Why Brussels Is Not So Scary by Fareed Zakaria

May 21, 2001, U.S. Edition

Why Brussels Is Not So Scary
Germany wants a stronger European Union. But Europe is ready to stop right where it is.
By Fareed Zakaria

For Americans in the past decade, thinking about Europe has meant thinking about the war in Bosnia or the occupation of Kosovo or NATO's enlargement. These are important issues, to be sure, but they are also familiar ones. Ethnic conflict, war, Russian expansion, deterrence. This is the Europe Americans have dealt with for decades and understand. This is the Europe with which we are comfortable.

But the main event in Europe is much bigger and stranger. It is taking place not on the Continent's peripheries but at its core. It is a process unprecedented in human history. Europe's great powers, with their proud pasts and distinct national identities, are voluntarily ceding authority to a transnational government. And yet Americans have almost nothing to say about the European Union. It's almost as if we pretend it's not happening because we don't quite know what to make of it.

To the extent that Americans--and Britons, who both feed and mirror their attitudes on these issues--have views, they are strong and simple. The European Union is too big and undemocratic and is snuffing out the charming diversity of European life. ("Unelected bureaucrats in Brussels will dictate to English brewers how to make ale!") While there is some substance to these concerns, they are vastly exaggerated.

The Euro-skeptics gained a fresh target when, two weeks ago, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder put forward a blueprint for the European Union, which involved significantly expanding the powers of the Brussels-based European Commission and Parliament, the two Pan-European bodies, and weakening the Council of Ministers, which represents Europe's member states.

But Schroder's ideas are going nowhere. Almost every government in Europe instantly dismissed his proposals. I happened to be in Denmark a few days after Schroder floated his idea. Like Schroder, Danish Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen is a social democrat. Like Schroder, he is a committed European. But he was very direct in his opposition.

"Schroder's proposal is not the answer at all," he said. "The European Union is unique precisely because it is not a federal union. It is a voluntary cession of sovereignty to solve common problems." I asked him where he saw Europe moving. "Toward enlargement, bringing in the

Eastern European countries. Then we must put into place measures to make people stop worrying that the Union will rob them of their identity. That requires a charter of fundamental rights, then a simplification of the EU structure and finally a clear demarcation of which powers rest with Brussels and which ones stay with national governments."

It used to be that the Danes--who opted out of the euro last year--were regarded as weird skeptics on the EU. Now they seem to be solidly in the mainstream, with French socialists, the architects of the idea of a European megastate, mouthing similar rhetoric. The trend among Europe's leaders is toward a more well-defined European Union that digests the tasks it has already taken on. In an insightful essay in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Andrew Moravcsik argues that "the single market and currency increasingly appear not as the first major steps toward political union, but as the finishing touches on the construction of a European economic zone." In other words, with Europe, what you see is what you will get.

To those who see the EU now as intolerable, this will give little solace. But the EU's authority is vastly exaggerated. Brussels's budget is just more than 1 percent of the EU's total GNP. Moravcsik points out that once you exclude translators and clerical workers, the European Commission employs 2,500 officials, "fewer than any moderately sized European city and less than 1 percent of the number employed by the French state alone." Any new law it wishes to pass needs more than 71 percent of weighted national-government votes--"a larger proportion than that required to amend the American Constitution."

Schroder's proposal, and those a year ago from his foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, were meant to address the most frequently heard criticism of the European Union these days--that it lacks legitimacy because it is not representative. True, and worth a substantive discussion, but the awkward reality is that the EU has been effective precisely because it is insulated from political pressures. Europe's statist economies have stayed protected and unreformed for so long because its governments are paralyzed by powerful protectionist interest groups. "The European Union is the chief, indeed the only, agent of free-market reform on the Continent," says Joseph Joffe, editor of Germany's Die Zeit. "Without Brussels we would not have deregulated any of our major industries." Without the fear of missing the EU's targets, countries like Italy would never have moved toward lower deficits. And much of what Brussels is responsible for--regulatory, trade, monetary and antitrust policy--is insulated from political pressures is many countries, including the United States.

The opposition to the European Union in the Anglo-American world comes mainly from people who rejoice in the free market. But the opposition to the EU on the Continent comes mainly from people who fear it. Prime Minister Rasmussen admitted that many of the Danish opponents of the EU were traditionally left-wing types. "It's people who fear globalization," he said. "Low-skilled workers, women, public employees. For them, the European Union is just part of this new world of global capitalism and free markets." That's why it is here to stay.