Contents
2. The French Perspective by Christian Lequesne and Wolfgang Brauner
3. The British Perspective by Charlie Jeffery and James Sloam
4. The Italian Perspective by Luigi Vittorio Ferraris
5. The Netherlands' Perspective by Ben Soetendorp
6. The Danish Perspective by Ulf Hedetoft
7. The American Perspective by Karen Donfried
8. The Nice Results: For Germany more than just Disputes about Symbols by Prof. Wolfgang Wessels
II. Book Reviews Writings on German Foreign Policy Culture III: Banchoff, Thomas, The German Problem Transformed. Institutions, Politics, and Foreign Policy, 1945-1995, Ann Arbor, Michigan UP 1999 by Sebastian Harnisch III. Online Ressources IV. Recent Publications About the Authors
The Nice Summit was meant to achieve at least two main objectives: To prepare the Union for enlargement and to increase its capacity to act. In a formal sense at least, it has achieved the former: there are no more "leftovers" after Nice. But the real question is not so much whether or not but how the four central issues have been resolved. To put it mildly, it remains uncertain whether the Union will now be able to act more decisively. If you believe the French Presidency, Nice will go down in history as a great and even historic summit, that made enlargement possible and increased the EU's capacity to act collectively. In contrast, if you believe the European Commission and the European Parliament, Nice was a failure that while formally fulfilling the conditions for enlargement, de facto weakened the Union's capacity to act together by making it more and not less difficult to reach a decision by qualified majority voting.(1) As the contributions to this Newsletter show, most member states assess the results of Nice in terms of how much their country, rather than the European Union has gained or lost. Has Germany once again been the (only) exception to the rule? Is Germany the only "big" country in the EU that prefers European over national interests? In the context of our Project on German Foreign Policy, we emphasize Germany's identity and role in Europe. We assume that Germany's foreign policy behaviour is significantly shaped by the expectations of its European partners, and that those expectations have become increasingly institutionalised in and through an integrating Europe. Among those European partners whose expectations matter to Germany, none has traditionally been more important than France. And in reality, too, there can be no doubt that in the context of European integration the by far single most important bilateral relationship so far has been that between Germany and France. That this crucial relationship did not work as the motor of European integration as it did in the past largely seems to reflect strongly diverging priorities and perceptions by parts of the French political elite (see the contribution by Christian Lequesne and Wolfgang Brauner). As the contributions from the different national perspectives clearly and compellingly show, all the other member countries of the EU that are covered in this newsletter had no major difficulty in accepting a formally enhanced role of Germany (Bernhard Stahl and Sebastian Harnisch), expressed and symbolised through a larger number of votes for Germany in the Council. This prevalent perception holds true for both, the more hesitant countries such as the United Kingdom (cf. the contribution by Charlie Jeffery and James Sloam) and Denmark (Ulf Hedetoft) and strong supporters of European integration, like Italy (Luigi Vittorio Ferraris) and the Netherlands (Ben Soetendorp), and is even shared in the United States (Karen Donfried). For the representatives of France in Nice and in particular for President Jacques Chirac, it was apparently completely out of the question to accept even a purely symbolic difference between France and Germany in this regard. Within the French political elite, many seem to think that Germany has become more powerful through reunification, that eastern enlargement of the EU will make the power differential even more pronounced, and that Germany could once again be tempted to try to dominate the rest of Europe. From this they conclude that France should balance this perceived trend by maintaining political equality between the two countries within the EU by all means. Thus, to achieve parity, French negotiators were willing to accept a very weak compromise. If France had not insisted on maintaining parity in the Council, it would have been much more difficult for the other crucial member states (especially Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands) to make similar demands. Because they perceived this as an attempt by the "big" member states to excessively increase their power in the Council, they were considerably less willing to compromise on the size of the Commission, insisting on the principle of "one country, one vote". Hence, Nice suggests that within the EU, France currently seems to have by far the greatest difficulties in adapting to the increasingly important role of Germany in Europe. For the bigger part of the French political elite, this transition represents a watershed, a change in political leadership. This fear contrasts sharply with the confidence that the other European countries have invested in Germany at the Summit. They expect it to use its increased clout in a responsible manner and seem to be more concerned about a lack of leadership and direction in the EU than about any new and highly unlikely hegemonic role of Germany in Europe. This issue of our Newsletter on the reform of the EU suggests that France's self-understanding and thus its understanding of European integration may be the greatest obstacle to a further deepening of the EU. But the political representatives of France that negotiated the Treaty of Nice are not necessarily representative of French society, the great majority of which is favourably disposed towards a further deepening of European integration and has no difficulty in accepting an increasingly important role of Germany in this process. One might therefore expect the further Europeanisation of the French political elite to be accelerated by the enhanced democratisation of the EU, just as the Europeanisation of the political elites of other current and future member countries of the EU will be accelerated through this. Democratisation here refers to both, the increasing parliamentarisation of the EU and the need to find a new balance between increased democratic accountability on the national and the European level. Thus, the Post-Nice-Process essentially has to respond to two major and interconnected challenges: enhancing the Union's capacity to act and increasing the democratic participation of the European citizens in the historic process of the political unification of Europe. In Nice, European integration seems to have reached its limits as a largely elitist and technocratic construction. In order to be able to progress in the future, European (re)unification needs to be increasingly democratised and constitutionalised. To succeed, however, it must simultaneously respect and transcend the heterogeneity of the current and future member states, thereby realizing the ideal of unity in diversity. I. Germany's Role in the Institutional Reform of the European Union as Viewed from Different National Perspectives
"Germany Victorious, Europe Sacrificed? A Post-mortem on the Nice Summit from Germany " "European integration and German unification are two sides of the same coin", former Chancellor Helmut Kohl used to say. Looking back at the recent EU summit meeting, this still rings true. In Nice, Germany's chancellor Gerhard Schröder presented himself as a dedicated European who worked hard to find common ground between member countries. And yet, the reverse side of Chancellor Kohl's coin, namely that unified Germany requires a strong European anchor, seems to have lost appeal since the days of Maastricht. Since the early 1990s, Germany´s European partners seem less and less inclined to cede national competences out of concern over a possible Teutonic hegemony in Europe. This is both good news and bad news for Germany and Europe. It is good news because ten years after the sometimes tortuous unification process most European neighbors and Germany itself have (for the time being) come to terms with the new Germany. It is bad news because the deepening of the European Union has lost momentum just when it is needed most to widen the integration process. A crucial element in this has been the slow-down of the Franco-German tandem to promote an ever closer European integration. The Franco-German bargain revisited Germany's attitude on institution-building before the summit - as formulated in Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer's Humboldt speech (2) - reflected a forceful "sowohl-als-auch" approach.(3) On the one hand, Germany's political elite has always been a strong supporter of communitarisation in all its perspectives. It has persistently supported more power for the European Parliament, has stood firmly by the Commission and has fostered an expanded use of qualified majority voting (QMV) on all kinds of issues. In recent years, however, Germany has grown somewhat more sceptical when the European Commission suffered a substantial loss of reputation and legal skirmishes broke out between some German Länder and Brussels. On the other hand, German governments never objected when France promoted a strengthening of the intergovernmental characteristics of the Union. Hence, through the Maastricht and then again through the Amsterdam treaty, an intergovernmental structure in which the European Council became the 'spiritus rector' of the integration process gained prominence over the traditional Community structure. Since the early 1950s, Bonn's interest in regaining sovereignty through integration and Paris' interest in binding Germany through European integration while retaining sovereignty have been at the core of the Franco-German partnership. But the Franco-German engine began to sputter after a first push for the deepening of the Union had been successfully completed with EMU and widening came to the fore. In the case of the 'Northern enlargement', Germany sided with the United Kingdom and Denmark, which pushed hard for a quick entry. As a result, the European Union has become richer, more diverse, and more difficult to manage. Existing institutional arrangements proved hard pressed to cope. Germany's talking points for the summit The primary objective of the Schröder government at Nice was to make the Union fit for enlargement with as many states and as soon as possible.(4) For this 'head-goal', Berlin was willing to sacrifice other, lesser "national interests". In addition, the government held that the necessary deepening initiatives should be carefully prepared with France. With the main fault lines drawn between larger and smaller member states on reweighing the votes in both the Council and Parliament, Franco-German leadership looked unproblematic and reasonable. Within this context Berlin intended to achieve four goals, which complemented each other. First, the Council should become both more effective and more legitimate. Thus, Germany called for a significant extension of the areas where QMV should be applied (with the only exception of certain home and justice affairs like asylum and labour relations). Closely related to the extension of QMV was the question of adjusting the relative weight of national votes in the Council. The Schröder government pushed hard for an adjustment in favour of the big states, so that smaller countries would not outweigh bigger ones once another round of small countries would have joined the Union. It also stressed that demographic factors had to be taken more closely into consideration. Berlin offered two possible solutions: a complete redistribution of council votes in accordance with the population or, alternatively, a straightforward double majority system were council votes would not be reweighted but a second count would be based on the population proportion. As a second aim, Berlin targeted enhanced cooperation of the able and willing. This procedure had already been introduced in Amsterdam but had never been used; the German government argued that the enhanced cooperation should be made possible through majority voting. Third, the Schröder government wished to reduce the number of Commissioners substantially. Hence, it signalled that it was ready to give up one Commissioner knowing that this probably would not suffice in the long run, and even indicated a willigness to temporarily forgo any German representation in the Commission a rotating basis - provided that this concession would be matched by others. Finally, Schröder and Fischer wanted to establish a 'post-Nice' process, a new Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) dealing principally with subsidiarity issues. In the run-up of the Nice conference, the German government had found itself under enormous pressure from Länder like Bavaria, Bremen or Northrhine-Westphalia which had called for a 'Kompentenzabgrenzung' between the European, the national and the sub-national (i.e., the Länder) level.(5) The negotiations All through the IGC the Germans failed to build up common positions with France. At the pre-summit gathering in Biarritz, both partners agreed to disagree. When President Jacques Chirac came to Hannover, again no agreement could be reached. The situation deteriorated further when French Foreign minister Hubert Védrine called Germany's Joschka Fischer a Pied Piper, alluding to Fischer's Humboldt speech (which had been closely co-ordinated with the Quai d'Orsay). During the negotiations, the German delegation had a difficult job, as the French government failed to serve as an honest broker right from the beginning.(6) Since Chirac and Jospin stuck to the symbolic question of equal voting in the Council, the other issues were only shortly addressed or effectively postponed (e.g. eventual number of Commissioners).(7) The French insistence drove Schröder and Fischer into a corner where they never wanted to sit. Eager not to make things worse, they reacted by abandoning the claim for strict demographic representation but secured an extended veto power through the backdoor of a 'double majority'. The German negotiators also successfully pleaded for a just treatment for Poland.(8) Overall, Germany's insistence on shared European instead of barely veiled national interests, combined with an unobtrusive negotiating style, made her win high marks with several member delegations.(9) Nach dem Spiel ist vor dem Spiel10 Although mediocre, the outcome of the Nice summit has been widely accepted among Germany's policy elite and media as the best that could be achieved. Germany's main objectives at Nice were met: deepening was advanced, if only by a few small steps far enough to make enlargement feasible. The candidate countries were happy with the results, and Germany's support was appreciated.