What a larger Europe needs is small countries able to....

azzuri · What a larger Europe needs is small countries able to....

What a larger Europe needs is small countries able to think big

see - http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1766910,00.html

The EU will be neither a federal superstate nor the plaything of large states. Step forward the far-sighted small nations

Timothy Garton Ash in Lisbon
Thursday May 4, 2006
The Guardian

Europe is a small continent full of small countries. Increasingly, its future will depend on the ability of these small countries to think big. The current holder of the presidency of the EU is Austria (population: 8.2 million); thereafter the club will be chaired by Finland (5.2 million), Germany (82 million), Portugal (10.6 million) and Slovenia (2 million).

Four small to one big. As the EU enlarges into the Balkans, the ratio of sprats to sharks will increase. One of the most supremely ludicrous moments in recent European history came in 1991, when Jacques Poos hurried to inform the Slovenes, then trying to break away from Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia, that small countries had no future in Europe. Poos was foreign minister of Luxembourg (population: 475,000).

There's a lot to be said for being small. Small countries generally don't start wars. They usually don't have the arrogance of larger states. Besides modesty and intimacy, they often enjoy a high level of social solidarity. The nation is like an extended family. And, particularly in the favourable conditions of contemporary Europe, they can do well by their citizens.

Seven of the world's top 10 in the human development index - the combined measure of health, education and gross domestic product per capita - are small European countries: Norway, Iceland, Luxembourg, Sweden, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium. They can be among the strongest supporters of European integration - although Eurosceptics will gleefully note that three of those seven are not members of the EU.

There are also disadvantages. The transaction costs of small states can be high. An extreme example is Bosnia. Under its present, Byzantine constitutional arrangements, it expends 70% of its budget just on paying its politicians and officials. There are also high transaction costs for cooperation between many small states: look at the EU's budget for interpretation.

Provincialism can be the flipside of modesty. In international relations, small countries can be fearful of confronting larger neighbours who are behaving badly. "Finlandisation" is shorthand for a state of mind that we would not want the European Union to fall into in its relations with Russia. But then, large countries can also fall for appeasement, especially when they have vulnerable interests to defend, like Britain in the 1930s or Germany with its current dependence on Russian gas, while small countries, like Estonia - and Finland, in its winter war against the Soviet Union - can be extremely brave.

Here in Portugal, I've been thinking about what it is that can enable small countries to think big. One advantage is to have a big past. That extraordinary moment in the 15th century, when Portuguese seafarers such as Vasco da Gama set out across unknown seas to discover the world, has left Portugal with some extraordinary treasures. There's the Jeronimos Monastery, for example, paid for by the riches of the far east: a white, gleaming limestone wonder, with its unique, exuberant stone carvings evoking the nautical forms of ropes, knots and ships. Here the treaty of Portugal's accession to the EU was signed just over 20 years ago. The memory of such a moment can inspire across centuries.

More important, Portugal's world-power moment has left about 210 million people across the world speaking Portuguese (186 million of them in Brazil). That's more than speak French as a first language. It gives this country, like Spain, Britain and Ireland, an enduring transatlantic perspective. Austria, the current holder of the EU presidency, is another small country whose big past gives it a broader perspective, particularly in its approach to the Balkans and Mitteleuropa. The voice of the emperor Franz Josef is still heard in the councils of Europe. But you don't have to have been the coloniser; you can inherit the broader view by having been the colonised. That is, at least potentially, the case of Bosnia, that clashing-point of Christian and Muslim empires. We worry about the position of Muslims in Europe but there, in Bosnia, for centuries Muslims have lived as Europeans and Europeans have lived as Muslims.

If smaller countries are to think big, one thing they definitely need is a good education system, including study abroad. Education has to compensate for the narrowness of local horizons. But if their elites acquire that education, they can have a more genuinely European - multinational and supranational - approach than a French, German or English European can usually achieve. Take the Portuguese president of the European commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, for example. Barroso has an extraordinary knack: when he speaks English he not only talks but thinks like an Englishman; when he speaks French, he not only talks but thinks like a Frenchman. To hear him alternate from one to the other can be quite disconcerting, almost as if he's switching between a left and right brain. Such intellectual virtuosity is a great asset for a European commission president, and perhaps only someone from a smaller country could acquire it. This was definitely not the case with Jacques Delors - never more French than when speaking English - while, even as commission president, Romano Prodi was 200% Italian in both French and English.

I don't want to overstate the case. There are obvious drawbacks to an EU of ever more small states. You only have to look at the size of the European leaders' conference table in Brussels to see that no one could ever have a proper discussion around it. But, like it or not, this larger EU of smaller states is a fact. It's an illusion to think that it will be made to work by a directorate of the three largest states, Germany, France and Britain. It's an equal and opposite illusion to think that it will be made to work by the EU becoming a single federal state. Both those moments have passed.

