention on the difficulties facing several key governments as decisions loom about who should participate.
This InterGovernmental Conference (IGC) was intended above all to prepare the EU for enlargement and to streamline its structures and decision making for a wider membership. Instead decisions on greater majority voting, reorganising Commission representation and reweighting voting procedures, have been put off until just before the next phase of enlargement happens, on the assumption that imminent change will itself generate the political will and energy to make difficult decisions. The changing political landscape has been vividly illustrated by new orientations among the largest member states.
The Franco German engine of greater integration has been upset first by the French election result and the emergence of new political priorities for employment and growth in France and now by evidence that Dr Helmut Kohl could not withstand strong political pressure from launder governments who were not prepared to ratify an IGC which endorsed qualified majority voting on asylum decisions within the EU or an extension of this form of decision making to other potentially cost increasing measures. In Britain, Mr Blair's government has transformed the political landscape, the ripple effects of which were clearly apparent in Amsterdam.
It is now time for governments to move on, making the most of the new provisions in this treaty, ensuring it is ratified rapidly and preparing the ground for the introduction of EMU in barely 18 months. EMU is the primary motor for European integration; if it were to be jeopardised by political miscalculation or fiscal illpreparedness, the Amsterdam Treaty would mark a retreat rather than a halt in political integration.
The treaty has many positive features. It introduces new powers and procedures in employment, social and environmental policy, on peacekeeping, new powers for the European Parliament and for flexible cooperation among member states. It should be used to stimulate political debate about how to make the EU more relevant and accountable to its citizens.