Michael McDowell raised a central question about the future of European integration in his provocative address to the Institute of European Affairs this week. The Attorney General said the creation of a European state not underpinned by "a cohesive, integrated and largely homogenous society may not simply be an unrealistic ambition, it might also be the recipe for democratic, cultural and, ultimately, economic disaster".
He put the case for a partnership of nation states as distinct from a federal model of integration, insisting that his is closer to the actual preferences of European electorates.
Mr McDowell makes much of the tightly knit band of activists associated with the federal project, many of them employees of EU institutions, for whom it functions as a legitimating ideology.
This is to underestimate the degree of political support that there is for a more ambitious agenda than he considers desirable. It includes the leaders of smaller states, such as Belgium (which takes over the EU presidency on July 1st), Finland and Greece; the leaders of larger ones, such as France and Germany; and the leaders of several candidate states, such as the Czech Republic and Slovenia.
Many of these accept the arguments put by Mr Romano Prodi in his interview with this newspaper on Thursday: that, far from displacing the nation state, the European Union has rescued it; that some transfer of sovereignty is necessary if nation states are to retain influence in an era of globalisation.
Integration has also rescued Europe from its imperial past. This was based on balance of power policies which led to two world wars. Subjecting state power to the rule of law through inter-governmental treaties has proved an immensely civilising influence, containing many lessons for other world regions.
Such disagreements are the meat of political debate on the future of Europe. That is why Mr McDowell's speech is so welcome (aside from its political timing and effects in a week when the Government was assailed for its incoherent policy line).
Mr McDowell disputes the polarity of Eurosceptic/federalist, proposing the partnership/European state choice as a better way of understanding the arguments. But that also risks substituting one facile distinction for another.
Mr McDowell has little time for subcategories of federalism, such as superstate, federal state or "federation of nation states". He suggests a checklist of indicators drawn from recent discussion about the future of Europe by which it is possible to recognise state-like entities. The checklist includes a constitution; a justiciable bill of rights; citizenship; direct taxation; tax harmonisation; defence capacity; a directly elected president; and a two-tier parliament government modelled on Germany's federal constitution.
Germany looms large in this discussion but the most important development there is the admission last month by the Foreign Minister, Mr Joschka Fischer, that it will be impossible in his lifetime to achieve a German state-like model at European level. He has accepted the formula of a federation of nation states proposed three years ago by Mr Jacques Delors. This formula is now espoused, most notably by the French Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, and tentatively by Mr Tony Blair.
In contrast to the federal approach, the federation of nation states seeks to take much fuller account of the indispensability and distinctiveness of European nations and peoples. It is not just a semantic question, but an acknowledgement, in Mr Fischer's words at an IEA function in Dublin last April, that European identity and citizenship must come through, not displace, national identity and citizenship.
This goes to the core of what is at stake. Mr McDowell assumes the federal case seeks "a single European state with 20 or 27 or more semi-autonomous regions", a maximalist interpretation which overstates the federalists' objective. His checklist of state-like features tends to assume a zerosum outcome between EU and national competences in which sovereignty and identity are transferred, not shared.
But a much more fruitful way of imagining the future of Europe (or indeed of its constituent nation states and constitutional regions) is as a co-existence of particular, varied, overlapping and multiple identities.
Mr McDowell hints at this when he defines the true spirit of Europe as complex, diverse and heterogeneous. That would admit a more integrated structure than he allows - so long as it respects those multiplicities. But he has little time for the shifting views of German federalists, saying Mr Fischer had changed his position over the last year like the Cheshire Cat.
Nor has he time for those who argue that the EU is sui generis or unique. This is precisely what the phrase federation of nation states tries to capture - an experiment that has never been tried before.
The trouble with the partnership model is that it would not provide sufficient political glue to hold a greatly enlarged system together. New institutions are required for that. And where institutions go, history suggests political community can follow.
As the Taoiseach said in welcoming Mr Prodi, Europe is not "them", it is "us". Pooling sovereignty, as envisaged in the future of Europe debate, will allow Europe to be united voluntarily and democratically for the first time in its history.
That is far preferable to the danger, which Mr McDowell does not address, that without deeper integration there would be a reversion to large state power projection. By the same token, it is better to have them contained in a rule-governed and law-based system than see them develop closer co-operation outside it - the sure guarantee of a two-tier Europe.
Those like Mr McDowell who complain about unaccountable procedures at national and European levels have ready-made remedies available to them, such as the reformed Dail procedures under discussion this week. It is remarkable that ministers should now try to disguise their own responsibility for executive unaccountability.
At European level there is a simple and radical approach as well - to elect the president of the Commission and similar officials, thereby consolidating the gradual development of the transnational community which has emerged over recent decades.
pgillespie@irish-times.ie
