The recent Chirac-Schröder joint proposal looks to many much more like an agreement to disagree than a really workable compromise, writes Paul Gillespie
'Europe is a union of states, peoples and citizens," declares the Franco-German joint contribution to the Convention on the Future of Europe published last week and endorsed at yesterday's 40th anniversary of the Elysée Treaty.
"This political vocation can be expressed in its institutions by the idea of a federation of nation-states."
The headline proposal they make is for a dual presidency of the EU (although there are several other important ideas besides this, which may be more realistic and acceptable to all).
The president of the European Commission would be elected by the European Parliament and confirmed by the member-states on the basis of a qualified majority.
A new position, president of the European Council, the EU's intergovernmental forum, would be created, elected by the heads of state and government by qualified majority for a five-year term.
It would replace the existing country presidency system and bring, they argue, "continuity, stability and visibility" to the office, notably by animating its work and representing the EU on the international scene.
This proposal has attracted much attention since being announced last week. It is taken seriously because of the marked revival of Franco-German co-operation since the re-election of Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder last year, amply displayed at yesterday's ceremonies in Versailles.
The supplementary initiatives of political, security, criminal and defence co-operation they announced yesterday reinforce the point. The historical function of the Franco-German relationship was aptly described by Denis Staunton in these pages as "a laboratory of compromise" within the EU; what they can agree on is most likely to be accepted more generally.
This has not proved to be the case with the dual-presidency proposal. It looks to many more like an agreement to disagree than a workable compromise, a circus horse rather than an organic amalgam of German federal and French inter-governmental approaches to European integration.
The notion of a "federation of nation-states" was coined by French leaders to capture the need for such an amalgam if the role of national identities is to be preserved through the deeper integration made necessary by the EU's forthcoming enlargement from 15 to 27 states.
Reference in their text to a union "of citizens" along with the traditional union of "states and peoples" can be seen as a German balancing of that French emphasis.
It plays to the widely acknowledged task faced by the convention to make EU political processes more democratically accessible and accountable.
Responses to the dual-presidency proposal varies according to three criteria: the size of member-state; orientations towards legitimacy, efficiency and simplicity of the EU's institutions; and towards deepening its provisions for common citizenship.
The dual-presidency idea has been welcomed by the United Kingdom, Spain, and Italy, which say the rotating presidency will be inefficient in a much larger EU.
It will not carry sufficient political weight or provide enough continuity internally or in relation to the rest of the world. An essential extension of EU competences in foreign policy, security and defence was spelled out in their document and elaborated on yesterday.
It requires that their inter-governmental character be adequately recognised in the EU's political structures. The Franco-German document says this will not prejudice the Commission president's role.
Such a bloc of large states approving the principles involved inevitably excites suspicions among the smaller ones, Ireland included. They are seen as a way of rebalancing the EU to give more advantage to the inter-governmental council over the supranational Commission.
This institutional balance has always been seen as a crucial protection for the smaller states, not least as a political guarantee that decisions reached by a qualified majority would be implemented disinterestedly by an independent Commission.
There are widespread fears that it could signal the end of the "community method" which has served the EU so well and is such a distinctive mark of its political originality.
As the Government representative in the convention, Mr Dick Roche, argued this week, objections to the rotating presidency are more administrative than political.
His Finnish counterpart said: "If we reject rotation, we lose permanently one very important expression of equality between member-states in the EU." Political choices are often made between more or less undesirable alternatives; in this case choosing between equality and efficiency is one of them.
A possible compromise arising from the initial impasse over the dual-presidency proposal would be a system linking different groups of member-states which would share the task over a five-year term. It would be interesting to see where Ireland would fit in that case.
An alternative approach would be to merge the two presidents into one, with different levels of political accountability and a variety of means of election. Those in favour of this approach welcome the greater legitimacy brought by having the European Parliament elect the Commission president and aligning it with elections in which different candidates will be put to voters.
John Bruton's proposal for direct election of the Commission president remains a minority one.
Sweden and Denmark are willing to explore the Franco-German idea, while Britain suggests a small state might be best suited to take on the council presidency role, at least initially.
So the political basis for a compromise exists, and there is still time to reach it before the convention reports in June and the subsequent Inter-Governmental Conference agrees a new treaty.
Many of the critics dispute the French and German argument that a dual presidency would simplify the EU's structures. Rather would it sow systematic and endemic confusion, tension and conflict between the Commission and council and their presidents, they say.
This brings us back to the argument about democratic legitimacy and citizen involvement. Pooling sovereignty and governance creates the conditions within which a genuine European citizenship can emerge.
It will be based not only on more transparent political processes but on the creation of better conditions for Europe-wide political debates and contests through political movements and the media.
So far the convention has not devoted enough attention to this task. If it fails, it will have not achieved one of its essential goals.
Critics of inter-governmental methods argue convincingly that secret diplomacy and indirect accountability obfuscate politics rather than engage citizens.
A leading academic commentator on EU affairs, Richard Bellamy, says the EU must confront this issue of civic freedom and free public deliberation. The danger, he argues, is that "Europe long ceased to be Holy, but its future may be Roman."
Paul Gillespie is Foreign Policy Editor of The Irish Times