UK PRESIDENCY: Cardiff clichés
The European Union's Cardiff summit lived down to expectations. Billed as a stock-taking exercise after last month's launch of the single currency, it betrayed the contradictions besetting the efforts of the 15 governments to establish a new political direction for the union.
Tony Blair, UK prime minister, saw the summit as the moment to launch a fresh debate on strengthening the democratic legitimacy of the EU's institutions and aligning its priorities with voters' preoccupations. He found ready support from Germany's Helmut Kohl and France's Jacques Chirac. For different reasons both see political advantage in denouncing the alleged intrusions of Brussels into national life.
Mr Blair may be right that the post-war Europe of the elites needs adaptation. But the exchanges in Cardiff appeared to owe much to short-term expediency. Thus Mr Kohl, facing an uphill struggle to survive September's German elections, railed against restrictions on the rights of the Länder to dole out industrial subsidies. Mr Chirac chided the European Commission's efforts to interfere in the allocation of tickets for the World Cup.
Such easy populism gives the principle of subsidiarity a bad name. As the summit's communiqué acknowledges, governments' habit of bending the rules of the single market demands stronger intervention by the Commission. There is much to be said for promoting co-ordination of economic policy through peer pressure rather than by fresh regulation. But Brussels must not become the scapegoat for the domestic troubles of EU governments.
It is the Commission's role to propose EU legislation - and as it has done in recent years, it would do well to focus on doing less, better. But it has always been for governments to dispose. Scrutiny by EU leaders of the boundaries of union and national competences must start from an honest assessment of the present position. That includes the Commission's role as guardian of the rights of smaller EU nations.
The most dispiriting aspect of the summit, however, was its failure to inject momentum into the reforms - financial, agricultural, and institutional - essential to proceed with enlargement to the east. The union needs a new political script. There is none better than adding substance to the oft-stated promise to extend peace and prosperity to the former communist states.