How Brexit can Boost European Integration

Much has been written on the Brexit referendum and its aftermath, and it is platitude to insist on what crisis this is for the United Kingdom, for the European Union and its Member States, and for the rest of the world. I have commented elsewhere (and in French) on legal implications and the need to have the British Parliament involved, in both the process of activating article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, and repealing the European Communities Act 1972 (Le droit au Brexit).

Relying so heavily on direct democracy on such serious matters is foolish, especially when such a dramatic referendum is so ill prepared, with no provision as to its effect in the Referendum Act 2015, and no requirement of a qualified majority for the decision to carry some legal and constitutional consequences. That politicians take the result of the referendum as binding because it is the voice of the people shows how representative democracy has weakened, even in the country that invented it. But it is also symptomatic of the British attitude throughout the European integration process. Churchill’s call for United States of Europe in 1946 was an isolated voice. Great Britain never advocated for a continental polity and, year after year, negotiated a number of opt-out possibilities.

We are faced with the perspective of a European Union without the United Kingdom. No crisis must be wasted, as crises can trigger progress: whether we regret Brexit or not – and I personally deeply regret – we must use this as an opportunity for boosting political integration. It is a secret to none that the UK was an obstacle to it. With the UK sadly moving out, the debate on building a true federal state and adopting a proper constitution is to be activated and placed on the drawing board. This is a reason why this blog was created.

The European Union must move from painful puberty to confident adulthood. It had a difficult gestation and long childhood. As the Schuman Plan stated, the whole idea was to “make war unthinkable and materially impossible.” European integration was aimed at securing peace on the continent, which is and remains its main and most remarkable achievement.

A European Defence Community project, initiated in 1950, eventually failed. Economic integration projects were to be more successful, starting with the European Coal and Steel Community (Treaty of Paris 1951). The Treaty of Rome signed in 1957 created the European Economic Community and the European Atomic Energy Community, with effect on January 1^st, 1958, in the six founding Members: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxemburg, and the Netherland. On January 1^st, 1973, Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom joined, after lengthy negotiations. Subsequent enlargements added Greece (1981), Spain and Portugal (1986), doubling the initial number of Member States. 1986 was the year of the European Single Act and the adoption of the European flag. The Maastricht Treaty signed in 1992 created the European Union as from November 1^st, 1993, adding among others a European currency to the project. Three additional States joined in 1994: Austria, Finland, and Sweden, raising the number to fifteen.

Two principal factors triggered the adolescence crisis: firstly, the launching of a monetary union joined by some Member States and implemented before securing the creation of proper institutional support and implementing a common budgetary policy. Secondly, the largest enlargement of the Union, bringing ten additional Member States on May 1^st, 2004: Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. Seven of these were part of the former Eastern Bloc, of which three were from the former Soviet Union.

This is the time when much of the European public started to worry and lose confidence in the project, as shown among other things by two founding Member States, France and the Netherlands, refusing to ratify a draft Constitutional Treaty, by referendums held in 2005. Bulgaria and Romania joined in 2007, and Croatia in 2013, bringing the number to 28.

Enlarging the Union by nearly doubling its members (from 15 in 1994 to 28 less than twenty years later), with the addition of countries from the former Eastern bloc, and expanding the powers of the Union without significantly strengthening the democratic foundation, creates a sense of loss of identity, typical of puberty. Citizens in Member States view the Union as a larger and bigger bureaucracy. Politicians in Member States blame it whenever they feel forced to implement unpopular adjustments to a fast changing world. No new leading project comes to renew the attractiveness of the political integration.

2005 was a missed opportunity of moving from cooperation based on a treaty to a constitution, even if that one was to be constitutional treaty. Though a hybrid legal document – but is not hybridity in the DNA of the continent? – it was a major first step, which could have led to the adoption of a true and proper constitution. It did not happen because of the two unsuccessful referendums of 2005, though the overwhelming majority of Member States had approved it, by referendum or parliamentary vote. The Treaty of Lisbon signed in 2007 and in force since 2009 does not replace a constitution.

The Brexit referendum of 2016 must be used as an opportunity to reboot the constitutional process and the march to a proper federation:

(1) A federal constitution would stabilize the distribution of powers between those delegated to the Union and those left to Member States and their regions;

(2) It will secure and reinforce the democratic dimension of a Union that must move beyond reinforced intergovernmental cooperation: too many of the powers devolved to the Union are proper State powers, that cannot be moved away from the direct control by the European citizens.  

With the principal opponents to political integration gone, the march towards a federal Europe must resume. As will be explained in forthcoming posts, a federation has the effect of limiting the powers devolved to the federal State and strengthen the control by the citizens, who need to be re-empowered.