Walker's World: Two-speed Europe

PARIS, June 23 (UPI) -- The European Union summit in Brussels, with the heads of government of all 27 member states, decided to lift sanctions on Cuba and to tighten them on Sudan and Zimbabwe.

It also kicked a few cans down the road, putting off an opening date for Macedonia to start talks on joining the EU and fending off a potentially nasty row about fuel tax cuts by telling its executive arm, the EU Commission, to "examine the feasibility of taxation measures to smooth the impact of sudden oil price increases" by October.

There are three interesting features of these decisions. First, it suggests those who say the EU needs a new organizing treaty or constitution, because the current rules cannot cope with the enlarged Europe of 27, have some explaining to do. It seems to be functioning tolerably well.

The second important development is that they managed, for all serious purposes, to avoid (if not ignore) the elephant in the room, last week's "no" vote in Ireland' s referendum on the new treaty. Brian Cowen, the Irish prime minister, said he still wasn't really sure why his people had voted "no" by a margin of 54-46, and by an even wider margin among those under the age of 30.

Cowen said he would come back in October with an explanation, and with some proposals for how the EU might try to rescue its ill-starred reform plan. Explanations will not be easy, when Ireland has enjoyed more benefits from EU membership than any other state, getting an average input of 3 percent of GDP in subsidies and payments from Brussels for over 30 years.

Most of the other EU leaders said the ratification process of the EU treaty should continue, regardless of the Irish vote, hoping that when 26 countries had ratified the document, then an isolated Ireland eventually would fall into line.

The British government played an unusual leading role in this, getting the ratification bill through the House of Lords for a third reading and vote Wednesday and then, with almost unprecedented haste, rushing it over to the palace for the Royal Assent, without which no Act of Parliament becomes law. This was to enable Prime Minister Gordon Brown to arrive in Brussels and boast he had gone the extra mile to ratify the treaty.

Not so fast, said Judge David Richards of the High Court in London, who currently is presiding over a lawsuit brought by an angry citizen who claims the British government broke its word by not having a referendum on the treaty. This is thought unlikely to prevail, but the rule of law prevails in Britain, and the judge told the government to hold off on ratification until his judicial review was complete.

"The court is very surprised that the government apparently proposes to ratify while the claimant's challenge to the decision not to hold a referendum on ratification is before the court," he said, and invited the defendants (the British government) "to stay their hand voluntarily until judgment."

Another "Not so fast" came from the Czechs, whose Euro-skeptic President Vaclav Klaus said Ireland's "no" had put an end to the matter and the treaty should now be regarded as dead. His prime minister, Mirek Topolanek, said he would not pressure his parliament to vote "yes," adding "I wouldn't bet 100 crowns ($6) on a Czech 'yes.'"

The process is already stalled in the Czech Republic, pending a verdict from the country's constitutional court on whether the new EU treaty is compatible with the constitution. Their decision is too close to call, but Czech legal experts says the Irish vote makes a negative verdict more likely.

France's President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were irritated by this, for different reasons. Merkel wants the treaty brought into force because it significantly increases Germany's voting weight in the Parliament and Council. Sarkozy wants it because he takes over the EU's rotating presidency July 1 and does not want his six months at the helm to be dominated by yet more wrangling over the unpopular treaty, which is now almost certain to happen.

So Merkel and Sarkozy began to bluster, warning that any further enlargement of the EU would have to be put on hold until the new treaty became a reality. (Merkel managed to get the German media to focus on the way she sneaked away to a TV to watch Germany beat Portugal in soccer's European Cup, but in private she gave Sarkozy strong backing.)

"It is certain that as long as we have not solved the institutional problem, the question of enlargement is stopped de jure or de facto," Sarkozy told a press conference in Brussels.

"A certain number of countries which have some reserves on the Lisbon treaty are the most active on enlargement. ... The Lisbon [treaty] allows further enlargement. No Lisbon, no enlargement," he added.

That was an effort to put pressure on the new member states from Central and Eastern Europe that want countries like Ukraine and the Balkan states of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia to be on a fast track for membership. The Poles, for example, are keen to have Ukraine in, for then Poland no longer would occupy the hot spot of being the EU's eastern frontier, directly facing Russia.

So Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk rejected the Merkel-Sarkozy call to stop further enlargement as "unacceptable."

And so the third and most interesting feature of the EU summit was that a two-speed Europe is now emerging. The Eastern Europeans and the Irish (and several other countries, had they been given the chance to say so in a referendum) have made it clear they do not like this treaty. They do not want the EU to start looking more like a state, with a permanent president and foreign minister, and ever more decisions made by majority vote and fewer and fewer national vetoes.

But the bulk of Europe's governments and the massed EU political elites are determined to proceed, whatever the voters may say. The real two-speed Europe, and the most dangerous, is the one that divides the rulers and the ruled.