(11) Yet, in first reactions after the summit, government officials also made clear that Berlin was neither satisfied with the compromises on the number of Commissioners nor with the lack of qualitative progress in QMV matters.(12) In all other issue areas, the German delegation got more or less what it asked for: the post-Nice process will lead to an IGC in 2004 (so that European issues will be held out of the national elections in 2002), the clauses on 'enhanced cooperation' were amended, the European Charter of Human Rights and the CESDP were brought on the way. The limited success on the relative weight of votes in the Council has not been perceived as a defeat in Germany. First, the (rather complex) provisions on the double majority privilege Germany at least to some extent. Second and more importantly, the government made it clear that it viewed the reweighting in favour of Germany (in both the Council and Parliament) as an instrument to strengthen the principle of demographic/democratic representation, not as a fixed end in itself. In other words, constructive relations with France still count more than one or three more votes in the Council. But, as Foreign minister Fischer made crystal clear in his remarks before the Bundestag's European committee after the summit, the demographic asymmetries in the European Union with regard to voting power have to be contained and reduced in the future. The widely shared principle of democratic representation must be applied to all European member states equally, no matter if they are recent members (such as Poland) or old members with a troubled history (such as Germany). With hindsight, the main leftover from Nice for Germany is her seriously troubled relationship with France. This relationship - often called friendship - comprises at least three elements: reliability, respect for the other's interests, and empathy for the partner's positions. In every respect, the friendship has lost ground on both sides of the Rhine. From a German (governmental) perspective, Foreign minister Fischer must have been stunned when his speech, in spite of much advance consultation, was rudely dressed down by his French colleague. Even if this could be explained by the domestic positioning of the socialist government against the Gaullist Presidency, the style was incompatible with friendly relations between two partners. In addition, the French negotiators bargained heavily against the widely shared (European) principle of demographic representation and therefore did not shy away from insulting the Belgians, Poles and Lithuanians by their preference for the Dutch, the Spanish and the Irish so as to uphold the équilibre between Germany and France. While most member countries criticized a sometimes stubborn, often chaotic and ill-prepared French negotiating style, Germany's interests were particularly badly treated. The Presidency presented one paper after another and eventually bought French parity with Germany at the expense of equal treatment of various and often changing groups of smaller member states.(13) Thus, Germany again was singularized by France, as French-German parity became the single most important cause to the negotiations - to the detriment of widely shared European principles. As both partners already seem to realize, this rot in French-German relations has to be stopped . The German government will be well advised neither to gloss over those difficulties, nor to exploit the weak position of the French Presidency right now. To press France on this matter of principle for an immediate concession will not bring any long-time and sustainable solutions. Thus, while many French observers claim that Germany was the winner at Nice, it should be clear to all parties concerned that Europe as a whole lost because the French-German relationship did not work.
"The French Position: A Matter of Purely Symbolic Power? Or: Nice is not a Nice Treaty" Four days and four nights to get such a result! The European Union is probably not in its best form. The key agreement from the perspective of enlargement - the extension of qualified majority voting in the Council - remains full of exceptions. Nothing has been decided for the Commission except a dilatory deal implemented when the EU will reach 27 members. Hours and hours have been taken up by something which has to do more with symbolism than with the reality of decision-making - the weighting of the votes in the Council. And lastly, a compromise has been reached on a procedure that seems difficult to be applied: enhanced cooperation. Still, the weak result did hardly come as a surprise. Two questions arise: Why was the outcome so minimal? And: How to proceed from here? Concerning the why, an easy answer would be that the French Presidency has not done its job properly. It is true that French ministers and civil servants have not all understood that building the EU is not compatible anymore with diplomatic methods inherited from Talleyrand. Neither President Chirac nor Prime Minister Jospin could go far in "selling out" French national interest because their parties (RPR and PS) are divided on the European issue in the perspective of the Presidential election of 2002 in which they are both candidates. The French discourse on Europe - and especially on its finalité politique - is more fragmented and polarised than the German discourse, where there is still a strong bipartisan consensus on European policy. However, there is now also - behind the official curtains - a developing discourse in Germany on the necessity to focus more on national interests within the EU, which increasingly resembles the way France and the United Kingdom emphasize their respective interests in the context of European integration. But Germany's practice does not (yet?) follow the discourse. The Germans still remain very favourably disposed towards European solutions in EU negotiations, essentially because they have been educated and socialised with the idea that Europe is part of their democratic destiny. This is why Chancellor Schröder, who has sometimes been presented as a representative of the new generation of "German nationalists", is as open to compromises in EU negotiations as Mr Kohl was. The only exception is when the Länder exercise significant pressure. The idea of a new IGC in 2004 to clarify the competences between the various levels of governance in the future is a good illustration of the effectiveness of pressure coming from the Länder. It was probably not very productive to announce just yet this new IGC, but Gerhard Schröder had to take into account the power of the regional politicians. Of course this clarification of competences according to the principle of subsidiarity has been discussed on the European level for some years and demanded by other politicians (like Valery Giscard d'Estaing) and governments. However, it is difficult to apply because powers in a multi-level polity cannot be distributed purely on the basis of rational criteria. Most of the public policies in the EU are the result of interactions between different levels of governments. The problem of the EU for the future is not how to distribute competences between different levels of government but to accept network forms of decision-making between various territorial authorities. France clearly expected Germany to accept the maintenance of parity in the Council of Ministers as an expression of the continuing political equality between the two countries and to avoid any kind of "décrochage". Because an important part of the French political elite still perceives Germany as a potential hegemon trying to dominate the rest of Europe, they (and, apparently, Jacques Chirac himself) felt it necessary to maintain at least the appearance of political equality between the two countries.(14) This misperception was aggravated by a widespread concern in the French political elite that, with German reunification and the pending eastern enlargement of the EU, Germany has become more powerful and could once again be tempted to dominate the rest of Europe. The term "political elite" here not only refers to the political class in a narrow sense but also includes French media and other prominent figures of French public life. Looking at the major French newspapers for example, it is interesting to note the very similar interpretations of what happened in Nice. Thus, Le Figaro, Le Monde and Libération all consider Germany to be the big winner of Nice, because it came out of the negotiations more powerful than France. Jean-Paul Picaper, long-time correspondent of Le Figaro in Germany, even repeated the exact same argument that was advanced by top French politicians in order to justify the maintenance of the political balance between France and Germany, namely the reference to conversations between Konrad Adenauer and Jean Monnet in the early fifties and between Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand in the early nineties, in which the German side allegedly promised their French counterparts that European integration would always remain to be built on absolute political equality between the two countries. Against the demographic, democratic and future-oriented argument advanced by Germany and most of the other member countries of the EU, they opposed their historically developed but increasingly anachronistic argument of political equality in the sense of an institutionalised balance of power. With reference to German history since the late 19th century and especially to the two world wars, they understand European integration to be eternally based on the political equality of France and Germany. Clearly, this is a misperception, which can to a large degree be explained by the political socialisation of the French political elite in general and by the way political elites are recruited via the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), in particular.(15) By and large, they are still educated according to the ideals, norms and principles of the classical French nation-state, based on absolute sovereignty, national unity and a high degree of centralisation. They interact much more with each other than with an increasingly pluralist French society. Although it is very likely that they knew better, they stubbornly clung to this position throughout the whole negotiation process. By doing so, they not only isolated themselves but made it easier for other countries to make similar demands (cf. Spain, Belgium). Chancellor Schröder at one point even proposed to do without the demographic "safety net" in exchange for a highly symbolic difference of only one vote between Germany and the three other "big" member states, including France. While Jospin was ready to accept this offer, Chirac rejected even that in favour of a solution that - at least potentially - makes Germany even more powerful, just to maintain the symbolic parity as expressed by the number of votes in the Council. What is more, France at no time played the role it was supposed to assume as President of the EU. Instead of initiating attractive compromises and trying - as best, that is, as neutrally as they could - to mediate between the diverging interests, French negotiators instrumentalised their privileged position to push their own national interests. This failure was perhaps most evident in the first compromise the French delegation proposed on Saturday morning, which did not at all reflect the different positions that already began to converge the night before. This made the subsequent negotiations all the more difficult. Moreover, all this came on top of a badly organized and sometimes even chaotic negotiation process. Thus, new position papers were often for a long time available only in French. In short, the French Presidency of the EU was much more French than it was presidential, and much more national than European. The dominant perception of the results of Nice in the French press is to consider Germany the winner.(16) Because France was not able to maintain even the appearance of political equality with Germany, France is seen as the loser. To them, the fact that a decision taken by qualified majority voting needs to represent at least 62% of the total EU population and that Germany is represented by 27 deputies more than France and the other "big" member states in the European Parliament is sufficient evidence to support this conclusion. In fact, this evidence is of course very thin: both the French Minister for Europe Moscovici and representatives of the German delegation referred to the demographic safety net as highly "symbolic". France and Germany have definitely not cooperated closely enough before and during the IGC. Contrary to a widely held view, the reason is not personal animosities between the leading politicians. It is because the relation between the two countries for a decade now has not been as complementary as was the case prior to 1989. France has perceived unification as a change in the political leadership of the EU from France to Germany, and this is putting a heavy strain on the Franco-German relationship. This is a pity because the problems of both countries and the two societies are very similar. (Just think about questions like the future of the social security system or of higher education). The French elite also seems to believe that the Germans now look towards the East and are not interested anymore in them. Bonn was so close, Berlin is so far away. Of course, this is not true. The Eastern enlargement is such a challenge that many problems have to be dealt with jointly by the current EU member states. French and Germans should have a common agenda on Eastern enlargement. They have to accept that enlarging the EU is a historical process which has to be prepared properly. In this respect, the main issue is not to think about the institutional design of a possible "hard core" which will recreate the Treaty of Rome. The nostalgia for "l'Europe carolingienne" among some defenders of European integration is striking. Have they actually realised that the Berliner Wall collapsed in November 1989? The fact that Chirac and Jospin quickly accepted to meet with the German government in January of next year seems to indicate how much the relationship actually deteriorated and how much it is in need of repair. Apparently, at several points during the negotiations, open conflict broke out between the French and German delegations over a real or perceived development of "spheres of influence" within the EU, where Germany would try to dominate the northern and eastern part and France would try to assume leadership of the Mediterranean countries. Obviously, the perception of such differences or, more precisely, such different perceptions bear the risk of undermining the very foundations of European integration. At this meeting, therefore, both sides will need to draw conclusions from what happened in Nice and to find new common ground. That they have settled on this meeting so quickly and so soon is a welcome sign that the seriousness of this situation has at last dawned upon the two governments.