Whatever the institutional arrangements we put in place when Valéry Giscard d'Estaing's constitutional treaty is finally dead and buried, one key to their success will be to combine the strengths, rather than aggregating the weaknesses, of larger and smaller states. A modest start will be made from January next year, when three successive presidency-holders - Germany, Portugal and Slovenia - will, for the first time, form a continuous "team" presidency. How that works in practice remains to be seen, but it's good that it starts with Germany, a big country that has a foreign-policy tradition of working well with smaller neighbours and a new chancellor intent on reviving that good tradition. Given the difficulty of renegotiating the EU's institutional and national balances, we may yet see more than one such team presidency - the next would be Franco-Czech-Swedish - although I somehow doubt we'll make it through to the British-Estonian-Bulgarian team scheduled for 2017-18.

In the long run, the EU will only move forward in any given policy area if there is a strategic coalition of the willing that includes the key big states and some small states. Nothing will happen unless the big states agree to it; equally, nothing will happen if only the big ones support it. This is a moment of opportunity for any small European country prepared to think big.

Neil

You make a number of good points, despite your niave opinions of Bosnia & Hercegovina, which isn't a nation or a truly independent state & except as part of Yugoslavia, has merely been a prize for whoever happened to be top nation at the time. The strength of a community of small nations is that they can try different ways of doing things & see what works. The best historic example of this is that when the Chinese Emperor decided that the exploration voyages of Cheng Ho should stop they did, whereas Vasco da Gama who did a similar trip 50 years later in reverse or even more, Columbus had the choice of working for different nations.

Today a similar example is Singapore where they have an extensive GM industry & one of the world's 2 active space access companies purely because they have chosen to accept innovative companies unwelcome in larger states.

Looking at the list of per capita wealth http://www.geographyiq.com/rankin..._purchasing_power_parity_dall.htm of the top 10 countries only the US is large (to be fair some of these are clearly because very small countries can act as banking centres (or in Luxemberg govening centre) & this isn't true wealth).

On the other hand all these depend on fairly free trade - when trade is hampered big countries score well. For example the economic situation in Serbia, while partly due to having 2 million rethnically cleansed refugees, is even more due to de facto EU trade sanctions (every off licence is full of Bulgarian wine but zero Serb). Small countries are immensely vulnerable to this.

To my mind loose federations dedicated to free trade, low regulation & the rule of law with separationof powers score best. On this the USA scores well. Strangely enough another in the top 10 list is Bermuda which is an entirely self ruling but externally legally regulated colony of the UK & Hong Kong at 14 used to be (politically incorrect but true).

I will, unfortunately, gleefully agree with you about small countries outside the EU being more successful than those in. That is because the EU is not mainly a free trade area but an increasingly constricting heavy regulation federation. The EU countries, particularly the older ones are among the world's slowest growing. Given the option I would prefer associate status like Norway. Given even more options I would join NAFTA.

Blackleaf

Neil

That is exactly my case for federation, though many Americans will think the US is more centralised than it used to be..

SLG

Neil

Absolutely.
The EU is not a democratic community (the Parliament is powerless token) it is a bridge game between the council of ministers in which they divvy up the pot as cynically as Bismark & Metternich ever did.

SLG

But would you promote democratic European federalism?

Neil

I would promote a free trade area. I think the cultural differences, particularly the different languages, would make (is making) a closer union self destructive.

I see what you are getting at but I submit that we have vastly more cultural, as well as linguistic, homogenity with England than Germany.

Having expressed disapproval about the way (ex-)Nazi Germany pushed the EU into supporting (ex-)Nazis in Yugoslavia in the commission of genocide you may legitimately consider me biased against Germany (or preferably unbiased against Germany)

SLG

Well, I'd agree that we have much more in common with the English than those of continental Europe. The thing about federation is that it can mean very different things to different people. Some folk want to see such strong federal powers as to make us de facto Independent.

I'd like to see a Scottish Parliament that had the power to decide on the relationship that Scotland has with England, the British Isles (I would consider us to be just as close to Eire as with England if not more so), EU, world etc. I would like to have a very close relationship with the other countries of the British Isles. I would prefer the EU to be mainly a trading body, but there are plenty issues that require the structures to allow the countries of Europe to collaborate.

The difference is, I would like to see this as a bottom up process with ultimate power lying with the Scots Parliament. The federalist 'middle down' approach doesn't make any sense to me. Why have a UK Parliament that devolves power down to Scotland, but carries out it's relationship with higher bodies from a unified UK perspective. IMO Scotland should relate to the other countries of the British Isles on those issues where we need to, and Scotland should relate to the EU on those issues where we need tom, etc. Every time you go up a level, you lose representation. If we allow the UK to speak for us in Europe, we lose representation. We are already seeing the EU speak for us on some international issues, where we lose even more representation. As a small country (the best in the world apparently Wink

) We could have a very representative government that could go on and represent us at all these levels.

Neil

Aventinian

Aventinian

azzuri

SLG