The Hindu Business Line : EU: Pains of growing up

It was in June 1988, exactly 20 years ago, that I was invited by the European Commission to Brussels to participate in the European Sub-Contracting Workshop. This was my first visit and representing the CII, I was proud to be in ‘Berlaymont’, the star-shaped Brussels headquarters of the European Commission. Soon after, in 1991, this symbol of power and bureaucracy, was hurriedly evacuated when found to be riddled with asbestos and uninhabitable.

The makeover from 1967 hunk of officialdom into a hi-tech headquarters for Europe’s policy-makers took 13 years. The renovation has been dogged with incongruity about everything from contracts and end dates to the origin of the timber used to endow the workplaces.

But, nowadays, the star-shaped building in the centre of Brussels, boasts of tilting, heat-sensitive window slats, state-of-the-art air conditioning and energy-saving ceilings and seeks a rejuvenated, citizen-friendly icon.

The Commission, backed up by some 2,700 EU bureaucrats, is located here. The Berlaymont building represents both the institution’s past and its future. It has today become more than a workplace, more than a big building. It is the flagship and the symbol of Europe.

Down the road from Berlaymont are two new European Parliament buildings, reflecting the increase in the powers of Parliament over the last 20 years. I recall the days it used to have influence. But, today, it has power. It has the legislative right of “co-decision” with the Council of Ministers, the member states. However, the pains of “growing up”, continue unabated.

Irish Reject EU Treaty

In a major setback for the European Union, Irish voters last week, rejected the Lisbon Treaty that was to replace the failed EU Constitution. An Irish “no” vote would mean that the reform treaty, signed by 27 EU leaders in 2007 would not be able to go into effect.

The treaty is necessary to regulate the interactions among the 27-member states of an expanded EU. In particular need of adjustment is the way the organisation makes decisions.

How Brussels Regulates European Lives

Treaty or no treaty, officials in Brussels continue to perfect a system of total control. As the guardian angels of the 495-million Europe’s citizens, the EU Commission considers each citizen as a consumer, a potential entity requiring protection.

In all seriousness, the EU’s inspectors are keeping themselves busy coming up with more and more regulations to govern even the most hidden corners of human existence, and that coverers the length and breadth of the EU — from Spitzbergen in Norway to the Spanish Canaries.

Current regulations already run the gamut from safeguards against pre-registration of imported chemicals (REACH), fine dust and noise control, to soil conservation, protections for workers against solar radiation and safety for non-smokers.

Noise Maps

Many European cities and regions, at Brussels’ command, are now developing the so-called noise maps. To produce the maps, precise noise readings must be taken on every street, whether in downtown areas, in industrial zones, along railway lines or in expensive and leafy residential neighbourhoods.

Europe’s “Specific Hygiene Regulations” cover every product and every producer. Anyone who, milk pail in hand, hopes to find fresh milk from the farm these days will have a lot of searching to do. Under Paragraph 17, Section 1 of the Animal Food Hygiene Regulation, “the sale of raw milk or cream to consumers is prohibited”.

A Tireless Effort to Regulate Everything

Advocates for the protection of consumers, children, animals, patients and practically everything else are tirelessly proposing new things that they are convinced require regulation or, in some cases, ought to be banned outright.

And, because everyone knows that we are what we eat, the EC laws regulate and ensure protection of European food before it reaches the supermarkets. Unlike India which stooped to American pressure to introduce genetically modified food, Europe has vehemently kept this out.

Dissolving Protectionism

Ten years ago, the EC ordered its member states to dismantle their government interests in private corporations — like VW — and report back to Brussels.

Europe is working hard to dissolve protectionism within its borders but, at the same time, it has to think more and more about how to replace the same laws, in practice, at a European level — because no one here wants to sell their “key industries” to concerns in the US, China, India or Russia.

EU Fast-Track Immigration

The EC may want to introduce a unified “Blue Card” system to attract highly-skilled immigrants to the EU. The Blue Card is an important instrument for alleviating the skills shortage in the hi-tech sector.

Passport-Free Travel

While in India, even after 60 years of becoming a nation, people and goods, cannot move freely, nine new EU countries joined the border control-free group known as Schengen. No more checks on the border between West Europe with Poland, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Malta. They officially became part of the Schengen Agreement, the European treaty that allows for border-free travel.

Switzerland will, later this year, join Norway and Iceland as non-EU members of Schengen. European residents and tourists can go from the easternmost tip of Estonia all the way to the Atlantic coast in Portugal without encountering a single border official.

Growing, despite laggards

It is the UK that considers itself “one-up”. The island country keeps drawing all the benefits and subsidies of EU but declines to integrate in soul and spirit.

The UK is the most self-centred laggard, shirker, straggler, hanging on to its almighty pound and refusing to open its borders to join the Schengen. For the English-speaking island populace of Europe, EU is just a clever marriage of convenience. After all, it is not so simple for a nation of shopkeepers to alter mindsets.

Closer co-operation

As unanimous decisions in the enlarged Europe have already become harder to achieve, current EU treaties include the option of “closer cooperation”.

This is to allow some member states to press ahead with integration, even if others are not in favour. But a “two speed Europe”, as exemplified in Great Britain and Ireland not participating in the Schengen border free zone, is controversial.

Notwithstanding dawdlers, the naissance of the European common market in the Palazzo Senatorio on March 25, 1957 applied the decisive diplomatic bond to hold together the longest incessant epoch of harmony and prosperity Europe has enjoyed in recorded history.

(The author is former Europe Director, CII, and lives in Cologne, Germany. Feedback may be sent tomohan.murti@t-online.de)

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