"Converging Positions?"" On 7-11 December 2000, the leaders of European Union member states met in Nice to decide on the 'leftovers' of Amsterdam, in particular to decide on key institutional reforms necessary to make eastern enlargement possible without gridlocking the Union's decision-making machinery: the streamlining of the European Commission; the reweighting of votes in the Council of Ministers; and the extension of Qualified Majority Voting (QMV). Domestic demands European integration has never been easy to promote in the United Kingdom to a sceptical public. While it is true that opinion polls have shown similar scepticism in Germany, in the UK a less than enthusiastic public is flanked by split political elites and an overwhelmingly Euro-sceptical press (in particular the 'Daily Mail', 'the Sun', 'the Times' and 'the Telegraph') in stark contrast to Grundkonsens on European policy across the major parties and most of the media in Germany. Even the pro-European press in the UK, according to Foreign Minister Cook, was using sceptical terminology: only the Financial Times, he claimed, had offered a consistently objective narrative. Despite the vehement anti-Europeanism displayed by parts of the press and the opposition Conservative Party, public attitudes to European integration do not seem to resonate so deeply. Popular opposition to EMU is clear, but the European rapid-reaction force - for example - is supported by a majority in the UK. Big business, on the other hand, has criticised its traditional allies in the Tory Party for their European stance: on 3 December, five of Britain's top businessmen wrote a joint letter to 'the Observer' claiming that the 'the negative way Europe is discussed is threatening job prospects in Britain.'(17) Against this background, the UK Government has become increasingly willing to speak of the benefits of European integration and to accustom people to the idea of closer co-operation. While German Governments have managed to act, in many cases, against public opinion, the Labour Government cannot afford such luxuries, and must be seen - to a far greater extent - to be working in the 'national interest'. A deeper sensitivity to domestic demands is nevertheless an increasing reality even in Germany where opinion has become more sceptical since unification on the merits of European integration. Consistent opposition to the introduction of the Euro has been followed by recent polls suggesting that the majority of Germans are against enlargement. The German Laender, in addition, have been playing a more forceful role in fighting the encroachment of EU policy into their spheres of competence - this was shown at Maastricht, Amsterdam and again at Nice in their insistence on establishing a clear division of competences between the EU and its member states. Eurovisions The speech given by Joschka Fischer at the Humboldt University in May lit the touch paper on a European debate across the member states. While emphasising many of the traditional mores of German European policy, he also responded to some of the domestic concerns shared by the majority of other EU countries: as he outlined what a future European Union might look like (with a Constitution acting as the centrepiece of a federal framework), Fischer also stressed both the principle of subsidiarity and the continuing role of the member states. He also supported the expansion of reinforced co-operation for those states countries wishing to proceed. This, quite predictably, created a storm in the UK, the Eurosceptic Opposition and press seeing it as evidence that the continental Europeans were intent on drawing Britain into a federal superstate. It also sparked a much wider debate on the future of the Union which presented a novel backdrop to the Nice Summit. Prime Minister Blair, following President Chirac's speech to the Bundestag in June, added a British perspective in a keynote speech in Warsaw in October, when he expounded on his own vision for Europe, speaking of the benefits for the UK and going as far as talking of the necessity of enhanced co-operation.(18) The lead-up to the Summit The big news issue in the UK in the weeks leading up to the Summit in Nice was the new, European rapid-reaction force. The proposal was attacked by Opposition and the Eurosceptic press alike as the giving up its sovereignty over national security through the formation of European army. This, as much as the European debate surrounding the Fischer speech, prompted Cook and Blair to turn on the press: Blair, on a visit to Russia at the time, described press coverage as 'fundamentally dishonest'. The position of the Government was not helped by the assertion of the French Presidency of the EU that the EU force should have an independent planning capability to NATO, since UK support of the transatlantic axis was, as has always been the case, very strong. With further doubts raised by U.S. Secretary of State, Cohen, the French agreed to drop this very quickly at the beginning of summit negotiations in Nice. The UK position with regard to reform of the Commission could be broadly regarded as similar to the policies of the rest of the 'Big Four' (Germany, France, and Italy): to make the Commission more efficient by capping its size and weakening its position vis à vis the Council of Ministers. The smaller countries, on the other hand, wanted to resist attempts to restrict the size of the Commission. The German Government, at the fore in efforts to find a compromise between the two groups, offered to sacrifice one of Germany's two Commissioners, suggesting a deferred ceiling on the size of the Commission in return for the reweighting of votes in the Council in the larger countries' favour. The smaller member states have been concerned by what they have seen as an attempt by Germany, France and the UK to weaken the European Commission by enhancing the position of the European Council. The German Government, for instance, proposed allowing the Council to amend Commission proposals or guidelines,(19) while Blair put forward the idea of an 'annual agenda... set out by the European Council'.(20) French, German and UK proposals, blocked at Nice, were singled out by the Commission as an attack on its powers and by the smaller countries as the attempt to form a directoire. Michael Barnier, Commissioner for institutional reform, warned that the German plan would 'drastically alter the balance of power between Commission, Council and European Parliament',(21) while Romano Prodi, Commission President, described President Chirac's call for a secretariat for an avant-garde group of member states as a 'huge retrograde step'(22). Another question to be resolved at Nice was the reweighting of votes within the Council itself - especially relevant when combined with the simultaneous extension of QMV. The Big Four wanted votes to bear a greater relationship to member states' populations, so that the current disparities would not be exaggerated further after enlargement (when several countries with small to medium size populations are due to join). Germany had a particularly strong case given its increase in size after unification. The most extreme contrast, gave Luxembourg (population 500,000) two votes, and Germany (population over 80 million), only ten. France in particular, but also the UK, adopted the contradictory position that they wanted to increase their vote to reflect population sizes in relation to the smaller countries yet wanted to retain the same number of votes as the unified Germany, throwing a simple votes-for-population formula out of the window. The extension of QMV aimed at streamlining the EU decision-making process, allowing deeper integration and avoiding institutional paralysis after enlargement, was certainly - from the British perspective - the most important aspect of the Nice reforms. This area provided a key test for member states' willingness to subscribe to the spirit of pooled sovereignty and communal action upon which an efficient and operational EU could depend. The UK position was an obstacle to progress in the so-called red line areas (especially tax and social security), though it was more flexible in many more areas than might have been foreseen only a few months before. The creation of these red line areas by the British Government can be seen as a tactical move with regard to domestic feeling: several of these issues were under no real danger from QMV (E.g. the borders issue, where the UK already had an opt-out). Germany, on the other hand, pursued a far more positive policy towards the extension of majority voting in the Council: announcing that the 'smallest possible area' would retain the veto,(23) and looking to maintain unanimity only in extremely politically sensitive areas (e.g. asylum and immigration). The UK was not alone in refusing to subscribe to the spirit of integration: Germany, for instance, was furious at the Spanish insistence on retaining the veto for structural subsidies, and annoyed with France's blocking of a full removal of the veto on world trade issues, to maintain protection for the French film and music industry. Fischer, Chirac and Blair had all touched on the possibility of some members forging ahead with European integration should they so desire. This 'avant-garde' or 'European core' was to provide a 'centre of gravity' for a framework federation. Franco-German co-operation in this area was clear. Even before the Fischer speech, Chancellor Schröder had spoken on French radio of 'the possibility that some states could advance more quickly than others'.(24) Blair's speech in Warsaw in October, however, was a crucial turning point, because it signalled the UK's intent not to block enhanced co-operation. Though Barnier complained that 'closer co-operation must not be seen as the magic solution to the lack of agreement on extension of qualified majority voting',(25) the fact that it was stressed by the Germany and France well before the Summit seemed to indicate that it was being held open as a not unpleasant alternative to QMV, to strengthen the role of the Council. For the UK, it took much of the pressure off them in the extension of majority voting. Analytical points: below the surface The Eurosceptic press, not able to report on any major climb downs in Government policy, concentrated on the horse-trading that took place at the Summit, quoting Blair's views on the negotiating procedures: the headline in 'The Times' read 'Blair to EU: we can't go on like this'.(26) Therefore, in terms of the domestic situation the Summit could be considered a great success. According to 'The Guardian': "Blair yesterday neutralised Europe as the Conservatives' most effective election weapon when he returned from the European Union's Nice summit with a compromise treaty good enough to meet his key political objectives."(27) Only the most sceptical papers ran with a negative assessment of Nice: 'Blair last night put on a brave face after signing up to more bureaucracy, greater secrecy and dodgier decision-making in Brussels' ('The Sun').(28) The UK's central concern, in terms of EU policy, has been the reaction of domestic actors: public opinion, media and Opposition. The Labour Government has nevertheless begun putting the case for Europe, positive advantages in the UK's own 'self-interest'. While the British Government has nowhere near the level of commitment to European integration shown by Germany, it has moved - in its own way - towards an active rather than a reactive engagement in Europe. There is a sense that this shift has brought the UK closer to a Germany arguably moving in an opposite direction from an earlier, 'instinctive' Europeanism to a more conditional commitment to the European integration process focused on more explicit conceptions of cost and benefit for Germany. This emerging convergence of position had been illustrated earlier in the Blair-Schroeder paper, but also in outline in the coalition of interest on policy reform in the Agenda 2000 discussions which culminated in 1999. In both these cases a further nuance was the increasing difficulty evident in maintaining the customary closeness of the Franco-German relationship. This issue resurfaced in Nice too in the Franco-German differences over voting weights in Council. The potential for a more fluid alliance structure in the Union is clear, with a growing commonality of UK and German positions on enlargement, enhanced co-operation, and improving the functioning of the Single Market. The Federal Government, furthermore, in common with the well established views in the UK, showed a tendency to support the intergovernmental aspect of the EU, to strengthen the role of the Council relative to other European institutions and the larger countries within the Council itself. German European policy may indeed, as Peter Hort suggested in the FAZ in 1997, be becoming 'more British'.(29)
