The European Council

Gatekeeper Of The European Community

Mary Johnston

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000301106
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book presents the history of the transformation of the summit into the European Council (EC). It considers the political, organizational, and legal preparations for the increased involvement of heads of government in a more influential EC international and regional role.

1
Summitry and Legitimacy

The European Council emerged as the de facto highest level decisionmaker in the European Community (EC) without a legal foundation for this role. An extra-Treaty innovation, the European Council was created by the people who would comprise it. At the Paris Summit of December 1974, EC heads of government announced the existence of the new body in which they would participate along with their foreign ministers and two representatives of the Commission. The European Council intended to meet routinely and consider EC affairs and political cooperation.¹ French President Giscard d'Estaing stated to the press at the Paris Summit's close, "The European Summit is dead, long live the European Council" and thus contributed the name.² Previously, a name had not been agreed precedenting the unplanned manner in which the European Council has developed.

Indeed, the precise functions of the European Council are still not established in the important texts comprising the legal identity of the Community. The Single European Act (SEA), henceforth the Single Act, did not delineate the role of the European Council when it amended the Treaty of Rome in 1987. However brief the mention of the European Council in the Single Act, that it was included assures its continuing existence. Significantly, the Single Act's text on the European Council is separated from that on EC institutions established by the Treaty of Rome. The distinction between the European Council and the original EC institutions, which underlines the former's dubious institutional status, formally survives although blurred in practice.

The institutional arrangements provided by the Treaty of Rome were novel and are, so far, inimitable. The Treaty of Rome's supranationalism towers over the feebler intergovernmental designs of other international and regional organizations. Because the European Council was not present at the Community's creation, it was bound to wage an uphill struggle for legitimacy. To institutional purists, the European Council did not deserve to exist because it was not in the Treaty of Rome. To members of potentially rival institutions, it would upset a delicate institutional balance by shifting influence away from the supranational institutions, the Commission and the European Parliament. In turn, the already influential intergovernmental side, the Council of Ministers' structure, would be strengthened.³

So much concern for protecting the content and spirit of Treaty arrangements flows from federalism's influence in the development of the Community. Federalism emphasizes an essential relationship between constitutional design and integration, the equivalent of a belief that integration can be constitutionally mandated. Thus, periodically the EC carries out institutional reforms to bring about more integration. The extra-Treaty nature of the European Council conflicts with federalism's more legalistic tradition of institutional development and deprives this institution of integrative credentials.

The controversy over treaty tampering began with de Gaulle's proposal of summitry and continues to affect perceptions of the European Council. This chapter reviews the history of summits, as meeting of Community heads of government were first called. The original factors leading to the creation of the European Council and the earliest conceptions of the role of heads of government in the EC are considered below.

Summitry: Internal and External Implications

Meetings of EC heads of government date from the Paris Summit of February 10-11,1961. Not only was the setting of this first summit Paris, but its purpose was to explore French President de Gaulle's special project for political cooperation. From this occasion onward, summitry would have a close association with the French and, in particular, French presidents personally interested in summitry's advantages for EEC member countries.⁴ Three French presidents in succession would initiate calls for summits during the 1960s and early 1970s. After Pompidou failed in a similar attempt, his successor, Giscard d'Estaing would ultimately succeed in almost singlehandedly founding the European Council.

From the beginning of the 1960s until de Gaulle retired from the presidency in 1969, the French had a notorious reputation for being anti-integrationist, which has only been rivaled recently by the British under Mrs. Thatcher.⁵ If de Gaulle had benignly proposed summitry, other member countries would have questioned his motives. Because de Gaulle proposed summitry as a vehicle for circumventing the institutional arrangements of the Treaty of Rome, member countries, especially the Benelux countries, were strongly opposed.

The purpose of the first meeting of the EEC heads of government in Paris in 1961 was to discuss de Gaulle's ideas on political union. Economic integration had been launched within the EEC context, but agreeing an acceptable framework for political cooperation remained problematic. In 1954 the Gaullists had helped defeat the proposal for a European Defense Community, and its accompanying plan for a European Political Union, in the French National Assembly. This defeat postponed indefinitely the ambition to bring "high politics" within the domain of the supranational institutions. De Gaulle's strategy was to dispense with the EEC framework altogether and create a separate intergovernmental framework in which to house political cooperation. In his plan for the political union, de Gaulle desired routine summits of heads of government from the member states, an institutional feature unknown to the EEC.

Jean Dondelinger, author of the first study of the European Council, considers why heads of government are absent from the EEC framework.⁶ He observes that the Treaty of Paris establishing the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and, to a lesser extent, the EEC's Treaty of Rome, presupposed a "certain effacement of the member states before the Community institutions."⁷ The founders might have reasoned that these institutions could have more difficulty establishing their authority if they had to do so in direct dealings with heads of government.

Certainly, the example set by de Gaulle gave credibility to those who believed that heads of government would tend to intimidate fledgling institutions and undermine their authority. De Gaulle's "confederal" view of the Community held that EEC institutions exercised authority only as the result of a revocable grant from the member countries; this grant did not extend to subjects which affected the vital interests of the member countries. Indeed, de Gaulle interpreted his duties under the Fifth Republic constitution as personally acting for France in vital foreign policy matters. This is how the claim of the president's constitutional "reserved domain" in foreign policy came to be made by de Gaulle's successors and explains his personal predilection for summitry in connection with political union.

