Quotes of the Day

Stop ignoring the E.U.!" those pleading, almost desperate words shouted out from posters that until recently were plastered throughout Sweden. They're part of the "E.U. Relay," a government-sponsored campaign that's crisscrossing the country to promote discussion about the European Union's future. But the vast majority of Swedes couldn't be bothered to talk about it. When students from Carlforsska High School in Västerås in central Sweden approached people, they would flee at the very mention of the E.U. "Many of them we almost had to chase," says Kristina Alpfält. "They were suddenly in such a hurry when they heard what we wanted to talk about."

The E.U. has been having this effect on people for roughly a half-century, but this time there's so much at stake that people really ought to pay more attention. At the end of this week, E.U. government leaders will meet for a summit in Thessaloniki, Greece, to accept a draft of united Europe's first constitution. The document has been the subject of emotional yet arcane debate for the past 16 months at a constitutional convention in Brussels, under the imperial aegis of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing.

Giscard's draft will be considered in detail by member governments beginning next October, but the fault lines are already clear. The United Kingdom vows to continue its fight against what it sees as federalist encroachments on the prerogatives of sovereign states, while integration-minded Continentals will try to bolster Brussels against the power of national capitals. By next June, all member states are supposed to have agreed upon a constitution that puts Europe on track to a single identity — with a President and a Foreign Minister, a European Parliament whose debates matter, and a clearer sense of the E.U.'s now ill-defined responsibilities.

The E.U. wants more clout — so why do so few Europeans seem to care? A recent poll commissioned by Elcano Royal Institute, a Madrid think tank, found that only 1% of Spaniards even know what the constitutional convention is meant to do. In Britain, lurid tabloid headlines like blueprint for tyranny have ensured that people are generally opposed to the constitution, but most newspapers on the Continent have run small articles on the debate.

That's partly because these deliberations have been so arid and technocratic. This constitution is the child of a slow, bureaucratic process rather than a sudden cataclysm. Revolutions provide a highly charged atmosphere for constitution writing (think of the U.S. and, more recently, Poland). Wars will do nicely, too, as they did for the Weimar Constitution of Germany in 1919 and — far more successfully — for the Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany. Constitutions normally mark a reshuffling of the deck for a society that knows it's in dire need of new governance — or of governance, period.

Not this one. The driving force behind the new constitution is the need to rationalize some of the E.U.'s 29,000 pages of legislation and streamline its byzantine bureaucracy and decision-making processes before it becomes even more bloated as 10 new members join next year, with others bound to follow. No wonder grandiose comparisons to America's Founding Fathers sound forced. "Our work compares favorably with that of the Philadelphia Convention," said Alain Lamassoure, a French member of the Convention. "They were 13, but we were 28, and they could solve their British problem using methods that we currently deplore."

Unlike America's founding document, the new draft constitution did not follow a crisis, but it may yet cause one. Not all of the eight countries that have promised to submit the final document to referendums are sure to approve it, and E.U. officials can't say now how they would handle a no vote. If it passes, the constitution could bring the E.U. up from an abstraction and into the consciousness of every European. But to really make a difference for ordinary citizens — the people who run away when the E.U. is mentioned — the constitution has to answer three key questions about what the European Union is, and what it should become.

SHOULD THE E.U. HAVE A COMMON FOREIGN POLICY?
A large majority of people think it should. A poll taken by Eurobarometer, the E.U.'s polling institute, in March and April found that two-thirds of E.U. citizens favor a single European foreign policy, and almost three-quarters want a common defense and security policy; only in the U.K. does support for either fall below 50%. With the diplomatic divisions over Iraq still fresh, it's easy to forget that the E.U. is already supposed to have a common policy — at least in principle. Former NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana has been High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy since 1999, during which time he's traveled frequently to the Middle East, helped avert civil war in Macedonia and held chats with U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell several times a week. In practice, however, E.U. policy has been bitterly divided and all too often driven into the ditch by the clashing political interests of individual member nations.

"The world has changed — it is dangerous, disorganized and dehumanized," French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin informed the Convention earlier this month. "We do not resign ourselves to a feeble Europe that is a spectator in the world." That's lovely rhetoric, but the reality has fallen far short. Marek Siwiec, National Security Adviser to Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, says that when his country faced the choice of backing the U.S. in Iraq, the E.U. complained but didn't offer a credible alternative. "We knew exactly what America wanted to achieve — the removal of Saddam Hussein — but we didn't hear any alternative approach from the E.U.," he says. "We want to be a party to a European foreign policy, but there is none."

The new constitution creates the position of European Foreign Minister to express a single voice on foreign policy, but neither the U.K. nor France is willing to give up its veto power over the E.U.'s policies. And even if the E.U. does manage to agree, it won't amount to much in most cases unless member states are willing to back it up by force. In military spending, the E.U. has yielded the field — happily in most cases — to the Americans. But it's a big, chaotic world. An E.U. that can pitch in — one that can forcefully argue its case and win — would go a long way to making itself matter to its citizens.