"From Rome to Brussels via Berlin?" Gibt es wieder eine offene "deutsche Frage", geht sie wieder als Gespenst in Europa um? Das angeblich fordernde und zielstrebige Auftreten der "Berliner" und nicht mehr "Bonner Republik" besonders zu Beginn der Verhandlungen des EU-Gipfels in Nizza hat manche Kommentatoren in Italien zu dieser Frage veranlasst. Ist Deutschland auf dem Weg, nicht nur wieder eine Macht in Europa, sondern eine Macht über Europa zu werden? über Europa zu werden. Wird Europa germanisiert oder wird Deutschland europäisiert (Venturini)? Andererseits fehlte es nicht an Stimmen, die auch und gerade Deutschland durchaus Normalität zugestehen möchten. Im Laufe des langwierigen Tauziehens in Nizza hat die Besonnenheit Deutschlands gegenüber den vielen Fehlern der französischen Präsidentschaft und der national geprägten Verhandlungsführung Frankreichs zu einer insgesamt ausgewogeneren Sichtweise geführt. Die Antwort aus Italien ist deshalb heute eindeutig und ehrlich: Deutschland ist der wirkliche Gewinner von Nizza (L.Mattina). Deutschland tritt als konkrete Macht in Europa hervor - und zwar nicht allein, wie in der Vergangenheit, aufgrund seines wirtschaftlichen Potentials, sondern als eine politische Macht, die keineswegs militärisch gestützt ist und keinerlei egoistische Ambitionen zeigt und ihr Gewicht allein aus der demographischen und demokratischen Dimension seiner 83 Millionen Einwohner zieht. Trotzdem sind viele seiner Partner nicht bereit, Deutschland als eine normale Macht zu betrachten. In Italien allerdings geht man davon aus, dass es weder vernünftig noch vorteilhaft ist, Deutschland als ein nicht-normales und damit vielleicht weniger pro-europäisches Land zu betrachten (Caracciolo). Man sieht den Anspruch Deutschlands als gerechtfertigt an, die seinem Gewicht entsprechende Macht auszuüben, denn man will Deutschland nicht das Recht auf seine Gegenwart und seine Zukunft verweigern (Bolaffi). Die Grundlagen dieser Einschätzungen sind komplex. Trotz der engen und erfolgreichen Zusammenarbeit zwischen beiden Ländern seit dem Ende des Zweiten Weltkriegs bestehen immer noch Vorurteile, sind Erinnerungen lebendig. Man hat anerkannt, dass die "die neue Bundesrepublik" oder, besser gesagt, das wiedervereinigte Deutschland eine Stellung in Europa angestrebt hat, welche die neue Sicherheit widerspiegeln sollte. Während des langen Leidenswegs Italiens auf dem Weg zur Teilnahme an der europäischen Einheitswährung wurde die Bundesbank in Italien als "böser Geist" dargestellt. Die deutschen Überlegungen über einen "harten Kern" Europas haben Unmut in Italien ausgelöst. Doch das neu gewonnene Selbstbewusstsein Italiens, nicht zuletzt durch seine pünktliche Teilnahme am Euro und trotz der innenpolitischen Wirren hat sich die italienische Einstellung zu Deutschland langsam, aber stetig geändert. In Italien gesteht man Deutschland das Recht auf die ihm gebührende Rolle zu, weil man ihm keine hegemonialen Bestrebungen unterstellt. Die Außenpolitik und die Europa-Politik Deutschlands werden als Garantie für die Ausgewogenheit des heutigen Deutschlands gesehen. Die Bedenken, die man in Rom - trotz der ideologischen Verwandtschaft der beiden Regierungen - dem sozialdemokratischen Bundeskanzler gegenüber gehegt hatte, weil man ihm, im Vergleich zum Vorgänger Kohl, mangelndes europäisches Engagement unterstellte, sind verflogen. Das Klima ist mittlerweile sehr positiv und freundschaftlich geworden, was sich nicht nur in Worten niederschlägt. Zum Abschluss der deutsch-italienischen Regierungskonsultationen in Berlin am 21.-22. September 2000 wurde eine gemeinsame Erklärung feierlich verabschiedet. Dies ist nicht die allgemeine Praxis, sondern sollte ein Signal setzen. Vergleicht man den Text mit der gemeinsamen Erklärung vom 12. Mai 1988 nach den Konsultationen in der Villa Doria-Pamphili, erkennt man wichtige Entwicklungen in den Beziehungen. Italien und Deutschland sind sich einig: Ziel der europäischen Politik ist nach der Einführung der Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion die Politische Union, die eine gemeinsame Politik steuern und andererseits die Vertiefung der Institutionen einschließlich einer Verfassung erreichen und, dazu parallel, die Erweiterung ermöglichen und zügig umsetzen soll. Dieser Einklang deutscher und italienischer Grundorientierung hat sich in Nizza bewährt. Die im September Berlin beschworene Gemeinsamkeit des Denkens fand konkreten Niederschlag. In Rom ist man der Auffassung, dass Italien in Nizza eine entscheidende Rolle spielen konnte und gespielt hat. Italien trat weniger als Vermittler denn als Mahner und als "europäisches Gewissen" auf - und zwar in zweifacher Hinsicht. Erstens will Italien den immerwährenden Zielen der Gründungsväter treu bleiben. Italien steht grundsätzlich und fast ausschließlich für die Interessen Europas ein (Ciampi). Es verzichtet darauf, kurzsichtige oder egoistische nationale Anliegen zu vertreten, was mitunter im eigenen Land als übertriebene Bereitschaft gesehen wird, die eigenen Interessen auf dem Altar der Vision Europas zu opfern. Ein besonderer Punkt, an dem Deutschland und Italien offenbar zueinandergefunden haben, ist gerade das Dilemma, das in Nizza evident geworden ist: Auf der einen Seite die französische Auffassung, welche die nationalen Staaten privilegiert und die EU nur als Verbund souveräner Staaten sieht, wobei eine gezielte Politik des Gleichgewichts betrieben wird (Parität zwischen Frankreich und Deutschland und Kräfteverhältnis der sogenannten großen und kleinen Mitglieder der Union) und, auf der anderen Seite, die deutsche Vorstellung, derzufolge die Bevölkerung der entscheidende Faktor sein soll. Schließlich haben alle Beteiligten eingesehen, dass der Wille der Staaten, auch im Blick auf die Erwartungen der zukünftigen Mitglieder, immer noch Gewicht haben muss. Das Beharren Frankreichs führte zu einem geradezu lächerlichen Gefeilsche um Zahlen, das dank des Hauptverhandlers in der italienischen Delegation, Cangelosi, mit einer arithmetische Lösung beendet werden konnte, die sowohl dem Interesse Spaniens als auch Polens gerecht wurde und im Einvernehmen mit Deutschland gefunden wurde. Dies entspricht auch dem italienischen Verständnis, weil eine solche Auffassung letztlich vernünftig ist, wenn sie den Bürgern bzw. der repräsentativen Demokratie mehr Einfluss gewährt. Schließlich ist es das Anliegen aller, die Union dem Bürger näher zu bringen und das Defizit an demokratische Kontrolle beheben. Im Interesse der Akzeptanz der Bürger ist eine stärkere Aufmerksamkeit für die Bevölkerung unumgänglich. Natürlich ist der deutsch-italienische Einklang nicht flächendeckend. Wenn von Föderalismus in Europa die Rede ist, ist Italien umstandslos zur Abgabe von Souveränität bereit, und zwar mit einer Begeisterung, die von den deutschen Bundesländern schwerlich geteilt wird. Werden allerdings die italienischen Regionen ihre seit kurzem gewachsene Macht auch wirklich für ein Europa opfern wollen, wo die zentralen Organe eine allumfassende Rolle spielen werden, oder werden sie ihre Zuständigkeiten verteidigen? Ein weiterer Aspekt ist die Position Italiens in dem gesamten Gefüge und die daraus erwachsenden Konsequenzen für das Verhältnis zu Deutschland. Ist Italien sich dessen bewusst, dass die Stärkung Deutschlands, ein mit sich selbst beschäftigtes Großbritannien, ein ehrgeiziges Spanien und ein geschwächtes Frankreich dazu führen könnten, Italien in eine unbefriedigende Randposition zu drängen. Könnte Italien aus einer solchen Lage heraus auch weiterhin engagiert und z.T. gegen Deutschland für die Reform der Vereinten Nationen kämpfen? Sollte oder könnte Italien auch weiterhin eine wichtige Funktion in Mittel und Osteuropa zu behaupten? Oder wird sich bestätigen, was wir in Nizza erlebt haben, dass nämlich das mächtige Deutschland und nicht mehr das freundliche Italien der einflussreiche Anwalt der neuen Mitglieder sein wird? Wie kann Italien mit Erfolg seine eigene Position verteidigen, wenn die neuen Mitglieder die Stellung Deutschlands weiter stärken? Werden angesichts des erstarkten Deutschlands die vielen italienischen Initiativen in Mittel- und Südosteuropa ("Zentraleuropäische Initiative" und "Initiative Adria-Ionisches Meer") im Sande verlaufen? Man könnte vermuten, dass die gemeinsame Erklärung von September und die Haltung beider Länder bei den Verhandlungen in Nizza einen möglichen Wendepunkt in der italienischen Betrachtung Deutschlands darstellen, sozusagen eine neu gewonnene Nähe im Zeichen der europäischen Politik. Kann Italien es deshalb - ausgehend von der beschriebenen Konstellation in der Union und angesichts des versagenden deutsch-französischen Motors - versuchen, Frankreich zwar nicht zu ersetzen, doch in Vorfeld zu der Regierungskonferenz von 2004 in Unterstützung Deutschlands eine ausschlaggebende Funktion auszuüben? Könnte Italien angesichts des gegenwärtigen Situation des Verhältnisses zu Frankreich, auf das die deutsche Politik keine große Rücksicht nimmt, der Partner Deutschlands werden und Deutschland mit erneuter Kraft und als zuverlässiger Freund zur Seite sehen? Könnte man sich vorstellen, dass Deutschland und Italien auf dem Weg zur politischen Einigung Europas zu einer Gemeinsamkeit finden, welche Europa in Zukunft vorantreiben wird? Oder wäre ein solcher Anspruch Italiens vermessen? Und könnte ein solcher Anspruch auch die vielen und in der Zukunft kaum abzuschätzenden Verschiebungen in der italienischen Innenpolitik überstehen? Aus italienischer Sicht erscheint der Anspruch Deutschlands, als wichtigstes Mitglied in Europas anerkannt zu werden, im allgemeinen, wenn auch nicht ohne Bedenken, gerechtfertigt. Man schätzt das Vorgehen Deutschlands, sich in einer klugen und tüchtigen Weise und undramatisch zu behaupten. Daraus ergibt sich für Italien Grund zur Hoffnung, gemeinsam mit Deutschland einen europäischen Weg mit mehr Mut und Zuversicht betreten zu können. Die deutsche Realität wird als Faktum akzeptiert. Zugleich bleibt Europa das Ziel der italienischen Realität. Werden die beiden Realitäten, die gewiss nicht immer deckungsgleich sind, eine Zukunft als Mittel zur Zusammenarbeit haben, oder wird in Italien der Eindruck überwiegen, dass seine unmittelbaren und spezifischen Interessen zu sehr von denen Deutschlands divergieren? Die Erweiterungsverhandlungen und die Arbeiten der Regierungskonferenz 2004 werden zeigen, ob die derzeitige italienische Haltung gegenüber der deutschen Europapolitik eine dauerhaft Verbundenheit hervorbringen oder ob die zentrale Macht Deutschlands schließlich in Italien das Gefühl der mediterranen Marginalisierung erwecken wird. Zum Schluss. Niemand in Italien hat Angst vor Deutschland und seine Macht und man ist bereit, der deutschen Regierung zuzugestehen, dass sie in Nizza vorsichtig und zurückhaltend aufgetreten ist - im Gegensatz zu Frankreich. Man ist in Italien bereit, eng mit Deutschland zusammenzuarbeiten, um die großen Ziele der europäischen Integration konsequent zu verfolgen. Man hofft oder geht sogar davon aus, dass Italien für Deutschland heute einer berechenbarer und zielbewusster Freund und Mitstreiter sein kann, weil die Ziele beider Länder weitgehend deckungsgleich sind. Beide, so sieht man es in Italien, brauchen Europa, und zwar schon immer, doch heute mit einer klareren Zielstrebigkeit. "Wir und die Deutschen werden zusammen vorwärts gehen," hat der italienische Ministerpräsident Amato gesagt. Italien ist sich also dieser Perspektive bewusst - doch gilt dies auch für morgen und für wechselnde Regierungen? Italien kann für Deutschland nützlich sein. Deutschland ist für Italien der unverzichtbare Freund, aber unter der Voraussetzung, dass auch Deutschland Italien als notwendigen Freund betrachtet. Können also Deutschland und Italien - im Interesse der nationalen Staaten in Europa und im europäischen Interesse zugleich - die Funktion des Motors in Europa übernehmen? In italienischer Sicht könnte die deutsche Außenpolitik eine solche Entwicklung ermöglichen. Wird Italien die Kraft und die Ausdauer besitzen, mit der Macht Deutschlands zusammenzuarbeiten, ohne in Abhängigkeit von Deutschland zu geraten? Die Voraussetzungen sind gegeben, hoffentlich auch der politische Wille auf beiden Seiten.
