Commentaar: Europese bevolking zal Grondwet niet zo maar alsnog aanvaarden (en)

EUOBSERVER / DEBATE - The great psychotherapist, Eric Berne, is perhaps best remembered for what he had intended to be a minor monograph on human relationships.

Such, however, was Berne's skill as a writer that his 1964 'Games People Play' rapidly became a best seller and established a permanent place for him in the pantheon of those who have sought to understand the mysterious workings of the febrile human mind.

Berne used to suppose that people would often act in two very different, if not opposing ways: the façade they presented to the world being rather different from the one that really drove their behaviour.

He likened this duality to a T-Shirt with a 'slogan' on the front and a 'kicker' on the back. The slogan tells people what you want them to hear; but the kicker carries your real, and often darker, message.

You can control climate change

I was reminded of this when - amidst a rash of reports about the European Union's patchy communications with its citizenry - I read that the European Commission, in the handsome shape of the Greek Environment Commissioner, Mr Stavros Dimas, had been busy last week persuading people to don T-shirts bearing the somewhat optimistic slogan "You can control climate change."

Even statues in some of our capital cities were so adorned apparently wherever the authorities were sufficiently broad-minded to offer support.

Despite being something of a sceptic when it comes to the real causes of climate change, sensible palliative measures to restrict the flow of greenhouse gases can only be welcomed. I shall listen to Mr Dimas and turn off my television at night.

Yet I could not help asking myself whether the Dimas T-shirt also carried a kicker - and if so what might it be? And then the terrible thought struck that maybe it would read "But you can't control us" - 'us' being, in this case, the European Commission.

For as the results come in from the various consultation exercises being undertaken by the commission following last summer's failed constitutional referenda, it seems clear that while European institutions are listening to the people, they are not paying overly much attention to what the people are actually saying.

Whether it is on the subject of enlargement, or the constitution, or transparency, or democracy, or even on the seat of the European Parliament, the European institutions give every appearance of still operating in a 'we know best' mode.

Anniversary of the Treaty

Typical of this approach was the Finnish enlargement commissioner's speech this week to a committee of the French Assemblée Nationale. Olli Rehn talked about 'shaping a new consensus' by which it turned out that he meant getting 'them' to agree with him, rather than the other way about.

Recently there have been straws in the wind that suggest the Commission are beginning to realise they may have stirred the enlargement pot a little too vigorously in the past year; if so, tant mieux! But it is all too late to make much of a difference.

As to the constitution, several proposals are now emerging which betray the belief that, if only European citizens can be put in an 'optimistic' frame of mind, they will prove less truculent and therefore, by some unexplained process, may swallow wholesale various changes to the treaties without the necessity for tiresome referenda.

Mr Prodi, who despite winning the recent Italian elections, still seems to hanker after his old job as commission president, seems to be the principal proponent of this idea

Several vague and unlikely initiatives have been suggested to bring about this desirable state of affairs including setting new goals for the European project, a new European declaration, creating a Europe of 'projects' and commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome next year with activities such as community singing and cake-baking.

On which it need only be said that ever since Marie-Antoinette made her famous "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche" declaration, European leaders have been fascinated by the imagined powers of cake to overcome the political judgement of the masses.

The real problem here is that the Commission's metaphorical T-shirt, complete with its "But you can't control us" kicker, has been stolen by the people.

Growing appetite for democracy

Having tasted the democracy of the referendum, the price that they will exact for ratifying a new and necessary constitutional treaty is likely to be a high one. The old one, unless modified, has to be considered dead.

True 15 countries have ratified the existing treaty text but that still leaves 10 to go. They divide, roughly into 5 countries that are naturally europhile: Finland, France, Ireland, Portugal and the Netherlands, and 5 that are of a more sceptic persuasion: Denmark, Great Britain, Poland, Sweden and the Czech Republic.

Curiously, as past experience has shown, it is the europhile countries that have presented the greatest - and certainly the least expected - problem.

And it is these electorates that European leaders should surely keep in mind as they approach the terminating summit of the Austrian Presidency next week.

As time goes by my feeling is that the price demanded by these electorates for accepting constitutional change will grow. Already elements have been identified: a guarantee of Europe's social dimension; an entirely new enlargement policy; greater transparency and openness.

But I suspect that something more will be required, even in addition to this. And that is some radical advance in the democratic basis of the European Union, some constitutional mechanism that will enable the electorate to get a democratic grip on leaders who at present seem to them unaccountable and who seem to take them in directions that are barely even discussed, or not until after the event.

They require the ability to dismiss the leaders they do not like and to elect others to take their places.

We are maybe reaching the 'tipping-point' of the power balance: between the first 50 years when Europe was a creation of, and controlled by, its member states and the next 50 when Europe is likely to be controlled primarily by its people and its Parliament.

How to bring this about will be the real constitutional challenge of the years to come.

The author is editor of EuropaWorld