SHOULD BRUSSELS HAVE MORE POWER?
There are plenty of people throughout the Union who feel the E.U. has quite enough power already, thank you very much. John Holbrow's small firm in Woking, Surrey, in the U.K. monitors air pollution and stands to profit from environmental legislation out of Brussels. But he fears the march of the Eurocrats is unstoppable. "In the end, why do we need M.P.s, why do we need Parliament?" he wonders. "In the future they are going to be relegated to the role of a county council, at best." In a way, he's right. National parliaments in the E.U. can only pass laws on employment, economic governance or the environment, for instance, if they comply with existing directives from Brussels. But E.U. legislation isn't made by fiat: laws are proposed by the Commission and approved by both the democratically elected (if too often invisible) European Parliament and by representatives of national governments.

For many Europeans, national sovereignty isn't such a holy principle. Germans, aware of how egregiously their country abused its neighbors, generally don't see a problem in ceding more authority to Brussels. And for some in regions traditionally jealous of the power of their national governments — like Flanders in Belgium and Scotland in the U.K. — the E.U. is a better seat of power than the national capital. "There has never been a debate over the loss of sovereignty in Spain," says Charles Powell of Elcano Royal Institute. "The Spaniards can't get rid of it fast enough."

Since the E.U. already has a single market and, in most cases, no border controls, sovereignty isn't what it used to be. It just doesn't make sense for European governments to address business and financial regulation or environmental standards differently from their neighbors, since by definition these issues cross national borders. The truth is that the E.U. has exactly as much power as national governments are willing to give it. Since France sees itself as a prime driver of E.U. policy, it's pleased to have a powerful union — a suit of armor to wear as the French slug it out on the world stage. Or so it often seems to Britain.

In trade, for instance, Brussels negotiates on behalf of all member states at the World Trade Organization. But last week France and Germany got together to water down reform plans for the Common Agricultural Policy, the subsidy program that consumes 45% of the Union's j98.6 billion budget, of which France is the biggest beneficiary. The reforms would strengthen Europe's hand in the next round of WTO negotiations. E.U. Agricultural Commissioner Franz Fischler was furious at the deal. "It cannot be that two member states decide for the other 13 countries," he fumed. But it is so, and the episode is just another example of how member states intent on preserving entrenched advantages undermine the strength of the E.U. as a whole.

The new constitution goes only part of the way to stopping stitch-ups like this. It suggests a simplified formula for a majority vote — at least half the member states representing 60% of the population — but it won't kick in until 2009 at the earliest. Moreover, national vetoes remain in place against measures governing social security legislation, worker protection and especially taxation, a national prerogative in countries with relatively low corporate taxes like the U.K. and Ireland. Exceptions like that make the E.U.'s remit a patchwork that's hard to grasp and harder to love.

SHOULD THE E.U. BECOME A SUPERSTATE?
Some federalists would certainly like to see the E.U. evolve into a United States of Europe. According to Philippe Moreau Defarges, an analyst at the French Institute of International Relations, the E.U. is "a process and creation that has become bigger than the nations that are part of it, the skeleton for a federalist Europe." Others, already alarmed by the E.U.'s "democratic deficit," want to make sure no flesh is put on those federalist bones. "To have a democratic entity you need a democratic identity," says Ditte Staun, 26, a Danish political-science student who campaigns against the E.U. "The 15 member states don't have a common history, and we don't want our identity to be changed. This constitution is just the E.U. consolidating itself, trying to create an unstoppable process in one direction." She is convinced that most Danes agree with her, and will reject the new constitution in the referendum the Danish government has promised to hold. Staunch defenders of the nation-state see no appeal in putting power at an ever-greater distance, or in consciously giving people who speak other languages and have different interests the right to co-determine their lives. The fact is, however, that other people already do so, whether one acknowledges it or not. No European country can isolate itself from the influence of what its neighbors trade, how they treat the environment, or whether they are prone to wage war. So advocates of a federal Europe figure that placing real power in Brussels — with the ability to make common rules for all — will give Europeans certainty at home and influence abroad. But most people still fall somewhere in the middle: they aren't parochial enough to be isolationist, but don't trust Brussels enough to relinquish all control.

For that reason, the European Union will always be a mix of national and supranational powers, and the new constitution leaves largely open just how rich that mix will be. It doesn't close the door to the E.U. eventually levying its own taxes, for example, though that's not a policy that's likely to win popular support. But if Europeans had a better idea of what they were paying for — and why — people might not feel so remote from the grand project of an integrated Europe. Comparisons with the American Constitution are easily overdrawn, but the framers of the E.U.'s future would do well to remember how that document kicked off: "We, the people ..." If the politicians gathering in Thessaloniki this week wanted to get the attention of ordinary Europeans, that might have been a good place to start.

• JAMES GRAFF
• Will a new constitution help make the E.U. matter?