"Dutch Pragmatism Declares Germany the Winner at Nice" The provocative call for a European federation with a supranational European government by Germany's Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer during the run up to the European Council meeting at Nice, did not trigger a real debate in the Netherlands about the final institutional set up of the Union. Being always a strong advocate of progress towards supranational arrangements in the EU, one would expect the Dutch Prime Minister or Foreign Minister to join the debate in other European countries between supranational federalists and defenders of the nation state. But as the Dutch member of the European Commission Frits Bolkestein argued, the Dutch government remained quite vague in its response to Fischer's ideas about the final objective of European integration. In fact, in the run-up to the Nice summit, where the institutional arrangements for an enlarged Union of 27 member states had to be settled, Dutch policy makers took a very pragmatic approach towards the EU's future. Maintaining the dynamic of European integration Like Germany, that has been quite ambitious in its demands during the intergovernmental negotiations on the institutional reforms necessary for the enlargement of the Union, the Netherlands underscored the strengthening of the institutions of the Union and the preservation of the community working methods and decision-making procedures as the main route to European integration. But Dutch policy makers recognized that in a Union of 27 member states it would be unrealistic to expect all member states to follow the same route and speed for more integration. For that reason the Dutch and its two Benelux partners pressed for reforms that will allow some countries to move ahead with closer co-operation. To the satisfaction of the Dutch government, Germany and other member states supported the Benelux initiative, which may lead in a number of policy areas to a situation where some member states will integrate faster than the rest. But the Benelux governments oppose the view expressed by some scholars within the scientific community in the Netherlands that enhanced co-operation might create new dividing lines in Europe, a EU within the EU, and would create new opportunities for intergovernmental co-operation outside the EU treaty. In the view of the Benelux governments, enhanced co-operation will rather promote the dynamic of European integration, since closer co-operation will enable a core group of member states that wish to do so to use the Union's institutions and the community method of decision-making in additional policy areas instead of seeking intergovernmental co-operation outside the framework of the treaty. Moreover, the other member states may join in a later stage, and the member-states that will co-operate closely will differ from policy area to policy area. To strengthen the momentum of European integration and to ensure that decision-making in the EU does not become paralysed in an enlarged union, Germany strongly demanded to remove the veto power in issue areas where an individual member state may still block decision-making by the use of a national veto. Like Germany the Netherlands also argued that in order to make effective decision-making possible in a Union of 27 member states, qualified majority voting (QMV) should be the rule and the using of a veto an exception. Moreover, the European Parliament should have the power of co-decision on each matter that is decided in the Council by QMV. But the Netherlands was disappointed by the refusal of Germany during the Nice summit to drop its opposition to the extension of QMV to asylum and immigration issues. Thus, contrary to Germany the Netherlands see further European integration less characterized by blueprints with a final institutional set-up in the form of a federal state with a supranational European government imposed on the member states by Brussels. Like the Germans, the Dutch are committed to the vision of an ever-closer union, but to keep it alive and to secure further integration they prefer to use instruments such as closer co-operation and more QMV. They realize that the coming enlargement will increase the diversity among EU members and weaken the willingness of national governments to transfer powers to a supranational European government. Therefore the Dutch consider further integration more as a step by step process, that should aim at institutional arrangements in line with the Community method where possible, but that should also leave room for co-operation along formal and informal intergovernmental lines when necessary. A Dutch identity problem But the big issue at the Nice European Council was the re-weighting of the number of votes allocated to each member state. On this issue Germany took before the Nice summit a clear-cut position. Germany argued that the vote weighting formula has to be adjusted so that it would reflect the size of the populations. Since Germany's population is more than a third larger than those of France, Britain or Italy it demanded in the new voting system proportionately more votes than France, Britain or Italy. In the existing voting system the four large states had a similar number of votes. The Netherlands shared Germany's position although a change in the existing system would shift the balance of power between the larger and the smaller states in favour of the larger members. This faced the Dutch government with a huge identity problem. While the larger member states regard the Netherlands as a small state, Dutch policy makers argue that on the basis of the size of its population and its economic strength the Netherlands has to be considered as a medium-size state, or as the Dutch say: the largest among the small or the smallest among the large. Since the Netherlands wanted to be part of the group of middle powers in an enlarged Union, it had to distance itself from the other small states, including Belgium that in the existing system had the same number of votes as the Netherlands. Thus the Dutch government supported the German demand that the new voting formula should reflect the size of the population of a member state, in the hope that once such a criteria was accepted as the key for the distribution of votes among the member states, the same principle would apply to the Netherlands with a larger voting power as a result. It indeed paid off. Whereas the French Presidency stuck to the principle that Germany, France, Britain and Italy will have a similar voting power in the new voting system, it finally agreed to give the Netherlands one vote more that it gave to Belgium, Portugal and Greece. The Dutch also benefited from the French agreement to compensate the Germans by the introduction of a so-called double majority system, where any decision has to be backed by a QMV as well as countries that together have a majority of EU population. But after Nice many Dutch scholars and commentators are quite critical about the Dutch effort to get the one extra vote. By trying to become the smallest among the large member state, the Netherlands missed a chance to become the champion of the small member states. In their view the Dutch government has to recognize that in spite of the one extra vote, in the perception of the large member states it will always remain a small country. Since it has become the largest among the small member states, its future role lies in an effort to become the true defender of small states' interests. Such a role has even become more crucial in an enlarged EU where the power has shifted, as a result of the Nice treaty, towards the big member states, hence creating a potential 'directorate' of the large states. In conclusion we may say that, although the Nice conference was not as successful as Germany and the Netherlands hoped it to be, the deal reached at Nice on the reforms of EU institutions and decision-making procedures will make the coming rounds of enlargement possible. Many Dutch observers from the scientific community as well as leading commentators in the Dutch Press agree that the credit for even such a modest success has to go to the German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who was ready to compromise on a new voting system that does not reflect Germany's legitimate claim for a larger voting power. This made Germany in their view the real winner of the Nice summit. The Dutch government, they argue, should have followed the German example instead of fighting for one extra vote. The bitter struggle about the voting power in the Council illustrates, in their view, that Germany's hope to make more substantial progress in the direction of a political union at the next IGC in 2004 is very doubtful. Although some progress was achieved in the extension of QMV to decisions in more areas, the way all member states defended their own national interests shows how remote Fischers's ideas about a federal Europe are from reality. This will become even more evident, once the new members in Eastern Europe have joined the EU, as the new members will even be more reluctant to transfer their sovereign powers to a European government.
