There should be a holiday mood in Brussels this week as commissioners, many of their officials and the entire press corps prepare for their long summer break. The talk at dinner parties is of cottages in Provence, villas in Tuscany and the price of air tickets to Cambodia.
But there is little joy in the air around the European Quarter, where officials look gloomier and wearier than ever. One official said she could not remember a time when everything seemed so grim or when the Commission was so unpopular.
This new spirit of self-doubt, which has been reinforced by Ireland's rejection of the Nice Treaty, is reflected in a recent shift in the political debate on Europe's future. While the Belgian Prime Minister, Mr Guy Verhofstadt, attempts to focus the discussion on reforming the institutions of the EU, other European politicians are asking a more fundamental question - what is the EU actually for?
In a contribution to opendemocracy.net, an excellent, new online forum for political thought, Finland's Foreign Minister, Dr Erkki Tuomioja, argues the EU is leaving European citizens behind by failing to engage with the issue that most dramatically affects their lives - globalisation.
"Is the European Union an instrument for imposing it upon us, and making its impact all the more inescapable?" he asks. "Or is it a means of gaining some degree of control over it and defending Europe from its adverse aspects? Voters may be wrong to turn away from traditional national politics. But they are surely right to insist, quietly but in huge numbers, that the EU must address the evident powers and importance of global change, from international corporations to the regulation of trade, finance and communications. This, after all, is in large part what it is about."
Dr Tuomioja, a former lecturer in political history, believes that globalisation is both an inevitable and a potentially positive process. But he warns that globalisation based on neoliberal, free market values can widen the gap between rich and poor and intensify environmental damage.
"It can also be socially damaging, destroying sustainable communities and threatening established welfare systems, which can never be replaced by purely market-based solutions. It can threaten core labour standards and weaken trade unions, as well as national and minority cultures," he writes.
The answer, according to Dr Tuomioja, is to develop policies at an international level that can protect social justice and democracy from the pressures of the global market.
Writing in Le Monde last month, the EU Trade Commissioner, Mr Pascal Lamy, and the former French finance minister, Mr Dominique Strauss-Kahn, made a similar point.
"The Irish referendum has shown that the definition of a European `doctrine' is long overdue. In the context of globalisation and enlargement, peace and wealth are still decisive motivations for building Europe. But the defence and promotion of European social systems will prove to be the decisive task for Europe in the future," they wrote.
Mr Lamy and Mr StraussKahn argue that, for economic regulation and redistribution to be effective, they must be governed at a European level. They favour institutional reform of the EU to make it more effective but they suggest that further moves are needed to protect the European social model.
"France should offer a new partnership to Germany, based on a closer union comprising economic policy, research, culture, foreign policy and defence. A congress made up of representatives of both parliaments, frequent meetings between both cabinets and a permanent secretariat would form the institutions for this union.
"Other partners would be asked to join as soon as they can. Soon, the new core would comprise all the countries of the euro zone, leading to a real economic government and to an entity able to respond diplomatically or militarily to international crises," they write.
The prospect of "a real economic government" for the euro zone is, of course, anathema to the Government, which argues that national sovereignty means nothing if national parliaments do not maintain sole control of tax policy. But as public pressure to control the effects of market globalisation becomes more vocal, the issue will preoccupy Europe's politicians more and more, setting the scene for a fundamental, ideological conflict between Ireland and most of our EU partners.
dstaunton@irish-times.ie