At their first summit in Paris, EEC heads of government agreed to explore the question of finding a framework for political cooperation.⁸ They charged a committee with the task of drafting proposals for a political union and instructed it to report back to the heads of government. This committee was known as the Fouchet Committee after its chairman Christian Fouchet. Another summit in Bonn, July 18,1961, held for the purpose of reviewing the proposals of the Fouchet Committee, did not meet with success. Important differences surfaced among the EEC member countries which made it impossible to operationalize political cooperation until approximately a decade had passed.

The Benelux countries and Italy did not want the EEC reduced to a sideshow by the creation of a completely separate political union. Loyal to the supranational integration being pursued in the EEC framework, these countries supported expanding its policy competences and strengthening its institutions. They also suspected that the French and Germans would have too much power in the proposed political union. The organizational and procedural arrangements of the EEC seemed to offer the best protection for small country interests. The Benelux countries and Italy continue to take similar positions at significant junctures in the Community's development, naturally falling behind proposals amplifying its supranational character. Furthermore, these countries are prone to suspect Franco-German cooperation of being exclusionist or marginalizing less politically powerful member countries.

With the differences over the political union, a rift opened ominously between the four integrationist members and de Gaulle, who favored intergovernmental cooperation. The embittered atmosphere made the member countries susceptible to further arguments, such as that over British entry and the "empty chair crisis." Especially the latter was related to the intergovernmental-supranational division in the Community. France's refusal to participate in the Community institutions for six months was precipitated by de Gaulle's objection to the supranational content of a Commission proposal. This proposal linked implementing the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) to awarding new budgetary powers to the European Parliament, an institution favored by integrationists. As the Treaty of Rome committed the member countries to effecting the CAP, France maintained that the Commission proposal was devious in setting conditions on fulfilling what were after all Treaty obligations. The French were only brought back into the Community by the other member countries' acceptance of the Luxembourg Compromise in January 1966. The Luxembourg Compromise provided that a member country could declare a vital national interest at stake in the Council of Ministers and insist on discussion continuing until a consensus was found. Its practical effect was that majority voting did not become the practice of the Council of Ministers in 1966, as it should have according to the Treaty of Rome. Integrationists condemned the Luxembourg Compromise as a critical derailment in Community development that permitted the predominance of intergovernmentalism in the functioning of the Community throughout the 1970s, until the Single Act renewed majority voting in specific sectors.

Profound differences in member countries' conceptions of European integration produced ill feelings and stalemates on essential issues in the 1960s. EEC heads of government did not meet again for more than six years after their unproductive summit in Bonn in 1961. When they met in May 1967, their purpose was to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the finalization of the Treaty of Rome. At this summit, heads of government were still conscious of the need to agree a means of political cooperation. Choosing words cautiously, they consented "to study the possibility of gradually tightening their political links through methods and procedures relevant to experience and circumstances."⁹ Resentment over de Gaulle's power plays did not dissipate easily. The impasse persisted as other member countries and the Commission refused to satisfy France's policy concerns.

Pompidou followed de Gaulle in the French Presidency in 1969 and was personally interested in fashioning a new French EC policy.¹⁰ He announced his desire to meet other Community political leaders during the presidential election. Once Pompidou was president, the French took the initiative in arranging a summit. Pre-summit preparations included Pompidou's consulting with German Chancellor Kurt Kiesinger in Bonn in September 1969.¹¹ France's initiating summitry and then looking to Germany for confirmation had also preceded the first summit in Paris in 1961.¹²

The summit at The Hague, December 1969, maintained continuity with past summits by including political cooperation in the agenda. In several respects, it provided a precedent for future summits and European Councils. The heads of government were as much concerned with the internal as the external dimension of the Community, if not more so. Furthermore, their political agreements removed stumbling blocks that had delayed decisionmaking on important issues.

The summit agenda was exhaustive owing to the multiple linkages participants intended to pursue. The French theme for the summit was the Community's "completion," "deepening," and "widening," in that order of priority.¹³ Completion signified attending to unfinished tasks, to which the Treaty of Rome obligated member countries. Deepening referred to expanding the policy scope of the Community. Widening indicated clearing Community membership for Britain and other members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), the organization Britain defensively launched when it chose, initially, not to join the EEC.

Above all, France sought completion. The aim was to permanently ground the CAP, from which she already handsomely benefitted, and, thus, make sure it would survive intact in an enlarged Community. Considering that the CAP was the costliest of Community policies and potentially not of much benefit to the British, France's strategy was well within reason. The informal agreement the summit produced on giving the EC its "own resources," as envisaged by the Treaty, was the same as the agreement on stable financing for the CAP. Even the summit's support for European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) under deepening was related to French concerns over the continuation of the CAP. In the lead-up to The Hague, 24 October 1969, Germany had to revalue its currency, which complicated both technically and politically the EC's common pricing of agricultural goods. With the idea of establishing mechanisms to avoid such disruptions to the Common Market and exert more control over regional currency fluctuations, heads of government instructed the Council of Ministers to produce a plan for EMU in 1970.

After The Hague summit, President Pompidou reported on radio and television his satisfaction with France's obtaining

... an undertaking from its partners that definitive financial arr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• List of Acronyms
• Introduction
• 1 Summitry and Legitimacy
• 2 Politics and Axle Weights
• 3 Bureaucrats, Eurocrats, and National Politicians
• 4 The Delors Plan and Technical Decisionmaking
• 5 The Train of History
• 6 When Politicians Become Eurocrats and Eurocrats Become Politicians
• Appendix: European Council Meetings
• Bibliography
• Index