"Hiding behind the "Bad Cop": Denmarks´s Newfound Appreciation of German Diplomacy " Background Unlike the Danish masses, traditionally apprehensive and suspicious of Germany's role and intentions in the EU, Danish elites--decision-makers as well as opinion-leaders and the media--have always been divided on this question, but with a penchant toward adopting a pragmatic, cooperative position. As Danish foreign policy has developed an independent and outwardly self-confident tack in the course of the 90s, the German shadow has tended to diminish. This has been particularly obvious in the area of security and high politics. In general, Germany is no longer viewed as a threat (and hardly with apprehension), partly because German policies are in line with Danish interests (e.g. Eastern enlargement, although Germany advocates a slower tempo), partly because, until recently at least, Germany was still shying away from an overt leadership role in the security area where Denmark has particularly tried to project itself. Whatever "threat" there might still be, is seen to lie in the possible faltering of the German economic "locomotive", on which Denmark depends, and to some extent in a German-led core of countries moving ahead on a faster track and becoming consolidated as "Euro-land". But unlike previously, this scenario by and large is not ascribed to any fault of Germany's, but to internal splits and indecision in Denmark--primarily to the constraints which the Danish electorate has imposed on political decision-makers in the shape of the four opt-outs to the Maastricht Treaty, and recently through their NO to Denmark's joining the Euro. In general, therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that although negative German stereotypes are still around in the Danish population, they have subsided significantly and the overall popular view of Germany has almost become normalized. In the field of politics and the media, it is noted of course that Germany is less shy of playing a leadership role than it used to be and is claiming a fitting place for itself at the center of European developments, but this is evaluated less in terms of threat than as a natural and normal reaction on the part of a large and influential EU member. Even EU sceptical parties, both on the left and the right of the political spectrum, fail to identify Germany as a scapegoat for plans and developments in the EU that they take exception with. Nice: The Intergovernmental Conference All these subdued and far from acrimonious assessments of Germany do not imply, on the other hand, that Germany is seen as belonging to the "Danish side" or as a safeguard for Danish interests. In terms of the run-up to the Nice conference, what they have implied in the Danish debate is a multi-dimensional displacement of the Danish "threat scenario". The most significant dimensions are the following four: 1. Links between the Euro referendum, Danish exemptions and a new treaty (consequences for domestic politics). 2. A redistribution of "good cop--bad cop" roles between Germany and France. 3. A (perceptual) realignment of oppositional forces within the EU between "large countries" and "small countries". 4. Ambiguous assessments of the desirable vs. expected impact of the Nice negotiations on the speed and extent of Eastern enlargement. Re 1: This domestic dimension is very important, though barely recognized outside Denmark. The peculiarities of Danish political culture (e.g. the necessity of referenda) and debates regarding EU membership and further integration have increasingly implied that all major developments in the EU routinely become linked to the imagined threat of (further) cleavages between masses and elites and between pro-EU and EU-sceptical parties and movements along the political continuum. This concretely means: to the threat (or promise) of yet another referendum--depending on which perspective one applies. In the recent debates prefiguring the Euro referendum in September, this peculiarity played itself out in the form of constant references by the Euro-sceptics to the Nice IGC and the (further) threat potential that this entailed in terms of what not only the Government and other pro-EU parties but also the "big countries" had in store for Denmark in different areas (the weighting of votes in the Council, no permanent Commissioner, a regular Charter, and generally yet another step on the "slippery slope" toward a European federal structure). In the context of the resultant NO and the fear that pro-European elites and media generally harbour of the judgement of the Danish people, such a scenario has developed a logic and dynamic of its own for the Danish negotiators at Nice: the result must be moderate enough to warrant a legal interpretation that a new referendum is not required. The possibility that Germany and France, and possibly others, might want to push hard in order to achieve a result more massively in their own interests, in itself constitutes a significant risk for the Danish government and its media supporters. The hope has consistently lain in speculations that France and Germany might, for once, not be able to agree, and that this "big-power divisiveness" might, willy-nilly, work in Denmark's favour. Re 2: Since France has held the EU presidency for the last 6 months and has been responsible for the Nice preparations, it is France rather than Germany which has received a lot of bad press in Denmark recently, due to its and President Chirac's alleged arrogance, self-interested politics, unwillingness to listen to other member-states, and insistence that large countries should have their size and importance recognized in negotiations on institutional reforms. Frequently, the suspicion has been voiced that France was unduly capitalizing on the enlargement issue to pursue its own interests, i.e. that the Central and Eastern European applicant states were taken hostage in a game that essentially had to do with power politics among the current members. Only rarely have these charges been levelled directly at Germany, which in a sense has been able to hide behind the "bad cop" image projected of France and whose interests have generally fallen on much more sympathetic ears--despite the fact that substantively German goals and expectations on many levels are more far-reaching and (for Danish interests) negatively consequential than the French. (Most Danes, for instance, have blissfully forgotten Joschka Fischer's "private" speech on the finality of European integration at Humboldt University in May 2000!) Re 3: Previously, the most widespread divide in the EU seen from a Danish perspective was between Germany on the one hand and the rest on the other. Both positive and negative assessments of the EU as a whole have been linked to this Us-Them dichotomy ("we need to contain Germany" vs. "the EU is another German ploy for dominating Europe"). In this way, very different assessments have been grounded in a "suspicion of Germany" syndrome, both at the popular and elite levels of interest and identity. As indicated, this has changed significantly, both because the assessment of German intentions is now less informed by prejudicial thinking, and because a new--albeit more moderate--Us-Them dichotomy between "Large " and "Small" countries has been created and now informs public perceptions and debates on the dynamics of integration. The objectives and agenda ascribed to the "large-country" camp--comprising Germany--understandably are not flattering; however, this new perceptual divide implies that it is no longer Germany above all else which is perceived in terms of risk, and both the agents of politics, the media and the populace at large are sensitive to existing rifts in the "opposite" camp, and have gleefully exposed and discussed them. The hope and, for some, expectations pinned on Germany, therefore, are rather exceptional in a historical context, i.e. that Germany will stand so firm on its own particular demands that the "Large" countries will not be able to pose a united front, and that the German-French rapport, as a consequence, will undergo a certain cooling. Re 4: An area where Denmark has for long counted on Germany to play in its own part of the court is in the domain of enlargement. As indicated above, here there are overlapping though far from identical--political/security-related as well as economic--interests in furthering the process and in doing it rather speedily. Denmark has argued for a more comprehensive and less selective enlargement process than Germany, and has been more interested in a wholesale integration of all three Baltic nation-states, but generally the two countries have here been moving on parallel tracks, in sync with each other. The official expectation concerning the German position in Nice on enlargement has therefore been that Germany (perhaps unlike France) would support efficient and speedy enlargement negotiations--and that Denmark would follow suit. The Danish position, however, is less cut-and-dry, more ambiguous than this, if the tenor of both recent public and parliamentary debates is taken into account. On the level of principled politics, the above faithfully reflects the Danish position. But since all the significant issues on the Nice agenda (particularly the questions of the composition of the Commission, the fate of the national veto and the weighting of votes in the Council) are directly related to enlargement and simultaneously constitute a significant threat potential for Danish interests, there exists an obviously contradictory and paradoxical situation, where comprehensive enlargement might come at a huge political price. The task for the Danish negotiators at Nice, therefore, was to try to achieve a treaty text that facilitates comprehensive enlargement, but also to make sure that this does not happen at the expense of fundamental Danish political interests--since this would both trigger a new referendum and seriously weaken Denmark's future position in the EU. In order to walk this tight-rope successfully, there is no doubt that the role of Germany--as so often before-would be central, though in that regard, and just for once, Danish hopes remain attached to confident rather than self-conscious German behaviour. Epilogue: Nice work if you can get it... The actual outcome of the Nice summit has met with rather positive reactions in Denmark, both in the media, among political actors (including the negotiators themselves) and the population at large. The worst-case scenario did not materialize. All member-states retain a commissioner, the reshuffle of voting weights and procedures turned out better than feared (though worse than hoped for), and as expected the large countries could not muster sufficient internal agreement and consensus on central issues. As for France, the host country has retained its "bad-cop" image and has been roundly criticized for inept and self-interested handling of the negotiations, and for carrying heavy responsibility for the near-crisis that the summit went through and thus for placing enlargement in jeopardy. As for Germany, it has been noted that it managed to safeguard most of its vital interests while combining it with rather subdued, low-key behaviour. Most praise has gone to the Belgian prime minister for standing firm on the interests of smaller countries and refusing to give in to French bullying. But, as expected, most attention in Denmark has been given to the question of whether or not the result implies Danish surrender of sovereignty and hence necessitates yet another referendum. While this is still in the balance, the government and the liberal-conservative alliance say no with badly concealed trepidation, while most of the sceptical parties and movements (right as well as left) say--gleefully--yes. In practice, the issue will be decided by the position taken by the Socialist People's Party, who will announce their verdict in January. In the meantime, political actors and parties have started to jockey for positions in regard to the general election expected to be called some time next year. Should the Nice Treaty be put to a referendum, this will, of course, have a profound impact both on the timing and central issues of this election.
"A Modest but Useful Summit Outcome at Nice: A View from Washington" The European Union considered and reached conclusions about a broad range of topics at the Nice summit, but arguably none were more important than how the EU concluded its Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) and resolved the issue of the "Amsterdam leftovers." From Washington's perspective, what was important was not principally the intricacies of the EU's internal reform, but rather whether the reform that was achieved would open the door to the EU's further enlargement. The Clinton Administration has consistently endorsed EU enlargement as in the United States' interest because it would spread stability and prosperity eastward. Viewed from this perspective, what many have termed Nice's "marginal success" was sufficient. EU members reaffirmed at Nice that the Union would be ready to accept new members by January 1, 2003 and that the accession of the first new members should be completed before the European Parliament elections scheduled for June 2004. (Of course, target dates are not commitments.) German Government spokesperson Uwe-Karsten Heye reported that, during a cabinet meeting on December 13, 2000, Chancellor Schroeder stressed that while the summit did not produce a "dream result," it did open the way for continuing the process of European integration. There are three striking consequences of the Nice summit. First, the summit was a victory for Germany. At first blush, one might think Nice shows just the opposite: the Schroeder government, after all, failed to secure more votes in the Council for a unified Germany of 82 million people than will be held by France (with a much smaller population of roughly 59 million). One might therefore think that Chancellor Schroeder has embraced the thinking of his predecessors that Germany should pretend to be smaller than it is and should defer to France. However, Schroeder played a different game. In the run-up to Nice, the Schroeder government tried again and again to win French President Chirac over to the logic of additional votes for Germany based on the principle that population should be determinative. The French repeatedly rejected that argument, contending that the "burden of the past" necessitated "strict equality" between the two countries. The inability of the French and the Germans to agree on a common position prior to Nice -- note the uncharacteristic failure of the two countries to produce their usual eve-of-summit joint letter aimed at steering the outcome -- both helps explain why Nice could achieve only marginal success and suggests how central a functioning Franco-German alliance remains as a driving force for the EU. An agreement between these two countries offers a compromise around which others can coalesce. At the end of the day, the German government realized at the Nice summit that it had won overall, whether or not France would concede this particular point. Namely, all of Germany's other 13 EU partners supported extra votes for Germany. They clearly understood that Germany stood uncontrovertibly as first among equals. Thus, Germany could only lose by rubbing salt in the French wound. Rather than pushing votes for itself in the Council, Germany successfully argued for increased voting rights for Poland. Many participants and outside observers would later contrast this seeming German selflessness with the transparent French self-interest laid bare at Nice. Germany also received concessions in the form of greater representation in the European Parliament, and a commitment for another intergovernmental conference in 2004 to agree on a catalogue of competences defining decisions to be taken at the EU, national, regional, and local levels -- a commitment that satisfied a particularly strong demand by the German Laender. Also, even though Germany did not obtain more votes in the Council than its other large colleagues, the very complex voting system adopted includes the so-called "demographic safety net" -- an obvious nod to the importance of population to any democratic system of decision-making. Finally, of course, the biggest gain for Germany at Nice was that it decisively opened the EU's door to new members. It is Germany that has the most to gain, in political and economic terms, from the Union's eastern enlargement. Germany, now at the EU's eastern periphery, will become its geographic center through that process. The symbolism of that changed reality will underscore Germany's already dominant economic and political role in the Union. This post-Cold War evolution of Germany has been deeply unsettling to France and no doubt the Schroeder government saw little gain in exacerbating that anxiety. Nonetheless, headlines in the English-language press declared that the "Power balance swings in favour of Berlin," and "Germany leads in EU building." A second result of the summit was a redistribution of power in the Union in favor of the big states. The rationale for institutional reform was to prepare the Union for the accession of new members, but the principle motivating the big states in fashioning that reform was, above all, to ensure that their clout would be preserved and, in fact, enhanced prior to an influx of primarily small- and medium-sized entrants. Before Nice, the EU's more populous states had more votes in the Council than the smaller states, but the allotment of votes was tipped in the smaller states' favor. Nice changed this. The EU's big five -- Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Spain -- all shared an interest in that change. Their success in securing greater influence can be seen in the reallocation of votes in the Council. The small states resisted this shift because it would disadvantage them, but in the end relented. Portuguese Prime Minister Guterres reportedly complained of a "coup d'etat by the big member states." A third consequence is the reality that Nice has made decision-making in the EU more complicated and inefficient. As Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission, said on December 12, 2000, the extension of qualified majority voting was a quantitatively important move, but qualitatively little or no progress was made on any of the sensitive areas of cohesion, tax regulation, and social legislation. National prerogatives outweighed any larger interest in furthering European integration. In these remarks to the European Parliament, Prodi went on to say that the reweighting of votes in the Council was regrettable not only because it made "a qualified majority more difficult and a blocking minority accordingly easier, where the goal should have been the opposite in an expanding Union," but also "because it has made decision-making even more complex, something that runs counter to the legibility and transparency for which the citizens have been calling." Accordingly, the addition of new members can only increase gridlock. This is of concern not only to EU members, but also to the United States, given that the EU is its largest trading partner and counts among its members the United States' closest political allies. A breakdown of EU decision-making and even greater difficulty enforcing decisions would undermine any benefits of enlargement. The response of current members is that change in the EU has traditionally been incremental. French President Chirac spoke of the construction of Europe as an art -- "the art of the possible." Thus, the silver lining of this cloud of impending institutional gridlock is that it may ultimately force far-reaching reform. The needed reform may well not be treaty-based change in the shape of another intergovernmental conference; it may be internal, procedural reforms. The Nice summit allows the EU to proceed with the accession of new members over the next few years, but much more work lies ahead if those applicants hope to join a Union that reflects greater democracy, transparency, and efficiency.
1 For a critical evaluation of the institutional reforms from a European perspective, cf. Centre for European Reform (CER) policy brief "What comes after Nice", http://www.cer.org.uk/n5publicatio/nicetreatyfinal3.pdf [19.12.00] 2 Cf. Joschka Fischer: "Vom Staatenverbund zur Föderation - Gedanken über die Finalität der europäischen Integration", Rede am 12. Mai 2000 in der Humboldt-Universität in Berlin Fischer Speech, http://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/www/de/infoservice/download/pdf/reden/2000/r000512a.pdf [13.12.2000]. 3 Cf. "RK 2000: Grundsatzpapier der Bundesrepublik zur Regierungskonferenz zu den institutionellen Reformen, 21.03. 2000, http://db.consilium.eu.int/cigdocs/De/04733d.pdf [12.12.2000]. 4 Cf. the official position paper of the Federal government: "Erwartungen der Bundesregierung an den Gipfel von Nizza, 28.11. 2000, http://www.bundesregierung.de/top/dokumente/Artikel/ix_24989.htm [13.12. 2000]. 5 Cf. Wolfgang Proissl, Gerrit Wiesmann und Rainer Koch, Schröder fordert EU-Gipfel zu Kompetenzfragen, in: FTD, 4.12.2000. 6 Dubois, N./Quatremer, J. 2000: "La France défend son rang, l'Allemagne prend du galon"; in: Libération v. 12.12.2000, 7 Cf. Eckhart Lohse, Fischer Slams French Handling of EU Summit, FAZ (Engl. Ed.), 16.12. 2000. 8 Weingärtner, D. 2000: "Polens Premier greift zum Telefon"; in: TAZ v. 11.12.2000. 9 "The Nice Summit: So that's all agreed, then", in: Economist, 16.12. 2000, p.23-26. 10 After the match is before the (next) match. Saying by Sepp Herberger, famous German National Soccer Coach. 11 o. V. 2000: "Zufriedenheit in Warschau, Prag und Bratislava"; in: FAZ v. 12.12.00, p. 4. 12 o. V. 2000: "Bundesregierung insgesamt zufrieden"; in: FAZ v. 12.12.00, p. 4. 13 Cf. "At two in the morning", Economist, 16.12. 2000, p. 24. 14 Cf. Tournée des pays membres de l'Union européenne dans le cadre de la Présidence française de l'Union européenne, Présidence de la République, http://www.elysee.fr/actus/actu001122-1202_.htm [5.12.00] 15 Das Ende einer Karriere. Einst war Frankreich der Motor Europas. Doch der Nizza-Gipfel zeigt: Die Elite versteht die Welt nicht mehr, in: Die Zeit, 51/2000, http://www.zeit.de/2000/51/Politik/200051_dt.-franzoesisch.html [18.12.00] 16 see for example: La France défend son rang,l'Allemagne prend du gallon, in: Libération, 12.12.00, http://www.liberation.com/quotidien/semaine/20001212marb.html [13.12.00] 17 'The Observer', 03/12/00, www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/eu/story/0,7369,406195,00.html 18 'Speech by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to the Polish Stock Exchange, Warsaw, Friday 6 October 2000', Foreign and Commonwealth Office website, www.fco.gov.uk/news/speechtext.asp/4215.html 19 See, for example, 'Die Welt', 12/10/00, www.welt.de/daten/2000/10/12/1012eu195980.htx 20 Tony Blair, 06/10/00, www.fco.gov.uk/news/speechtext.asp/4215.html 21 Cited in 'Die Welt', 12/10/00, www.welt.de/daten/2000/10/12/1012eu195980.htx 22 Cited in the 'FAZ', 04/10/00, www.faz.com/IN/Intemplates/...BFEF0-9795-11D4-009027BA226C} 23 Gerhard Schröder in an interview with 'Der Spiegel', 04/12/00, Nr. 49 - 2000 www.spiegel.de/druckversion/0,1588,105973,00.html 24 'Die Berliner Zeitung', 11/05/00, p. 1. 25 AFX (UK), 09/10/00; FT Global Archive, www.globalarchive.ft.com/search-component/index.jsp 26 'The Times, 12/12/00, www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,49993,00.html 27 'The Guardian', 12/12/00, www.guardian.co.uk/eu/story/0,7369,410171,00.html 28 'The Sun', 12/12/00, www.thesun.co.uk 29 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 30.10.1997.
Writings on German Foreign Policy Culture III: Banchoff, Thomas, The German Problem Transformed. Institutions, Politics, and Foreign Policy, 1945-1995, Ann Arbor, Michigan UP 1999 by Sebastian Harnisch Ever since Wolfram Hanrieder coined the term "double contaiment" the pacifying effects of international institutions on Germany have been at the center of the debate on German Foreign policy. But no one - to my knowledge - has tracked this effect as succinctly and successfully as Thomas Banchoff in his book on the "German Problem Transformed". It is rich in empirical analysis as well as theoretical reflection; it is well suited for both undergraduate seminars (mostly) unfamiliar with theory-led description and graduate seminars, which cover several competing approaches. Banchoff surmises that there has been and will be no reemergence of Germany as Europe's central power because since World War II German leaders anchored the Federal Republic within an ever thicker web of international institutions. In addition, this "Einbindungspolitik" came to rest on a solid domestic political consensus that outlasted the Cold War era (1).(1) The four empirical chapters cover the integration of the Bonn Republic into NATO and EEC during the Adenauer era, the detente phase characterized by Brandt's bilateral "Ostpolitik" and Germany's active participation in the multilateral CSCE process, the new cold war era of the early eighties with chancellor Helmut Kohl strengthening ties with NATO during the Ins crisis, and finally the early post cold war era in which the united Germany further strengthened integration with the EU and the OSCE. Banchoff corrects the popular misunderstanding in rationalist institutionalist analysis that institutions constrain national foreign policy choices so that a common (institutional) cost-benefit order emanates from organizational structures and norms. The author rightly notes that different institutions pulled policy makers in different directions (16). For example, the Paris treaty (at least potentially) offered Adenauer the option to press Western allies on the issue of supporting German unification. But instead of prioritizing German unification Adenauer, in contrast to Schumacher, chose to go ahead with Germany's firm integration in NATO and EC. Theoretically speaking, Banchoff reaches well beyond the rationalist institutionalist framework into the constructivist field. He posits that foreign policy choice at four key junctures resulted from individual decisions reflecting ideas and norms held by decision makers. Methodologically, the author focuses on pairs of foreign policy makers (Adenauer/Schumacher, Kiesinger/Brandt; Kohl/Schmidt, Kohl/Scharping) thereby shortcutting comprehensive analyses of the policy discourses involved. While this procedure is certainly debatable, the conclusions drawn are not. He holds that (in general) Christian Democratic leaders tended to stress the centrality of NATO and EC while their social democratic counterparts tended to supported the institutionalization of the Ostpolitik in bi- and multilateral contexts. Again, theoretical hotheads may criticize that the theory-led operationalization of policy ideas along two dimensions (power and intentions of other states and prominence of certain institutions) is too simple to be good. And yet, on the whole Banchoff´s conclusion that successive foreign policy struggles (from rearmament in the 1950s to European Monetary Union in the 1990s) lead to converging foreign policy outlooks in the two main parties and thus a broad foreign policy consensus among the elite is sound. In sum, Banchoff´s analysis is a must for any serious student of German Foreign Policy. It deserves credit for condensing central aspects of Germany's post-cold war foreign policy to a mere 180 pages. In addition, it derives noteworthy criteria for assessing the probability of continuity in the foreign affairs of the Berlin Republic. But two intertwined processes may result in a change of Germany's priorities. First, transatlantic and European institutions might suffer serious setbacks as they strive to adapt to new challenges in the 21st century. Secondly, social constructions (such as belief systems, identities or role conceptions) held by decision makers and the society at-large might change in response to changing domestic and international circumstances (176-177). But as the author persuasively shows, recent attempts to "construe" a more national and autonomous Germany have been flawed and politically marginalised. Thus, even after 1995 German foreign policy has followed its traditional foreign policy trajectory of multilateralism and integration. 1 Cf. for the term "Einbindungspolitik": Hellmann, Gunther (1994): "Einbindungspolitik". German Foreign Policy and the Art of Declaring 'Total Peace', Paper prepared for Presentation at the XVIth World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Panel RC 36.1: "Power in the 'New World Order'", August 20-25, 1994, Berlin, Germany.
1.) Intergovernmental Conference 2000
b) National Positions c) Positions of EU Institutions
b) Individual Contributions
Intergovernmental Conference 2000 (main page)
Nice European Council 7.-9. December 2000
French Presidency of the European Union
European Commission, general Information about the IGC
European Commission - IGC : factsheets on the subjects for negociation at the IGC, 11.12.00
b) National Positions
Bundesminister Joschka Fischer am 17.02.2000 vor dem Deutschen Bundestag zur Eröffnung der
Regierungskonferenz über institutionelle Reformen der EU und zu den Ergebnissen des Allgemeinen Rates am 14./15. Februar 2000, AA 17.02.00
Brok, E., Reform of the European Union: Nice and Beyond 19/10/2000
Die Erweiterung der Europäischen Union. Einführung des Auswärtigen Amts.
"Die Reform der europäischen Institutionen vor der Erweiterung: Die Regierungskonferenz 2000"
Vortrag von Staatsminister Dr. Christoph Zöpel im Rahmen der Reihe "FORUM CONSTITUTIONIS EUROPAE" am 27. 01.2000, AA 27.01.00
Die Regierungskonferenz der EU zu den institutionellen Reformen, AA 26.10.2000
Die Regierungskonferenz 2000. Einführung des Auswärtigen Amts.
Staatsminister im Auswärtigen Amt Dr. Christoph Zöpel am 17.02.2000 vor dem Deutschen Bundestag zur Eröffnung der Regierungskonferenz über institutionelle Reformen der EU und zu den Ergebnissen der Tagung des Allgemeinen Rates am 14./15. Februar 2000 (Auszüge), AA 17.02.00
"Britain´s choice: engagement, not isolation". Speech by Prime Minister Tony Blair, at the Lord Mayors Banquet, London 13.11.00
British EU Policy, FES London, September 2000
"Creating a multicultural Europe: the British approach". Speech by the parliamentary under-secretary of state, Baroness Scotland at the German Embassy, Berlin 1.12.00
"Europe 2010". Speech by Robin Cook, Secretary of foreign relations, to Europe 2010 Seminar at the Centre for European Reform, London 13.11.00
Foreign Affairs and defence debate on the queen´s speech. Extracts from a speech by Robin Cook on Nice European Council, London 11.12.00
"Priorities for the future of Europe". Speech by Robin Cook, Secretary of foreign relations, to the foreign affairs committee of the French national assembly, 8.11.00
Statement by the Prime Minister on the Nice European Council to the House of Commons, 10 Downing Street, 11.12.00
Allocution du Premier ministre, lors de l'ouverture du colloque sur l'identité de l'Europe, Pavillon Dauphine, le 30 novembre 2000
Entretien du Ministre des Affaires Étrangères, M. Hubert Védrine, avec "TF1", 11.12.00
Pierre Moscovici : entretien du ministre délégué chargé des Affaires européennes avec "Europe 1" (Paris), 11.12.00
Speech by Jacques Chirac at the European Parliament on the European Council of Nice European Parliament Strasbourg, 12.12.00 (french)
Statement by Mr Pierre Moscovici before the Conference of the Presidents of the European Parliament (Brussels, 5 December 2000), French Presidency, 7.12.00
Institutional Reform of the European Union, Point of view of the Committee of the Regions, 31 July 2000
2000-2005: Shaping the New Europe, Speech of Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission to the European Parliament on 15 February 2000
Reforming the Commission. Reference documents, European Commission, 22.11.00
Speech by Romano Prodi at the European Parliament on the European Council of Nice European Parliament Strasbourg, 12.12.00 (English)
Time for change in Europe´s public administration, European Commission, 22.11.00
Rede der Präsidentin des Europäischen Parlaments, Frau Nicole Fontaine, bei der Eröffnung des Europäischen Rates (Nizza, 7. Dezember 2000) 2.) German Foreign Policy
Algieri, F./ Emmanouiolidis, J. 2000: Centre for applied policy research (Hrsg.), Setting signals for European Foreign and Security Policy - Discussing Differentiation and Flexibility, München
Bertelsmann Europa-Kommission 2000: Europas Vollendung vorbereiten - Forderungen an die Regierungskonferenz 2000, Gütersloh
Bertelsmann Forschungsgruppe Politik, Centre for Applied Policy Research (Hrsg.) 2000: Ein Grundvertrag für die Europäische Union - Entwurf zur Zweiteilung der Verträge, München
Centrum für angewandte Politikforschung, Europanorama #4 (März 2000)
Giering, C. 1999: Demokratie und Interessenausgleich in der Europäischen Union, Gütersloh
Weidenfeld, W./ Wessels, W. (Hrsg.) 2000: Europa von A bis Z - Taschenbuch der europäischen Integration, Institut für Europäische Politik, Bonn
Anneke, H./ Pradetto, A. 1998: Desintegration durch Integration? Dilemmata der Osterweiterung der EU und die Europapolitik der Regierung Schröder, in: Studien zur Internationalen Politik, Hacke, C., Knapp, M., Pradetto, A. (Hrsg.), Institut für Internationale Politik an der Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg, Heft 1/1998 http://www.unibw-hamburg.de/WWEB/soz/pradetto/nato-kosovo-studie.htm
Pradetto, A., 1999: Konfliktmanagement durch militärische Intervention? Dilemmata westlicher Kosovo-Politik, in: Studien zur Internationalen Politik, Hacke, C., Knapp, M., Pradetto, A. (Hrsg.), Institut für Internationale Politik an der Universität der Bundeswehr Hamburg, Heft 2/1999
Asbhourne, A. 2000: Opening the US Defence Market, Centre for European Reform Working Papers, Centre for European Reform (Hrsg.), London
Hall, B. 2000: European governance and the future of the Commission, Centre for European Reform Working Papers, Centre for European Reform (Hrsg.), London
Hall, B. 2000: How flexible should Europe be?, Centre for European Reform Working Papers, Centre for European Reform (Hrsg.), London
Varwick, J. 2000: Die EU nach dem Kosovo-Krieg: Ein überforderter Stabilitätsanker?, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik, Berlin
Varwick, J. 2000: Passt der EU die Größe XXL? Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik, Berlin
Palmer, J. 2000: European Policy Centre (Hrsg.), The European Union After Nice - One Step Forward, Two Steps Back?, Brusseles
Böckem A. 2000: Klimapolitik in Deutschland: Eine Problemanalyse aus Expertensicht, HWWA Discussion Paper Nr. 91
Hoffman, A./ Knowles, V. 1999: Germany and the Reshaping of Europe. Identifying Interests - the Role of Discourse Analysis, Institute For German Studies Diskussion Papers 1999/9, Birmingham
Hyde-Price, A. 1999: Building a stable peace in Mitteleuropa: The German-Polish hinge, Institute For German Studies Diskussion Papers 1999/9, Birmingham
Hellmann, B.,/ Knodt, M./ Kohler-Koch, B. 2000: Globalisierung und Integration: Strategievorstellungen deutscher Parlamentarier, MZES Arbeitspapiere / Working papers #31, Mannheim
Is the current IGC pursuant to Article 1 or 2 of the enlargement Protocol to the Treaty of Amsterdam? 22.10.00
Jeffery, C./ Paterson, W.E. 2000: Germany's power in Europe, Institute For German Studies Diskussion Papers 2000/10, Birmingham
Lord Watson of Richmond 2000: Europe. Moment of Redefinition, Institute For German Studies Diskussion Papers 2000/2, Birmingham
Pigeau, M./ Sesselmeier, W. 2000 : The Effects of European Monetary Union on Social Security Systems, Institute For German Studies Diskussion Papers 2000/4, Birmingham
Schild, J. 2000: Über Nizza hinaus. Deutsch-französische Debatten über die Zukunft der EU, Aktuelle Analysen des DFI Ludwigsburg, Nr. 16
Schimmelfennig, F. 2000: NATO's Eastern Enlargement. An Analysis of Collective Decision-Making, EAPC-NATO Individual Fellowship Report 1998-2000
Szabo, S. F. 1999: Germany. Strategy and Defense at a Turning Point (AICGS Issue Brief)
The Changing Quality of Stability in Europe, RAND(Hrsg.) 2000: The Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty Toward 2001, John E. Peters, MR-1104-SMD, Santa Monica
Bahr, E. 1999: Die "Normalisierung" der deutschen Außenpolitik. Mündige Partnerschaft statt bequemer Vormundschaft, in: Internationale Politik Nr.1/99, Berlin
Bartels, H. 2000: Eine neue Bundeswehr, in: Europäische Sicherheit 09/00, Bonn
Hellmann, B./ Knodt, M./ Kohler-Koch, B. 2000: Globalisierung und Integration. Strategievorstellungen deutscher Parlamentarier, MZES working papers No 31, Mannheim
Hellmann, G. 2000: Rekonstruktion der "Hegemonie des Machtstaates Deutschland unter modernen Bedingungen"? Zwischenbilanzen nach zehn Jahren neuer deutscher Außenpolitik, DVPW- Kongress Halle
Link, W. 2000: Deutschland im multipolaren Gleichgewicht der großen Mächte und Regionen, in: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte Nr.24
Linksammlung zu konzeptionellen Fragen deutscher Außenpolitik, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik.
Meier, C. 2000: Nach dem Machtwechsel im Kreml. Deutsch-russische Wirtschaftsbeziehungen vor einem neuen Aufschwung? Aktuelle Analyse des BIOst Nr. 8/2000
Mutz, R. 2000: Auf schiefer Bahn. Deutsche Aussenpolitik - Militarisierung ist mehr als ein Schlagwort geworden, in: Die Ost-West-Zeitung 4.8.00, Berlin
Schmidt, A. Deutsche Friedensgesellschaft- Vereinigte KriegsdienstgegnerInnen (Hrsg.) 1999: Militarisierung der deutschen Außenpolitik. Der Remilitarisierungprozess der deutschen Außenpolitik nach 1945, Velbert
Schöllgen, G. 1998: Die Berliner Republik als internationaler Akteur - Gibt es noch eine deutsche Interessenpolitik?, Köln
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